The Huffle of a Snail in Danger

Your slow-motion montage backed by a Gregorian choir can be done with a few technques that all involve repetition.

First is epizeuxis, the repeating of a word for emphasis.

Example:

Falling. Falling. Falling. There was nothing to keep Marie from plunging into the rolling river below. She could only hope for a miracle now, that she would come out alive somehow despite a twenty-foot drop into five-foot-deep water.

Then there’s anaphora, where you write a number of phrases with the same words at the beginning.

There were still mages out there living in terror of shining steel armor emblazoned with the Sword of Mercy.

There were still mages out there being forced by desperation into the clutches of demons.

There were mages out there being threatened with Tranquility as punishment for their disobedience, and the threats were being made good upon.

Mages who had attempted to flee, but knew nothing of the outside world and were forced to return to their prison out of need for sustenance and shelter.

Mages who only desired to find the families they were torn from.

Mages who only wanted to see the sun.

White

also: pale; blanched; sallow; pallid; waxen; spectral; translucent; albino; 

Grey

also: dust; stone; pepper;  

Black

also:  coal; slate; dusky; ebon; shadow; murky; 

Tan

also: flesh; khaki; cream; tawny; 

Brown

also:  henna; russet; sepia; chestnut; cocoa; drab; bronze; 

Red

also: terracotta ; rouge; carmine;  fire-engine; ruddy

Orange

also:  pumpkin ; rust ; 

Yellow

also: sunny; amber; saffron; hay; straw; platinum; 

Green

also: viridescent; grass; jade; forest; 

Blue

also: turquoise; cyan; ultramarine; royal; aqua; aquamarine;

Purple

also: berry;  amaranthine;

Pink

also: flushed; candy; cherry blossom; petal pink ; 

—– source: http://ingridsundberg.com/

Find the right place to write your novel… 

Nature

Arctic ocean

Blizzard in village

Blizzard in pine forest

Blizzard from cave

Blizzard in road

Beach

Cave

Ocean storm

Ocean rocks with rain

River campfire

Forest in the morning

Forest at night

Forest creek

Rainforest creek

Rain on roof window

Rain on tarp tent

Rain on metal roof

Rain on window

Rain on pool

Rain on car at night

Seaside storm

Swamp at night

Sandstorm

Thunderstorm

Underwater

Wasteland

Winter creek

Winter wind

Winter wind in forest

Howling wind

Places

Barn with rain

Coffee shop

Restaurant with costumers

Restaurant with few costumers

Factory

Highway

Garden

Garden with pond and waterfall

Fireplace in log living room

Office 

Call center

Street market

Study room from victorian house with rain

Trailer with rain

Tent with rain

Jacuzzi with rain

Temple

Temple in afternoon

Server room

Fishing dock

Windmill

War

Fictional places

Chloe’s room (Life is Strange)

Blackwell dorm (Life is Strange)

Two Whales Diner (Life is Strange)

Star Wars apartment (Star Wars)

Star Wars penthouse (Star Wars)

Tatooine (Star Wars)

Coruscant with rain (Star Wars)

Yoda’s hut with rain ( Star Wars)

Luke’s home (Star Wars)

Death Star hangar (Star wars)

Blade Runner city (Blade Runner)

Askaban prison (Harry Potter)

Hogwarts library with rain (Harry Potter)

Ravenclaw tower (Harry Potter)

Hufflepuff common room (Harry Potter)

Slytherin common room (Harry Potter)

Gryffindor common room (Harry Potter)

Hagrid’s hut (Harry Potter)

Hobbit-hole house (The Hobbit)

Diamond City (Fallout 4)

Cloud City beach (Bioshock)

Founding Fathers Garden (Bioshock)

Things

Dishwasher

Washing machine

Fireplace

Transportation

Boat engine room

Cruising boat

Train ride

Train ride in the rain

Train station

Plane trip

Private jet cabin

Airplane cabin

Airport lobby

First class jet

Sailboat

Submarine

Historical

Fireplace in medieval tavern

Medieval town

Medieval docks

Medieval city

Pirate ship in tropical port

Ship on rough sea

Ship cabin

Ship sleeping quarter

Titanic first class dining room

Old west saloon

Sci-fi

Spaceship bedroom

Space station

Cyberpunk tearoom

Cyberpunk street with rain

Futuristic server room

Futuristic apartment with typing

Futuristic rooftop garden 

Steampunk balcony rain

Post-apocalyptic

Harbor with rain

City with rain

City ruins turned swamp

Rusty sewers

Train station

Lighthouse

Horror

Haunted mansion

Haunted road to tavern

Halloween

Stormy night

Asylum

Creepy forest

Cornfield

World

New York

Paris

Paris bistro

Tokyo street

Chinese hotel lobby

Asian street at nightfall

Asian night market

Cantonese restaurant

Coffee shop in Japan

Coffee shop in Paris

Coffee shop in Korea

British library

Trips, rides and walkings

Trondheim - Bodø

Amsterdam - Brussels

Glasgow - Edinburgh

Oxford - Marylebone

Seoul - Busan

Gangneung - Yeongju

Hiroshima

Tokyo metro

Osaka - Kyoto

Osaka - Kobe

London

São Paulo

Seoul

Tokyo

Bangkok

Ho Chi Minh (Saigon)

Alps

New York

Hong Kong

count to twelve on your right hand using your thumb and the bones of the other four digits (so, one-two-three up your pinky, four-five-six up your ring finger, etc etc), marking each time you hit 12 with your left hand up to five times which makes sixty

so to indicate the number 8 you would hold up just your right hand with your thumb pressed to the middle bone of your middle finger; to indicate 25 you’d hold up two fingers on your left hand and press the thumb of your right to the proximal bone of your pinky

if that’s how you count upward from zero then numbers end up in mostly multiples of 3 by default which is why noon is 12 and an hour is 60 minutes and a circle is 360 degrees

So listen up y’all, nothing drives me crazier as both a writer and a scientist than seeing alien diseases that make no fuckin’ sense in a human body. 

If you’re talking about alien diseases in a non-human character, you can ignore all this.

But as far as alien diseases in humans go, please remember:

DISEASE SYMPTOMS ARE AN IMMUNE RESPONSE.

Fever? A response to help your immune cells function faster and more efficiently to destroy invaders.

Sore/scratchy throat? An immune response. Diseases that latch onto the epithelium of the throat (the common cold, the flu) replicate there, and your body is like “uh no fuckin’ thanks” and starts to slough off those cells in order to stop the replication of new virus in its tracks. So when it feels like your throat is dying? guess what it literally is. And the white spots you see with more severe bacterial infections are pus accumulation, which is basically dead white blood cells, and the pus is a nice and disgusting way of getting that shit outta here.

(No one really knows why soreness and malaise happens, but some scientists guess that it’s a byproduct of immune response, and others suspect that it’s your body’s way of telling you to take it easy)

headache? usually sinus pressure (or dehydration, which isn’t an immune response but causes headaches by reducing blood volume and causing a general ruckus in your body, can be an unfortunate side effect of a fever) caused by mucous which is an immune response to flush that nasty viral shit outta your face.

Rashes? an inflammatory response. Your lymphocytes see a thing they don’t like and they’re like “hEY NOW” and release a bunch of chemicals that tell the cells that are supposed to kill it to come do that. Those chemicals cause inflammation, which causes redness, heat, and swelling. They itch because histamine is a bitch.

fatigue? your body is doing a lot–give it a break!

here is a fact:

during the Spanish 1918 Plague, a very strange age group succumbed to the illness. The very young and very old were fine, but people who were seemingly healthy and in the prime of life (young adults) did not survive. This is because that virus triggered an immune response called a cytokine storm, which basically killed everything in sight and caused horrific symptoms like tissue death, vasodilation and bleeding–basically a MASSIVE inflammatory response that lead to organ damage and death. Those with the strongest immune systems took the worst beating by their own immune responses, while those with weaker immune systems were fine.

So when you’re thinking of an alien disease, think through the immune response.

Where does this virus attack? Look up viruses that also attack there and understand what the immune system would do about it. 

Understand symptoms that usually travel together–joint pain and fever, for example.

So please, please: no purple and green spotted diseases. No diseases that cause glamorous fainting spells and nothing else. No mystical eye-color/hair-color changing diseases. If you want these things to happen, use magic or some shit or alien physiology, but when it’s humans, it doesn’t make any fuckin’ sense. 

Suddenly all those Hinterlands quests to go round up a random farmer’s druffalo don’t  seem so silly.

Dragon Age Inquisition - doing something right.

Where most beginning writers screw up (you should pardon the expression) is in thinking that sex scenes are about sex. A good sex scene is about the exchange of emotions, not bodily fluids. That being so, it can encompass any emotion whatever, from rage or desolation, exultation, tenderness or surprise.

Lust is not an emotion; it’s a one-dimensional hormonal response. Ergo, while you can mention lust in a sex scene, describing it at great length is like going about the pattern of the wallpaper in the bedroom. Worth a quick glance maybe, but essentially boring.

So how do you show the exchange of emotions? Dialogue, expression or action– that’s about the extent of your choices, and of those, dialogue by far is the most flexible and powerful tool a writer has. What people say reveals the essence of their characters.

[…] In essence, a good sex scene is usually a dialogue scene with physical details.

Diana Gabaldon “I Give You My Body …”: How I Write Sex Scenes 

I’ve written that Cupidsbow’s The Formula for Writing Sex Scenes has been incredibly formative for how I think of and write sex scenes. I like a lot what Gabaldon says (I’ve long clanged the drum about how sex scenes have fuck all to do with real sex), but dialogue is not something I’ve thought of too deeply in this context. Her analysis contrasts with Cupidsbow’s that a sex scene is an action scene, as Cupidsbow writes:

When I sit down to write a sex scene, I conceptualise it as an action scene, because the techniques for writing sex effectively are exactly the same as those for writing gripping action. This is because the goal is the same: evoking a physical response in the reader. 

Now maybe Cupidsbow might be referring to a more graphic kind of erotic writing (fanfic by large writes more explicit and diverse smut than mainstream romance, I think). Still, they end up in a similar spot, except Gabaldon seems to weigh more dialogue, specifically.

I wonder if this is something to do with a division between fanfic vs original prose. We can’t get enough of introspection in fanfic (what Cupidsbow calls “context” in her analysis). Is dialogue more difficult than context? I think so, particularly when occurring in a sex scene because you have to get the character’s voice (which exists already) just right. In contrast, if it’s your own character that’s less of an issue.

I’ve only written two smut pieces ever, I am reluctant to ever write more because I still kind of struggle/fight my way through it, but if I were, THIS. 

@teagrl was the one to really help me out with this by referring me to Cupidsbow and the idea of writing sex scenes as action scenes–with all the emotions and character that one would add on to an action scene to give it weight and not just logistics. You can paint a scene but your interpretation of the emotions can transform that same sky into a field of black or into Starry Night. 

This idea of dialogue is interesting–actual words, body language, POV character inner thoughts–or rather it is super important, because like mentioned above, just by saying stock things like, “You’re so beautiful,” are you really getting at something unless the character has always say, had a hang up about it? Or has recently been scarred, etc.?

1.  Allow your good guys to actually be good people (or, alternatively:  evil qualities do not automatically equate an interesting character.) 

Everyone loves the new Star Wars movies.  

Okay, that might not be 100% true:  the inclusion of a Black stormtrooper as a main character, a female “Mary Sue” Jedi, and the very possibility that Poe Dameron might not be straight as an arrow provokes outrage in the Dudley Dursleys of white, heterosexual male fandom, who are used to getting copious quantities of what they specifically want at all times.  

But excluding this crowd, its safe to say that almost everyone loves the new Star Wars movies, successfully combining originality with nostalgia, and of course, three-dimensional, interesting, and most relevant to the point at hand, good main characters.  

All three are overcoming huge obstacles:  Rey was an orphan whose only life experience has been a lonely existence in a desert wasteland, who was implied to have been abandoned or left behind by her loved ones at a very young age.  Finn was brought up in a strictly conformist, fascist dictatorship run by mass-murderers, who didn’t even get an actual name until he was well into his young adulthood.  Poe is captured, tortured for information, and presumed dead for the majority of the first movie. 

Yet they are all continuously, unambiguously good people, and are no the less charismatic, believable, or interesting because of it.  

And Star Wars isn’t the only series that’s currently showcasing the three-dimensionality and potential of emphatically good (albeit flawed) characters:  Stranger Things, for example, unabashedly showcasing its characters’ qualities of innocence, tenacity, complexity, and unconditional love.  In other words, it draws the viewer’s attention to their redeeming qualities, and is no less awesome because of it. 

I, as a person whose grown up surrounded by scholastically-minded individuals (mostly college-age, metro-sexual straight men) explaining the complexities of Humbert Humbert (the affluent pedophile of Lolita), Flowers in the Attic (in which one of the protagonists rapes his twin sister and suffers no foreseeable consequences because of it), or Clockwork Orange (enough said), could not appreciate this development enough.  

Let me tell you, as someone who voraciously consumes all forms of fiction and media, the morally grey antihero shtick gets old really, really fast.  At a certain point, I’d personally like to be able to enjoy a complex character without constantly having to wonder if they’re good or bad, or worse, being consistently distracted with my own repulsion towards their actions.  

I don’t want to consume media that considers itself complex just because it is morally ambiguous, or “makes you think” about the allegiances of its protagonists.  Moreover, I’ve been a little taken aback by the number of “classics” that are little more than vintage-style orgies of misogyny and violence, simply for the sake of their being thought-provoking.  

I’ve been thrilled that media has begun to provide good, pure-hearted characters with the spotlight they deserve, and would love to see more of it in all forms of fiction.

So I bid you, aspiring authors, to write soft characters, sympathetic characters, and unabashedly nice characters.  Moreover, write them being rewarded for their actions rather than killing them off for shock value, a la Orange is the New Black, The Walking Dead, Harry Potter, and every other series that killed off at least one benevolent and beloved characters for no discernible reason.

If you want your work to be edgy, this is the way to do it. 

But:  this is not to say that all your characters should be inherently sympathetic, nor should your villains be unfeeling monsters.  

In fact… 

2.  Allow everyone sympathetic qualities (even the villains.) 

It’s your protagonist’s story, but sometimes considering things from the opposite point of view can be just as interesting.

And I’m not talking about going the full Maleficent route, re-purposing a character who’s traditionally pure evil as flawed but ultimately sympathetic anti-heroes, though this can be an interesting trope in its own right.  

I’m talking about works such as, say, the animated Batman series.  While DC’s cinematic universe might currently centralize around contrived edginess and grit, the animated Batman universe of my childhood was uncommonly tender and profound.  Its villains were unabashedly villains, but many were given clearly definable reasons for their behavior, some of which could tug at the heartstrings of even the most emotionally tepid viewer.

Take, for example, this interaction with Mr. Freeze:

(Example courtesy of @wetwareproblem.)

Or the final days of this semi-omnipotent child psychic: 

https://youtu.be/YOooJW5SSDA

(Example via @eric-coldfire.)

Perhaps just as important to note is exactly how human the Batman himself is here, as opposed to the cold-hearted, borderline sociopath he’s been portrayed as in more recent endeavors:  we see him helping Harley Quinn out of her situation with the Joker and buying her a dress in “Harley’s Day Out,” consoling Baby Doll after a breakdown, and compulsively adopting orphaned children.

(Via @kane52630.)

All the characters are flawed, some of them dangerous, and most (Batman included) a little bit deranged.  But all of them are unambiguously human.

And this is what makes the series so much better than almost all of its big-screen counterparts. 

3.  Torture them. 

Look.  I’ve mentioned before that I’m a happy endings kind of person.  I will fight tooth and nail towards pretentious writers’ proclivity towards thinking that a dark and disturbing story with no pay-off is inherently more “deep” than one in which good and kind characters are eventually rewarded and granted an appropriately soft and happy epilogue.  

That said, there are definitive benefits towards inflicting copious amounts of pain on your characters.  

I know it sounds bad, but think about it:  would characters like Bucky Barnes, Jon Snow, or Spencer Reid be so beloved by their respective fandoms if their lives weren’t so wrought with tragedy and tribulation?  Would A Song of Ice and Fire have been such a sensation if it had just been about the Stark’s summertime adventures, or Life of Pi been such a smash hit if it had just been about a little Indian boy’s idyllic childhood in a zoo? 

Admittedly, it could be argued that George R.R. Martin and company may go a little too far with the senseless killing and torture of his characters, but we’ll get to that later.  For now, let’s have a look at an example even closer to home, a show famous for its sadistic writing, yet paradoxically, one in which its main characters rarely stay dead:  you guessed it.  Supernatural.

I started watching Supernatural in late 2015, because I love campy horror and had just run out of Game of Thrones episodes.  I didn’t interact much with fandom at the time, and as such, I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

I immediately found it to be an enjoyable, easy watch, but I didn’t really begin my downward spiral of obsession until around season three.  I.e. the point at which (spoiler alert) Dean goes to hell.  

Before this point, I had liked Dean:  he was a lovable character played by an obviously talented actor, who’d already made me cry on several occasions (”What is and What Should Never Be,” both season finales, etc.)  But I didn’t realize how attached to him I’d become until I was confronted with the possibility of his eternal damnation.  

But of course, in all my naivety at the time, I didn’t think that sending one of their main characters to hell was actually something the writers would do, so I sat back, laughed and cried through the emotionally confusing absurdities that were “A Very Supernatural Christmas” and “Mystery Spot,” and waited for the inevitable, last minute rescue, all while the plot inched steadily closer towards a worst-case scenario I didn’t possibly think could happen.

And then it happened.  After a tearful goodbye, Sam watches in horror as his brother is ripped to shreds by an unseen assailant.  Dean is then seen suspended from hooks in a vast, nightmarish landscape, his pained cries for his brother the last thing the horrified viewer hears as the screen goes black.

Of course, a socially awkward, angelic white knight eventually comes to his rescue, but the damage is done:  Dean has spent all of four decades being continuously tortured in hell, and the aftermath is painful to watch.  Moreover, the writers are all too eager to inflict one physical and psychological torment after another on the three main characters in the seasons that follow, cackling madly through the viewers’ pleas to stop.  

But it paid off.  I speak from personal experience when I say that you will never meet someone more protective of their favorite character than a Supernatural fan, collectively producing more character-driven fanfiction than almost any other demographic.  Indeed, I’ve talked to quite a few people who have continued to read and create fandom-produced works long after becoming disenfranchised with the show itself. 

Incidentally, Supernatural is also a great example as to how creating lovable, three-dimensional (and of course, long-suffering) characters can foster a devoted following, and even make up for serious plot-related shortcomings. 

For example:  has the show gone on longer than it probably artistically should have?  Yes.  Does the plot occasionally amble on like a nonsensical country road?  Yes.  Is it occasionally subpar in its treatment of female and minority characters?  Yes.  Has Dean’s unconfirmed bisexuality dangled in front of my nose like a pink purple and blue carrot since day one?  Yes.  

But would I still, without question, legally adopt any or all of the main characters if the opportunity were to somehow present itself?  Yes, yes, and yes.

4.  No when not to kill them.

We all know that killing the occasional character can help build suspense, further the story, and provoke an emotional response in the audience.

But I’m going to say it:  I really resent popular writers’ apparent proclivity towards killing off beloved characters for shock value.  I think it’s lazy writing, and as a bona fide fiction nerd, I can’t count on all my fingers and toes how many times I’ve devoted hours and days of my life to characters, only to have them killed off for no discernible reason.  

Here, I’m going to list a few examples of what I mean, so sufficed to say, spoiler alert:  

Poussey Washington, Orange is the New Black.  

Aside from being a genuinely wonderful character, Poussey’s death has been described as “tragedy porn for White people.”  And rightly so:  it serves no narrative purpose other than emotionally devastating the viewer and showing people how terrible and hopeless the lives of Black women are.  Moreover, Black, lesbian women are a vastly underrepresented demographic, and I personally think the writers should have considered this more before electing to kill her off.

Lexa, the 100.  

Another lesbian, I resented the fact that Lexa was killed off directly after becoming a canonical love interest to Clarke.  It was almost as if she was killed off specifically so Clarke would have a reason to return to her heterosexual male love interest instead, as is typically the route taken with bisexual women (and bisexuals in general) in popular media. 

Charlie Bradbury, Supernatural.  

Wow, look at that.  What a crazy coincidence:  it’s another dead lesbian, killed for no specific reason!  Why ever could this be?  Okay, as a bisexual gal myself, I might be a little more embittered than the average viewer to watch my fellow Women who Love Women bite the dust, but this is arguably just an example of why you should consider the real-world implications of which characters die.  If not, you’re going to wind up with a lot of angry queers on your ass. 

On that note, the same goes for disabled colors and characters of color:  if its a marginalized group, letting them live and giving them a happy ending can go a long, long way.

Another issue I’ve noticed is that some writers are just plain trigger-happy:  they kill off characters to the point at which death loses its value and narrative punch.  

For example:  I love Game of Thrones, both the onscreen adaption and the Song of Ice and Fire series off of which it was based.  But the sheer number of onscreen deaths has reached a point at which I’m utterly desensitized to them.  You’ve gotta let some characters live, George:  it should be a question of if a character will die, not when.

Finally, resurrection can be amazing when done right, but it can remove suspense when its overdone.  Too many characters back from the grave can make death lose all meaning, and is arguably one of the points where Sherlock lost its footing in its latter seasons. 

As a disclaimer, I’m not saying you should forgo killing characters entirely.  I speak from experience when I say killing people has its benefits.  Just do it sparingly, and use your best judgement.  Kill responsibly. 

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go re-watch that one episode of Black Mirror.

5.  At the end of the day, nothing makes up for layered, three-dimensional, and charismatic personalities.

Finally, the simple truth is that you can apply tips and tricks till the cows come home, but nothing makes up for truly human characters the audience can relate to.  

So make your characters sympathetic to you.  Apply your own life experience.  And write religiously, as this is very often a skill that can only be acquired with time and perseverance.

It takes courage to write, because to write truly good literature that speaks to the soul is to bare an intimate part of yourself, often to total strangers.  To write about personal experiences, feelings, and motivations, and hope that they are at some level universal.  

This is what makes good fiction such an amazing thing to consume, as it is truly a form of intimacy between souls that can’t be replicated anywhere else.  

So be proud of your writing, be proud of your characters, and be proud of the substantial courage it takes to even attempt to portray the human experience.  Good luck, and know that I’m rooting for you. 

like, for a real life example of what im talking about– we had “phones” in 1977, and we still have “phones” in 2017, but MAN would a time traveler from the 70s be confused by the things we call “phones” now, and the ways we use and relate to them– “im typing this text post on my phone, and autocorrect keeps cramping my style” is a straightforward and easily understandable sentence to me in 2017. it would sound like word salad to someone from 1977. (how can you TYPE something on a PHONE?? what does “post” mean in this context, or “text”? the fuck is “autocorrect”??)