valilenna

Getting Started with Your Story

There’s no one way to start writing a book. For some people, it’s enough to just jump in and start writing to see where the story takes them. If you’re not too keen on that idea, then here is one process (as in, not the only process) that might help you move beyond your concept. 

Concept ≠ Plot

Many writers mistake concept for plot, but they’re actually two very different things. A world where everyone grows up with superpowers is a concept; the plot is what you decide to write about within that concept - the specific characters and what happens to those characters; who your antagonist is and what conflict arises when that antagonist goes after what they want. All of these things contribute to your plot. 

So first, define what it is you actually have at this particular point. Do you just have a concept? If so, you’ll need to take the necessary steps to develop that concept into a plot. 

Concept >>> Plot

If you’ve decided that all you really have is a concept, then how do you take it and turn it into a plot? You brainstorm. All brainstorming really amounts to is expanding your ideas. All you’re doing is asking questions about the concept and delving deep into the answers. 

The most simplistic way to start this process, especially if you’re struggling, is to ask one of two questions (or both, if applicable). These two questions: What could go wrong? What could go right?

Going back to my example about a world where everyone grows up with superpowers. If I were to ask the question “what could go wrong,” I’d end up with a whole list of possibilities. 

The powers suddenly disappear

People start abusing their powers

Someone figures out how to steal powers

A hierarchy of strong vs. weak powers develops, creating superiority/inferiority dynamics

Someone is born without a superpower

There are many more possibilities I didn’t even think of here, but any one (or more) of these could become a plot. Choose one that sounds interesting, and then ask yourself “and then what?” 

Say I choose: Someone figures out how to steal powers. Then what does that person do? Do they recruit people to do the dirty work for them? Do they work alone? Do they hoard these powers and barter them for other goods? Do they attempt to enslave people? Do they attempt to take control of institutions? What do they do?

Your goal is to take your ideas and turn them into actions taken by characters. People doing things. And each piece you add will usually lead into another. If you went with the idea that this character is stealing powers and essentially selling them for other goods, you’d have to ask yourself follow-up questions. First, who are they selling to? Why would anyone buy a new superpower if they already have one? What uses would they have for additional ones? What is the key demographic that this person is trying to reach? Secondly, what are they selling them in exchange for? Money? Favors? Souls? What is this character getting in return?

Now that you’ve examined potential actions that the character takes, you’ve also exposed potential new characters. 

People they’re stealing from

People they’re bargaining with

People that try to police these crimes

People that try to copy this character’s process

At the beginning of this section, I talked about using “what could go right” as another optional jumping off point. This is a good path to follow if your concept is already really negative. For a concept where someone is killing people for some pointed reason, you might ask “what could go right” and explore ideas where the killer is caught and brought to justice. 

The point of all this is to think about change as a means of taking your idea from concept to plot. A concept is static - it doesn’t move, evolve, or change. By developing a plot, you’re forcing the concept to be challenged in some way. If you think about it that way, you’ll be able to formulate conflicts, and the people that orchestrate and fight against those conflicts. 

On that note, I think we’re ready to move onto the third piece of my graphic above. 

Plot = Character Actions and Consequences

At this point, you have sketches for characters. You’ve got this nameless, faceless person that is stealing the powers, and all these other nameless, faceless people that I listed above. In essence, we have character concepts. And just like we turned our initial concept into a plot, we have to turn these character concepts into actual characters. 

The basics are the easiest way to start. You figure out their name, their gender identity, their age, their appearance, some brief backstory and personality traits. I personally prefer the simplest questionnaire that I put together back in the early days because it hits on the poignant pieces of a character without overwhelming you with 100s of questions. 

Now that you’ve given your character concepts names and faces and potential behaviors, you start to consider how one character’s view of the world inspires them to take certain actions, and you then think about how those actions affect your entire story. 

We already kind of talked about the motives of the power thief in our example, but definitely delve deep here. On the surface, this character seems bad - stealing from people and then selling what they steal. But depending on what it is they’re getting in return, could we not argue that this character is a supernatural Robin Hood? Maybe instead of selling, they’re giving, and maybe the characters they’re stealing powers from are people that abuse and misuse their powers. Character motives can take a plot and turn it on its head, forcing you to reconceptualize everything. And that’s okay! That’s part of the process.

But separate from that idea, if we have a character concept of someone whose powers were stolen, and after developing their basic backstory, we discover that person’s name is Rose, and she has an especially close relationship with her brother. So when her powers are stolen, how does this affect her life? Was she using her powers to keep her brother alive and protected? What she using them to keep a roof over their heads? Was she using them as part of her job, as a means of providing? What happens to her life when her powers are stolen? And what will Rose do about it? Whatever Rose does will impact the story. If she does nothing to get her powers back, how does she solve her problems and does that make for a good story? If she does decide to act, then you’ve moved onto a new plot point to dive deeper into.

My point is, character concepts come from plots, but characters themselves often create plot, as their decisions and mistakes and successes create new outcomes. So if I could modify my original flow chart:

Before you develop something, you conceptualize it. You have a concept, then you make it a plot. You have concepts for characters, then you make them characters. And those characters end up driving your plot, to the point that this happens:

Plot inspires character. Character inspires plot. And it just keeps going around and around and around. Breaking it down into these pieces helps organize the process, but developing a story is rarely this neat and tidy. You’ll get ideas that don’t make sense, ideas that aren’t cohesive, characters you don’t need, characters that piss you off, problems you can’t solve, or plot points you’ve committed to that you no longer like…it will be messy. But it’s your mess, and the more you work on developing your own process, the more it’ll make sense to you. And it’ll become easier to know how to go about fixing it when something’s not right. 

Have fun with this process! It’s supposed to be fun. When the pieces start to become clearer, you’re able to put them together in a rough outline. And once you have a rough outline, you can start writing, and really see it take shape. 

Some genres shy away from antagonists that take the form of a person or physical being. Adult contemporary especially tends to focus on internal antagonism. Side antagonists can be found in all types of stories, though, and they don’t all have to be a person. It’s good to mix it up and keep it interesting!

Here are examples of metaphorical antagonists:

Self-doubt

Mental illness

Grief

Impulsive/risky behavior

Nature/Weather/Natural disasters

Physical illness

Poverty, Bills, and Debt

Insecurity

Family legacy

Laws, Rules, and Protocol

Monotony 

Soul-crushing job

School

Loveless relationship

Aloneness/Isolation

Lack of resources

Night time (or day time)

Wearing a face mask takes some getting used to. To get the most benefit, you need to avoid these common mistakes.

Masks in a variety of colors, styles and materials have appeared on the faces of people around us. While it’s good news that many people are doing their part to slow the spread of coronavirus, the bad news is that many people are wearing their masks wrong.

“Wearing a mask takes some getting used to, for sure,” said Dr. Scott Segal, chairman of anesthesiology at Wake Forest Baptist Health. “You are probably wearing it exactly right if it’s a little stuffy.”

One of the biggest mistakes people make is that they fidget with their masks, and pull them under their noses or completely off their faces to rest under their chins. “You should absolutely not be pulling up and putting down your mask while you’re out,” said Shan Soe-Lin, a lecturer at the Yale Jackson Institute for Global Affairs. “If you’re going to go to the trouble of using a mask, leave it on.”

Here are the dos and don’ts of wearing a mask.

And once you’ve figured out the correct position for wearing your mask, follow these tips to stay safe:

Always wash your hands before and after wearing a mask.

Use the ties or loops to put your mask on and pull it off.

Don’t touch the front of the mask when you take it off.

For apartment dwellers, put the mask on and remove it while inside your home. Elevators and stairwells can be high-contamination areas.

Wash and dry your cloth mask daily and keep it in a clean, dry place.

Don’t have a false sense of security.

Masks offer limited protection, and work better when combined with hand washing and social distancing. “It’s not that one excludes the other,” said Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee, assistant professor of medicine at Columbia University. “They compound the effects of the other.”

“Hit the button that looks like a floppy disk”

No, I don’t.

The first thing you need to do is try and understand a few things about sexes/genders. A lot of people write the opposite gender as a stereotype as opposed to an actual human being. Women are emotional - I’ll make her cry a lot! Men are tough - I’ll make him punch things! Yeah, you gotta let that shit go. 

Inherently, men and women aren’t that different. Most of our differences come from societal expectations rather than what’s rooted within us. Men experience emotion just as women do, but society tells us that men shouldn’t cry, whereas women can cry freely. Women get horny just like men do, but society tells us that women should be modest, whereas a man can chase as many skirts as he pleases. If a man exerts his opinions, he’s strong, he’s a leader. If a woman exerts her opinions, she’s bossy - which causes many women to resort to passive aggressive measures to get their opinions heard, a habit that men find annoying. These behaviors are not ones we’re born with. They’re taught.

So, what’s the biggest mistake writers make when writing for the opposite sex? Assuming that these differences are innate. They’re not. Women, just like men, are affected by their nurture and nature. They are a product of their childhood and family. They’re also a product of how society treats them. These are the things you should take into consideration while writing your character. Not all women are emotional - some are. Some aren’t. I’m not. Not all men chase skirts. Lumping your character into a stereotype is only going to make the character feel inauthentic and alienate half of your potential audience. 

Additional tips:

- Think about your character’s childhood/past/family when creating her personality. That is going to be far more influential than her genitalia. I promise.

- Talk to women - ones who are going to be honest with you about what it’s like to be a chick. And not chicks who go “men are from Mars, women are from Venus,” because they’re not knowledgable.

- Please, for the love of God, don’t make her a big bundle of weakness. What do we do now? < - avoid writing that girl. 

- If you’re writing from a female perspective and it’s time to give her physical description, don’t sexualize her. We don’t look down at our bodies and comment on our perfect breasts and perky asses. Why male writers write first person POV female physical descriptions like this is beyond me. Ladies make this mistake sometimes with male characters, but men make this mistake with female characters often, to the point where it’s become a running joke among female readers. 

- If the character is just there to be hot, you’re doing it wrong.

Search for “there is” or “there was.”

Find all the description or action that starts with “there” and change it.

“There is a strike of lightning” becomes “lightning strikes the sky.”

“There is panic building in his chest” becomes “panic builds in his chest.”

- when the first and last line are the same in a book

- WHEN THE TITLE IS AN IMPORTANT LINE SOMEWHERE IN THE SERIES AND YOU DONT UNDERSTAND UNTIL YOU READ THE WHOLE THING

- when a character does something 100% against what others believe of them, but we the audience knew their true colors all along (this can be good or bad both ways it’s good)

- unapologetic villains with a dramatic flair and sense of humor

- when people you thought were good turn suddenly bad and you’re sitting there with whiplash

- characters who know what they want and actually get it (though maybe not through the way you think)

- morally grey characters being friends with good people (™) characters and it actually working

- a male/female friendship that’s wholesome and intimate but doesn’t end in romance

- when the author completely tricks you and it’s amazing. for example: I read a book a few years ago and there was an ancient society with a saying “come eleven hither thee” and it was built as this Ancient Knowledge that Had to be unlocked. turns out it was just a guy in the 16th century calling his dog and a drunk writer wrote it on his wall. he promptly forgot what it meant and started a secret society on it.

- when characters say “it’ll be fine” and then fall promptly into a disaster

- when the only reason a character helps the protag is so they can get what they want (this can range from intense manipulation to “if this bitch leaves I can get back to my book”)

- when an “all powerful” character does something and people take it seriously and they’re like; no wait?? I didn’t mean it like that?? come back I don’t actually want a statue!

- drunk idiots doing harmless but funny things

- selfish characters hiding their good deeds but their love interest/teammate finding out and exposing them

- female villains. that’s it. they’re all amazing.

Oh geez, you are right. What other motivation could this person possibly have other than eventually getting laid.

You fool. You absolute buffoon.

(in)justice

Revenge

Fear of losing loved ones

Family/friends

Thirst for knowledge/curiosity

Call from a higher power

Boredom

“It’s a job, I’m getting paid for it.”

Spite

Guilt

Duty

A bet

“Maybe I want to save the planet BECAUSE I LIVE ON IT???”

Simply being a decent human being

misunderstandings

Fun

No one else is fucking qualified to get shit done

Hey friends! Did you know that Tumblr quietly starting curating your dash instead of showing you posts chronologically? Me neither! Fortunately, you can fix this. There’s a setting called “Best Stuff First” which is enabled by default, but which you can disable it by following these steps.

Step 1: Go to your account (little person icon), then choose “settings” from the dropdown menu.

Step 2: On the right, choose “Dashboard”

Step 3: Scroll to the bottom where it says “preferences” and toggle off “Best Stuff First”

- Shades of white in Europe range from ‘freshly fallen snow’ to ‘I am frequently mistaken as being from the Middle East’

- White European is a thing. When you fill out a form, under ethnicity, there are several options for white; white British, white European, white other. Because people make that distinction

- There are Europeans who don’t class their ethnicity as their skin colour, but as their nationality. I have family who don’t think of themselves as white, they just think of themselves as Italian and don’t really give much thought to their skin colour

- People here in Britain always question if darker skinned white Europeans are ‘actually white’. I get it a lot myself. My response is always ‘well I’m not anything else, so obviously I must be’

- Despite being white, a lot of Europeans from Italy, Greece, Spain etc, don’t feel white in the traditional sense. We’re not white like white British people. We’re not white like white Americans. We’re our own white. White British is one thing. White Italian is another thing. White Greek is another, etc

- Which is why we have this notion here in Europe of ‘nationality over race’. Being white isn’t as important as where you’re from

- So this really only becomes an issue if you’re an immigrant

- So being white in Europe doesn’t save you from racial discrimination, because sure, you’re technically white, but you’re not white white. Not the right white

- Here in England, Europeans with really blatantly foreign names, such as myself, find it more difficult to get job interviews, because they take one look at our name and don’t bother reading the rest of the CV. A guy I know was actually told by his boss to reduce the pile of CVs he had by ‘chucking away any with a name you can’t fucking pronounce’

- And then even when you do get an interview, half the time you walk into the joint several shades darker than everyone else and feel like you’ve walked into the ‘Swedish supermodel’ clubhouse and you just know you’re not getting hired

(That’s Mila Kunis. She was born in the Ukraine.)

(Sebastian Stan. From Constanta, Romania.)

(Mia Wasikowska, from Poland)

(Nina Dobrev, who was born in Bulgaria.)

They are white! Just because they are white, it doesn’t mean people from their countries cannot face horrible discrimination, and it doesn’t mean that they can’t be constantly told that they don’t work as hard as people from Western Europe, and that they don’t deserve basic human rights.

But as somebody who has lived in England and the US, I can vouch for all of this. The race issues in Europe and the race issues in the US are not the same.

For the last few years, there has been an awful backlash against immigrants from Poland, with some of the same language used that Americans use about “Mexicans” (By which, half the time, they mean anyone from south of the US/Mexico border).

It’s worth understanding that

1. Racism and discrimination are everywhere.

I was yelled at in the street because a lady thought I was Polish. People have pushed their chairs into my parents and insulted them in a restaurant because they were recognised as Germans.

Less than 100 years ago we were considered mongoloid (and while it’s not entirely wrong, though Uralic or North-West Asian and Caucasian mix would be lot more accurate), and were oppressed by another nation (Russia) that tried to enforce cultural and linguistic genocide on us, and before that we were oppressed and practically enslaved by Sweden, not all that differently as in any other colonized nation–which we were for 800 years.

I’d like to point out that also italian people have faced discrimination from other european countries. We were, and sadly often still are, always seen as part of the mafia and therefore dangerous, or inferior and poor (y’all can find signs saying pretty nasty stuff online, and i’m leaving this here even tho it’s in Italian), i’ve heard a lady telling his son to stay away from me and my family because we were speaking italian and so we could do “bad things” to him and there were times when in shops we were made feel not welcome because we are italian…..and guess what my family is white.

“What are you talking about?” say my sister and I. ‘There are two Italian guys RIGHT THERE.” 

“OMG you cannot say Italian people are not white,” he says.

“Yes we fucking can,” says the Italian friend watching the show with us, deeply offended. 

And then we had to pause it and a lot of complex explanations ensued. (Including the fact that Greek and Italian people generally aren’t considered White in Australia and in fact many a Nonna will smack you if you suggest otherwise.)

Basically, ‘white’ is a category upon which no two cultures/countries can agree on the definition, they all think they have the only possible definition, and it usually boils down to Preferred Flavours of Bigotry.

Fluff bunn

So get this: 

NO ONE IS NATURALLY PERFECT AT WRITING!

NO ONE JUST RANDOMLY PICKS A PEN UP ONE DAY AND CREATES THE NEXT NYT BESTSELLER!

NO ONE WRITES A PERFECT BOOK IN THE FIRST DRAFT!

Y’all need to stop being so damn hard on yourselves. Everyone has to start somewhere. Writing is the same as any other art. If you don’t practice and put yourself out there to receive feedback then you will never improve. End of story. I know it’s scary to put yourself out there, but it’s so crucial to take advice from others and see what you can improve on. 

The other thing? You have to read. Stories are your writing textbooks. Look at the way an author words something. Pick apart their sentences. Hell, take their sentences and see if you can rewrite them a different way just to practice your own skills! You won’t improve without time and effort!