My local Barnes & Noble has an entire bookcase dedicated to books on BookTok. How many BookTok books have you read? Iâve read fourteen!
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH
Sade Olutola
I'd rather be in outer space đ¸
KIROKAZE
d e v o n
let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open
Aqua Utopiaď˝ćľˇăŽĺşă§č¨ćśăç´Ąă
Jules of Nature


pixel skylines

tannertan36
DEAR READER

Love Begins
wallacepolsom
Cosmic Funnies
2025 on Tumblr: Trends That Defined the Year
Sweet Seals For You, Always
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@megxnswrites
My local Barnes & Noble has an entire bookcase dedicated to books on BookTok. How many BookTok books have you read? Iâve read fourteen!

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Have created a new novel-writing approach for myself that I am calling Very Gentle Writing. Very Gentle Writing is an approach for people who live nearly every waking second in self-castigation and actually need peaceful slowness to unleash their creativity.Â
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 easyâŚitâs a low bar, I mean really low).Â
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!Â
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 beâŚ.justâŚ..nice.Â
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.Â
Very Gentle Writing came to me as an idea when I started to think about how as someone actively trying to recover from a lot of lifelong trauma, the usual word harder!! Work harder!! mantras in the world of âpeople doing hard thingsâ didnât motivate me at all, they only hurt me. I truly need a voice saying work less hard, personally.
Heroic Traits and Their Faults
Accepting â too accepting; willing to excuse extreme behavior
Adaptable â used to traveling from situation to situation; may not be able to fully adapt/live in a permanent situation
Affable â accidentally befriends the wrong sort of people; pushes to befriend everyone
Affectionate âinappropriate affection
Alert â constantly on edge; paranoid
Altruistic â self-destructive behavior for the sake of their Cause
Apologetic â apologizes too much; is a doormat; guilt-ridden
Aspiring â becomes very ambitious; ruthless in their attempts to reach goals
Assertive â misunderstood as aggressive; actually aggressive; others react negatively when they take command all the time
Athletic â joints weakened from exercise; performance-enhancing drug abuse; competitive
Keep reading
Ohhh, this is good.
Beautiful snowy Jessie Mei Li as Alina Starkovâď¸
that whole "make your characters want things" does so much work for you in a story, even if what your characters want is stupid and irrelevant, because how people go about pursuing their desires tells you about them as a person.
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?
there's so much good story meat on those bones; you just have to be brave and decisive enough to let characters want specific things instead of letting them float in the current of the plot.
and I loved the responses of âWell, my character is very passive and doesnât know how to want things, the story is about their process of learning to do that exactlyâ, because thatâs fine, thatâs all well and good, but passive people still want things. passive human beings who have been so thoroughly neglected that the articulation of a single desire is beyond them want what their internal sphere of control tells them they are allowed to want. they desire constancy and a lack of conflict. they desire nostalgic artifacts that remind them of prior constancy and lack of conflict. the desire to float is an engineered desire that runs in conflict with the development of a happy healthy human being. Who engineered it? How do you begin to chip away at something like that? How do small, passive desires lead up to that?
"Everyone has motive" needs to be at the forefront of your thoughts. If a passive character wants something and yet does not act to achieve it, the crux of the story is WHY they are inactive. Therein lies your conflict and complications.

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Writing Question of the Week #1
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?
I can't wait to read your answers! Let's get this conversation going!
mine is when i first start drafting! i usually donât do too much outlining ahead of time, so beginning a draft is always so exciting and scary and fun. i love diving headfirst into a new draft and just seeing where the story will take me before i inevitably stall out lol
Magma Flowing Into The Pacific Ocean, Hawaii.
Writing Protagonists Without Strong Wants or Goals
Often in the writing world, we are told to make sure our protagonists have strong wants. After all, the protagonistâs want usually leads to a goal, and goals allow audiences to measure progress or setbacks in a story (which also helps with pacing). The protagonistâs 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 âCharacterâs Want vs. Needâ) But if you arenât familiar with the want vs. need approach, no worries. Suffice it to say that the protagonistâs 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 ârulesâ are really more like guidelines. Itâs 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, itâs nearly impossible to have a protagonist who doesnât 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 latestâbut thatâs often pushing it. Rarely do protagonists make it through a whole story without having a clear significant want, though I wonât go so far as to say itâs impossible. And in some types of stories, you may be dealing with one significant want per section of the story.
Letâs talk about some situations where the protagonist doesnât 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 wantsâor 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 declinesâhe already has everything he wants. However, something big threatensâor maybe even destroysâwhat 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 somehowâwhich means stopping or thwarting whatever the threat is. (However, with that said, itâs 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 didnât 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 isnât enough.
I feel like this is something we see more with villains and anti-heroesâespecially those depicted as spoiled, selfish, or entitled. But it doesnât 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 lifeâhe has his creature comforts in his hobbit hole, and thatâs all fine and well. But it isnât 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 isnât driven by a strong passion or goal, because he lacks vision. His life may be dissatisfying, but he canât imagine any way to change that. Itâs just the life heâs been dealt. It feels like something is lacking, but he doesnât 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 doesnât 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 isnât driven by a strong want, goal, or passion can have steep costs. There often isnât 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 contextâif there is no goal, then what happens doesnât really matter that much. The protagonist isnât trying to get anywhere specific, and isnât 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 protagonistâs life isâhow 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 wonât stay this way. The audience subconsciously knows a problem is coming (after all, itâs 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 isnât 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 wonât stay this way. The audience subconsciously knows an opportunity is coming. Theyâll likely be willing to wait to see how it could fix the characterâs dissatisfaction.
- Cut to another viewpoint. If your story has multiple viewpoints, you can use a scene in another viewpoint to make up for the âcostsâ of your protagonistâs current state. This might mean having a scene where the antagonistâs 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 passionâfilling in for everything the protagonist doesnât 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 protagonistâs 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 Emperorâs New Groove, Kuzco pretty much starts with everything he wants and is on the trajectory to get the next thing he wantsâKuzcotopia. 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 storyâs 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 wonât 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 itâs 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 doesnât have a plot-level goal (yet) doesnât mean she doesnât 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 itâs 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 storyâas long as there are some stakes tied to the outcome.
- Pair the protagonist with someone who is driven by wants, goals, and passions. I touched on this related to the viewpoint technique. Many protagonists who donât have strong wants get tied to a character (probably the Influence Character) who does. This secondary character may be more of the go-getter, pulling the protagonist into the main plot. This sort of thing happens in Luca, where Alberto is the one with the drive and passion, which Luca comes to adopt and embrace. Albertoâs goals become his goals, at least through much of the first half. If the protagonist isnât driven, there is a good chance a nearby character isâor at least should be.
Another post by the always helpful September!
does anyone else remember the foxhole court bc that was so insane. for awhile the biggest thing on tumblr was a self published book series that no one outside of this website has ever heard of and that was never even published in physical form about a guy who fakes his name, age (by one year) and identity to join a sports team for a fake sport that the author invented for the series despite the fact that it was literally just lacrosse, after being on the run and changing his name hundreds of times because his mobster dad tried to sell him to a rival sports team that was actually owned by the japanese mafia. or something like that. and then every single subsequent thing that happened was somehow more batshit soap opera plotlines. this was literally the most popular book series on tumblr and was put on book rec lists alongside like, the great gatsby and donna tartt books. if I didnât remember it so clearly I would assume I hallucinated this
oh and to be clear this series was not set in japan, the japanese mafia just owned an american college sports team and was super invested in it for some reason
WEBSITES FOR WRITERS {masterpost}
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? Itâs 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 - âWriters helping writers along every step of the path to publication.â Itâs FREE and has ZOOM writing rooms;
Reedsy - âA trusted place to learn how to successfully publish your bookâ It has many tips, and tools (generators), contests, prompts lists, etc. FREE;
QueryTracker - Find agents for your books (personally, Iâve 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). Itâs 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!
(Also, check my blog if you want to!)

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10 Female Written Short Stories Everyone Should Read
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 â A couple in a failing marriage share secrets during a blackout.Â
2. Stone Animals by Kelly Link â A family moves into a haunted house.
3. Reeling for the Empire by Karen Russell â Women are sold by their families to a silk factory, where they are slowly transformed into human silkworms.Â
4. Call My Name by Aimee Bender â A woman wearing a ball gown secretly auditions men on the subway.Â
5. The Man on the Stairs by Miranda July â A woman wakes up to a noise on the stairs.Â
6. Brownies by ZZ Packer â Rival Girl Scout troops are separated by race.Â
7. City of My Dreams by Zsuzi Gartner â A woman works at a shop selling food-inspired soap and tries not to think about her past.Â
8. A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery OâConnor â A family drives from Georgia to Florida, even though a serial killer is on the loose.Â
9. Hitting Budapest by NoViolet Bulawayo â A group of children, led by a girl named Darling, travel to a rich neighborhood to steal guavas.Â
10. Youâre Ugly, Too by Lorrie Moore â A history professor flies to Manhattan to spend Halloween weekend with her younger sister.
I LOVE THIS POST!!
Iâd like to add:
11. Good Country People by Flannery OâConnor
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. DĂŠsirĂŠeâs Baby by Kate Chopin
16. The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin
17. Impressions of an Indian Childhood by Zitkala-Ša
(I wanted to put little summaries for each of them, but Iâm afraid Iâd spoil the whole story if I did!)
adding a few more! all by women of color, & the first four were published within the last few years
18. âMy Dear You,â Rachel Khong â love, loss, & absurdity in the afterlife
19. âThe Husband Stitch,â Carmen Maria Machado â a feminist retelling of the folklore story âThe Green Ribbonâ
20. âInventory,â Carmen Maria Machado â one womanâs retrospective list of her lifeâs sexual encounters
21. âBoys Go to Jupiter,â Danielle Evans â what happens after a white college student poses for a photo in a Confederate flag bikini
22. âDrinking Coffee Elsewhere,â ZZ Packer â a Black woman attends Yale University
oh i have some of these too! many are science-fiction or science-fantasy, because the woman in those genres are severely under-represented ! The first two authors are slightly older, but their works are so important in the development of the roles of women in scifi as a genre so!
23. âThose Who Walk Away from Omelasâ and âMountain Waysâ by Ursula K. Le Guin â 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 societyâs polyamorous marriage rituals. But honestly you should read all of Le Guinâs short stories and novels, sheâs amazing.
24. âBloodchildâ by Octavia Butler â 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. Itâs gruesome, gory, unsettling, and honestly pretty horrific but itâs really wonderfulâif you can handle horror in your stories I highly recommended it. Butlerâs novels are also wonderful, please check them out if you can (not all of them are this unsettling)
25. âThe Girl-Thing Who Went Out for Sushiâ by Pat Cadigan â 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.
26. âFrom the Lost Diary of Treefrog7â and âThe Palm Tree Banditâ by Nnedi Okorafor â Lost Diary is a story about a woman and her husband exploring an alien jungle told through research log-style journal entries. Very much survival horror scifi. Palm Tree Bandit is told as a mother reciting a story to her daughter as she braids her hair, about her great-grandmother who started a kind of small revolution for women in Nigeria. Nnediâs novels and other short stories, as well as her works within the comics industry, are all fantastic, so look into her more if you can!!!
Fleshing out that vague idea
YOU HAVE A PLOT. Well, okay, you have a character. Or maybe just this one cool image. Problem is, thatâs all it is, and itâs hard to write an entire novel on a month with just a vague idea.
Now, you might say, âbut Iâve worked on my character for so long theyâre a wizard/vampire/space pirate rolled into one, how can I possibly fit that into a plot,â and I say to that, weirder books have been published, youâll 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. Donât groan, I know these are hard. Our goal is simply to end up with a starting point. It doesnât have to be pretty, or succinct. We are merely trying to find a starting point, so letâs tackle each one by one:
A Character: Your characters are complex individuals, but weâre 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 weâre not trying to sell anything, we can expand a bit and give into cliches. âA eighteen-year-old werewolf with a chip on his shoulder.â âA trans dude with a terrible crush on his married landlady.â âA lonely accountant into the sanguinarian scene.â Etc. Have fun with it.
A Problem: Weâve 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 theyâll 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 youâre a magical girl in a world where magical girls are evil, etc. You are going to ruin your characterâs life, so I advise doing it as gleefully as possible.
A Complication: Weâve got the basics of our plot, now we have to figure out how to keep it moving. Your protagonistâs mother was murdered for being a werewolf, and now theyâre 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.
You now have the beginnings of a plot and where itâll take you. Thereâs going to be more complications to carry you through to the finish line, and good god donât stop writing them down if youâre on a roll, but this should at least get you out the gate. Good luck!
Hereâs a fine list of my personal Original Character development resources. MENTALITY. LIST OF MENTAL CONDITIONS LIST OF PHOBIAS LIST OF ZODIAC SIGNS MYERS-BRIGGS PERSONALITY TEST MORAL ALIGNMENT TEST IDEONOMY PERSONALITY TRAITS LIST MANNERISMS. LIST OF HOBBIES WORDS TO DESCRIBE SPEECH & ACCENT LIST OF HABITS / QUIRKS & TICKSÂ LIST OF LANGUAGESÂ PHYSICALLY. LIST OF PIERCING PLACEMENTS EYE COLOUR CHARTS [ ONE & TWO ] LIST OF NATURAL HAIR COLOURS MRINITIALMAN HEIGHT CALCULATORÂ SKIN TONE / FOUNDATION COLOUR CHARTS âRESTING FACEâ EXPRESSIVE TERMS LIST OF PHYSICAL ALIMENTSÂ OTHER. LIST OF CRIMINAL OFFENSES REAL TIME AGE & BIRTHDATE CALCULATOR
Five Core Scenes
Alright, yâall, Iâm going to be reblogging plotting tools throughout most of October, but letâs do a stripped down, bare bones plot prep for anyone with just a vague idea. Letâs 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 protagonistâs life. If you follow any of the Heroâs Journey form of outlining, this is called the Ordinary World. If itâs contemporary, youâll probably focus on what takes up the main characterâs time - job, family, school, etc. If itâs fantasy, youâll also be doing that, but establishing that he also flies a dragon to his 9-to-5. Basic stuff.
Your protagonistâs problem. Yes, youâre going to give the main character a problem before the book kicks off. You can make your plot revolve around a person whoâs perfectly happy, but hell, weâre writers, we want our characters to suffer. If thereâs something they want (a person, a thing, a life change) or donât know they need, itâs good to start with it right off the bat.
Inciting Event: This can be tricky, but itâs basically The Point of No Return. Your character canât 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 canât. This usually kicks off Act II.
Now, the middle is known as the dreaded slog, but Iâm going to share a secrect: You want to split Act II into parts A and B, the middle split byâŚ
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 theyâre going to hit a wall, and hit it hard. In the False Victory turning point, your character thinks theyâve gotten what they want - only to realize itâs fixed nothing at all. In the False Defeat, all seems lost - but actually, theyâve 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. Thereâs 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 youâre 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 itâs a showdown with the god of vampires, how do we track him down? You can write âbig fightâ at the start of your notes, but youâll 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, itâs 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.
You are going to have plenty of important scenes in between, but pinning these down will make the rest a whole lot easier - and if youâre mostly a pantser, you can keep these big goals in mind as you write toward them.
I think there's a lot of value in spite writing. If you read something that has good ideas or themes but god awful execution I ENCOURAGE you to grab it with your grubby little fists and wrangle into something better

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It's weird cause, I went to bed on Nov 3th feeling very serious, anxious stressed. It's now Nov 6th and I feel like I've snorted cocaine
Writing is a party and I, the writer, am the piĂąata.