intopandorasbox:

amandaonwriting:

Words that describe a voice

Here are some great voice words for when you can hear something in your head and just can’t think of the best way to describe it! 

maxkirin:

Hello, writerly friends~ ♥︎

My Writing Advice Masterpost is back! Now featuring the best questions and answers from the last three years, along with all of the videos from my writing advice YouTube Channel!

This post will be updated every week with new writing advice videos, playlists, and responses! So, make sure to bookmark THIS page and follow my blog (maxkirin.tumblr.com) so you don’t miss a thing!

Writing Advice Compilations

• The NaNoWriMo Survival Guide
• M. Kirin’s NaNoWriMo 2014 Writing Advice Videos
• WRITERS UNITE! A book of writing advice, inspiration, and tips! Written with the help of 248 Tumblr authors. FREE DOWNLOAD!

Writing Exercises & Prompts

• Virtual Writing Academy (Newest Episode: Writing Exposition)
• Daily Story Seed
• Daily Weird Prompt
• Daily Character Question
• Your Writing Horoscope (Retired)
• “Can I publish a story based on one of your prompts?”
• Did you know that I have published a book of Story Seeds? Sounds interesting? You can learn more about it HERE! c;

Motivation & Inspiration

• Daily Writer Positivity
• How to Regain the Motivation to Finish Your Novel (Video)
• How to Finish Your First Novel (M. Kirin’s Origin Story)
• M. Kirin’s Top 3 Tips for NaNoWriMo
• The 7 Cardinal Rules of Writing Life
• Neil Gaiman’s “Make Good Art” Speech
• Neil Gaiman’s 8 Rules of Writing
• Elizabeth Gilbert’s Inspirational Speech on the ‘Genius’
• What Confidence Is and Is NOT
• “I’m afraid writing is a waste of time”
• “I’m half-way through this book and I’m stuck”
• Stop Trying to Impress People
• Stop Trying to Make Your Parents Proud of your Writing
• Your Parents Disapprove of Your Writing?
• You’re Not The Worst Writer In The World
• English Not Your First Language? Neither is Mine
• Are You Worried Nobody Will Take You Seriously?
• Dealing with Hate and Harsh Criticism
• Why You Need to Develop a Thick Skin
• Feeling Down About Your Writing?
• “I am not as good as other writers” (and other lies)
• Be A Little Delusional

Planning, Outlining, and Getting Started

• How to Plan Your Novel (Video)
• The NaNoWriMo Survival Guide (Video)
• How Much World-Building is Enough? (Video)
• The *Right* Time to be Critical of Your Writing (Video)
• Overcoming the Fear of Getting it “Wrong“ (Video)
• The Story-Idea Test
• M. Kirin’s Click-n-Drag Story Generator
• Which outlining method is the best?
• “I want to write a book but I have no idea where to start”
• M. Kirin’s Secret for Starting books, and Finishing Them
• M. Kirin’s Top 3 Tips to Start Writing and Never Stopping
• Tips for writing Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Paranormal
• M. Kirin’s #1 Tip For Improving Your Writing
• Let’s Talk About: Show VS Tell
• The Difference Between Character & Plot (The Marcy Rule)

Dialogue

• TOP 3 TIPS for Writing Dialogue (Video)
• The Art of Writing Dialogue Tags (Video)
• M. Kirin talks about authentic dialogue
• The grammatical side of dialogue
• How do I write numbers in dialogue?

Editing & Revision

• M. Kirin’s Top 5 Revision Tips
• How to Love and Care for Your Beta Readers
• M. Kirin’s (subjective) secret recipe for the second draft
• When is the best time to edit a story?
• M. Kirin Talks About Editing, and Speeding Up Your Story
• M. Kirin Uses Evernote to Revise Books
• “Kill Your Darlings” VS “Cut What You Love”
• Writing Killer Plot-Twists and Mystery Novels
• “How long is a Rough Draft compared to the Finished Draft?”

Hot-Button Issues

• Let’s Talk About: Filler (Video)
• Let’s Talk About: Purple Prose (Video)
• Let’s Talk About: Deus Ex Machina
• Let’s Talk About: Coincidence in Writing
• Realism is a dirty word
• Racist & homophobic language in fiction
• Inaccuracy in Fiction (Video)
• M. Kirin drops a few bombs on ‘creative vocabulary’
• “I want to write but I don’t have the time”
• Is it bad to have too many LGBTQIA or POC characters?
• “My antagonist is POC/LGBTQIA, is this bad?”
• “All my characters are LGBTQIA, is this bad?”
• When to let go of a story
• Is it rational to be afraid of what people will think of you?
• Let’s Lightly Talk About: Plagiarism & Copyright
• Writing About Things You Have Never Experienced
• “Do you need to go to college/university to be a good writer?”
• My book is similar to something already out, what do I do?

General Advice

• M. Kirin’s Cure For Writer’s Block (and Life Block)
  
• Overcoming Writer’s Block: The First Sentence (Video)
• A [Strange] Tip For Writing More! (Video)
• Writing Advice from: The Walking Dead (Video)
• World-Building Tips: Dystopian (Video)
• World-Building Tips: Fantasy & Science Fiction (Video)
• World-Building Tips: Life After the Apocalypse (Video)
• World-Building Tips: Government & The Human Element (Video)
• World-Building Tips: Spicing Up The Real World (Video)
• Using Real People as Inspiration (Video)
• When Should The Book End? (Video)
• Writing Better Characters: The ‘Flawed’ Myth (Video)
• Writing Better Characters: Unlikable Protagonists (Video)
• TOP 3 TIPS for Writing a Large Cast of Characters (Video)
• Overcoming the First Sentence (Again) (and Again)
• Let’s Talk About: Pen Names!
• Let’s Talk About: Reactive VS Proactive Characters
• Let’s Talk About: Transitioning Smoothly From Scene to Scene
• Let’s Talk About: Writing The Climax (& Resolution)
• Let’s Talk About: Writing The End
• Let’s Talk About: Spies
• Let’s Make a Title (To A Story You Haven’t Finished)
• The 10-Minute Rule
• Making Boring Scenes FUN to Write!
• Stories are like children
• Let’s Talk About Titles (And Then Talk Some More)
• M. Kirin Reveals the ‘Secret’ Behind Style
• How much description/scenery is too much?
• How can I write faster?
• I want my readers to love my characters
• I think my book may be too short for my genre
• I killed one of my main characters by mistake, what do I do?
• M. Kirin’s Writing Advice for Fleshing out Romantic Relationships
• A warning about character names and meanings
• Past or present tense?
• Is swearing okay? And other muthafuckin’ truths
• “What emotion do you find hardest to write?”
• “What writing software do you use?”
• Communication, a must for collaborative works
• Researching illegal things, cousin? I got just the thing for you!
• Joss Whedon’s Top 10 Writing Tips
• M. Kirin’s Tarot Cheat-Sheet
• Writing Tips for Storytelling in Video-Games
• Fair Use In Novels (by thedancingwriter​)

Publishing

• Publishing Battle: Indie VS Traditional
• “How do I turn my book into an eBook?”

Writing Music & Playlists

• Top 10 Songs For Writers
• Writing In The Dark (Unobtrusive)
• Writing About Love
• Writing & Fighting!
• Writing About Horror
• Royalty And Noble Blood (Medieval/Fantasy)
• Digital Reality (Cyberpunk/Futuristic)
• Lost In The Wild (Survival/Nature)
• No Hero (Action/Anti-Heroes)
• Mermaid Magic (Mysterious)
• After The Bomb (Post-Apocalyptic/Dystopian)
• Sorrow (Sad/Despair)
• Upon Black Wings (Adventure/Dragons)
• Haunted Mansion (Horror/Supernatural)
• Childhood Friends (Happy/Uplifting)
• Music For Writers: Portal 2 Soundtrack (FREE)
• M. Kirin’s Favorite Music to Listen to While Writing
• M. Kirin’s Secret For Making Playlists

Miscellaneous

• M. Kirin’s 2014 AMA, Part 1 & Part 2 (Video)
• Max & Kitty Recommend: Top 10 Things You Should Read/Watch/Play Right Now! (Video)
• Finally! An Ask-Meme for Writers! 
• M. Kirin’s Philosophy for Running a Writing Blog

Last Updated: 03-07-15. Click HERE to see the latest update. Latest posts are in bold.

amandaonwriting:

Happy Birthday, Janet Fitch, born 9 November 1955

Janet Fitch’s Top 10 Writing Tips

1. Write the sentence, not just the story 

Long ago I got a rejection from the editor of the Santa Monica Review, Jim Krusoe. It said: “Good enough story, but what’s unique about your sentences?” That was the best advice I ever got. Learn to look at your sentences, play with them, make sure there’s music, lots of edges and corners to the sounds. Read your work aloud. Read poetry aloud and try to heighten in every way your sensitivity to the sound and rhythm and shape of sentences. The music of words. I like Dylan Thomas best for this–the Ballad of the Long-Legged Bait. I also like Sexton, Eliot, and Brodsky for the poets and Durrell and Les Plesko for prose. A terrific exercise is to take a paragraph of someone’s writing who has a really strong style, and using their structure, substitute your own words for theirs, and see how they achieved their effects.

2. Pick a better verb 

Most people use twenty verbs to describe everything from a run in their stocking to the explosion of an atomic bomb. You know the ones: Was, did, had, made, went, looked… One-size-fits-all looks like crap on anyone. Sew yourself a custom made suit. Pick a better verb. Challenge all those verbs to really lift some weight for you.

3. Kill the cliché. 

When you’re writing, anything you’ve ever heard or read before is a cliché. They can be combinations of words: Cold sweat. Fire-engine red, or phrases: on the same page, level playing field, or metaphors: big as a house. So quiet you could hear a pin drop. Sometimes things themselves are cliches: fuzzy dice, pink flamingo lawn ornaments, long blonde hair. Just keep asking yourself, “Honestly, have I ever seen this before?” Even if Shakespeare wrote it, or Virginia Woolf, it’s a cliché. You’re a writer and you have to invent it from scratch, all by yourself. That’s why writing is a lot of work, and demands unflinching honesty.

4. Variety is the key. 

Most people write the same sentence over and over again. The same number of words–say, 8-10, or 10-12. The same sentence structure. Try to become stretchy–if you generally write 8 words, throw a 20 word sentence in there, and a few three-word shorties. If you’re generally a 20 word writer, make sure you throw in some threes, fivers and sevens, just to keep the reader from going crosseyed.

5. Explore sentences using dependent clauses.

A dependent clause (a sentence fragment set off by commas, dontcha know) helps you explore your story by moving you deeper into the sentence. It allows you to stop and think harder about what you’ve already written. Often the story you’re looking for is inside the sentence. The dependent clause helps you uncover it.

6. Use the landscape. 

Always tell us where we are. And don’t just tell us where something is, make it pay off. Use description of landscape to help you establish the emotional tone of the scene. Keep notes of how other authors establish mood and foreshadow events by describing the world around the character. Look at the openings of Fitzgerald stories, and Graham Greene, they’re great at this.

7. Smarten up your protagonist. 

Your protagonist is your reader’s portal into the story. The more observant he or she can be, the more vivid will be the world you’re creating. They don’t have to be super-educated, they just have to be mentally active. Keep them looking, thinking, wondering, remembering.

8. Learn to write dialogue. 

This involves more than I can discuss here, but do it. Read the writers of great prose dialogue–people like Robert Stone and Joan Didion. Compression, saying as little as possible, making everything carry much more than is actually said. Conflict. Dialogue as part of an ongoing world, not just voices in a dark room. Never say the obvious. Skip the meet and greet.

9. Write in scenes. 

What is a scene? a) A scene starts and ends in one place at one time (the Aristotelian unities of time and place–this stuff goes waaaayyyy back). b) A scene starts in one place emotionally and ends in another place emotionally. Starts angry, ends embarrassed. Starts lovestruck, ends disgusted. c) Something happens in a scene, whereby the character cannot go back to the way things were before. Make sure to finish a scene before you go on to the next. Make something happen.

10. Torture your protagonist.

The writer is both a sadist and a masochist. We create people we love, and then we torture them. The more we love them, and the more cleverly we torture them along the lines of their greatest vulnerability and fear, the better the story. Sometimes we try to protect them from getting booboos that are too big. Don’t. This is your protagonist, not your kid. 

Janet Fitch is best known for her novel, White Oleander. She is a faculty member in the Master of Professional Writing Program at the University of Southern California, where she teaches fiction.

From Writers Write