#winter-wisp

Part 1 (Character Creation): http://windor.tumblr.com/post/34157013202/tips-for-writers-and-artists-regarding-character

BOOK IDEAS always start with the words What If? Reading in your own time, an unresolved court case, that you were looking forward to the end of? Why don't you write your own ending, or ask yourself What If the main suspect wasn't really the culprit, but an elaborate scheme that was mainly taking place elsewhere? Myths and legends can also make fantastic books, provided you do the adequate research.

Believe in your story, and in your characters. Honestly. If you don't believe your own words, who else will? Believe in them all, believe that they are all real and that you are just writing down their story for them. I know a writer who, while writing a crime novel stayed up for two days in a row at the end so that if he accidentally died in some accident, his character in his book would not be thought of as guilty by the next person who would read the book after his death. 

Cut out everything that is unnecessary. A passage should always do one of two things. 1: Carry on the story. 2: Develop a character. The things you take out will make the story easier to read, and more exciting.

First person and third person perspectives both have their pros and cons.  First person lets the reader into your character's head much easier, but also doesn't let you, the writer, explore other people's perspectives; it also means that your story has to take place around your character, and you can't show some secret meeting in the back of an alley way whenever you like. In third person perspective you have to be much more careful to SHOW your reader everything, but you can change perspectives. The easier of the two would have to be third person view, but everyone is different.

A plot only begins when someone wants something, and something else is standing in their way. The something standing in their way can be themselves, even. Its up to you, the writer. A characters greatest strength can hold them back, which can make a character all the more interesting. 

YOUR CHARACTER CANNOT BE PASSIVE. Passive main characters are boring! Boring boring boring! No-one get attached to someone who has everything happen to them, but they don't do anything! Your character has to do something, or the reader will throw down your book without hesitation. A character can never be the same at the beginning as they are the the end. Never ever. That just defeats the subverse purpose of the novel.

Sub plots are not a bad thing, in fact, they can make your story much better. Relatively easy to weave in, they are just things that need solving as the main story progresses. They can confuse your reader though, so be careful, but some make use of this confusion to mask something that would otherwise be quite an obvious thing to the reader otherwise. 

Make detail about things interesting, and even funny. For instance, if you were to describe a white, round lamp by a hungry person, you could say that it resembles an upside-down bowl of chips, the color of whipped cream with a center of glowing ice cream in the middle. It's totally up to you. 

DO NOT MAKE THE MISTAKE OF TAKING TOO LONG TO GET INTO YOUR STORY. Leap right into it! Go for it, think of your readers as people who easily get distracted. They need something to keep them there. This is where a sub plot may come in handy, in the middle of a book. If you like, you can even start in the MIDDLE of your plot line, and have the reader piece everything together themselves (not recommended)! If you're getting bored with your book, most likely the reader will be as well. 

In a story, a sense of place is important. Be aware of places in your story, give names to houses and streets. The reader will remember them if they are mentioned often enough. If your story is about the world ending, then INCLUDE THE WHOLE WORLD. No use staying in one place.

Be willing to kill your babies. No, not literally your babies, I mean your characters. The best books are the ones that evoke emotion. Better to be hated for killing off a lovable character then to be totally ignored as an author, right? 

FIND YOUR VOICE AND YOUR CHARACTERS VOICE. Please please please remember, your characters are. not. you. They are themselves. When writing from their points of view, they should have their own style of recounting. In third person perspective, every character should sound different in comparison to every other character you are writing from. Your characters, when recounting or talking, don't even have to tell the truth. You don't even have to tell the reader they are lying. People rarely say exactly what they are thinking,

AN IMPORTANT WORD ON DIALOGUE.  So many people underestimate the importance of well-written dialogue. Dialogue tells readers about your character without having to specifically outline anything. Dialogue is also SO MUCH EASIER to read than big paragraphs. Use as little descriptive language about the way things are said when someone is speaking in your book because it breaks the flow of the conversation and some people find it very annoying. Once you have established whose line is whose, you don't even have to establish or say anything until either the conversation stops or pauses or someone new interjects. People should be able to tell if someone is angry or upset in your dialogue just by reading it. Dialogue also seems very real, but in fact is extremely stylized. In real life, people cough, interject and do various other things while another is speaking. If you are under confident about your dialogue, read it out loud with another person and make sure it gets across what needs to get across to your reader. 

A Final Word. Ask yourself: Is the story coherent? What are the recurring themes or elements? Do I care about my characters? Do I believe in them? And also, if in your story you choose to use time travel to jump back and forth, MAKE IT OBVIOUS. Its awfully confusing, too. To reduce confusion add recurring elements. Like a moon-glow butterfly that appears whenever someone changes times, or a particular shrine that is commented upon by each perspective in the different time lines. 

http://www.livestream.com/WinterWisp

He smiled a large, somehow knowing grin. His neck garland of flowers still hung wholly; he was not even touched by the bloodshed that had fallen around him, as if the flowers warded off all dirtiness. His grin, right in the face of Tayao, seemed to only incite him. His neck fell with a wet thud. And the war was over. And the wrong people had won.

Can you hear that dirty rat?

Scurrying down the corridors?

It hear it has some irreversible,

Disease, of which it mourns

The day it received such an untimely gift.

  Oh look, what is that other one doing

Giving it food like it’s an equal?

That other rat should be shunned to,

Before they create it’s equal.

  Why do they converse, those two dirty rats?

They’re both diseased now, as you can tell,

They have created their own social gaps.

  But those two rats found solace,

In the only ways they could

They were blind to the other’s internal malice,

As if they wore a blinding hood.

  They whispered reverently

of the happiness they found

In each other’s company,

Ignoring the ripping sound

Another man appears in the distance out of the foggy gloom, like watery milk, giving me a chance to talk to his equal before he arrives. He looks so old and malformed that it may take a while. His steps look painful.

I turn to the man seated next to me, on the cold park bench, surrounded with white. There is a tree looming over us, like we are both just sitting in a laneway; I look to his priceless tuxedo, his desirably handsome features, but not his eyes. I see them twinkle in the peripherals of my vision. He wants me to look at them. Offering, saying nothing just yet, because that is not in the rules of the game; If there are any, anyway. He looks like the picture of youth, eternal and always taking. He is not giving anything to me, no, he is not. It’s in his nature to be greedy, like me.

I turn back to the milky fog. The old man is much closer now, hobbling, giving us time. We wait for him. I am not leaving just yet. I cannot see his eyes over his drooping eyebrows, baggy like a pair of stretched sweatpants on a clothesline. He is heaving with strain. He stops in front of me, never even glancing at our other companion.

He opens his mouth, gaping. “Give, or take?” he says, sounding as if his voice box was itself breaking, expecting a hacking cough. I stay silent, waiting for the tuxedoed man to say something.

“She’s mine, old man. You can see it already.” The handsome hissed at the malformed. I looked down at my lap.

“Patience, my brother. You are merely the guide.” The elder said, wheezing. His breath smelt like rotting fish, and his hand waved like he was senile.

“Is it not obvious? There is no will for you here.”

“It is indeed obvious, why are you so eager?”

The two said nothing. I knew what they were here for. The Two Great Ones, joined for all eternity, the Yin and Yang, the Giver and the Taker, Life and Death. With a bullet wound to the stomach, all I knew was that I did not want to face the pain of being alive. In this place, you do not remember family, friends, memories or anything of the like. It is just you and your mind. Alone. When you come here, it’s usually one of the two that seems all the more inviting.

The old man started to wither visibly as my mind made up itself. All he said was a small, sad little “oh,” before he fell into crumpled heap with two glinting black beetles for eyes, who quickly scurried away.