the writing grindstone

Step away from the thesaurus. Put down that list of SAT words. Yes, those are all great words to know, I agree, but maybe they don't ALL need to go in one story?

Because the perfect word isn't always the right word. Sometimes the perfect word is exactly the wrong word and, actually, several not-quite right words can come together and create a better whole than that one perfect word ever could.

"It was like a conflagration lit in his chest, swallowing his heart. "

"It was like a fire lit in his chest; one tiny spark that jumped to a bush, to a tree, to a second tree, to a third, and soon there was an entire goddamn forest fire blazing inside him, swallowing his heart."

make your characters have inaccurate perceptions of themselves. your character might think they’re selfish but at every opportunity they act selfless. we all have blind spots so give these to your characters too! (this works best with first person pov but I’m sure you can do it in third.)

make a character’s personality trait helpful sometimes and harmful other times. impulsivity that makes them act quickly in high-stress situations which is great but it also sometimes results in the wrong choices.

make an excel/google sheets doc for your outline. for mine i have the chapter number, the date, the character pov (since mine is first person and switches between 5 characters), a summary column, and a continuity column. my story takes place in one setting but most stories have multiple locations, so you could include a column for that, the time of day, even the moon phase (one of my wips is from the perspective of animals so that is super important for that story).

you can also use excel/sheets for keeping track of your conlang. for my animal wip i have constructed a language called Vannro and I have 300 some-odd entries into my excel doc. i have columns for the Vannro word, the English translation, etymology and derived words (for some), the part of speech, and the subject. you can easily sort in alphabetical either in English or your conlang, and also sort by excluding all entries that aren’t under the subject “derogatory” or “places” etc. I always forget what my “be” verbs are so I sort through the part of speech column so I can find “is” “was” “are” etc.

use perspective to create tension for your reader. for example, in The Blackwater Anomaly in a chapter from Rainer’s pov, we experience his nightmare, however in a later chapter from Holly’s pov, when she asks him directly, he lies and says he hasn’t experienced any nightmares. Holly doesn’t know he is lying but the audience does. I also have characters who do not get chapters from their perspective, who may or may not be lying, and so both the audience and the characters experience that anxiety and uncertainty together.

consider using deep pov. you can read some articles about it but essentially you make the audience experience the story at the same time as the character and it makes your narration more active. this can also be done in third person. this has a lot to do with “show don’t tell” (although sometimes its better to just tell). remove some “telling” words like “thought/felt/saw” and just get directly into what’s happening. instead of “Ava saw a shadow fall across her shoulder” make it “a shadow fell across her shoulder”. your reader will know who you’re talking about. this even jumps into the unreliable narrator when you change “I felt like Isaiah was blowing me off” to “Isaiah blew me off.” the former has room for doubt and makes your character seem weaker. if she thinks she’s being blown off and she’s pissed about it, make her say that! you have to make the audience believe it’s true, it makes them more invested in the character’s experiences and emotions. and then if they later find out Isaiah wasn’t really blowing them off, there was an emergency or something, both the character and the audience can feel regretful together over misreading the situation and being pissed at Isaiah. if you leave room for doubt, then your reader will just feel unsurprised during the reveal and frustrated at your character for being stupid up until then.

Reread your old writing. Especially those scenes you're proud of

Write something silly. Doesn’t need to be logical, or included in your story. Write something dumb

Compare your old writing to your new writing. Seeing how much you've improved is a great way to get motivated

Explore different storylines. Those type of storylines that would never make it into your novel, but that you'd still like to explore

Choose one of your least favorite scenes, or a really old one, and rewrite it

Read old comments from people praising your work

Create a playlist of music that reminds you of your wip

Don't push yourself to get back to what made you stop writing in the first place. Write something else

Write what you want to write, no matter how cliché it might be perceived as. It doesn't matter. If you want to write it, write it.

Take a break and focus on another hobby of yours. Consume other pieces of media, or take a walk to clear your head

You don't have to write in chronological order from the very beginning if it isn't working for you! Sometimes a scene you aren't interested in writing can become interesting after you've explored other scenes leading up to it/happening after it

Read one star reviews of ''awful'' books. As much as I hate to say it, you'll unlock a newly appreciated view on your own writing

create a new storyline, or a new character. Anything that helps bring something fresh into your story. Could even be a completely new wip

Not writing everyday doesn't make you a bad writer. If you feel you need a break, take one.

Remind yourself to have fun. Start writing and don't focus all your attention on following every rule created for writing. You can get into the nitty-gritty when you’ve familiarized yourself with writing as an art. Or don’t. It's fiction. You make your own rules.

Go to sleep, or take a nap. Sleep deprivation and writing does not go hand in hand (trust me)

Listen to music that reminds you of your characters/wip

Here’s some questions I’ve been answering for my MCs during my character development phase! Feel free to add on your own

What do they each have to lose?

What does it mean for each of them to be in love? (Most useful for romance genres)

What are they attracted to?

How’s their family life?

How’s their social life?

What do they like about each other? (What attracts them to each other in the first place, and then what makes them stick around?)

What’s their sexual and romantic history?

What are they skilled in?

How’s their school experience? (Most useful for YA and NA)

What are their hobbies?

Are they an introvert, extrovert, or ambivert?

Are they right brained, left brained, or balanced?

What are their most prevalent strengths and weaknesses?

What are their goals and dreams?

What are their fears and insecurities?

What do they believe in?

the good old fetch quest. when your characters realize that they need to get this one thing in order to move on, but also they are doing something else to further the main plot. fetch quest subplots are hard to put in without things feeling like they’re just traveling from point a to point b–take advantage of the space in between to explore your characters, the world, etc.

there’s some tension between character a and character b. it doesn’t need to be super obvious at first. maybe it’s been kind of growing at the edge of your mind this entire time, and it just explodes. regardless of what kind of tension it is, your story will have to pause to address it. 

character a actually wants to stab character b. well, that’s a problem.

figure from a character’s past returns (and turns into a major plot point instead oops). a la jesper fahey and colm fahey. they just appear, and they bring a whole lot of baggage with them for the character to resolve before they can even think about moving on. perhaps they also help the main plot, or perhaps they’re just there to help develop your characters. either way, it’s a good way to get more insight on who your character is, how they are perceived by the people around them, and perhaps even a glimpse into a different part of the world.

put in a new pov for a side character, accidentally flesh them out and make them a main character with their own personal problems and motivations to further your main plot. yeah. sometimes it happens.

other notes about subplots

subplots should tie into the larger story–or be interwoven enough that when it gets resolved, it doesn’t feel as though there was no consequence to the bigger picture.

they don’t actually have to be that big of a deal! you can have smaller subplots littered throughout your story. maybe there’s this minor rivalry between two of your characters that always appears at certain moments. maybe there’s some development to that rivalry that the main characters notice (occasionally) but don’t comment on because that’s…just their thing. it seems like there’s no consequence to it, but it does serve to further flesh out what might have been minor, flat characters beforehand.

⟢ PEOPLE DON'T FINISH SENTENCES! IMPORTANT! they interrupt themselves, they trail off, they start talking about eggs and somehow end up confessing their deepest fear about becoming their mother. Your dialogue should derail like a drunk train conductor took the wheel. "I was thinking we could—no wait, did you feed the cat? Because last time you said you would but—actually never mind, what I meant was—" SEE? HUMAN. Beautiful chaos.

⟢ Contractions exist??? USE THEM. Nobody says "I am going to the store" unless they're an alien spy or your grandmother leaving a voicemail. It's "I'm gonna" or even "gonna hit the store" or if they're really casual "store run, back in 20"

⟢ LISTEN TO ME! Said is NOT dead but said is also boring sometimes. Yeah yeah, "said is invisible," the writing teachers chant while burning incense. But you know what? Sometimes people mutter, snap, whisper, drawl, bite out their words. Your character just found out their partner sold their vinyl collection? They're not "saying" anything, they're HISSING like a Victorian ghost

⟢ People repeat themselves when emotional!!! "I can't believe you. I just—I can't believe you did this." Not poetic. Real. That's the point!!!

⟢ Subtext is doing heavy lifting, what people DON'T say matters more than what they do. "Fine" is never fine. "Whatever you want" means "I will remember this betrayal forever." Your readers are smart; let them read between the lines

Revision has got to be, at least for me, the most cringeworthy part of writing just about anything. I get to the end of a first draft and I look back over the great, wide mess of the thing I just wrote and I don’t want to do it. I think well, maybe the next new story will be better from the beginning, but that’s not logic. That’s not really how writing works.

- most timeloops can be categorized with a string of the following letters -

First : is it supernatural (S), or is it mechanical (M)

Note that mechanical loops don’t need to abide by real-world science. If there’s a techno-babble explanation, a machine, a wormhole excuse, or multiverse explanation, it’s likely mechanical

Supernatural loops are either unexplained phenomena, or in-universe magic such as curses

Second : is it a typical timeloop (T), a deathloop (D), or an event-triggered loop (E)

Typical timeloops are a set amount of of time, such as a day, an hour, or a few minutes, and always reset at the end of that time. They may also reset upon death.

Deathloops do not have a set amount of time that they last, and only reset upon the death of the looper.

Event loops reset when a specific action other than the looper’s death occurs. The death of somebody other than the looper is included in this.

Finally : is it escaped via physical means (P), a correct series of actions (A), character growth (C), or is it inescapable (X)

Physical means of escaping a timeloop are methods such as finding an exit point or destroying a machine

Series of actions is essentially the trope of ‘living the perfect day’, or achieving a particular goal, Similar to physical means but less direct interaction with the cause of the loop

Character growth, self explanatory. Grow as a person, escape the loop.

when you’re writing a conflict between two characters or factions of characters, you need to consider whether their disagreement over the premise or over the methods. put another way: do they disagree on the problem or the solution?

this is a genuinely tricky thing to identify, especially in very complex narratives, so let’s do some very simple examples.

the situation: pacifist nation X is about to be invaded by empire Y. the laws and cultural practices of the Xians make violence and death so abhorrent that even accidental death is as minimized as possible. the Ylings, on the other hand, are totally cool with straight up murder and think diplomacy is for wimps, but are also pragmatic enough that they won’t waste troops if they don’t need to. the king of X calls in his council and asks for their opinions.

character A: It is more noble to die for one’s beliefs than to live having broken them. We should allow the Ylings to invade us and if we die, we die. character B: If all life is sacred, then our lives are also sacred. We must fight back against the Ylings, even though that means we’d be committing violence.

A and B agree on premise but not solution: they both acknowledge that the Yling invasion is a bad thing that will lead to their deaths if unopposed and that the nonviolence code is important; what they disagree on is priorities and methods.

character C: We should invite them into our nation as honored guests. Maybe they’ll spare us or at least kill us more mercifully. character D: We should propose an alliance and intentional annexation in exchange for our lives. Being part of the Yling Empire is a pretty sweet deal, actually.

C and D agree on solution but not premise: they’re both okay with just letting the empire walk in and invade, but C thinks the invasion would be a bad thing and is just trying to minimize the damage, and D thinks it would be a good thing and wants to maximize the rewards.

character E: We should fight the Ylings and stay a sovereign nation; the nonviolence code is stupid and holding us back. character D: We shouldn’t fight the Ylings and try to be peacefully part of their empire instead; we’d be true to our code and reap the rewards of an alliance.

E and F disagree on both premise and solution.

Now, all possible permutations of this argument are fine. “Is this the best way to solve the problem?” and “What actually is the problem?” are both great sources of conflict. Captain America: The Winter Soldier’s entire plot is an argument over the methods to prevent death and crime, but everyone agrees that crime is bad; one of Zuko’s big character development moments is when he realizes that the problem with the world isn’t the other nations ungratefully rejecting the prosperity and unity offered by the Fire Nation, but that the Fire Nation routinely commits genocide in their quest to colonize the rest of the world.

The issue is when a disagreement over methods is treated like a disagreement over premise. The characters are positioned like one side’s entire worldview is correct and the other is wrong, but it turns out they actually disagree with what the other does rather than what the other believes.

A big giveaway that what you’re seeing is about methods and not underlying beliefs? If at any point it is said or implied that one character “goes too far.” “Too far” implies a point before that cutoff that the other characters or the reader would be okay with. You can’t go too far if going any distance in that direction is wrong. “Frollo in the Disney version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame goes too far when he tries to kill all the Romani in the city” implies that the problem isn’t racism in general, but mass murder specifically, and that if Frollo was only nonviolently racist, that would be fine!

Like, you know the joke about the guy who offers a woman a million dollars to sleep with him, then ten dollars after she accepts the million dollar offer, and when she’s offended and says she’s “not that kind of woman,” he says, “Oh, we agreed you were that kind of woman, now we’re just haggling over price”? If your characters are arguing about the best way to solve a problem, they have already agreed about the existence and nature of the problem. Now they’re just haggling over price.

Again: that kind of storyline is okay if you actually do want to discuss extremism v. moderation of the same basic principle. It’s okay for two characters to argue over the best way to free all of their country’s slaves. It’s also okay for two characters to discuss the best way of practicing slavery, if you want to show how ingrained it is in society or how even the character you think is a moderate is still evil or something. What doesn’t work is if your intention is to say how awful slavery is, but then the entire conflict is over the treatment of slaves rather than whether slavery is okay.

There is the problem, the end, and the means, and those are all things that can be disagreed with in different ways.

Let’s take a very basic scenario. Two people live together. There is a bookshelf full of books and there are books all over the floor.

Disagreement on the problem:

Person 1 thinks there are too many books on the floor. Person 2 likes having books on the floor because it makes the house feel lived-in.

Disagreement on the end:

Person 1 and 2 have agreed that there are too many books on the floor. Person 1 thinks the ideal end is that the house has exactly one bookshelf worth of books in it. Person 2 thinks the ideal solution is every book remaining in the house but simply being somewhere that is not the floor.

Disagreement on the means:

Person 1 and 2 have agreed that the ideal solution is every book remaining in the house and being on a bookshelf. Person 1 thinks they should buy more bookshelves to fit every book. Person 2 thinks they should double- or triple-stack their shelves rather than spend money on new bookshelves.

Sometimes where writing, particularly dialogue, can feel funky is the problem of voice, of that just doesn't sound like him, which can come down to individual words used. What's really interesting is this sense can ping even for characters you don't know at all, NPCs and background characters, not just the big main canon favorites that everyone knows intimately.

For example, I was writing a fic recently where I had typed out a character saying

"He was lucky he wasn't more seriously hurt."

And immediately had to backtrack because the word lucky felt wrong. I knew exactly what needed to go there instead without really thinking about it, but let's break it down a minute first.

Okay, so imagine you're me and lucky feels off, so what do you do? You turn to the thesaurus. This is what you get:

[alt text added to image; should pull through]

These aren't... wrong. (Well, some of them are.) Most of them are synonyms of lucky in various contexts, but they're not one-to-one by any means. So first you have to know that, in this spoken context of describing a person who avoided a potential negative outcome, only some of these will work, because it needs to be an adjective that has to address a moment of good luck (as opposed to a pattern or a lifetime) and avoiding that potential negative outcome by chance. Most of the time, you can sort these out by saying them out loud in your chosen sentence.

"He was lucky he wasn't more seriously hurt"

✅ Original sentence, construction works.

"He was serendipitous he wasn't more seriously hurt"?

🚫 No. That doesn't make sense at all.

"He was blessed he wasn't more seriously hurt."

✅ Yeah, that works, in a vacuum, too.

Of the above, in the sentence of dialogue I created, the following work:

Blessed

Fortunate

Lucky

Only three. (If I changed the sentence structure to "It was ___ he wasn't more seriously hurt," I could try out a few more, maybe, like fortuitous and providential, but I'm not going to.)

Even with only three options, especially in dialogue, you have to be able to parse out what kind of person would use which. That was why lucky pinged as off to me, even though it works perfectly well in this context in a vacuum.

In my scenario, the person speaking was a highly educated, upper socioeconomic middle-aged man of authority for whom American English is a first language speaking to another man with whom he has only a professional relationship, a reason to worry about his standing within the state of said relationship, and a vested interest in maintaining a healthy level of respect and trust.

That is not a man who is going to say lucky.

I knew immediately and instinctively that he would say

"He was fortunate that he wasn't more seriously hurt."

He wouldn't say blessed unless I wanted to imply something about his religious and/or spiritual background and beliefs, which I did not. Lucky has a more common feel to it, a little more casual, and just wouldn't be the word of use for this kind of character in this situation. Reaching for the three-syllable word instead of the two, the one that echoes with a tiny bit more pomp.

You'll notice, too, that a that appeared as well, because a man like the character I described would be more particular about the formalities of grammar, even in cases where his meaning is clear without them.

A different character, someone of a lower socioeconomic status and/or in a much more casual situation might even say

"He got lucky he wasn't more seriously hurt."

Do you see how those four ways of saying the exact same thing sound and feel different?

"He was lucky he wasn't more seriously hurt."

"He was fortunate that he wasn't more seriously hurt."

"He was blessed he wasn't more seriously hurt."

"He got lucky he wasn't more seriously hurt."

The exact same sentiment, just tweaked to match the speaker.