thewritershelpers:

Before you ask beta readers to look over your stuff, you might want to think of these things.

—Every time you change the tense that you’re conjugating the action of the story in, an author decides not to ship your OTP.

—Commas are nice. It’s not nice to feel like you want to give a speeding ticket to a writer because their sentences just run on and on with the “flow like a jungle river”.

—Giving two characters the same first letter of their names (and especially if their nicknames end with the same sound) actually curses your future children to reading only bad fanfiction when they grow up. Every book they touch will turn into My Immortal.

-Reading over your piece before you ask other people to is kind of just good manners. (If only Stephanie Meyer had thought of that.)

—Put in dashes when you slap two words together, or make an adjective out of them.

—Emdashes are great too!

—Spell out numbers in works of fiction. Science stuff, on the other hand, uses the Arabic numerals.

—YOLO. It’s better to ask someone to beta something you write than to not have the guts to do so.

—If your puns are as bad as mine, I will cry tears of blood and shame.

the-right-writing:

1. When your main character first meets somebody they’re attracted to, their thoughts might go to the positives and negatives of their appearance.

2. Same goes for when your character is going into a situation where they feel judged (first time on a stage, moving to a new area, first day at a new job, etc.).

3. When your character is dressed up or in costume, they could take the opportunity to contrast their new look with how they look normally.

4. When your character meets a family member they’ve never seen before, they may think about which traits the two of them share.

5. Try spacing out the physical description throughout the first part of your story instead of concentrating it in one place.

thewritershelpers:

There are a lot of things that go into creating a super powered being, and all of them can be boiled down to two words: back story. You have to decide what power they have, how they got it, when it showed up, and a million other things before actually writing out the good parts. However, developing the super hero (or villain) is a bit more complicated.

The first thing to do with the development of a super is to teach them how to use their power. This can be a lot of fun because it gives you the chance to have your character make a lot of mistakes. The character is brand new to this and has no idea what the limits to this power are, or even if there are limits. So this is your chance to have them turn invisible in the middle of a first date, tear their car door off, or burn down the model airplane they’ve been working on forever. Teaching your character how to use their power can also help develop the super as a character. It helps to show how they handle different situations, or how they think about the world and the people in it.

The important thing to remember about super heroes and villains is that deep down they’re still human. They have the same wants, needs and motives as anyone else: love, greed, sympathy, anger, etc. However, what makes them interesting is the fact that they have power. They have abilities that no one else has, and that’s where writing these characters gets really interesting. Once the character has these powers (and knows how to use them) the logical next step is to make the “big decision.” Are they a hero or a villain. In comic books the decision to be a hero or a villain is almost always made after a major life event. This can be the death of a loved one, being framed for a crime, sometimes even after the character’s own death. What the writer has to think about is how the character deals with the particular event. This is just like any character development, but with the addition of powers. This may not seem like a huge addition, but it is, and this is because it gives a lot of possibilities for a reaction scene.

After any huge life event a person is going to feel a very strong emotion or maybe a bundle of emotions they can’t easily untangle. The trick to this part is figuring out how the power plays into it. When people are sad they cry, then they’re scared they scream and run away, when they’re happy they jump up and down, however, these aren’t just ordinary people. The tricky part (and often the fun one) is to figure out how the power reacts to this emotional cacophony. There’s a ton of different ways to do anything and the best part is it’s all up to you.

Happy Writing.
-B

lettersandlight:

The “Now What?” Months are here! In 2014, we’ll be bringing you advice from authors who published their NaNo-novels, editors, agents, and more to help you polish November’s first draft until it gleams. Today, Allison VanNest, from Grammarly, highlights some common grammar mistakes:

For many writers, each November is a new chance to write a complete novel—at least 50,000 words in 30 days—during National Novel Writing Month. In 2013, Grammarly joined the fray with GrammoWriMo, a group novel project. Together, nearly 300 participants wrote more than 130,000 words.

As you know by now, the breakneck nature of NaNoWriMo leaves very little time for editing. To reach the goal, every writer needs to put at least 1,667 words on the page every day. The resulting rough draft is, in many cases, really rough.

When Grammarly crunched the GrammoWriMo group novel in our automated proofreading program, we discovered a ton of comma confusion and grammar goofs. Here are our top five mistakes (and how you can avoid them):

Read More

writing-questions-answered:

Anonymous asked: I’m not sure if anyone’s asked this already, but do you know of any resources that explain what living on the run would be like for a criminal? (Crimes would be theft, burglary, robbery, etc.) Like, being a modern-day outlaw and having to use fake identification and trying to blend in and not be noticed? The setting would be modern America. I’ve searched far and wide for information on this subject and haven’t found anything, so any help is appreciated! 🙂

Wow. There is a dearth of information on this topic, but I did manage to find some sources that might be helpful:

This article at Livesafely.org has a lot of information about how to vanish yet hide in plain sight. 

Here’s a disheartening step-by-step guide to help runaway teens live on the street. =

Here’s an article about software designer John McAfee, who was apparently on the run from authorities in Belize. It has a few details about tricks he used and what his life on the run was like. More info, with video.

A little bit of info in the story of another criminal on the run.

Two others on the run.

And another.

And one more.

Here’s an episode of a UK real crime TV show, which details the story of a bodybuilder on the run from authorities in the US and UK.

You might also try watching some movies about people on the run.

This episode of radio program This American Life details people who are “hiding in plain sight.” It costs 99 cents to download from iTunes or Amazon, and it isn’t about criminals in hiding (although the last story is about criminals), but it might give you some good ideas about how easy it can be to hide in plain sight.

A few basic tips on blending in.

A book about going into hiding, if you’re able to spend money.

You might also try looking at survivalist web sites and forums to see if there are any articles or threads on the topic.

I hope these sources will give you at least some idea. Luckily, it’s one of those wide open subjects where you can probably get away with any details you want to create.