asdowell:

I started the preparation for a novel and wondered what kind of things I should ask my most important characters. So I looked around on the net and put this list together. 

1. What is your full name?

2. Date and place of birth?

3. Tell me about your parents?

4. Brothers? Sisters? 

5. Where/how do you live? (alone or with someone; in what kind of home?)

6. Do you have a job? If yes what is it?

7. How do you look? Hair, eye and skin color, height, weight, any marks, style of dress.

8. Do you have any allergies, mental illnesses, psychical weaknesses?

9. Are you left or right handed?

10. Do you have any tics, certain habbits or other things like that?

11. What do you usually carry in your pockets?

12. Describe your childhood

13. Did you like going to school?

14. Where did you learn most of the things you know?

15. Who did you look up to when you were younger?

16. Did you like your family? Why/why not?

17. What was your dream job?

18. What kind of child were you?

19. What’s the most important thing you did in your life?

20. Have you ever had any romantic relationships? And if they ended, why did you break up?

21. Do you have a relationship now?

22. What is your greatest regret?

23. What is the worst thing you ever did?

24. What are you scared of?

25. Best memory? And worst?

26. What are your religious views?

27. Would you kill anyone? If yes, why?

28. Would you die for anyone?

29. Do you make friends quickly?

30. How would you describe your manners?

31. Turn ons? 

32. Turn offs?

33. Are you close to your family? Why/why not?

34. If you desperately need help, who do you turn to?

35. Your hobbies?

36. Your most treasured possession?

37. Favourite color and food?

38. Favourite book/genre?

39. Do you smoke/drink/do drugs? And if so, why?

40. What is your favourite way of spending a Saturday?

41. How do you deal with stress?

42. Favourite joke?

43. How do you react if someone disturbs your routine?

44. Do you like yourself?

45. Introvert or extrovert?

46. What are you good at?

47. And what are you not good at?

48. What words describe you?

49. what is your weakness?

50. What would you want to add that you feel is important?

I would ask these things like I am having a conversation with my character. 

nimblesnotebook:

Anonymous asked you:

Fantastic blog, I have to start by saying. After reading that ask that asked you what you like/dislike and your response about LGBT characters, I was wondering if you had any tips on writing a gay/bi character without the whole story BEING about him/her being gay/bi. I mean, if there’s not really romance and there’s not angry bigots bothering them, how does the audience know? I hope I’m not sounding dumb, I am a gay dude but I don’t have many good ideas on how to write people of my persuasion.

Revealing a character’s sexuality can be tricky when on romance or LGBT+ issues are involved and how to do this is a legitimate question and a good one, so don’t feel stupid for asking.

Keyboard Smash Writers wrote a post on how to do this, but it’s mostly for gender.

Contemporary Settings:

In contemporary settings, it’s unrealistic to not have a non-heterosexual person’s sexuality have no impact on them whatsoever. Most people will come out and most people will feel worried or anxious about their sexuality in certain places or situations. However, you can still portray these characters without putting LGBT+ issues in their story line.

To include LGB+ characters without incorporating LGB+ issues, make it as casual as possible. In adults, it’s easier to show that characters are in a non-heterosexual relationship because they’re more likely to be in a committed relationship than teenagers. There doesn’t have to be a romantic subplot with these characters. They can just be a couple who may be the parents of another character or they could be the main character. Then again, those characters would probably be side characters unless the story centers around the family or if they have an important part in the story.

For characters who are not in a relationship, there are a few things you can do:

• Make a reference to a past relationship
• The character can check out other characters whom they are attracted to
• Casual coming out
• Reference to “when I first came out blah blah blah”
• Relationship between two characters without making it a romantic subplot (it’s very possible)
• Gay paraphernalia (gay flag, marriage equality pin, etc.) 
• The character joking about their gayness

The “casual coming out” comes up a lot more than you might think. This can be anywhere from showing up to a company/office party with your partner and thus indirectly coming out, turning down a persistent “suitor” who just won’t leave you alone, keeping a photo of their significant other in their wallet/on their desk/wherever, or responding to a question that would not apply to them by saying, “Well I’m gay, so…”.

An example of that last one would be like that picture that went around tumblr a while ago where students were asked if they thought students should get free condoms (or something like that) and the last girl said, “I don’t care. I’m gay.”.

For the paraphernalia, it would have to be something that separates an ally from a member of the LGBT+ community. An example would be shirts that say I’m gay, get over it or something like that.

A lot of LGB+ people who are comfortable with their sexuality make jokes about it. And then sometimes straight people will call them out for being homophobic and that makes it funnier sometimes. But harmless jokes could help out a character to your reader as long as the joke is specifically about that character.

When making other references, you can easily do it in narration. If the gay character is the narrator and it’s in first person, you can mention how the character met another character before or after they came out if it’s relevant to the characters or another story within the story.

Sci-fi/Fantasy Settings:

In these settings, you can rid the world of homophobia and all that bad stuff. Some of the above applies to these genres, but some of it doesn’t.

With these settings there can be casual mentions of finding attraction in another character or mentions of relationships without it being a big deal to other characters.

Historic Settings:

I refer to Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe a lot and I’m going to do it again. There can be LGBT+ historical romance without homophobia and a bunch of LGBT+ issues and the book I just mentioned is a good example. The sexuality of the characters wasn’t a big deal and it wasn’t the focus of the story.

And just another personal preference for all genres, I’d like the sexuality to be brought up more than once, but still not emphasized because it seems like some writers just mention it once and then never revisit that part of the character or they’re constantly reminding viewers and readers that a character isn’t straight.

Anyone have any other ideas?

writeworld:

dathieflord asked: How do you budget time to writing when you work 2 jobs + college classes? I’ve found a really great idea and have a tentative outline but I never have to work on it. I think about it when I can and basically “write” in my head, but I just don’t have the energy when I get everything else done to open up my notebook.

Yeah, time is a limited thing. You have to find it where you can get it. Here are a few tips for you to squeeze some writing time out of your day. All of these tips require that you understand how you work best. Some of them might not work for you. Some of them don’t work for me. I’m going to try to include something for everyone. 

• Just write something. Seriously, even if you’re so beat and you don’t want to do anything and the very notion of cerebral activity is downright nauseating, get something down. Give yourself a quota. “After I hit 500 words, I shall go to bed, and it shall be glorious!” Then, with the glorious carrot of bed before you, begin to write. If it’s terrible, oh well. That’s what editing is for.
• Find “lost” time. “Lost” time is time that you could be spending doing things that you actually spent doing nothing. Many people refer to these times as “breaks.” Breaks are important, but evaluate how it is you’re spending your breaks. If you’re hitting refresh on Facebook (or Tumblr) and just waiting for new content, think about how you could dedicate that break to writing. Perhaps come up with a system: I shall read X amount of pages, and then work on my story for X amount of minutes.
• Wake up early. A great thing to suggest to a college student. But consider it: wake up, grab a cup of coffee (or Yoo-Hoo or something) and spend the first thirty minutes of your day writing. Perhaps over breakfast. Perhaps before you’ve even gotten out of bed. (I’ve written entire WriteWorld articles before leaving my bed.) Staying up extra late might not work for you, so getting up early might.
• Schedule a time. From 12 to 1 every day, you write. Or from 6 to 7. Or whatever time works for you. Don’t let anything else infringe on it and clear your mind of everything else during that time. Turn off the cell phone and the internet connection.
• Know that you’re always writing. Think about your story while you’re walking, or on line, or in the loo. Just the other day, I had a great idea for a line of dialogue, stopped dead in my tracks, and ran home. I wrote a whole scene off that one line. Invite ideas as they come by. Bring a notepad with you everywhere. (And leave it next to your bed, so that when you come up with a great idea in those precious seconds between waking and sleeping, you can scribble it down.)
• Make sure you’re having fun writing. In this article, we talked about how your own story can motivate you. If your story is one that you’re excited about, you’ll probably find time to write. It’ll pull you in.
• Make sure you’re having fun not writing. Life experience is writing experience. If having mandatory blocks of time for writing is getting you down or interfering with time with your friends or time eating ice cream or whatever, then don’t write. Look after your own happiness and go out there and find something to write about, if you don’t have anything.
• Find a buddy. Not only will you get to edit your work together, which will be super beneficial, but you’ll be able to keep on each other. If your buddy hands ten pages to you at the end of the week, and you don’t have anything for the buddy to read, you’ll feel behind. (You’ll also lost out on some editing.) If this kind of system works for you, and you’re comfortable with someone reading your work, this is probably one of the finest motivators you can find.

Finding time to write, like writing itself, is an individual challenge. You have to make choices and manage your time in your own way. The tips above are just a smattering of things that you can do to improve your time-management. Experiment. Try new things.

If you have other ideas for this dathieflord, send a message! And if you have any questions for us, know that our ask box, despite its increasing fullness, is actually an infinite space and will never get completely full, which is a weird mathematical concept that I don’t fully understand.

– O

bookgeekconfessions:

Tips by Regina Paul
Originally Posted on www.lisahartjes.com

Creating worlds that exist only in a novel is not the easiest thing to do, and detail is paramount. You may not think that details are that important, but if for example you create a rule such as, men can’t have children with anyone but their pre-ordained mates. Then you have a guy in your universe have a child with someone he’s having casual sex with, and who is not his mate, well you see how this might upset and or confuse a reader. While you can explain such incidences with exceptions to the rules as you go along, readers don’t always take kindly to such things.

So, what are some good ways to create authentic worlds in your books?

1. Set up all the rules and their exceptions ahead of time. That way if you are consistent in your writing and reveal the rules as you go, you won’t have to worry about upset or confused readers down the road.

2. Study other cultures and their laws. Believe it or not you can get some really good “what ifs?” from studying cultures that exist now or in the past. In my science fiction romance Getting Out Alive, I got the idea for Darek’s culture by asking myself the question, “What would happen in a culture that aliens had come in and began creating hybrids and trying to integrate them into that culture? Would they accept them, or as is human nature which often fears differences, would they do a complete 180 degree turn and become afraid of any differences in others?”

3. Pick a common human trait such as I did in Getting Out Alive with the human trait of fearing that which is different, and imagine what the extreme reaction might be. In my case on Darek’s home world of Laren, in his past his people began exterminating anyone who didn’t have a particular hair or eye color. They had their own holocaust because of this fear. Be sure and come up with reasons for the human trait taking the people down the road it does.

4. Think about the sorts of motivations people have and why they have them. Be clear in your mind what your character’s motivations are when you are writing. Another example from Getting Out Alive is the heroine Angel Whitedove. She could have allowed her experiences of alien abduction to cause her to completely withdraw from society, but instead she chooses to help other abductees. Even though she does it in disguise, it is still a risk for her.

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fuckyeahcharacterdevelopment:

The bond between a parent and child is something quite unique. I really can’t imagine the pain it must cause. I hear that one eventually learns to live around the loss. It’s not something people ‘get over’ or ever come to forget about. They simply must manage to live without their son or daughter.

As for techniques: show her emotion. When you lose someone that important, life stands still. Everything around you goes to pieces because it takes every fibre of your being to keep yourself standing. Parents invest everything in their children. Is she sad or angry? What parts of her life does she still have to juggle around the gaping hole of her loss? Which of these things suffer behind her grief? How does it change her over the course of the story? Some days will be better than others, but most days will be empty.

A young mother will love her baby as intensely as a more mature woman. The only thing she may lack is life experience, but definitely not the capacity to form a good parental bond.

• Characters Dealing With Loss
• What It’s Really Like To Lose A Child
• Grief and Mourning
• The Death of a Child – The Grief of the Parents: A Lifetime Journey

Ah, this ask has really choked me up. I’m sorry to hear about your Grandad.

I hope these links help. Please research well (read books, watch movies and watch television programmes that deal with the loss of a child).

Best of luck.

– enlee.

Thoughts from the ask box:

My best friend lost his sister, Aurora. His parents, who my family is personal friends with, never truly got over it. Even now, eighteen years later, his mother cannot even watch the sunrise (“dawn”) or even think about that name or anything to do with it. She wanted to get pregnant immediately after and she described the pain as something unimaginable. Both she and her husband told me that they both wished that they had died instead–to this day. It’s like losing your entire heart. – Anonymous

howtofightwrite:

Divorce yourself from this idea right now, author. While I’m sure it is the narrative you’ve been presented with your entire life, I’m here to tell you that it isn’t true. Women do find building up muscles in the upper body more difficult than men, but since power does not come from the arms, it’s actually a superfluous distinction. Women build up muscles in the lower body and in the core muscles (abdominal) very rapidly.

Skill in combat is not a matter of biology, but in training and dedication. Remember, if your female character fights, she’s neither unique nor special. In my experience as a martial artist and a martial arts instructor, there are on average per class 2 girls to every 10 boys, with the female number either remaining constant or doubling as the class goes up in age. While there are fewer female combatants around than male, it’s not hard to find 20 women to every 100 men. Extrapolate that out and think about it, women who fight are not as rare as you might have previously imagined.

Here are a few things to consider:

1) Power comes from the hips.

I will harp on this until the end of time until everyone shakes the myth of punch strength being decided by arm muscle strength out of their heads. The strength of the strike comes from the pivot of the hips and guess what? Women have wider hips than men, thus a greater opportunity to generate more power and hit their opponents harder. Combine this advantage with a low-center of gravity and the ability to push that center even lower  and you have a fighter capable, not just in power, but able to topple much larger opponents.

2) Women have a lower center of gravity.

This is the advantage of the short fighter, it’s the same for short men and short women, a tall woman fighting a shorter woman will encounter the same resistance as a tall man fighting a short one. I list this as a female advantage because most women will always find themselves facing larger opponents. So, it’s important for an author to keep in mind.

So, how does this work? A center of gravity is the height difference from the ground to your core, around the belly button. The shorter the fighter, the lower their center of gravity, the lower the center of gravity the closer they are to the earth, the closer they are to the earth the better their ability to generate a stable base and the harder they are to knock over. A fighter who knows where to put their feet and weight to make use of their center is a hard one to take to the ground. This is one way for women to overcome the height and weight disadvantage.

3) Women are naturally more resistant to pain and fatigue than men, have a greater potential for stamina, and can fight harder for longer.

It’s important to note: it’s not just that men cannot biologically carry a child to term and survive the birth, but if they did with their current make-up, they would die. So, you may call it the miracle of childbirth, but a woman’s body is gifted with a much greater level of resilience than their male counterparts. While these abilities must be honed and improved through training, the natural talent is already present in every woman’s body.

4) The only combatants who ever actively terrified me were women.

I’ve met a great many master martial artists from a great many different styles, all of whom I deeply respect, and can trust in their ability to utterly annihilate me. But the female black belt sparring division, my first thought on encountering those women as a teenager was: “I want to spar with the boys.”

Women live in a very different world than men do, they live in a world that is comprised of dangers even in places that are supposed to be safe. A woman cannot walk down a street alone, never mind if it’s at night, without wondering if an attack will happen. Rape and other acts of violence are very real, every day threats, and women live with the knowledge that the places they have been told to go to for protection will disregard them, laugh at them, and judge them on their worth for “allowing” these acts to happen to them. Every woman, even the ones like me who began at a young age, will eventually be faced with the realization that they may have to use what they know against another person one day. This is not fantasy assessment full of wishful thinking, but a cold reality. What if one day I have to hurt someone else? What if one day I have to kill them? The women who practice and prepare through forms of combat do so with that in mind, with the knowledge that they are the underdogs and that one day, they may have to use that training to fight for their lives.

The ferocity with which they beat on each other in sparring matches is a reflection of that. Remember, these are women who have shaken off the socially ingrained idea of ‘I can’t hurt anyone’ and moved on to ’I will break you if you hurt me’. They follow that up with: you will never walk right again.

Unless your character comes from a very different society, this attitude will be part of who they are. Women who are trained and dedicated have the capacity to be terrifying, especially in a patriarchal society. Why? It’s not the behavior that most men expect.

fuckyeahcharacterdevelopment:

Sorry if I’m not understanding- but doesn’t ‘racebending’ (I’m reading about it here) refer to an adaptation changing the canon ethnicity of a character? So, what you’re describing (a god/faerie/demon/shapeshifter etc freely changing whatever part of their appearance they choose including and not limited to skin color) wouldn’t be racebending at all?

In regards to writing it respectfully- I feel like as long as you aren’t falling into stereotypes or cliches, you should be fine (which means that doing research on racial stereotypes and cliches so that you know what they are might help). The character themselves will probably have a bit of an interesting relationship with their appearance, depending upon what you’ve got in mind for them- that is, how close they live to humans, if they are very familiar with human culture, etc.
I mean, this is just me talking here, but I feel like it’d be more peculiar if your characters had limited shapes based on race- like, I could see a character having preferences about what shapes and appearances they like, but it seems strange that a character who is not human at all would be inherently limited by human races, considering that the actual genetic differences between races are smallish and something that we humans are still debating [x]. 

That aside. 

I’ve definitely seen shape-shifting characters have set color palettes, especially in visual media, that may line up to physical traits or be seemingly arbitrary (say I have brown hair and eyes, and am always shown wearing red, so I always turn into a brown and red animal, even if it’s something that that wouldn’t make sense for (ex. brown and red penguin)) which reminds me, are your characters limited to human shapes? I’ve also seen limits where there’s something like the character has one look per species (I’m always a gray grayhound as a dog, I’m always a brown-haired human woman, etc), I’ve seen limits of gender (whatever shape I take, I’m always female), and there’s the classic, ‘one trait stays the same in all shapes’, typically the eyes or something like that, you might set rules about how often they can change shape in a day, there might be limits based on calories expended or there could be a time limit- there are a lot of different ways to put limits on shapeshifting.  

So, I say, choose your own take on what makes sense to you in terms of shapeshifting- and consider also what would make sense for your character’s personality. For example, the main shapeshifting character that I have is mostly only limited by conservation of mass- because I could see physical appearance, gender, species, and more changing, but pulling mass out of nowhere or getting rid of it randomly crossed the line for what I’d believe from this character. 

Anyway, I hope that that at least kind of answered your question.

-Evvy

Thoughts from the ask box:

for my personal shapeshifters what I do is have it be ‘rude’ in their types society to steal an identity. so even if there isnt a physical limitation, you can use societal limitations as well; even if said limitation is just in that particular character’s mind. IE one of my protagonists wont steal an identity, and personally refuses to change his gender though his kind are traditionally pansexual/genderfluid. – Anonymous

I recommend reading Wild Seed. One of the main characters is a black woman with the ability to shapeshift and it’s set in the era of slavery. It’s an interesting example. – Anonymous

– enlee

wtffanfiction:

So at one point someone suggested we start a list of words used in fanfiction to describe genitals. After a particularly great Twilight fic was submitted, I decided to start that list, and Im providing what the phrase is describing. It will be updated as more words and phrases are found. And feel free to submit ones you’ve heard :3

Also check out the lube list!

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