Hello, I just really wants to write a vampire but i'm not sure how to do it without sounding cliché or ignorant because I don't anything about them... Do you have some helpful tips or post? Xx
There are many posts about this exact problem, so here are the most helpful articles I could find.
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Can you give advice on how to write a character who has a stutter? Please! I love you!
While neither D or I actually have a stutter, we can offer a few advice and tips to write a character with a stutter.
Is it developmental stuttering, neurogenic stuttering, or a more rare form of psychogenic stuttering?
Developmental stuttering is the most common and occurs when children are still developing their verbal language skills. It also runs in the family. Neurogenic comes from a stroke or an accident to the brain. Psychogenic is caused by emotional trauma, but this form of stuttering is far more rare.
Are they seeking help for their stuttering?
There is no cure for stuttering but people who have an issue with stuttering do often seek help for this issue. They may go to a speech-language pathologist, who specializes in helping manage stuttering, increase their speech fluency, and give them more confidence in their speaking.
Also consider how they feel about their stutter?
Is it something they are ashamed of so they rarely speak? Is it a joke that they can make fun of? Do they carefully calculate each word in order to minimize stuttering? Think about how they react under stress too, people tend to stutter more when they face pressure.
Lastly, do your research is a big piece of advice we give on all our guides! The better you understand something, the better you can write your character. We have provided you a few resources, but if you want to write a character with a stutter accurately, you need to know how and why they stutter.
National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders
National Stuttering Association
On Writing Stutters by referenceforwriters
Playing a Mute by keir-reviews- (This guide has some information on stuttering and other speech disorders)
We hope this helps! If you have any other questions, we would be happy to help! -AJ
At around March, I was admitted into a rehabilitation center because of my depression. However, I am feeling much better now, and have thought of sharing my experience so that -- hopefully -- others may be able to use it in their writing, in the background of their characters, or for their personal use. This is a part two to my guide to rehab, and you can check out part one here. I highly recommend reading that first before turning to this one.
The same disclaimer follows: Not all rehabs works the same way. Different rehabilitation centers have different styles — some more lax, and others more strict. The type of rehab I was in is not the only type of rehab there is, but it is one type.
I hope I am able to be of some help! If there are any questions about life in rehab that you think I might help in, don't be afraid to send me an ask!
Under the cut, you will find the following sections:
i. Length of Duration in Rehab
ii. After Care
iii. Supplication of Food, Toiletries, Clothing, etc.
iv. Check-Ups
v. Group Therapy Guidelines
vi. OJT (On the Job Training) Students
vii. Visitation and Going Out: Day Pass, Out on Pass, Escorts and Parents
viii. Family Dialogue
ix. Checking Out
x. Life After Rehab
i. Length of Duration in Rehab
The length of duration in rehab varies from person to person, if you're coming from the behavioral section. It will depend solely on the parents, the doctors, and the students themselves to determine their stay in rehab. If the student does well, and is greatly improving throughout their stay in rehab, the doctors will forward this to the parents, and then file for the student's leaving. It really all depends if the students show themselves to be fully functional and able to cope in their given community.
There is, however, a fixed six-month stay for those from the substance section. Unless other situations should arise (such as work, etc.), students from the substance group must finish their six-month program in rehab.
In order to say that one is improving, students must attend all activities (for which points will be given), eat properly and on time, listen to the nurses in charge, maintain proper hygiene, and the likes.
ii. After Care
After Care is a group for students whose parents and/or legal guardians have not agreed to letting them out of rehab. They may prove fully functional and able to cope, and their doctors may recommend that they be released, but their parents and/or legal guardians have not yet signed the proper forms and paid the proper fees.
Students under the after care program usually have more privileges. They are able to go out on day passes and out on passes (as will be discussed later) more often and for a longer amount of time, and they may also have more visitation privileges.
iii. Supplication of Food, Toiletries, Clothing, etc.
Upon entering rehab, parents and/or legal guardians would have packed a number of food, clothing, toiletries, and the likes for the students. Of course, as time is spent in rehab, these supplies will either be used up, or not quite be enough. For example, a week's worth of clothes wouldn't be enough if you're staying for over a month, etc.
This is why every Wednesday and Sunday, students are able to request supplies from their parents and/or legal guardians. All one has to do is write down the supplies they need on a piece of paper, and submit it to one of the students in charge in order to get their request processed. However, a request will cost some points, which stated above, can be earned by attending and participating in activities. For example, a text request would cost 50 points; a call request would cost 100, and etc.
iv. Check-Ups
Aside from the nurses and houseparents in charge of the students in the rehab center, there will also be house doctors in charge. Unlike the nurses, however, they are not present every day. There are only certain days that they come to visit, and during these days, see their patients. Not all doctors choose to come on the same day as one another, but they will always come on their specified day. For example, one doctor may visit every Saturday. Another may visit every Wednesday. Another may visit every Friday, and etc.
v. Group Therapy Guidelines
Before therapy sessions (discussed in the first part of my rehab guide) are begun, the group therapy guidelines must first be implemented. The scenario for group therapies are as follows: the students sit in a circle, and each one would say an item from the guideline rulebook. Anyone who disobeys or breaks the rules will get a punishment according to the gravity of their error.
Some of the group therapy guidelines are as follows:
No eating or drinking.
No walking out, and no acting out.
Observe confidentiality and anonimity.
Respect moments of silence.
Don't say bad words.
Come on time.
vi. OJT (On the Job Training) Students
Often times, there will be OJT students from universities or colleges that will come to work in the rehab center in order to fulfill what their class requires. They will only have a number of hours to spend with the students, and they will not be staying forever. Since they will be joining most of the activities of the students, either by preparing them or participating in them, students are allowed to build friendships with them. However, there must be a line to the relationship between a rehab student and an OJT student, and thus romantic and/or sexual relationships between any one of the two groups are strictly prohibited.
Upon working for the rehabilitation center, OJT students are also subject to the same confidentiality and anonimty. Because of this, rehab students may not ask for the numbers, Facebooks, or any form of communication with the OJT students outside of rehab. Everything is to be kept inside the center. What happens in rehab stays in rehab.
vii. Visitation and Going Out: Day Pass, Out on Pass, Escorts and Parents
Visitation and going out are privileges that a student can have once their doctor has deemed it okay to do so. It may take two weeks, two months, or two years to be given this privilege, as it solely depends on the students performance while inside the center, and the doctors judgement of whether they are ready or not to meet their families from the outside again.
Visitations occur on Sundays only. Sundays are day offs, so time from the morning to the afternoon is allotted to visitation.
Going out of rehab, however, can occur on any day. Of course, they must first be discussed with the student's doctor and family. There are two types of going out of rehab: Day Pass, and Out on Pass.
As the name suggest, Day Passes are only valid for one day. The student's parents and/or legal guardians will pick them up (preferably in the morning, to allot more time together), and then would have to bring them back to rehab before curfew, which is 9 PM.
Out on Passes, however, can extend from one day to however long it is that a student's doctor allows. For After Care students, the maximum may range from two weeks to two months, but for behavioral and substance students, out on passes can range from one to three days. These are all averages and generalizations, as it can depend from student to student.
viii. Family Dialogue
A family dialogue is something that every student is waiting for. It can be attained by two possible ways: 1) whenever a student's doctor says it is possible for a dialogue, and thus sets it up themselves; or 2) when a student has enough points to purchase themselves a family dialogue.
It is a time where students may be able to speak with their parents and/or legal guardians -- in the presence of their doctor and their case manager -- about the issues that they faced while dealing with the illness or addiction. Students will come up with questions to ask their parents and/or legal guardians, while parents and/or legal guardians will also come up with their own questions to ask the student, and all will be answered and tackled throughout the family dialogue. The purpose of a family dialogue is to resolve conflicts between the student and their family.
A family dialogue is something that every student wants because it helps determine how much longer they would stay in rehab. If all goes well, a family dialogue may allow for visitation and going out privileges, and at best help cut the length of their stay; on the other hand, if it goes badly, their stay in rehab might be lengthened. This is why most students prepare for this event. Students also take to putting on their best attire during a family dialogue, as it might be the first time that they would see their parents and/or legal guardians.
ix. Checking Out
Checking out of rehab is one of both the happiest and most painful moments. On one hand, it means that life may resume outside. One can go back to their lives, and hopefully, be mentally healthier than who they were before they were admitted. On the other, it means saying goodbye to the friends one has made whilst inside the center. It's very bittersweet, and a lot of people cry.
When a student is going to leave, a small farewell get-together will be held for them. In this get-together, each student will be able to give a simple message to the departing student. The message can be advice, or a memory they share, or something that bonds the two students together.
Before the students fully leave, one of the nurses will check their belongings to make sure that they have not kept any souvenirs from the other students -- whether it be in the form of gifts, phone numbers, Facebook emails, and etc. This is all to keep confidentiality and anonimity.
x. Life After Rehab
The healing process doesn't end after one has been released from the rehabilitation center. Students have to keep up with their medication, show up for their therapy sessions held in the clinic that their doctor reports to, and try every day to keep getting better.
Living with a mental illness or a disorder is not easy. There are tough days, and there are days that feel hopeless. But always remember that there are people who will guide you and help you. And it may be hard to see it right now, but things will get better. They may not be good now, but they will be. There's always hope!
If you're writing an aromantic and/or asexual character, and the whole point of your narrative or your story is to show that they need "the right one" to "fix them" or to "spark something within them", please do us all a favor and STOP. Not only is it untrue, but it is also offensive and bigoted to think so, write so, and justify so through your writing. You are writing on a very, very dangerous slope, and I suggest you nope out of there as quickly as possible because you are portraying a whole group of people wrongly. Yeah, yeah, it's fiction, whatever, right? Wrong. By writing in such a way, you are denying that aromantic and asexual people exist, and that we're all just waiting for the right one to come make us realize that we're allosexual or alloromantic all along.
If you're writing an aromantic and/or asexual character with the whole point of your narrative or your story showing that they just need "someone to come fix them", and you get called out on it, then you react with "wow I'm sorry some people found this offensive, but that's exactly what I was saying!", please just STOP. Seriously. Stop. Don't do that. Go home. Go do your research. Stop looking at asexual and aromantic people like they're broken and they need The One to come fix them. Please just stop.
It may not mean that much to you, and it may not even matter to you that you're wrong, but people from the ace and/or aro spectrum already face these things on a daily basis. We already have our families and friends telling us that we're weird for not feeling romantic attraction and/or sexual attraction. We already have people telling us we're broken. To have to read it, to have to see it on media, and to have it be justified through your character's life matters to us. There are so little representation of aro and/or ace people as it is, so please represent properly.
So, yeah, in the end, if your story is out to prove that asexual and/or aromantic people just need ~~The Right One~~ to come fix them, it's messed up, and you should probably check yourself before you wreck yourself.
Do you have any advice for writing about illegal street races? I haven't been able to find much. I was also wondering if you would be able to find anything about writing about a drug cartel.
Street Racing
Street Racing.
Information
Facts | 2
Addicted to the rush of the race
Illegal Street Racing
Car Chases
On Writing Car Chases
Tips on writing a big fight/chase scene
Tips on writing action scenes
Writing chase scenes
TIP: How to edit for tension
Vocabulary [car-chase lingo defined]
Vocabulary [sounds]
Came
Spun (up)
Cranked
Sputtered
Whined
Coughed
Rumbled
Grumbled
Growled
Snarled
Revved
Zoomed
Vroomed
Screamed
Roared
Blasted
Thundered
Exploded
Whispered
Purred
Whirred
Hummed
Chortled
Stuttered
Vocabulary [car related]
Max Speed – max car speed
Max Reverse Speed – max car speed in reverse
Acceleration – acceleration speed
Deceleration – braking speed
Friction – how far the car rolls before stopping
Max Steering Rate – max rate at which car can turn
Steering Acceleration – how fast the car starts turning
Steering Friction- how fast the car corrects itself (when you “let go of the wheel”)
Car Starting Direction – set car rotation on start
Drug Cartels
Drug Cartel
Illegal drug trade
How the Cartels Work
Drug Cartels In Oregon: How Traffickers Operate
Sinaloa Cartel
How is the organization structure of a drug cartel?
What should we know about the Mexican drug cartels?
Where do drug cartels invest their billions?
Mexico's "Queen of The Pacific"
Mexico’s Drug Trafficking Organizations
A guide to the world's biggest drug cartels
"What I saw inside the Cali drug cartel"
Confessions of a drug cartel hitman on the run
Links from Havocscope
El Narco: Inside Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency
The Last Narco: Inside the Hunt for El Chapo, the World’s Most Wanted Drug Lord Meet the boss of the Sinaloa Drug Cartel and a man who was once listed on Forbes Billionaire List.
Narcoland: The Mexican Drug Lords And Their Godfathers The author is living under protection after receiving numerous death threats from drug cartels in Mexico. According to the Guardian, traffickers have left the heads of decapitated animals on her doorsteps as the results of her investigations.
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Under the read more is a guide about Claustrophobia, as requested by anonymous. This guide includes the topics of how to play a character with this phobia, examples in the media, and possible starters or plot points pertaining to a character who suffers from claustrophobia. We do not claim to be experts about this topic, but we both suffer from this phobia along with being exposed to it from the outside because of family members who are also claustrophobic. We have done our best in this guide to be as comprehensive and explain as well as possible. If you find this guide helpful, please like/reblog this post!
First of all let’s define what claustrophobia is so there isn’t any confusion. Claustrophobia is the fear of small or confined spaces. This fear can range from small rooms, places without windows, crowded rooms, or if something is even tight against your body. A phobia is usually a fear that changes how you function. If you avoid taking the subway because you don’t like the trapped feeling, this could classify you as claustrophobic.
As someone with moderate claustrophobia, I can tell you that the fear of tight places can differ for everyone. For you or your character, it can mean that they break out in a sweat when they’re in an elevator filled with people, they can’t wear tight fitting clothes, or they have an anxiety attack on an airplane. There are many different ways that claustrophobia can affect a person. You, as the writer, are able to determine how and to what extent your character’s life is focused on their claustrophobia. Personally, I don’t think about my claustrophobia until I’m in a tight place and find it harder to breathe; for other people it can cause them to change their everyday lives.
Symptoms of claustrophobia include:
Panicked feeling in small places
The need to get out of a confined place by any means possible
Shaking
Sweating
Heart palpitations
Nausea
Panic attacks
Headaches
Hyperventilation or trouble breathing
Triggers for claustrophobia:
Elevators
Subways
Airplanes
Small hallways
Crowded areas
Cars
Trains
Hotel rooms with windows that do not open
Tunnels
Changing rooms
MRI machines
Basements
Bathroom stalls
Dark areas/Power outages
Stores with little room between isles/racks
Closets
Tight clothing/Tightly wrapped blankets or bedding
Usually the cause for claustrophobia stems from a traumatic experience from childhood or in the past. It could mean they were stuck in a small place and couldn’t get out, their parents could have reinforced this fear, or they could have gotten lost in crowded place. For some people claustrophobia is caused by not being able to escape or feeling trapped in one’s own home. If someone feels restrained in a relationship or at home, it can cause them to develop claustrophobia There is no one cause for claustrophobia, it’s different for everyone.
Examples of films that reference or induce the feeling of claustrophobia
Saw
Panic Room
127 Hours
Kill Bill: Volume 2
Buried
Life Boat
The Descent
Books that reference or induce the feeling of claustrophobia
House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
Buried Secrets by Joseph Finder
Dead Silence by Randy Wayne White
Deep Shadow by Randy Wayne White
Faithless by Karin Slaughter
The Keeper of Lost Causes by Jussi Adler-Olsen
The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris
Silencer by James W. Hall
TV shows that reference or induce the feeling of claustrophobia
CSI (episode: Grave Digger)
Family Guy (episode: Brian & Stewie)
Spongebob Squarepants (episode: Wishing You Well)
Here are some examples of how to incorporate claustrophobia into your character’s life. Since it can affect everyone differently, you can choose where their claustrophobia comes from and how much it affects their everyday life:
Sharing a taxicab with windows that do not work
Crowded elevator ride with multiple stops before their floor
A tricky bathroom stall that won’t open
Sounds/animals/flooding that forces them to go into the basement
Going into a tiny store that has little room to move around in during a sudden rain storm
Being in a restaurant during lunch rush accidentally
The attic/cellar door getting stuck, sealing them inside
A power outage while being in a new area or a hotel room
A subway during rush hour
A transatlantic flight
Riding a bus with a pull line that won’t work no matter how many times it’s tugged on
Going to a party that is crowded with people or held in a small, enclosed space
Tornado or other natural disaster that forces them into a small, windowless room like a closet or a basement
Changing how they get around on a daily basis so they never get stuck on the subway or train
Getting a MRI and freaking out while inside
A tight turtleneck sweater that won’t stay down on their neck, causing them to feel suffocated
Further Readings:
Examples of claustrophobia in media
Claustrophobia Fear of Enclosed Spaces
What is claustrophobia? What causes claustrophobia?
Psychologist identifies what may trigger claustrophobia
We've talked about them a couple times before (more than a couple times, in fact) but I'd like to leave something very clear:
You are free to write your character's accent as much as you want, however, people are also free not to read your story; harsh truth, but truth nonetheless.
I more than agree that if your character has a particular way to express themselves, you can point it out through dialogue. I encourage it. Whether it is that, like, they use verbal crutches and stuff (they're perfectly fine) or they use a very formal syntax and grandiloquent word choice (your character may be a bit pretentious), it shows something about their character, which is always useful specially if you want to back up certain statements (with the pretentious person, for example that they are suave, or wannabe suave depending on the context; on the other hand abrupt sentence structure may reference the character's preference for straightforwardness, only looking to talk as much as it is necessary to do so).
Finally, accents in my opinion are a particular layer of your characters' speech that should be used in moderation. It has the chance to be very, very annoying, and/or very, very offensive (particularly quite racist or classist), and sometimes only saying your character has a French accent may give us the feeling that they are talking in a French accent.
You are reading this right now in Morgan Freeman's voice.
Look. Imagination.
(warning: gif / gif not mine)
Sometimes dialect may make an entrance (dialect is different from just accents because dialect involves vocabulary and grammar; accent is pronunciation), which's okay, y'know, so long as y'don't exaggerate. Because if you overdo it (the way someone may overdo a character that stutters), it'll disrupt the flow of my reading because I'll be too busy trying to understand what you even mean.
There's also a special kind of issue with characters whose first language is not English. If it's shown your character speaks perfect English, has done so for a while, and then drops the occasional little Spanish word in every other sentence, only that point out that sí, they speak Español, then that's not only a bit extraño (if they speak perfect English, why would they do this?) but offensive (because we know the answer, that's why).
See gratuitous Spanish, German, and French (among others).
This only applies if it's not quite explained why they do this. If they're not perfect English speakers, or if they are doing this deliberately for any other reason, then you may not be doing this. However, sometimes not even people that are not fluent in English will speak this way. More often than not, they'll try to express themselves as clearly as possible with what they know, and if they don't know how to say something, they'll try to explain it. Gratuitous (insert language) is just there to remind the readers these people are foreign and different, and that's just not acceptable.
See my accents, character's speech, and dialogue tags for more on this.
