writeworld:

writeworld:

Anonymous asked: Sorry if you’ve touched on this before, but I’ve read conflicting opinions about the use of “said.” Some articles/people swear that there is no need to change up “said,” and that doing so distracts from the dialogue. Others believe using more descriptive tags to replace “said” is the way to go. To use “said” or not to use “said”?

I think you’re looking for these articles:

• The Great Said Debate (this one especially, I think)
• He Said, She Said, Who Said What?
• Confession: I abuse dialogue tags like there’s no tomorrow.
• And here’s our page on dialogue.

Thank you for your question!

-C

jamessblond:

As someone who writes fics with action sequences and the use of guns, I thought maybe it would be helpful to pass some things on. Even though I’ve done lots of research and talked with family members (I live in WI which is a big hunting state and we have lots of guns), I still catch myself making mistakes with specific terms and their usage. Reading more James Bond fics lately, I catch others making mistakes also. So here is a little guide to help writers. 

• A ‘clip’ is something that stores multiple rounds of ammunition. It is not what you would insert into a handgun to load it. Clips make loading into a magazine easier because they simply store the rounds. It helps with organization. 

• A magazine is what feeds the ammunition into the barrel. Magazines vary in capacity. They, unlike clips, are spring-loaded, which helps the ammunition move in the gun. So, when you want a character to reload, they would use a pre-loaded magazine, NOT a clip. 

• A silencer is really a suppressor. ‘Silencer’ is a word that’s used in media to refer to a suppressor that doesn’t exist in real life. Guns that are suppressed will still be loud and have a sound. This is because compressed air will still leak out of the end of the barrel, you can’t silence a bullet moving extremely fast through the air, and you can’t silence the mechanical parts on a gun. There will be a noise, but it just won’t be as loud or more importantly, alert people in a nearby area that a gun was just fired. SO suppressor is a much more accurate term technically speaking. 

• There are different kinds of suppressors. One important kind suppresses the muzzle flash. It’s likely a sniper would use this more than they would want to use a sound suppressor, as the muzzle flash more easily enables you to be spotted when you don’t want to be. These are simply referred to as flash suppressors. 

• After a handgun runs out of ammunition, the slide will lock back into place and you will know that it is out. There is no ‘click’ signifying an empty weapon that is so dramatized in movies and tv. A more likely scenario that would prevent a gun from firing would be a jam. Or programming the gun to recognize certain palm prints. 

• A great place for writers, in particular fanfic writers, who want information on guns is imfdb. You can find out what guns are used in movies and shows, and what guns characters use. You can also just search for guns. 

• If you want to get really specific, check out YouTube. There are users who will post reviews of guns on there, which can be really helpful if you want to see how a particular gun looks or how to shoot it. 

So yeah! Here are just a few basic tips if you want to write a fic where a character uses guns. 

chaperoned:

I really didn’t want to do homework so here are some quick and dirty tricks for revising your writing – especially if you write fanfiction. It gives you examples of common errors and quick and easy ways to correct them. Big ty for kyrilu for suggestions and sarahdoesfandom for letting me steal some examples off her (go read their fic – it’s amazing). And remember: sharing is caring.

[x] indicates a link with further information!

Redundancy & Wordiness
Avoid repeating words/phrases within a sentence and as well as using redundant sentence structure. [x]

Repeating Words. Don’t repeat the same word in one sentence (or several times in sentences close by).

• In January, Tony Stark and Loki go skiing in Canada. You don’t want to use ‘in’ twice (besides that, ‘in January’ and ‘in Canada’ are both prepositional phrases). So, you might change this to ‘Each January, Tony Stark and Loki go skiing in Canada’.

Read More

missturdle:

• So You Want to Write a Fantasy: Writing Female Characters
• So You want to Write a Fantasy: Culture
•  SYWTWAF: Writing What you Don’t know
•  A list of adjectives to describe physical attributes, Or, As it turns out, I could go to Starbucks with half this list
• Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack
•  Some primers
•  More Primers
•  RaceFail ‘09: Or where Deepad’s I didn’t dream of Dragons comes from, and why.
•  Writing characters of Color
•   Writing Outside your experience
• Media Representations Wiki – stereotypes/tropes/culture/etc
•  On A:TLA’s whitewashing – All The World’s White, the Rest of Us merely live in it
• The Face of the Other: Do Manga & Anime characters look “white”?
• Describing Characters of Color pt 1 & Describing Characters of Color (pt 2)
•  I Didn’t Dream of Dragons
•  Shame
•  So You Want to: Avoid Unfortunate Implications
•  Transracial Writing for the Sincere
•  Why Writing Colorblind is Writing White
• What a Girl Wants: Representation
•  An Equal Place at the Table
•  Avoiding LGBTQ Stereotypes
• The Problem With Colorblindness (and the Rest of Racebending.com)
•  Making Movies for White People: A Tongue in Cheek critique of Minority Representation in the Media, or lack thereof
•  From Margin to Center: Writing Characters of Color via Racialicious
•  Writing Characters of Color – a helpful community!
•  Why my Protagonists aren’t white (even though I am.)
•  The Dangers of Telling a Single Story (a helpful Video)
•  The Lack of People of Color in Historical Fictions
•  How to Read and Respond to Literature of Color
•  The Advantages of being a White Writer (in getting published)
•  Writing Characters of Colour (Now With 10% Less White Liberal Anxiety!)
•  Fic and Skin Tone (discusses Nyota Uhura, otherwise relevant)
•  On Problematic Writing
•  Writing Race in YA fiction: Debunking Myths
•  Diversity Writers: How to Write People of Color
•  The Importance of Inclusionary Writing
•  Racialicious
•  Overcoming the Noble Savage and the Sexy Squaw: Native Steampunk
•  The Intersection of Race and Steampunk: Colonialism’s After-Effects & Other Stories, from a Steampunk of Colour’s Perspective
•  Beyond Victoriana: For EVERYTHING Steampunk/1800s/Industrial Revolution that isn’t just Victorian England and the archives Tales of the Urban Adventurer
•  Can I just watch A Game of Thrones in Peace? (A brown feminist fan rant).
• Fantasy and Sci-Fi race Bingo
• Invoking Strangely Colored people
• Many Voices
• AfroFuturism, SciFi, and the History of the Future
• Some Open Thoughts on Race & Dsyutopia
• When Will White People Stop Making Movies like Avatar?
• Portraying POC in YA Fantasy: Are we There Yet?
• Debunking White Fantasy
• Racism in Fantasy
• Magical Realism is Fantasy written in Spanish.

1.) It’s not hard to figure out what to do, there are plenty of resources.

People say you have to get it right, do your research, but … what else are you supposed to research? It’s not like people with more pigment in their skin have completely different personalities than those with less, any more than any individual. It’s frustrating when I can’t even figure out what the heck people are talking about.

Bam. Research step one done for you.

2.) Writing characters of color/minorities is a good thing.

I don’t like the notion that fantasy authors are under some kind of obligation to present ethnically diverse worlds. I’m English, and a fair sized part of English history consists of unwashed beardy white people in mead halls. If I’m inspired by my own history and cultural heritage, then that’s what I’m damn well going to write about. I’m not writing about some other culture just to appease the people who think there aren’t enough black characters in fantasy, or whatever. You want it, you write it. Nothing to do with me.

You’re wrong.

3.) Your all White Fantasy Land Didn’t Exist in Real Life:

…the rather medieval one has more diversity than real medieval Germany probably had […] In a world with medieval means of transport, it just doesn’t seem natural to me to mix dark-skinned people with blue-eyed blondes in one setting. I just try to give the people a colour that fits the place where they live.

You mean like the people from Africa and the Middle east who began to take over Southern Spain, as well as the Jews who were pretty well spread out throughout Europe, the Middle Easterners they would have met on the Crusades, and the incoming Mongol Hordes who spread to the very edges of Eastern Europe before the empire finally collapsed? Don’t forget that Turkey is right there, and the silk road would have gone from Song Dynasty China, through India, and ended in Turkey before moving further westwards into places like Germany. Also the attempts at the Franco-Mongol alliance would have been pretty interesting. (That’s about the 13th century – arguably smack dab in Middle Ages Europe and definite contact between France/Christian Europe and the Mongolian Empire.)

Unless you’re writing everything in the far reaches of Denmark or something, historically speaking, I call bullshit on people who have societies that are only all white ever, because it’s just inaccurate. Consider the relative closeness of Northern Africa to Spain, or Turkey to the rest of Europe, the conquests of Alexander the Great, the Crusades, Slavery existing in Europe, including England, the slave trade, imperialism, Pax Mongolica, The Silk Road, Jewish Diaspora, the Islamic Empire vs The Holy Roman Empire, Egypt, Algeria, China’s sailing across the world, The Maruyan/Gupta Empires of India, tea trades, Columbus sailing in hopes of finding China, etc, etc, etc.

4.) I mean I just don’t believe you anymore. It’s unrealistic. Seriously guys.

You’d think I’d just denied the holocaust or something. Get a grip. All I said was that I’m going to write about my own cultural experience and anyone who thinks I should do otherwise for the sake of political correctness can bugger off.

This isn’t even about being PC this is just not being wrong about everything.

good lord.

fuckyeahcharacterdevelopment:

Hello fellow writers! So I was looking through some of Miss Turdle’s posts and while I think she brought up some good points, some of her information is just a tad wrong. Also, since I imagine lots of you are writing about fantasy societies  I thought I could share my knowledge about Ancient Egypt with you guys as well 😀

Miss Turdle definitely has the heart of her argument right– saying that all of one race or one people have the same beliefs is invalid– but the way shes says it is what lead to confusion.

First of all, if you want to know ANYTHING about medieval society or history in general, PBS and shows from the old History Channel are king.

http://www.pbs.org/godinamerica/people/catholic-church.html Bam! Everything you wanted to know about Catholicism and Medieval Europe in general. Catholicism controlled Europe for hundreds and hundreds of years. They led the Crusades, the Pope was the most powerful figure ever… Catholicism was da boss in Medieval Europe. So Miss Turdle’s argument that having one religion for an empire will lead to ruin is incorrect, and Catholicism did not lead to the ruin of Europe– the sameness kept Europe intact. It was the schisms that broke it apart.

Now, I also happen to be taking a Hieroglyphs class and I have been in love with Ancient Egyptian society since I could read, so let me say to you: religion is a VERY powerful force, especially for Ancient Egypt. It’s what united Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt. Their first and foremost creation story, of Osiris, Set, and Horus, is burned into Egyptian memory and lore and represents the uniting of the two kingdoms. Their unification marks the start of the Middle Kingdom, which was the most powerful and prosperous time of Ancient Egypt. Their religion never changed for the thousands of years that they survived. It only died with the takeover of the Roman Empire.

Btw, if you guys have any questions about Ancient Egypt, do feel free to let me know!

writeworld:

writeworld:

Anonymous asked: I was looking through the archives and I couldn’t really find anything pertaining to this but you wouldn’t happen to have any resources for language creation, would you?

I think I might have some cool stuff for you.

• The Language Construction Kit by Mark Rosenfelder
• How to create a language by Pablo David Flores
• How to create a language in one day by Mikael Säker
• Fantasy Language Creation for Fiction Writers by M
• Creating fictional language(s) (this is a forum)
• Notes on Language Creation by Dave
• How to Create Your Own Language by The Council of Elrond
• How to Build a Language by Donald J. Harlow
• Constructed Langauge and Fictional Language from Wikipedia
• Creating and Using Fictional Languages in Your Writing from fmwriters
• Fictionary versus Con Lang from TV Tropes

You could also check out:

• The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature by Steven Pinker  
• On Language: Chomsky’s Classic Works Language and Responsibility and Reflections on Language in One Volume by Noam Chomsky

Thank you for your question, and I hope that helps!

-C