fuckyeahcharacterdevelopment:

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reedus-andweep:

In the English language, there are a lots of commonly misused words.  I’m just as guilty as the next person for misusing these words.  This little post is to help you, just as much as it helps me, sort out these commonly misused words.

Convince means to get someone to change her mind;  persuade means to get someone to take action.  (You can convince me that french fries are not healthy, but you can’t persuade me not to eat it.)

Tortuous means winding — a tortuous path, staircase or logic.  Torturous connotates torture — a torturous root canal, bar exam or surprise party.

Imply means to suggest or indicate;  infer means to conclude or assume.  On this post, I imply that words should be used precisely.  Those who read this post might infer that I’m a stickler.

Comprise refers to the whole, not the parts.  Think of it as a synonym for “include”:  the USA comprises fifty states;  the committee comprises seven people;  the schoolyard comprises seven played areas.  People often use it, incorrectly, in the passive voice, i.e., “is comprised of” but that’s a redundant way of saying “is included of”.  If you’re tempted to use “is comprised of”, try “is composed of” or “is made up of” instead.

Flaunt means to show off something in an obvious, even vulgar manner — if you’ve got it, flaunt it.  Flout meats to scorn or defy something.  You flout the rules if you ignore all your parking tickets.  You don’t, however, flaunt the rules — you flaunt a new car, a designer dog, or your superior knowledge of easily confused words.

These are a fraction of the commonly misused words in the English language.  You’d be surprised at how often they’re misused.  I’ll try to write more posts about these and maybe, they’ll even help you out.  

Good luck with your writing, folks.

fuckyeahcharacterdevelopment:

I feel like my characters are pretty developed by themselves. As stand-alone creations, they’re well-rounded and interesting and so on. But in my story, they… have no point. You could throw PacMan or Mel Gibson in their places and still have everything turn out the same. How do I get them to INTERACT with my plot, so to speak? How do I get them to actually have an effect on their world and their world to affect them? [And if this is the wrong blog, could you direct me to one that CAN helpme?]

 Anonymous

1. Have them make decisions and choices.
2. Make their decisions matter. 

In other words, base your plot more heavily off of what your characters would do. If they fuck things up and your story lands in a tricky place that you’re not quite sure how to get out of, all the better. So, the next time you’re writing, ask yourself constantly, ‘what would this person do in this situation?’ It should matter which character does what. Everyone should have a motive, and they should act in accordance with their motivations, desires, and fears. 
Does that help?
-Evvy 

bookgeekconfessions:

I was asked to make a rebloggable version.

1. Be bold, vicious and detailed. 
There are different kinds of abuse and they are all damaging to a person. In our current social climate it seems to me that authors and readers have no idea what an abusive relationship is. Bella Swan and Edward Cullen are in an abusive relationship. Travis Maddox and Abby from Beautiful Disaster are in an abusive relationship. Braden and Joss from “On Dublin Street” are not quite there, but they are straddling the line. Christian Grey from “Fifty Shades of Grey” is probably the most terrifyingly controlling man in any book I have ever read and it has nothing to do with the fact that he is into the BDSM lifestyle.

If you are going to write an abusive relationship you have to be aware that abuse has been glamorized and glossed over.  Extreme jealousy is now seen as romantic, because “he’s so afraid of losing me.”  If a guy isn’t insanely passionate, breaking down doors and watching the heroine sleep then “he doesn’t care enough.”  If the guy is trying to isolate the heroine, have control of the way she dresses or where she goes it’s because “he doesn’t want to share me.”

It is scary as hell out there  and if you are going to write this kind of relationship you have to go for it 100%. You can not dilute or gloss over how horrible it is. You have to make it very clear that this is not romantic, it is not sweet, it is abusive and this kind of guy may love you forever, but he will probably also destroy you in the mean time

2. Research.
Everyone is different. Every relationship is different, which means that every abusive relationship is also different.  Do research. When I was in film school I wrote a short film about a woman who runs from an abusive relationship. I did hours of research on the web. Do you know that survivors of domestic abuse run blogs and websites? These incredible women put all their emotions on the web in the hopes that women who are living through it will read it and be inspired to leave. It is amazing. These stories will break your heart, they will piss you off, frighten you and fill you with conviction. There were nights where I wanted to grab a baseball bat and just go after these husbands. The point is that I found two stories that touched me so deeply, I wrote for hours.

If you have never been in this kind of relationship you have NO IDEA what it’s like. You have no idea, so don’t for a second think that you can come up with these emotions from scratch. If you want to delve deep into the brain of the victim, of the person who sleeps beside their abuser every night, then you have to find their thoughts. You still wont really know what it’s like, but this will give you a better starting point then your preconceived notions of what it means to be abused.

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thewritershelpers:

hello there, I love your blog! Do you have any “don’t ‘s” when it comes to fictional relationships. I am writing a romantic relationship that was formed in an zombie apocalypse, any tips? – Anonymous

Hi, first of all thanks! 

I thought quite a bit about this and I think I’m going to give you a list of do’s and don’ts. Now take everything I say with a pinch of salt, remember this isn’t ALWAYS the case and I’m basing some of these from bad fanfiction…

Disclaimer: These are my opinions.

Dos.

• Have instant physical attraction (if that’s your thing)
• Have your characters get to know each other. 
• Show the progression of the relationship.
• Still mention other characters in your story.
• Make the relationship realistic
• Have arguments (no relationship is perfect)
• Have things about the other person that annoys them (you left the seat up- AGAIN).

Don’ts.

• Have them love each other instantly. It takes time to love each other and love grows as the relationship progresses. 
• Have instant trust. (this may work for some, but I don’t think it’s realistic.)
• Make the relationship perfect
• Forget the other characters
• Only focus on the physical attraction (unless it’s not about love)
• Be sickly with their love. It turns me off, and I’m sure it turns others off.
• Make them have sex every five minutes. 

I hope this helps, also keep in mind that if yours is set after a zombie apocalypse there may be very different reasons for your characters to get together than for most characters. So think of their reasons for wanting to be together. Are they clinging to the only person left? Forced together through circumstance? 

Some links for you as well: 

Writing realistic love relationships

How to write strong character relationships

Writeworld

FYCD

Nicholas Sparks’ DOs & DON’Ts for writing a love story

Thanks for the question!

-S

referenceforwriters:

For those not familiarized with the term:  Memento? Homestuck? 500 Days of Summer? 

• Nonlinear Storytelling: what it is, examples in film, literature, and videogames. Pretty much the basics and probably what you already know. 

• Story structure: graphic examples of types of story structures, including nonlinear. 

• 25 things you should know about story structure: tips, advice about story structure in general, things you’ve gotta take into account. Pretty funny.

• Linear vs Nonlinear: a comparison between linear and nonlinear storytelling. 

• Nonlinear storytelling: more talk on nonlinear storytelling. 

• Exploring methodologies for a nonlinear story development: now we get to the really good stuff. Explaining in steps the way you can pull a nonlinear story development off. Suggestions on ways you can keep track of your plot. 

• Limits of a nonlinear narrative structure: stuff you need to know you’re getting yourself into. Some obstacles. 

• Structure and looking at the whole: talking about the difference between structure and plot. Plot is always linear, structure doesn’t have to be.

• Writing nonlinear stories: on continuity, timing, and cues.

• Sypnosis for a nonlinear story: what title says. Talkin’ about sypnosis, I’m adding this in case your story needs one.

• VIDEO: how to write a nonlinear story: Robert McKnee talks and gives advice on how to write non linear stories for screenwriters. 

• Out of order: a discussion of nonlinear narrative stories: OP even did  a restructuration of Red Riding Hood to make it a nonlinear narrative. 

For the anon that needed help with anachronic storytelling. Maybe they couldn’t find anything because we don’t use the word “anachronic”, we use nonlinear.

-Alex 

bookgeekconfessions:

Many, many, many times I’ve seen people complain that they can’t play powerful characters without these characters being labeled as Mary Sues. I really have only one thing to say to this: it’s probably either because your characters are Mary Sues, or because you’re presenting your character the wrong way. Sure it’s not the former? Okay, then let’s get on to how you can present your character so people proably won’t grab the torches and pitchforks.

This article is largely intended for fan characters, particularly in superhero settings, though most of it applies to other character types as well.

Start by describing what makes your character tick, not what makes xir special.
When you begin your character profile/pitch, leave out your character’s appearances, superpowers, and canon connections as long as you possibly can. Instead, start off with your character’s personality, ambitions, dreams, career, and vulnerabilities. Basically, all the things that drive and motivate your character. In short, if you took away all of your character’s toys and goodies, who would xe be?

If you have a well-developed character, you should be able to describe xir without mentioning xir powers, abilities, or canon connections quite easily. Here’s an example based on one of my own OCs (who is the daughter of two canon characters) – she’s an intelligent, but socially-awkward young woman who works for her father’s company as an accountant. Her current pet project and hobby is a tabletop RPG she’s developing, which most people would probably find frustratingly fussy about.

Remove irrelevant specialness.
I’ve seen way too many “not-Sues” who have special/unique features for pretty much no other reason than the author found it appealing and decided to toss it in there. Something that’s common in far too many characters I’ve seen are strangely-colored eyes or the presence of cat ears and a tail that have pretty much no relevance to anything. At least one OC superhero I’ve seen had cat ears and a tail, the reason given that her abusive father experimented on her as a teenager. The character must have cat powers, right? Nope. Her powers have absolutely nothing to do with cats, and the story of how she acquired her kittybits has absolutely nothing to do with anything at all.

Compare with, for example, the Marvel-verse – if I see a character with an unusual appearance, I can usually trust that there’s a character-defining story attached to it somehow – EG, Doc Samson received his green hair in the incident that gave him the powers that changed the course of his life. Storm has white hair because she is a mutant, a fact which has essentially defined her life since a young teen.

Let your character earn respect.

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fuckyeahcharacterdevelopment:

About back story: My characters tend to have a lot of it, and I understand that this is a good thing. But I also have trouble /pacing/ it throughout the story so that the reader doesn’t get overwhelmed. And it just feels like I’m doing this: IjustlovemycharactersomuchandIwanttotellyoueverythingaboutthemrightawaysothatyoulovethemtooooooooooo. And yeah, that’s annoying and the reader will probably get a headache. So, do you have any tips for pacing character back story?

 Anonymous

When it comes to revealing backstories, I really think that less is more, and I’ll tell you why.

• Realism: Real people (and good characters) are complicated, multilayered, and have been living their own lives prior to when you met them. However, when you first meet someone, do they pour out their life story to you in a Scheherazade-like epic retelling? Not usually. Usually, you get to know them over time, and you learn new things when they come up in the time you spend together. In time, you may even know quite a lot about that person- but it takes time. Knowing about someone’s history, their childhood, and their current life is a mark of trust and a lot of time spent together. I can only claim to know a handful of people as well as you’d normally get to know the protagonist of a book. 

In short- there’s a lot about characters and people that you don’t know. Trying to tell your audience ‘the whole story’ about someone will likely only cause you (and your reader) a headache. While they may learn a great deal about the character over the course of the narrative, they’ll learn it better in bits and pieces. 

• Relevance to plot: While it’s good to throughly develop a character’s background for your own purposes, when you’re writing, ask yourself: Is this relevant to the story at hand, or would this be something that would be better placed in a prequel about that character (whether you intend to write one or not). 
  For example: If I’m telling you a story about how Pen and I got chased by a dog, it’s relevant that she’s scared of dogs after one treed her as a child, and would come up in the narrative naturally. It’s irrelevant that I had a bad experience with lemon popsicles as a child, and would feel out of place.  

Additionally, your character will probably be developing and changing within the story- so the focus should be on how they’re becoming a different person than who they were in the times of their backstory. People evolve continually, so really, ‘backstory’ is kind of a broad term. Exceptions include purposefully static characters, characters who are caught in the past themselves, and the like. 

• Finally, why it’s good to keep readers in the dark just a little bit: Now, I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase ‘show not tell’ approximately 10^23 times by now. But it applies here too! When possible, it really helps to try and demonstrate a character’s backstory, rather than tell it straight. Harking back to Pen and I’s hypothetical dog adventure- if she turns pale when we go by the dog park, the reader can infer that something happened in her past involving dogs. This in many ways is better than flat telling, because a block of telling backstory can be boring, but if you make it just enough of a puzzle, the reader will feel really clever for having figured out something about the character that wasn’t explicitly stated (and we want them to feel clever, it keeps them interesting). From there, you need to decide if the shown not told detail is a segue in to a written explanation, or a noodle incident. Segues are good if you need to do a lil bit of an infodump that’s relevant and important and all that to the plot. The trick is, keep the reader feeling clever. The ideal is that when you reveal that Pen has a crippling fear of dogs since she was five, the reader screams bloody murder about how they called it. When it comes to a noodle incident (a noodle incident being a past event that is frequently brought up, but not properly explained. ie, ‘Budapest’ in Avengers) the first rule is that is that you never explain the noodle incident. Instead,you let the readers draw their own conclusions or make their own theories, as they will almost invariably be disappointed with your answer. Decide which is better or more suited to your story.

IN SUMMARY,

some tips for you include:

• Reveal backstory in digestible lil bites
• Reveal those bites when they come up naturally
• Select which details are relevant to the story at hand, and which are irrelevant 
• Try to ‘show not tell’ some parts of your character’s history

That’s it, hope it helps!
-Evvy