lost among the words

Very Gentle Writing does not set staggering word count goals and then feel bad about it. No! Very Gentle Writing for me sets an extremely low word count and then feels magnificently productive when the low bar is exceeded (which is easy…it’s a low bar, I mean really low). 

Very Gentle Writing is about saying hey yo maybe I just want to listen to a chill playlist for a while and feel one sentence spill out. Go me! 

Very Gentle Writing is kind of about realizing I have a really limited amount of time to write in between work, and adulting, and taking care of a thousand life responsibilities, and trying to heal&deal from trauma in 2020. So I want that writing time to be….just…..nice. 

Very Gentle Writing means I have a goal of enjoying every single time I sit down to write. Really. I use all the fun words first. 

Accepting – too accepting; willing to excuse extreme behavior

Adaptable – used to traveling from situation to situation; may not be able to fully adapt/live in a permanent situation

Affable – accidentally befriends the wrong sort of people; pushes to befriend everyone

Affectionate –inappropriate affection

Alert – constantly on edge; paranoid

Altruistic – self-destructive behavior for the sake of their Cause

Apologetic – apologizes too much; is a doormat; guilt-ridden

Aspiring – becomes very ambitious; ruthless in their attempts to reach goals

Assertive – misunderstood as aggressive; actually aggressive; others react negatively when they take command all the time

Athletic – joints weakened from exercise; performance-enhancing drug abuse; competitive

do they actually move toward what they desire? how far are they willing to go for it? do they pursue their desires directly or indirectly? do they acquire what they desire through force, trickery, or negotiation? do they tell themselves they aren't supposed to feel desire and suppress it? does the suppressed desire wither away and die, or does it mutate and grow even stronger? is the initially expressed desire actually an inadequate and poorly translated different desire that they lack language for? does the desire change once the language has been updated, or when new experiences outline the desire more clearly? do they want something else once they have better words for it, or once they know that they definitely don't want something they thought they wanted before?

how does the world accommodate those desires? what does the world present to your character and in what order to update and clarify their desires? how does your magic system or sci-fi device correspond to those desires and the pursuit of them?

I thought it would be a good idea to ask a question related to writing every week to get us all sharing our opinions with one another about the same topic!

Reblog this post with your answer so more people can see this and participate! This week's question is:

What's your favourite part of the writing process and why?

Often in the writing world, we are told to make sure our protagonists have strong wants. After all, the protagonist’s want usually leads to a goal, and goals allow audiences to measure progress or setbacks in a story (which also helps with pacing). The protagonist’s pursuit of the goal often makes up most of the plot.

For change-arc protagonists, often what they want will be at odds with what they need. For most flat-arc protagonists, they often want the need, though sometimes they have to deal with a competing want or even lose sight of the need. (For more information on wants and needs, check out “Character’s Want vs. Need”) But if you aren’t familiar with the want vs. need approach, no worries. Suffice it to say that the protagonist’s want is almost always a key component of character arc, plot, and even theme.

So, must every protagonist absolutely have a powerful want driving them through the plot? Of course not. All “rules” are really more like guidelines. It’s just that if you break that rule, it will likely come at a steep cost, since it influences so many parts.

Because of the nature of story itself, it’s nearly impossible to have a protagonist who doesn’t want something significant by the end. Pretty much always the protagonist will have a want by the end of Act I. If not then, she will at least have a want or goal by the midpoint, at the latest–but that’s often pushing it. Rarely do protagonists make it through a whole story without having a clear significant want, though I won’t go so far as to say it’s impossible. And in some types of stories, you may be dealing with one significant want per section of the story.

Let’s talk about some situations where the protagonist doesn’t start with a driving want, goal, or hobby.

The Protagonist Already Has What He Wants

While in many stories the protagonist will start with a burning desire, in others, the protagonist already has everything he wants–or at least, is already on track for soon getting what he wants. There are a couple of ways this can play out.

1. His Lifestyle is Threatened

If the protagonist already has what he wants, one of the easiest ways to get the story rolling is to threaten what he already has. The threat may come as the inciting incident. In Shrek, Shrek already enjoys his life of solitude in the swamp, scaring off humans and bathing in mud. The inciting incident appears as a problem that threatens this: Other fairytale creatures are invading his home. For him, this stake is too high, and he must do something about it.

Alternatively, the lifestyle may not be threatened until near the end of Act I. For example, the inciting incident might be an opportunity that the protagonist declines–he already has everything he wants. However, something big threatens–or maybe even destroys–what he has, and he responds by taking the opportunity.

There are a few ways this can play out really, but the basic idea is that the protagonist loses, or is at risk of losing, what he already has. Often the goal is to get it back somehow–which means stopping or thwarting whatever the threat is. (However, with that said, it’s not impossible to give the character a new goal either.)

2. She Discovers a New Want

It might be that the protagonist already has everything she wants, but soon discovers something new she wants as well. Maybe she didn’t even know the wanted thing existed or was possible, until the inciting incident, or even a later point in the story. She thought her life was complete, but now realizes what she has isn’t enough.

I feel like this is something we see more with villains and anti-heroes–especially those depicted as spoiled, selfish, or entitled. But it doesn’t have to be. It could just be that the character is satisfied with life, but now yearns for more.

In The Hobbit, Bilbo is largely satisfied with his life–he has his creature comforts in his hobbit hole, and that’s all fine and well. But it isn’t until Gandalf arrives with the opportunity for adventure (and strives to persuade Bilbo into it) that Bilbo eventually embraces the fact that, in reality, he wants adventure (which, in some sense, is also what he needs).

The Protagonist is Wanting, but Lacks Vision (a Goal)

Sometimes a protagonist isn’t driven by a strong passion or goal, because he lacks vision. His life may be dissatisfying, but he can’t imagine any way to change that. It’s just the life he’s been dealt. It feels like something is lacking, but he doesn’t know what. Eventually, the character encounters something new that broadens his vision and leads to a concrete goal. The goal promises (at least to the protagonist) to fulfill what is lacking.

In Luca, Luca appears dissatisfied with his daily life, which seems to be made up of boring and repetitious chores, but he doesn’t really know of any other lifestyle. He later meets Alberto, who shows him an entirely new way of living. Soon Luca is filled with the same passions as Alberto and adopts the same goals.

Helpful Techniques

Having a story where the protagonist isn’t driven by a strong want, goal, or passion can have steep costs. There often isn’t a lot of tension, conflict, or driving force prior to the character gaining a want or goal. This is, again, in part because the goal helps give the plot context–if there is no goal, then what happens doesn’t really matter that much. The protagonist isn’t trying to get anywhere specific, and isn’t having to struggle to get there. This threatens to kill pacing and lose the audience.

Luckily, there are a few workarounds to help.

- If the protagonist already has everything he wants, open the story by showcasing how wonderful the protagonist’s life is–how everything seems to be going her way. She has everything she wants, or is about to get everything she wants. Drifting in the subtext is the implication that things won’t stay this way. The audience subconsciously knows a problem is coming (after all, it’s a story, and story means conflict). This creates a sort of ironic promise, where the audience is waiting for things to turn bad.

This can be harder to pull off. Waiting for an antagonistic force to ruin things for the protagonist isn’t usually as interesting as anticipating what the protagonist is going to do next to try to get a goal. However, it can be done, and done well.

- Alternatively, if the protagonist lacks vision, open the story by showcasing how life is dissatisfying. Convey the sense that something is missing. Drifting in the subtext is the implication that things won’t stay this way. The audience subconsciously knows an opportunity is coming. They’ll likely be willing to wait to see how it could fix the character’s dissatisfaction.

- Cut to another viewpoint. If your story has multiple viewpoints, you can use a scene in another viewpoint to make up for the “costs” of your protagonist’s current state. This might mean having a scene where the antagonist’s plans promise to soon ruin things for the protagonist. This creates dramatic irony, and the audience will want to stick around to see what happens. Alternatively, you can cut to a side character who has a driving want, goal, or passion–filling in for everything the protagonist doesn’t bring to the story.

- Get to the inciting incident quick. The inciting incident disrupts the established normal, either as a problem or an opportunity. This means it will disrupt, at least to some degree, your protagonist’s amazing life (or dissatisfying one). It may be that the inciting incident is a problem disrupting the good things, in which case, the character will want to act to try to get things back to normal. Or, it may be the incident is an opportunity that keeps bothering the protagonist. In any case, it knocks the character off balance to some degree.

- Start in narrative in medias res. In narrative in medias res, you bring a part from later in the story and use it to open the story. This will usually be a scene that promises big problems and/or high stakes. In The Emperor’s New Groove, Kuzco pretty much starts with everything he wants and is on the trajectory to get the next thing he wants–Kuzcotopia. The story opens with narrative in medias res, pulling a scene that shows him as a llama crying in the rain in the wilderness. This contrasts the story’s actual beginning so much, that audiences want to stick around to see how he went from having everything to having nothing and no one.

- Use a prologue. Similar to in medias res, you can stick a powerful or punchy prologue in at the beginning, which can help carry the audience through the setup. Contrary to what many say in the industry, the primary purpose of a prologue is to make promises to the audience about what kind of story they are about to read or watch. Prologues can work great for stories with slower or calmer openings. I already did a whole article on prologues, so won’t repeat everything here, but feel free to peruse it.

- Use a teaser. Like many of the techniques listed here, a teaser makes promises to the audience about what will come later in the story, so it’s just another way to pull them through the calm, peaceful, or happy (or slowly dissatisfying) setup.

- Give the protagonist scene-level goals. Just because the protagonist doesn’t have a plot-level goal (yet) doesn’t mean she doesn’t have scene-level goals. Pretty much everyone wants something all of the time. In most scenes, your protagonist should have a goal too. It might be simply to maintain the current lifestyle. Maybe she just wants to get through her work shift without any inconveniences or without anyone discovering she secretly loves to watch K-dramas. Or maybe the goal is to make cookies for a neighbor. Or maybe it’s to pass a test, or to not draw attention in class. Scene-level goals may not have as much driving force as plot-level goals, but they still help carry the story–as long as there are some stakes tied to the outcome.

E.A. Deverell - FREE worksheets (characters, world building, narrator, etc.) and paid courses;

Hiveword - Helps to research any topic to write about (has other resources, too);

BetaBooks - Share your draft with your beta reader (can be more than one), and see where they stopped reading, their comments, etc.;

Charlotte Dillon - Research links;

Writing realistic injuries - The title is pretty self-explanatory: while writing about an injury, take a look at this useful website;

One Stop for Writers - You guys… this website has literally everything we need: a) Description thesaurus collection, b) Character builder, c) Story maps, d) Scene maps & timelines, e) World building surveys, f) Worksheets, f) Tutorials, and much more! Although it has a paid plan ($90/year | $50/6 months | $9/month), you can still get a 2-week FREE trial;

One Stop for Writers Roadmap - It has many tips for you, divided into three different topics: a) How to plan a story, b) How to write a story, c) How to revise a story. The best thing about this? It’s FREE!

Story Structure Database - The Story Structure Database is an archive of books and movies, recording all their major plot points;

National Centre for Writing - FREE worksheets and writing courses. Has also paid courses;

Penguin Random House - Has some writing contests and great opportunities;

Crime Reads - Get inspired before writing a crime scene;

The Creative Academy for Writers - “Writers helping writers along every step of the path to publication.” It’s FREE and has ZOOM writing rooms;

Reedsy - “A trusted place to learn how to successfully publish your book” It has many tips, and tools (generators), contests, prompts lists, etc. FREE;

QueryTracker - Find agents for your books (personally, I’ve never used this before, but I thought I should feature it here);

Pacemaker - Track your goals (example: Write 50K words - then, everytime you write, you track the number of the words, and it will make a graphic for you with your progress). It’s FREE but has a paid plan;

Save the Cat! - The blog of the most known storytelling method. You can find posts, sheets, a software (student discount - 70%), and other things;

I hope this is helpful for you!

I have seen a post circulating for a while that lists 10 short stories everyone should read and, while these are great works, most of them are older and written by white men. I wanted to make a modern list that features fresh, fantastic and under represented voices. Enjoy!

1. A Temporary Matter by Jhumpa Lahiri — A couple in a failing marriage share secrets during a blackout. 

2. Stone Animals by Kelly Link — A family moves into a haunted house.

3. Reeling for the Empire by Karen Russell — Women are sold by their families to a silk factory, where they are slowly transformed into human silkworms. 

4. Call My Name by Aimee Bender — A woman wearing a ball gown secretly auditions men on the subway. 

5. The Man on the Stairs by Miranda July — A woman wakes up to a noise on the stairs. 

6. Brownies by ZZ Packer — Rival Girl Scout troops are separated by race. 

7. City of My Dreams by Zsuzi Gartner — A woman works at a shop selling food-inspired soap and tries not to think about her past. 

8. A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor — A family drives from Georgia to Florida, even though a serial killer is on the loose. 

9. Hitting Budapest by NoViolet Bulawayo — A group of children, led by a girl named Darling, travel to a rich neighborhood to steal guavas. 

I’d like to add:

11. Good Country People by Flannery O’Connor

12. The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (this one is my favorite short story of all time)

13. The Lottery by Shirley Jackson

14. Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? by Joyce Carol Oates

15. Désirée’s Baby by Kate Chopin

16. The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin

17. Impressions of an Indian Childhood by Zitkala-Ša

18. “My Dear You,” Rachel Khong — love, loss, & absurdity in the afterlife

19. “The Husband Stitch,” Carmen Maria Machado — a feminist retelling of the folklore story “The Green Ribbon”

20. “Inventory,” Carmen Maria Machado — one woman’s retrospective list of her life’s sexual encounters

21. “Boys Go to Jupiter,” Danielle Evans — what happens after a white college student poses for a photo in a Confederate flag bikini

23. “Those Who Walk Away from Omelas” and “Mountain Ways” by Ursula K. Le Guin — The first is a study of philosophical questions similar to the trolley problem, told in very loose form. The second is a science-fantasy story about two women navigating love and sexuality in their society’s polyamorous marriage rituals. But honestly you should read all of Le Guin’s short stories and novels, she’s amazing.

24. “Bloodchild” by Octavia Butler — One of my all-time FAVORITE short stories, about a future where humans live alongside large insect-like aliens, and serve as hosts for their eggs and larval young. It’s gruesome, gory, unsettling, and honestly pretty horrific but it’s really wonderful–if you can handle horror in your stories I highly recommended it. Butler’s novels are also wonderful, please check them out if you can (not all of them are this unsettling)

25. “The Girl-Thing Who Went Out for Sushi” by Pat Cadigan — A trans allegory in which future humans go through surgery to become invertebrate sea creatures (cephalopods and arthropods mostly) in order to better work in space. Wonderfully weird in so many ways.

YOU HAVE A PLOT. Well, okay, you have a character. Or maybe just this one cool image. Problem is, that’s all it is, and it’s hard to write an entire novel on a month with just a vague idea.

Now, you might say, “but I’ve worked on my character for so long they’re a wizard/vampire/space pirate rolled into one, how can I possibly fit that into a plot,” and I say to that, weirder books have been published, you’ll be fine. Our main goal is to figure out how to get that sweet space vampire fighting bisexual cyborg into a book you can write in thirty days. Though that seems challenging, never fear, for we are going to give you a working framework with which to move forward with. It goes like this:

A [character type] has [a problem], and [tries to fix it]. However, [plot twist/inciting event] happens, and [deadly complication ensues].

Yes, we are talking about loglines. Don’t groan, I know these are hard. Our goal is simply to end up with a starting point. It doesn’t have to be pretty, or succinct. We are merely trying to find a starting point, so let’s tackle each one by one:

A Character: Your characters are complex individuals, but we’re going to distill them to their most distinctive, plot important aspects. A sixteen-year-old wizard. A trans lady dragonrider. A lonely accountant, etc. Since we’re not trying to sell anything, we can expand a bit and give into cliches. “A eighteen-year-old werewolf with a chip on his shoulder.” “A trans dude with a terrible crush on his married landlady.” “A lonely accountant into the sanguinarian scene.” Etc. Have fun with it.

A Problem: We’ve got two main types, external and internal. External will be the outward issue being dealt with - solving a murder, finding a girlfriend, stopping an asteroid from destroying the moon, etc.An internal problem will be the driving force of the character - needing to fix a broken relationship, facing a fatal flaw, confronting an addiction, etc. Both will be important to driving your plot, so consider how connected they’ll be both in tackling the plot and complicating it.

An Inciting Event: No way back, this it what thrusts your character forward. The discovery that their mother was a werewolf. The loss of an important necklace. Realizing you’re a magical girl in a world where magical girls are evil, etc. You are going to ruin your character’s life, so I advise doing it as gleefully as possible.

A Complication: We’ve got the basics of our plot, now we have to figure out how to keep it moving. Your protagonist’s mother was murdered for being a werewolf, and now they’re after your character too too. The necklace was more than important, the mob desperately wants it back and knows your character was the last person who had it. Your sixteen-year-old wizard has cast a spell to raise the dead, and now the Wizard Council is out to kill her to stop it.

Alright, y’all, I’m going to be reblogging plotting tools throughout most of October, but let’s do a stripped down, bare bones plot prep for anyone with just a vague idea. Let’s talk about the key parts of a plot outline, the Five Core Scenes.

Opening: This is your view of the world before you decide to toss your protagonist life upside down. Your goal is to establish two things:

Your protagonist’s life. If you follow any of the Hero’s Journey form of outlining, this is called the Ordinary World. If it’s contemporary, you’ll probably focus on what takes up the main character’s time - job, family, school, etc. If it’s fantasy, you’ll also be doing that, but establishing that he also flies a dragon to his 9-to-5. Basic stuff.

Your protagonist’s problem. Yes, you’re going to give the main character a problem before the book kicks off. You can make your plot revolve around a person who’s perfectly happy, but hell, we’re writers, we want our characters to suffer. If there’s something they want (a person, a thing, a life change) or don’t know they need, it’s good to start with it right off the bat.

Inciting Event: This can be tricky, but it’s basically The Point of No Return. Your character can’t go back to their old life, you blew it up. The door to the Ordinary World is closed. They witnessed a murder, got bit by a vampire, dumped by their boyfriend, etc. The character might think they can go back, but they can’t. This usually kicks off Act II.

Now, the middle is known as the dreaded slog, but I’m going to share a secrect: You want to split Act II into parts A and B, the middle split by…

False Victory/False Defeat: In the first half of Act II, your character is trying to solve their problem the wrong way. They may think the solution is to cooperate with the police, seek out a cure, try to win their boyfriend back, but they’re going to hit a wall, and hit it hard. In the False Victory turning point, your character thinks they’ve gotten what they want - only to realize it’s fixed nothing at all. In the False Defeat, all seems lost - but actually, they’ve found a new path. Either way, the second half of Act II will be doing things the Right Way - solving the murder themselves, embracing vampirism to find the douche to turned them, finally flirting back with that new neighbor, etc. There’s more urgency in your second half, because your character can know see the way to solve their problem - they just have to get there.

The Climax: No brainer, though you’re actually going to take a few steps back to the start of Act III to figure out how you get to the climax. If the climax is confronting the murderer, how did the protagonist figure out who that is? If it’s a showdown with the god of vampires, how do we track him down? You can write “big fight” at the start of your notes, but you’ll have an easier time actually writing it if you flesh out how it happened a bit more.

The Denouement: Yes, you need a denouement. Yes, it’s helpful to figure out how your story is resolved before you write The End. The whole point is the end of your story, the lesson you want to leave the readers, the emotion you want to have. Figuring this out first will make getting there a whole lot easier, trust me.