Rhyming Slang

By Janice Hardy:

Skippy Dies

Eleanor & Park

The Interestings

Beautiful Ruins

The Engagements

The Patron Saint of Liars

Dark Places

My Misspent Youth

The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls

The Smart One

Uses for Boys

The Goldfinch

The Unknowns: A Novel

The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.

Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead

Cartwheel: A Novel

Very Recent History

Visitation Street

Tiny Beautiful Things

Handguns

We’ve all seen it in movies, comics and anime: the bad ass hero or the sexy heroine toting two handguns with barrels bigger than their forearms.

My advice is to read up on the lore and the mythology behind these creatures, discover the different versions in the mythology and then either combine different elements of this creature or pick one version you prefer and then change it slightly. 

What I think is really cool is to find a little known version of it and then use that, because it is similar to other versions but is little known and you can make it your own as that version may not have already been done. 

Magical/Mythical creatures

But as long as you keep some things the same so they are recognisable then you can do whatever the hell you want. Hell, it could be completely different to myth and your creature can be like ‘yeah, for some reason they thought we wore seashell bras and had green tails, I mean COME ON’.

See what I mean? It’s your story and it can be however the hell you like. So go wild!!!

By Chuck Wendig

I’m editing a book right now. It is its own happy brand of hell — but, for all its hellishness, it’s also a process I dearly love because it’s like purification through flames. It’s a powerful step in storytelling — often, I find that editing is the part where the story is truly constructed.

So, here you go: steps I sometimes go through to get the job done. Other times: I go through an entirely different process. These are not set in stone or meant to be a doctor’s prescription: these are just a handful of options in a relatively sensible sequence to help you get a grip on Forging Your Story In The Fires Of Mount Revision. Do as you will. And good luck, penmonkeys.

Stay sane.

1. GO DO SOME OTHER SHIT FOR A WHILE

Hey, you wrote a book! Yay! Woo! Now go hibernate. Write another book. Travel with the machine elves on a hallucinogenic odyssey through time and space. The goal is to give yourself as much time between I Finished A Book! and I Am Editing That Book! as possible. You need to come to the edit with distance between You and It. You need to arrive as if some other assholewrote this book. That will give you cold clarity about the story, the characters, the language, everything. You won’t feel nearly as much irrational hatred and absurdly protective love over it. Your co-dependency with the manuscript will be ground into the mud. This is tricky if you’re on deadline and don’t have a lot of time, but you gotta try.

2. MAKE SURE SOME OTHER HUMAN ACTUALLY READS IT AND OFFERS NOTES

Other human beings are essential to the editing process. Essential. Otherwise you’re operating in a vacuum. You’re floating in the amniotic goo with just a swollen cord connecting you to the story. You need eyeballs. You need hands. You need the doctor with the ultrasound to be all like, “This baby has three legs, hooves, and Tilda Swinton’s face growing up out of its back.” This other person might be an agent, an editor, a friend, a spouse, a beta reader, a stoned dude on the highway selling oranges, whoever. Just have them read it. And get their notes. Pay them if you must. Sob plaintively. Embrace blackmail.

3. READ THEIR NOTES, THEN PUT THOSE NOTES AWAY

They gave you notes. Good. Read them. You’ll hate those notes for anywhere between five minutes and fifteen days. That’s okay. Ride it out. In the meantime, just put the notes away. Hide those fuckers in a drawer and go have a cheeseburger or something.

We spend a good deal of time talking about fiction writing on this blog, so it seems like a good idea to spend a little bit of our energy on nonfiction. This is the first post in this series, so if there are any particular topics you want covered, please send a message! The first thing we’ll discuss is the essay.

Essay (n): a short piece of writing on a particular subject.

Usually, the purpose of an essay is to give your readers information or persuade them to believe a certain theory. You’ve probably written several formal essays in high school, college, or other such venues, but  something as routine and informal as an email to a co-worker can be considered an essay. If your point is to give information or convince someone of something, you’re writing some variation of an essay. So let’s get going. 

Build your appeals. Your essay’s effectiveness rests on three pillars, called appeals. These are appeals to ethos, pathos, and logos, and we’ll discuss them individually. 

Ethos (credibility). Ethos answers the question of “well, what makes this person qualified to tell me this stuff?” Sometimes you have pathos built-in; if you have a PhD in urban planning, people will probably respect your opinion with regard to urban planning. But if you don’t have some sort of credentials, building ethos can be hard. Most of it rests in three places: evidence, ethics, and tone.

Evidence. People can’t argue with facts. If it’s important that your readers understand that Congress is largely unpopular, you shouldn’t say “nobody likes Congress” and keep it at that. Instead, try “A Gallup poll conducted in August estimated Congress’ approval rating at 14%.” Now we know who conducted the poll, where and when it came from, and what the result was. Can’t argue with that. If your argument progresses from credible facts, your argument will be credible. Keep in mind that “credible facts” doesn’t include sources like Wikipedia; stick with trustworthy information.

Ethics. Much of your ethos will rely on you taking a stance that you can assume is universally moral. If you know that racism is something that most people oppose, then you can go ahead and assume that opposing it will keep you in good ethical standing with your readers. Everyone will be behind you. If your moral case is more ambiguous, you need to prove your point with a combination of logos and pathos, discussed below.

Tone. Building credible tone can be difficult. It involves both not condescending to your reader but also not going over their heads. We’ll talk more about tone in essays below, so sit tight.

Ethos is also intertwined with logos and pathos. The strength of your other two appeals will affect the strength of your ethos. Let’s talk about them now.

Logos (logic). Has someone tried to convince you of something, and you said “no, that doesn’t make any sense”? That’s because that person had weak appeals to logos. Please refer them to the following paragraph:  Great, we’re glad you’re here. Listen. If you’re trying to convince someone of something, it should make logical sense. This means each claim should lead to the next one, or there should be some apparent order to things. As a writer, consider having your point in the back of your head so you can build up to it. Then, when you edit (because you have to edit, see below), check for any gaps you may have left behind. If you’re not sure if there’s a gap, there’s probably a gap.  I have a friend that says that if a seven-year-old with a dictionary can’t understand your essay, there’s something wrong with your structure. Make your logical progression clear and accessible to your readers, and remember that none of your readers are in your head. Your essay makes sense in your head, of course, you just have to make that sense clear in your writing.

Pathos (emotion). Pathos can be tricky to use. In strict academic writing, pathos is usually implied under several analytic layers. Consider the following statement:

The suburbanization of the United States since the 1950s has maintained racial stereotypes already present in society by virtue of the homogeneity of most suburban neighborhoods.

It is not very emotional on the surface. It really means that somewhere along the line, a random person that grows up in a suburb that isn’t ethnically diverse might grow up to be racist and a lot of people are going to end up upset and offended by that person in the long run. Most readers would decide that this is a bad thing, and react negatively to it. This extrapolation is implied, however, by that mess of a sentence. The important thing is to know when the important emotional ramifications of a claim are implied and when they need to be stated outright. An argument or a speech that leans too heavily on pathos is often criticized. People who pay close attention to politicians often notice a high concentration of emotional appeals in speeches and interviews because they are powerful on a shallow level. In order for your essay to be powerful both on a first impression and on a deep level, be sure to use pathos in conjunction with both ethos and logos. It is often the most powerful of the appeals, but overusing weakens your essay, just as underusing it can.

These three appeals work best in conjunction with each other. Evaluate your argument ahead of time and consider which is the hardest battle: What’s the logical progression? Why people should care? Why they should listen to you? and find a way to tackle it.

Ditch the cheeseburger. I once learned an essay is like a cheeseburger. Your introduction and a conclusion are your top and bottom buns. Your body paragraphs are your lettuce, cheese, and patty.  Surprisingly, not everything you learn in school is a comprehensive, be-all-end-all method to do anything, much less write an essay. The cheeseburger thing is good when you’re looking to write an essay that can get knocked off in exactly five paragraphs, but if you need more (or less), the hamburger will be pretty useless.  Be comfortable using other forms. An introduction and conclusion are probably safe bets, especially if it’s a long piece. But the one idea = one paragraph notion and the one idea = three pieces of supporting evidence notion are not good rules for every instance. Write your essay the way the essay needs to be written. If it takes several paragraphs to explain one idea, use several paragraphs. Boxing yourself into a single idea (whether it’s a question of form or how you marshal evidence or even your style) can be detrimental to your writing in the long term.

Hear it out loud, then write. Listen to the sentence you’re about to write in your head. You will automatically arrange the words so the sentence sounds more natural, which will make it easier to read. Reading it out loud once it’s done is tricky territory. When reading out loud, most people give their writing inflections that it doesn’t have on paper, which makes it sound better than it actually does. It’s best to start with a sentence that already sounds good out loud. (Of course, if your essay is a speech, practicing it out loud is a pretty good idea.)

Research. Obviously, you need to make sure your facts are right. Even if you’re pretty sure of something (e.g. I’m pretty sure that Al Gore won the popular vote but lost the electoral vote in 2000), look it up, so you can cite a source (mine is uselectionatlas.org). Citations are everything; your ethos is riding on them.  Citations are not necessary in informal settings (like an email), but if you are submitting your essay to some kind of supervisor or a teacher, you better cite your sources. No way around that one. Find out which citation system your instructor/boss wants, and learn how to use it. Here are out posts tagged “research,” and the OWL is a great resource to use for different citation systems.

Know your audience. This is one of the most important rules of writing, but it’s especially applicable for nonfiction. If your audience is a single coworker that knows the ins-and-outs of your subject and you just need to inform this person of a couple of things, be concise and feel free to leave out most of the background details that this person probably already knows.  If your audience is an unknown reader, assume they know nothing. Fill them in on every piece of background information they need and spell out everything that might be tricky.  If your audience knows the jargon, use it. If they don’t, don’t. If they agree with you, don’t bother convincing them. If they don’t, convince them.

Write economically. People tend to think long words make them sound smart. This is an attempt to build up ethos, and it doesn’t always work. Readers can get confused and annoyed when your sentences look like the one about the suburbs that I used above. Try using the words that will get the message across in the most concise way possible. Language exists to convey meaning from one person to another in an effective way; try not to use language in a way that disrupts that exchange. David Foster Wallace, known for being the opposite of concise, has an opinion on this one. About the word utilize:

“‘Utilize’ [is] a noxious puff-word. Since it does nothing that good old ‘use’ doesn’t do, its extra letters and syllables don’t make a writer seem smarter; rather, using “utilize” makes you seem either like a pompous twit or like someone so insecure that she’ll use pointlessly big words in an attempt to look sophisticated.

Basically, if it isn’t complicated, don’t make it complicated. You want your readers to believe you and follow your ideas. Don’t let them get lost in a web of prose.

You aren’t the point. The most important thing in your essay is your subject. Your point. The thing you’re trying to tell the person. Not you. You’re not important. This is not the time to impress your readers with your style or your knowledge of unrelated topics. If you need high-octane vocabulary to prove your point, use it, but know the point of your essay is to prove your point, not your intelligence. Build ethos just to the point where the reader is confident in your knowledge on the topic at hand.

Edit. Everybody makes mistakes. Everybody has those days. You should go over your essay and edit it. Editing is not only fixing errors with grammar and mechanics, but with large, structural problems. Maybe a paragraph is irrelevant or connects poorly with your thesis, or maybe you notice a contradiction that needs to be addressed. No essay is perfect the first time through, so become comfortable editing your work.

Remember the main goal of your essay is to deliver information or persuade your reader in a way that is both concise and convincing. Keeping these tips in mind will help you, but know that essay writing improves over time as you develop style and voice. Practice doesn’t make perfect, because nothing is perfect, but practice can make you pretty good. So practice.  Again, this post is part of a nonfiction series. If you have questions about this article or have a suggestion for another topic, please send us a message.  Feel free to come to us with any writing question, fiction or nonfiction. Further Reading:

Ethos, Pathos, and Logos

George Orwell: Politics and the English Language

10 Steps to an Essay

Academic and Fiction Writing

European Parrying Daggers

Photo #1

Dated: circa 1580-1610

Place of Origin: Italy

Medium: steel, copper wire

Measurements: overall - l:26.50 cm (l:10 3/8 inches) Wt: .08 kg. Blade - l:17.20 cm (l:6 3/4 inches). Quillions - w:8.40 cm (w:3 1/4 inches)

Photo #2

Dated: circa 1600

Place of Origin: Germany

Medium: steel, wire grip with arched quillions and side ring

Measurements: overall - l:34.60 cm (l:13 9/16 inches) Wt: .18 kg. Blade - l:22.70 cm (l:8 7/8 inches). Quillions - w:7.60 cm (w:2 15/16 inches). Grip - l:10.90 cm (l:4 1/4 inches)

The plot doesn’t have to be super strong if the characters are great and you can have more than one protagonist, but there still needs to be a plot.

To strengthen your plot, ask yourself:

Who is the protagonist? Of course, you can have more than one or there can be no clear protagonist as long as these characters are well written. You just need an answer to the question.

What is the protagonist’s motive? Your protagonist(s) needs a motive, especially if the story is character-driven. If it’s character drive, the characters will move the plot along.

What is the main conflict? Of course, you need a conflict for a plot. You need to establish what the main conflict is. There are probably minor conflicts, but those should not overshadow the main conflict. The main conflict should be present from start to end.

What is the climax? The main conflict will need a climax, which leads to the next question:

How does your protagonist overcome or fail? and how does this change the protagonist? There needs to be an outcome of the main conflict. And with that needs to be change within your characters.

An increase to heart rate is usually a sign of adrenaline, along with a slightly bitter taste in the mouth, and in most people, some fine muscle tremors. I think we’ve talked about that before.

As with a lot of things, how someone handles an immediate combat threat is going to be very specific to that individual. A lot of people freeze up, and some can switch over smoothly and rapidly. Specialized training can help with this. But, it’s important to understand; this isn’t covered in most martial arts classes.

Usually training comes in two parts: First is an awareness of dangerous situations, so the combatant will be harder to take by surprise. The second part is rote responses to specific threats. This can vary pretty massively depending on who the person being trained is. It can include drawing a weapon, getting to cover, tensing muscles (which you mentioned), or going into a stance. It won’t always be completely appropriate, but it doesn’t really need to be, either. The entire point is just to get the combatant ready to fight faster. It’s worth pointing out, with military drills; those rote responses can include lethal takedowns.

How well someone handles an adrenaline rush is another matter. As far as I know, this is something that people either learn to deal with through experience or conditioning, rather than traditional training. The more adrenaline rushes someone’s experienced, the less they’ll be impaired by it, relatively speaking. In general, adrenaline rushes work towards your advantage in hand to hand or melee, but work against you when operating firearms.

Anonymous asked: There are two things I care deeply about: accuracy and representation. I’m currently writing a story that takes place in a small town in California. While fictional, I really want the town to seem as real as possible, which is why I spent a long time looking up demographics of other small towns in california. Almost all of them have a good 88% of white people, which makes me worry my story will be lacking in POC. Any advice?

You’re in luck, Anon! While I didn’t grow up in small town California, I did grow up in a small town, so I can understand your concern. In my high school, all but 15 of the 1000 students were white. So let’s talk demographics, shall we?

demographics (n): the quantifiable statistics of a given population.

Sounds rather dull, doesn’t it? That’s because it usually is. Few people living in rural areas would be able to tell you the statistics concerning their towns, and rarely do you see authors slap percentages on their characters. The makeup of the entire town is irrelevant, unless you’re writing a summary of a census. The important part is the makeup of your cast. But let’s see if we can fulfill your desire for accuracy and representation.

How important is this exact setting? If the culture of small-town California is important to your story, by all means, keep your setting. But if not, consider another state. For instance, could you set your story in rural Georgia where the average is 56% white? Remember, living in a small town is pretty much the same everywhere. Most rural areas feature town busybodies, no 24-hour grocery store, and the “Oh, I heard she just moved here from enter-big-scary-city-here” character. You can leave your front door unlocked. Everyone knows everyone else, and there’s a sense of unity within the town. Check out programs like the Gilmore Girls, the Simpsons, and Welcome to Night Vale — they’re all set in three different towns in different parts of the country, but you can still find similarities. Of course, this kind of change requires considering edits in terms of dialect and other geographic ramifications, so be aware of those needs.

Demographic information isn’t always complete. For example, demographics rarely take the surrounding areas into account. Where I grew up, we were surrounded by farm land. Most of these farms employed migrant workers, but because they were outside city limits, and the residency status of some wasn’t always legal, they weren’t taken into account. These percentages also ignore visitors, workers that live somewhere else, and some part-time residents. Take this into account!

Don’t write off that 12%. Even if your town only has 500 residents and you follow these statistics, there will be 60 POC. You can move mountains with 60 characters. You can start a war with 60 characters. Don’t sell them short! They’re relevant. California has a rich history of immigration. In fact, California has more immigrants than any other state. So explore the backstory of the family from Mexico. Write about the Chinese family who’s great-great-grandfather came to America during the Gold Rush. The possibilities are endless.

There is no rule book. Just because 88% of the town is white doesn’t mean 88% of your characters have to be white. This is your story, and you can write it however you see fit. If representation is important to you, be conscious of the characters and the world you are creating. It doesn’t have to fit the cookie-cutter image of Small Town, USA.

Writing accurately isn’t about hitting a quota — it’s about capturing a picture of the world. Don’t get caught up in numbers and figures and lose sight of the reason why you want to write this story. Throw out the calculator and the pie charts and concentrate on the characters in your story. Make them varied, realistic human beings, and the accuracy will follow. Further reading:

Race & Ethnicity in Rural America (contains maps)

“The setting itself is a character”: 17 fictional TV towns with personality

Writing A Novel: The Appeal Of The Small Town Setting

Small Town American Literature

TV Tropes: Small Towns

Location, Location, Location: The Fundamentals of Choosing a Setting

O’s post “Re: POCs: Just write." and C’s follow-up post "More on Inclusiveness, Art, and Just Writing”

Race and Books by RachaelReviewsAll (video from a WriteWorld follower on race in fiction)

Tips To Overcoming Writer’s Block

(Note: These are not necessarily in chronological order, and don’t need to be done one after the other.)

A Writer’s Rule Book

list of medieval jobs

more medieval jobs

lords of the manor

ladies of the manor

medieval ladies

medieval weapons

medieval names

more medieval names

guide to medieval terms

more medieval terms

how to write sword-fight scenes

This will not help everyone and some of you may plan in a completely different way. However, a lot of people struggle with where to begin so here we go.

Where do I start?