Writers Problems

So if your story has a twist, don’t worry about whether or not people guess it! Just make sure it’s the sort of twist that would make the average reader:

A) feel very galaxy-brained for connecting the dots

B) shriek with joy and shout “I knew it! I was right! I knew it!” when the time comes for the Reveal

Sounds unrealistic, right? And yet that’s the way death works in so many stories. There’s one heartfelt emotional scene and then the character is just gone.

And it’s not just death. Writers will do this with war, torture, any trauma you can think of. The characters will go through horrific events and then just forget about them. 

It leaves you with the impression that none of what happened actually mattered. Sure there was a war, but it had no effect on anyone and was clearly just there for the cool sword fights. The writer can claim that the war was important, but if none of the characters have a reaction to it then I’m not going to believe them.   

Even though the frenzy of April’s Camp NaNoWriMo session has passed, that doesn’t mean you need to stop writing! If you’re feeling like you want to continue your noveling adventures but you’re not quite sure where to go with them, participant V.S. Chiu shares her top tips for researching your novel:

Research is one of those things in life that you either love or hate—but it’s one of those things you have to do. Not just in writing, but in life: plane tickets, buying a computer, the time of a movie—all of those things require just a little bit of research to make sure you get the best deal, or show up when you need to. As an archivist and professional researcher, I may be one of the people who loves research the most, and when I’m teaching people to research it’s always how to make life easier. My top tips are mostly for academia; however, adapting to fiction is not that hard.

1. Find somewhere to start.

Wikipedia is a starting point. Wikipedia is a great resource to find jumping off points, due to editable nature however makes the information somewhat hard to take on its own. Those lovely footnotes (the numbers after a word) are a great way of getting more information.  If you have vague questions, or thoughts, going through the Wikipedia article is a great place to start.

I got pretty fed up with looking for words to replace said because they weren’t sorted in a way I could easily use/find them for the right time. So I did some myself.

IN RESPONSE TO Acknowledged Answered Protested

INPUT/JOIN CONVERSATION/ASK Added Implored Inquired Insisted Proposed Queried Questioned Recommended Testified

GUILTY/RELUCTANCE/SORRY Admitted Apologized Conceded Confessed Professed

FOR SOMEONE ELSE Advised Criticized Suggested

JUST CHECKING Affirmed Agreed Alleged Confirmed

LOUD Announced Chanted Crowed

LEWD/CUTE/SECRET SPY FEEL Appealed Disclosed Moaned

ANGRY FUCK OFF MATE WANNA FIGHT Argued Barked Challenged Cursed Fumed Growled Hissed Roared Swore

SMARTASS Articulated Asserted Assured Avowed Claimed Commanded Cross-examined Demanded Digressed Directed Foretold Instructed Interrupted Predicted Proclaimed Quoted Theorized

ASSHOLE Bellowed Boasted Bragged

NERVOUS TRAINWRECK Babbled Bawled Mumbled Sputtered Stammered Stuttered

SUAVE MOTHERFUCKER Bargained Divulged Disclosed Exhorted

FIRST OFF Began

LASTLY Concluded Concurred

WEAK PUSY Begged Blurted Complained Cried Faltered Fretted

HAPPY/LOL Cajoled Exclaimed Gushed Jested Joked Laughed

WEIRDLY HAPPY/EXCITED Extolled Jabbered Raved

BRUH, CHILL Cautioned Warned

ACTUALLY, YOU’RE WRONG Chided Contended Corrected Countered Debated Elaborated Objected Ranted Retorted

CHILL SAVAGE Commented Continued Observed Surmised

LISTEN BUDDY Enunciated Explained Elaborated Hinted Implied Lectured Reiterated Recited Reminded Stressed

BRUH I NEED U AND U NEED ME Confided Offered Urged

FINE Consented Decided

TOO EMO FULL OF EMOTIONS Croaked Lamented Pledged Sobbed Sympathized Wailed Whimpered

JUST SAYING Declared Decreed Mentioned Noted Pointed out Postulated Speculated Stated Told Vouched

WASN’T ME Denied Lied

EVIL SMARTASS Dictated Equivocated Ordered Reprimanded Threatened

BORED Droned Sighed

SHHHH IT’S QUIET TIME Echoed Mumbled Murmured Muttered Uttered Whispered

DRAMA QUEEN Exaggerated Panted Pleaded Prayed Preached

OH SHIT Gasped Marveled Screamed Screeched Shouted Shrieked Yelped Yelled

ANNOYED Grumbled Grunted Jeered Quipped Scolded Snapped Snarled Sneered

ANNOYING Nagged

I DON’T REALLY CARE BUT WHATEVER Guessed Ventured

I’M DRUNK OR JUST BEING WEIRDLY EXPRESSIVE FOR A POINT/SARCASM Hooted Howled Yowled

I WONDER Pondered Voiced Wondered

OH, YEAH, WHOOPS Recalled Recited Remembered

SURPRISE BITCH Revealed

IT SEEMS FAKE BUT OKAY/HA ACTUALLY FUNNY BUT I DON’T WANT TO LAUGH OUT LOUD Scoffed Snickered Snorted

BITCHY Tattled Taunted Teased

- hijabis get really excited over pretty scarves - they also like to collect pins and brooches - we get asked a lot of questions and it can be annoying or it can be amusing, just depends on our mood and personality and how the question is phrased - common questions include: - “not even water?” (referring to fasting) - hijabis hear a lot of “do you sleep in that?” (we don’t) and “where is your hair?” (in a bun or a braid, usually) - “is it mooze-slim or mozzlem?” (the answer is neither, it’s muslim, with a soft s and accent on the first syllable) - “ee-slam or iz-lamb?” (it’s iss-laam, accent on the first syllable) - “hee-job?” (heh-jahb, accent on the second syllable)

- “kor-an?” (no. quran. say it like koor-annn, accent on the second syllable) - people tend to mess up our names really badly and you just get a sigh and a resigned nod or an awkward smile, maybe a nickname instead - long hair is easy to hide, short hair is harder to wrap up - hijab isn’t just covering hair, it’s also showing as little skin as possible with the exception of face, hands, and feet, and not wearing tight/sheer clothing - that applies to men too, people just don’t like to mention it ( i wonder why) - henna/mehendi isn’t just for special occasions, you’ll see people wearing it for fun - henna/mehendi isn’t just for muslims, either, it’s not a religious thing - henna/mehendi is not just for women, men also wear it, especially on their weddings - there are big mehendi parties in the couple of nights before eid where people (usually just women and kids) gather and do each other’s mehendi, usually just hands and feet - five daily prayers - most muslim kids can stutter through a couple verses of quran in the original arabic text by the age of seven or eight, it does not matter where they live or where they’re from or what language they speak natively - muslim families tend to have multiple copies of the quran - there are no “versions” of the quran, there has only ever been one. all muslims follow the exact same book - muslims have no concept of taking God’s name in vain, we call on God at every little inconvenience - don’t use islamic phrases if you don’t know what they mean or how to use them. we use them often, inside and outside of religious settings. in islam, it is encouraged to mention God often and we say these things very casually, but we take them very seriously - Allahu Akbar means “God is Greatest” (often said when something shocks or surprises us, or if we’re scared or daunted, or when something amazing happens, whether it be good or bad; it’s like saying “oh my god”) - Subhan Allah means “Glory be to God” (i say subhan Allah at the sky, at babies, at trees, whatever strikes me as pleasant, especially if it’s in nature) - Bismillah means “in the name of God” and it’s just something you say before you start something like eating or doing your homework - In Shaa Allah means “if God wills” (example: you’ll be famous, in shaa Allah) (it’s a reminder that the future is in God’s hands, so be humble and be hopeful)

1 drink (a tall glass of beer, a can of beer, or a shot of hard alcohol in a cocktail or alone): are you a burly dude? you may or may not feel it. are you a tiny lady? you will probably notice it.

2 drinks: burly dude may or may not be noticing it. tiny lady like me: this is a sweet spot where you’re talkative but not drunk. (Note: people don’t go from zero to “so drunk you remember nothing/are profoundly disinhibited.” There’s a lot of ground to cover in between.)

3 drinks: burly dude probably feeling it, tiny lady getting drunk.

4 drinks: burly dude still feeling it, tiny lady ready to FUCKING FIGHT YOU

5 drinks: burly dude, slow down, buddy, you gonna polish off that six-pack by yourself? That’s going to hurt in the morning. Tiny lady: oh my GOD stop. Go to bed.

This is where we draw the cut-off for a “binge,” if you were wondering. More than this and you’re officially binge-drinking, where your odds of serious harm go up sharply. From alcohol, but also from the bad decision dinosaur that plagues you when you binge-drink.

a fifth of anything by yourself: Sir. Sir, can you hear me? Sir, I need you to open your eyes. Squeeze my fingers. Sir, you’re in the emergency room.

Splitting a bottle of wine between two adults: generally like three drinks each, you’ll feel it but you’ll survive. (A bottle of wine between three adults: usually not quiiiiiite enough.)

An entire bottle of wine by yourself: oh, so you enjoy suffering?

Other Fun Medical Alcohol Facts: high-proof alcohol like vodka will temporarily paralyze your pyloric sphincter, so the alcohol can’t get into your gut for about twenty minutes. Then, when it DOES get into your small intestine, enjoy getting uncomfortably drunk too fast.

Alcohol is a zero-order metabolizer: that means that nothing on Earth can sober you up except time*, and the time it takes is linear, directly related to how much you drank. Most of us can clear about a drink an hour, so if you’re drinking slowly you can stay roughly sober all day. Most of us don’t drink that slowly. Hangovers are made awful by a metabolic intermediate (literal acid in your blood!!!! it’s so shitty!!!!!!!) that makes you nauseated and feel super gross, and not every drinking episode will lead to a hangover, and severity of hangover varies greatly by person and amount drunk.

So please never write someone having coffee to “sober up.“ Now they’re drunk AND they can’t sleep. Bad combo. Sucks for driving. Splashing cold water on your face? No. Amphetamines? Good Lord what’s wrong with you. Look, the room’s gonna spin, you fucked up your endolymph in your semicircular canals, deal with it. You can partially override that with proprioceptive feedback–keeping one foot on the floor to get tactile input–but it’s just gonna suck for a while.

The variability in capacity is real; my aunt-in-law, who is roughly my size, can drink me under the table easily. She’s a high-powered business executive who has martinis with lunch. I tried to keep up with her once and had to call in sick. So you don’t HAVE to write a character having a “normal” alcohol tolerance, but don’t get into “yep, definitely alcohol poisoning” territory, please.

This has been Please Don’t Show Up In My Emergency Room, I Hate Getting Barfed On by your local friendly medical trainee.

BUT. Here is the story, as I recall it:

Alcohol, or, as we fancy-schmancy-pantsy medical types like to call it to distinguish it from the bajillion other alcohols out there (”alcohol” describes a general type of molecule in chemistry, not the good ol’-fashioned Get You Drunk molecule) ethanol, abbreviated EtOH, is what’s generally called a “sedative-hypnotic.” What that means is that it doesn’t work on opioid receptors, it doesn’t work on cannabinoid receptors. It does stuff to your GABA receptors–GABA being the major inhibitory neurotransmitter–and it also binds to other stuff. We still don’t have its actions in the brain fully mapped. But we know, and we’ve known for a while, that it does stuff to GABA receptors.

A major pharmaceutical company developed an honest-to-God antagonist. If you’re not a pharm person, you may be going, “a what now?” First point: damn near everything your brain does is determined by neurotransmitters and the receptors that love them. Neurotransmitters interact with their receptors in a variety of ways, with a HUGE variety of end results. Humans love jamming other chemicals that are not neurotransmitters into their receptors. Why do opioids work? Because they mimic NTs we make ourselves. Why does cannabis get us high? Because it mimics endogenous (”originating inside”, self-made) NTs. Manmade molecules that alter us are hijacking built-in systems. Don’t even get me started on how fucking bananas cool it is that neurons can adapt to neurotransmitter levels, and in a super awesome sci-fi-like variety of ways. Take a Neuro class! Take five! Take seventeen! Most fun I ever had was in a Neuro lab.

So what’s an antagonist? It’s something that, one way or another, makes it so the NT can’t do its thing at the receptor.

The line of thinking went, if we can keep ethanol from doing its thing at the GABA receptor, we can make people sober again. They can drink and then take a pill and be sober. Wouldn’t that be AMAZING? Wouldn’t that be lucrative? These are questions that drug companies think about a LOT.

So they made the chemical! Its name is Ro15-4513. You can Google it and get a WAY less interesting description of what went down. But how my professor explained it to us is like this:

It works. It’s an ethanol antagonist at the GABA receptor. You take it and it blows the ethanol off the receptor and you’re sober. And… because humans are awful, you get drunk again. You take another pill. You’re sober again. The time that pill is active is less than the time it takes your body to metabolize ethanol, so you’ve still got all that ethanol swishing around in your system waiting to murder you via aspirating your own vomit the hot second it wears off, but by God, you’re sober.

Except, as mentioned, the GABA receptor is not the only place where ethanol does stuff. One of the effects it has, since it’s such a teeny tiny molecule, is fucking with the lipid bilayer that forms the bulk of your cell membrane. If you’re a Neuro person, you’re getting cold chills right about now, because the only reason neurotransmission works is the properties of the lipid bilayer. You have to be able to transmit electricity down the axon of the neuron to generate an action potential. The lipid bilayer is what allows you to do that.

The pill does nothing for that. So if you take enough of the pill, and keep drinking, there comes a point where you’ve fucked the lipid bilayer beyond repair. You can’t transmit messages. Your brain doesn’t remember how to tell your body to do things like breathe, or not have seizures. And you die!

So, in summary, we have a pill that could make you a responsible designated driver, but actually fucking kills you because people have no self-control.

I’ve had a rough morning and I’m riled up so here’s my two cents. Repeat: my two cents. I do not claim to speak for or represent the beliefs of everyone with a disability.

INCLUDE CHARACTERS WITH DISABILITIES 

[Can’t believe I’m still saying this but here we are] 

No, not “disabled characters”, put your character before their disability but include it nonetheless. People with disabilities exist in real life, out in the world, living and breathing and going about their days in the same spaces as able-bodied people. No their disability does not have to further the plot because that’s not how life works. If you want realism, include characters with disabilities. We’re all around you. I guarantee you know several people with disabilities even if you don’t think of them that way.

“But a disabled person can’t be a soldier/mercenary/other badass fighty character which is apparently all I include in my story!”

A) Yes they can. If you’re only aware of physical disabilities that completely limit a person’s mobility, you’re not aware of the diversity of disabilities or the mobility aid options and it’s time to do some research. Peg leg, bionic eyes, arm made of gears and pneumatics-based imitation tendons for each individual finger, magic potions or holistic treatments for chronic pain management, mental disabilities, someone who has a disability but is in remission. Get. Creative. These people exist and function in the same spaces as your perfectly able-bodied soldiers/mercenaries/various badasses.

B) Let’s say they can’t. Let’s say, for whatever reason, your badasses must only be completely physically and mentally abled. Do you not have medics? Blacksmiths? Ammunition and weapons experts/providers? Pilots? Family members back home that your badasses fight for and return to once a month? What about the bar/tavern/club/restaurant/dining tent your badasses regularly visit - are there no servers or cooks or bartenders that they talk to? Hell, a prostitute with a missing arm or severe ADHD. Are you really telling me you don’t think it’d be fun, and beyond handy, to have a magic healer who happens to be paralyzed from the waist down in your crew who’s constantly cracking jokes and shutting down shitty behaviour? Sure they may not fight because your fighters are only perfectly abled, but damn are they good at the fix-up after.

“But I don’t want to write a sob story”

Yikes. Well, good news, you don’t have to. People with disabilities can be  ridiculous and funny and fun in general and it doesn’t always revolve around their condition. However, they will make jokes about their condition and, given the right people, can be joked with about it. “The right people” varies person to person, but I find for the most part it’s close friends and family members who act as strong supports and will also joke about things outside of the person’s disability. For this, you may want to talk to real life people with disabilities. Seriously, we’re everywhere. If you built rapport, many of us would be happy to tell you if a joke/situation is offensive even within the context of goofing around with a friend. Hell, some of us (ex. me) would be willing to answer questions from a total stranger if it’s in the name of providing education and support on writing a character with a disability. 

[in which my best friend is a gift and figured out reassuring me I wasn’t a burden wasn’t working so she settled on calling me her favourite burden]

“But I don’t always want to be talking about their disability”

You. Don’t Have. To. It’s almost like, with all character traits/quirks/identifiers, it happens occasionally and within context.

____

She bowed her head low and bent her elbows at funny angles, tying her hair up quickly so she didn’t have to hold her arms up for long.

“Bad shoulder day?”

“Yeah, kept me up all night.” She dropped her hands, straightened up, and stretched her neck, rolling her head side to side. “Alright. Let’s do this.”

____

Washing bitter pills down with even more bitter coffee, he went over his tasks for the day. Dry cleaning, groceries, bank, assassination. Easy enough.

____

“They can’t take the stairs. We’re leaving them behind.”

“Or, you inconsiderate rat bastard, we could find an alternate route. You’re not getting through security without them. They’re coming.”

TL;DR, it’s not hard to throw in the realities of living with a disability every few chapters, or whenever relevant.

Lastly, the topic of using the word(s) “disabled/disability” and naming a diagnosis.

This, for me, isn’t really a big thing. I can understand how it is for some people, and I’m a fan of it but I don’t consider it a necessity. Some people want to see the word ‘disability’ used in order to take away its stigma. Some people want to see diagnoses named for the sake of completely being able to purely relate to a character. I understand that. I’m not bashing that. This is just my opinion. Personally, I don’t see the need, especially in fantasy settings or scifi or general other-world where conditions may not have the same names or treatments as they do in real life. If you make it clear that your character has a disability, show the symptoms and the ways in which they cope/manage/adjust to carry on with their lives, show their ups and downs and condition management, that’s enough for me.

This might be the area that you upset and offend some people. Someone might get mad that you used the word ‘disabled’, some might get mad that you didn’t. Some might get upset that you ‘made up’ your own condition, some might get upset that you named a diagnosis and didn’t portray it in a way they felt was accurate. Unfortunately, that’s the reality and your choice to make which group you want to potentially upset. Do your research, do your best to be sensitive, make an informed decision. Ultimately, I don’t think I’m alone in saying I’d rather see characters with unnamed disabilities portrayed in a positive way than not portrayed at all.

THIS IS SAPPHIRE

THIS IS TEAL

THIS IS PERIWINKLE

THIS IS AZURE

 AND THIS IS TURQUOISE

WONDER WHY THOSE ALL DON’T LOOK LIKE THE SAME COLOR? BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT 

OTHER THAN BEING PART OF THE SAME FAMILY OF BLUES, THEY ARE NOT ALL THE SAME FUCKING COLOR! WHY WOULD THEY ALL BE THE SAME FUCKING COLOR! DO YOU THINK WE JUST NAME NEW COLORS FOR KICKS!?!?!?

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