you should

I personally made up my own.

Preparing for Inktober 2017?

I am too! And to get inspired, I have put together 8x Inktober prompt lists, to help us create something really cohesive and cool this October

Prompt lists:

- Post Apocalyptic Wanderers

- Anthropomorphic People

- A Steampunk Adventure

- Space Travellers

- Super People

- Characters for a fairytale

- Characters for an urban fantasy

- Characters of the Forest

We automatically assumed that he had divorced parents that got remarried. He corrected us; “No, there is a plot twist. My mom and dad never got married but had me. They were going to get married, but then my dad suddenly confessed he was gay. My mom was so relieved and said that she discovered she was a lesbian and was afraid to tell him. So they stayed together in the same house for me. Then eventually both got partners. So my dad has his husband and my mom has her wife.”

While in graduate school at the University of Houston, I supplemented my income by working as a writer in residence for Writers in the Schools (WITS). I was with WITS for three years, during which I visited third, fourth, and fifth grade classrooms, and worked with groups of students visiting the Menil museum of art, the Houston Historical Society, and the Houston Arboretum.

When first hired by WITS, I expected that working to explain some of my favorite poems to fourth graders would result in me becoming a better teacher of poetry. What I wasn’t expecting was that (thanks to having my brain blown apart on a weekly basis as I browsed my students’ folders of barely legible poems) I would become a better poet.

Here are some lines written by students in grades 3rd-6th:

“The life of my heart is crimson.”

[Writing about a family member’s recent death:]

“My brother went down/ to the river and put dirt on.”

“Peace be a song, silver pool of sadness”

“Away went a dull winter wind that rocked harshly, and bent you said, ‘Father, father’.”  

[Writing about a terminal illness:]

“I am feeling burdened and I taste milk…… I mumble, ‘Please, please run away.’ But it lives where I live.”

“The owls of midnight hoot like me shutting the door to nothing.”

[Writing about life as a movie:]

“The choir enters, and the director screams ‘Sing with more terror!!!’”

  “I have provisions. Binary muffins. It’s an in/out/in/out kind of universe. We cannot help you, this is a universe factory. A sound of rolling symbols. Disappearing rocks, screams of lizards. Sanity must prevail. Save vs. Do Not.”

“I, the star god, take bones from the underworlds of past times to create mankind.”

These young writers are addressing subjects that still obsess poets fifty years older: sadness, death, love, responsibility, aging, family, loneliness, and refuge…and they are addressing these subjects in language that is new, and thus has the power to emotionally effect a well-seasoned (/jaded) reader. The average fourth grader is able to do this because she hasn’t been alive long enough to know how to do it (and by “it” I mean talk about the world) any other way.

Story time: When I was a child I believed that one day I might be allowed to cross into an alternate dimension by walking through a quilt hanging on my living room wall. As I got older I stopped believing that this was a possibility—not because I grew to believe that the universe was not an extremely strange place where incomprehensible things could happen on a daily basis, but because I passed year after year after year not being able to enter the spirit realm through a wallhanging.

Anecdote that I hope you’ll find relevant: When Jean Piaget began studying the intellectual processes of children, he was not doing so because he had any special interest in children. Piaget was interested, rather, in the intellectual processes of (adult) humans and was seeking a control group. [His first thought was that the best control group would be comprised of martians but, as he did not have access to martians, he decided to use children since children possessed what is farthest from human consciousness.]

So let’s look at what happens to our young writers as they age [I took these lines from poems written by middle-school/ high school students (Italics, mine)]:

 Snacking on this and that my friends and I keep the party going even when it is over”  

“Whispers of a secret crush being unraveled”

“I’m trapped in this hole that I can’t break through”

“Barack Obama in the White House. I can feel the inspiration Can you feel it?”

“Now I feel secure with my head held high.

Sad times. By middle school/high school, the average student has learned how normal people talk. The resulting language is underwhelming and predictable—the safe regurgitations of a thoroughly socialized consciousness.

While the average older student’s poems are heavy with allegiance to a limited view of reality, the average younger writer’s vision of the world is nimble and surprising—bazaar, yet true.

Last year I spent every Saturday tutoring an extremely undersocialized kid in vocab. When I taught her the word blandishments (“to flatter, coax, sweet-talk, appeal to”) she wrote this sentence: “The blandishments of the sugar flowers made the cake so much more inviting.”

The sentence is interesting because the student understood that a blandishment is something that attracts favorable attention without fully realizing that people almost always use the word to refer to a human action.

The poet’s job is to forget how people do it.

I haven’t posted textures in almost six months, but I was randomly inspired again. Enjoy, guys! Please tag me if you make pretty things with them. I always love to see what you come up with. 

How do I know if I have too much exposition?

ex·po·si·tionˌekspəˈziSH(ə)n/ (noun)

a comprehensive description and explanation of an idea or theory

As a basic rule of thumb: if your exposition distracts from the main narrative, then it’s too much.

That sounds a lot simpler than it actually is, though, doesn’t it? Because it’s difficult to tell when we’ve pulled the reader’s attention away and when we haven’t within our own work.

That’s why beta-readers are so helpful because getting a fresh eye can do wonders for helping see things in our work that we’re too close to notice. A good beta-reader (or two or seven) is an invaluable tool for a writer. Find a few friends or family whose opinion you trust and listen to them when they have feedback on your work. Their word isn’t gold–you don’t have to make every change they suggest–but it is still important for your development. 

But that’s not really the issue, right? This post is about what you can do to help your own work improve!

First, if you’re fretting over this and you have not written your novel yet…then stop reading this post and go write your book! In your first draft, you should write all the words. (Maybe not all, but lots.) It’s okay to write four pages of exposition in the middle of scene in your first draft because in this version, you’re just telling yourself this story. You’re organizing notes, thoughts, outlines, etc. into a narrative. It won’t be perfect, and that’s great. You can’t move onto the next stage of book-making until you’ve got a first draft, so through caution to the wind and write!

This post is mostly for those of you who have finished work and are going over it prepared to edit, rewrite, scramble it up, and starting making that mess-of-a-first draft into a finished, wonderful product.

So…it’s time to edit your book

Zoom in on a section of exposition and take every fact you’ve written about and ask: 

Does this advance the plot? Do we come to a deeper understanding of a main character because of this? 

If the answer to both of those is no, then cut it (in this draft. Don’t worry. You still have those words written in previous drafts!) Do this as you read through for any section of exposition you find.

Then, when you’ve shaved off the irrelevant bits, start asking yourself: Is there a more subtle way to weave this into the action or dialogue of the narrative? If no, but it’s still important, then leave it. If yes, then try to do some rewriting where you have these cultural tidbits revealed in the actions and speech of your characters.

For example:

Allendra was from the southern tribes. Their main diet consisted of crop, food produced from the land. Wildlife beyond the occasional crow or squirrel was rare, so the southern tribe had come to view their abundant crops as a gift from the gods. They were vegetarians as a matter of, not only happenstance, but religion. That religion had been instilled in her by her parents, primarily her mother, and even though she’d left her homeland and was wandering new, unfamiliar territories for the sake of her own people, her mother’s hypothetical approval still drove Allendra’s actions. When presented with meat, Allendra did not know what to do. She was out of her league here, in this strange culture. And she didn’t know how to turn away the offer without being rude.

vs.

“Street vendors?” Allendra said, lifting a brow. “But they’re all selling…bloody things.”

Randa laughed. “Oh, Ally, don’t betray yourself as such an alien. That’s meat! Everyone around here eats it. It’s good for you.”

“I haven’t…I don’t eat…It’s just…” Allendra stumbled over her words. She didn’t want to be rude. Her mother would slap the back of her head if she was rude to this new hostess. And yet…what would mother say if Allendra waltzed up to this vendor and took a bite of the meat? Allendra shuddered to think.

The gods wouldn’t be too thrilled, either, but it was the image of mother’s disappointed face that made Allendra turn away from the street vendors and keep walking. Homesickness filled her gut. “Sorry, Randa. I just can’t.”

See you can do to make cultural facts fit into the story or character development. Here are some ways to think about that, as you attempt to change flat exposition into engaging storytelling:

Could this worldbuilding exposition be used to:

Invoke an emotion in a character?

Create conflict between characters?

Create conflict within a character?

Add tension to the main plot?

Add tension to an important subplot?

Create a funny or awkward situation?

Motivate a character’s actions?

Prevent a character from taking necessary action?

Basically, ask yourself this main question: How can I show the importance of this cultural element, rather than telling the reader how important or relevant it is?

Sometimes, exposition is needed. It’s not evil and it has a lot of power to get bullet points of information to your reader quickly. However, you–the writer–always need to make sure you’re letting exposition have power by using it sparingly. There are always multiple options on how to present information to your reader. It’s your duty to make sure you consider them all and use the one that best fits your narrative.

And now that you’ve finished this draft of editing and rewriting, set your novel aside for a while. A week, a month, a year…whatever you need. Come back to it later with a fresher perspective and see how your edits fit together. If you find that some of the exposition that you cut needs to be put back, then you can always do that. You can see the flow better, and do more editing to help your new rewrites fit effortlessly into the narrative. You are the writer. YOU HAVE THE POWER.

“You work the sound design and I work the lighting and we’re sitting next to each other and seeing who can press buttons more extravagantly” AU

 "I don’t know why you’re in the forensics lab at 3 in the morning but hey you seem tired and you don’t have any weapons would you like some coffee" AU

 "I thought you were an intruder in my apartment and I started having a mental breakdown - wait what do you mean this is your apartment" AU

 "I came into the classroom 20 mins early and here you are dancing to ‘All I Want For Christmas is You’ with a yard ruler" AU

 "We were pretending to be astronauts so that’s why we broke our neighbors window" AU

 "I just sent a meme to a wrong number but the other person knew what it was we’re destined to be together" AU

 "Hello your small child is crying and I’m a daycare worker luckily we are sitting next to each other on the plane don’t worry I got this" AU

 "I was sent to kill you but I got hurt and now you’re naively nursing me back to health and calling me cute pet names I cannot do this" AU

“You’re a total stranger that came up behind me with an object I dropped like five years ago on this exact street and you just shoved it into my pocket and ran and I have so many questions” AU

“You’re a bloodthirsty cryptid/ghost/mythical creature and I’m a skeptic so I’m starting to think you mean it sexually when you say you’re gonna tear me limb from limb” AU

“So you’re the little shit that beat me in sled racing on Club Penguin 7 times all those years ago” AU

Username: Winter

Nationality: Russian

Pronouns: He/his/himself

Age: 20s

FC: Conor Mclain

About

Has grown up in a very religious family, who accepts him for his sexuality and feminine behaviour. Plays the violin, and enjoys annoying coven members by purposely playing wrong.

Core traits

+ Genuine, elegant, charismatic - Resentful, unrestrained, indulgent

Personal information

Favourite plant: Wax Plant

Favourite gem: Onyx

field: escorts / full service sex workers

i’m gonna be pretty blunt in saying that a lot of y’all non sex workers really have horrible portrayals of us. and those of us that actually out here working in this particular field do not act or do the things y’all like to write about. so here we go:

one: stop writing us as hypersexual folx who will have sex with anyone that exists. (hypersexuality is a serious medically diagnosed condition)

yes, y’all do this. i’ve seen it and it’s disgraceful. we do not have sex with just anyone, there’s a screening process that a lot of us actually do on our clients before proceeding to the appointment. we are selling a service/selling our sexual energy to the people that want to experience it. if there is a client i’m not comfortable with, no matter what they might be paying me, i will not have sex with them if something about them throws me off. and i do not have sex with clients that don’t show payment for a service before the appointment. your muse shouldn’t feel “bad” or “awkward” asking for that, it’s the same as any job. please make sure that your muse does get paid for a service they provided.

two: safe sex is responsible sex.

9 times out of 10 we do keep condoms on us, especially for an appointment. your muse should be smart about having sex with clients (regular or random). it doesn’t matter how long your muse has known tom, dick or harry, protection is important. i don’t perform anything without protection and the same is true for a lot of us out here. it is also responsible that your muse should be getting safety check ups regularly if they’re a fssw. they may have a regular clinic or pcp that they go to for this.

three: not every fssw makes beaucoup bucks

i’m sorry to tell you that while yes money is made as a fssw, not all the time will your muse make bank. especially depending on your prices and the area you live in. a fssw muse based in beverly hills will not make the same as a fssw based in detroit. please keep that in mind when writing your muse, think about the cost of living in the area they live vs. the amount they charge for a service. or better yet, think about where they go to work (especially if they are a street based sex worker) be realistic please, don’t be stereotypical. 

four: don’t use slurs. don’t use slurs. don’t use slurs.

please, if you are not a sex worker in real life, do not ever refer to your muse as a hooker/prostitute/whore. please just call your muse an escort or a full service sex worker. do not use johns for clients. this is just ugly and a lot of us don’t actually call them johns. especially since our clients are not always male. do not use pimps for procurers. pimps have so many anti black connotations attached to the word, it’s best to just stay away from it, please. just because your muse is a sw, doesn’t mean that you are and doesn’t mean you’re able to use these in your writings. please don’t whine “but they say it in xyz book/show/film/song!” as an excuse. the people behind that media shouldn’t be using it either if it’s not a slur they can reclaim. you wouldn’t be using the n word if you weren’t black, would you? other acceptable/appropriate names to use are here.

five: stop making it seem like such a bad thing to do

there is absolutely nothing wrong with being a full service sex worker. this goes to non sw and non fssw as well. when writing your muse, please stop with the idea that we’re out here degrading ourselves bc we have no other choice. don’t write your muse like that. it’s perfectly okay to chose to go into the field of fssw so long as it’s consensual. this isn’t to say there aren’t people that do it because it’s their easiest way to make “fast” money, because there are definitely fssw out there like this. however there are more than enough of us out here that made a choice to do this because we wanted to. and we don’t view it as negative as well, end that stigma in yourself if you’re going to write a muse that is a fssw.

six: be realistic about where your muse is hosting the appointment

it’s not gonna be actually safe having them come to your muse’s home the first time they’re meeting their client face to face. or if your muse is street-based, chances are they should have a regular spot they go to for appointments. especially if your street-based muse is getting clients on a stroll, the appointment location is usually not too far from where they are. yes it’s stereotypical to place your muse in some janky ass motel with flies buzzing around and cigarette butts on the furniture. fssw tend to have appointments at a fair priced hotel/motel, brothel or client’s home. some of you write the appointments like a casual old buddy meeting up and forget the actual transaction of it. which goes to show you’re just writing this for smut purposes. 

seven: your muse should have a pretty good knowledge of finances and the govt

granted this is ongoing with any sex worker, but nine times out of ten your muse should know how to work the system of fiances. especially when it comes to the amount of money they might keep in their bank account or if they keep tangible cash in the privacy of their home. the irs does exist in america and i know similar agencies exist in other countries. your muse should be well versed in their money management.

      He’s a small guide about how not to over play children of first generation immigrants to the United States. A. We’re not stereotype characters don’t play us as them. B. We’re not immigrants stop playing us as immigrants. It’s a pretty common trait to be a “second gen” now a days and though it’s used in roleplays in my opinion it’s personally severely underused for some bizarre reason (though that maybe due to the lack of POCs) anyways here’s a guide based on my personal experience and those around me !! hope you enjoy.

It’s time for another MASTER PACK giveaway!

Your chance to win:

The Game Master’s Kit Deluxe The Full Multi-Classing Pack The Complete Set of 12 Class Specific Character Sheets

RULES:

Must be following me! New followers are welcome!

Only REBLOGS count

Reblog as many times as you like!

No giveaway blogs

An extra 5 winners will be announced at 5000 followers (making a total of 10 winners!)

You must be willing to provide your email address so I can send you your prize

Deadline is the 20th of July 2017, 4pm GMT.

Winners will be randomly selected and notified via inbox

I made this today as I find it’s a helpful tool when I make characters. I call it the 1-2-3 method.

1 value: Their core belief.

2 flaws: The limitations of the character. Things that can affect their actions and abilities.

3 traits: What makes them, them. the aspects of their behaviour and attitude.

It’s important that you justify their personality through their backstory and home life, however, and it’s good to have conflicting flaws/traits within a group which will help create tension and drama.