just a friendly reminder that inflated phrases aren’t always a bad thing. the voice of a character, or the tone of a scene, or the emotion and pace, etc, can actually benefit from inflation.
and concise phrases/words aren’t always a good thing. tone, voice, emotion, pace.
IT MATTERS.
Characters and Plot
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
- Have them make decisions and choices.
- 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
Ways for the author to directly intervene in the story >: (
- Prophecies
- Ancient tales
- Intuition
- “Sudden urges”
- Orders from the boss/leader/etc
- Things the gods say
- Governmental edicts
If you use any of these, take care to see that the government or the gods or whoever sends prophecies to seers has an agenda beyond “advance the plot.” Otherwise, you might as well waltz into the pages of your story and push your characters into place.
Tagging this in writing advice because I hate it when this happens in stories.
Thought it deserved a screencap.
Merlin’s quick guide to writing trans*characters without being an ass
writing specific characters - advice
- a young character
- a character who lost someone important
- a flirtatious character
- a villain (2) (3) (4)
- a character based on yourself
- a hit man or mercenary
- an indifferent character
- a bitchy character
- a gay character
- a dancer
- a vampire
- a pansexual character
- a character on the police force
- a drunk character
- a manipulative character
- a friends with benefits relationship
- a natural born leader (2)
- a nice character
- a british character
- a character with a baby
- an assassin
- a character with night terrors
- a rich character
- a witty character
Antagonist Prompt: A Big One
I titled this ‘a big one’ because it seems so necessary to think about. This is a prompt about character flaws. I’m not talking about pet peeve habits or petty flaws. This is “A Big One” type post. So.
- Does your antagonist have character flaws?
- What are they? For example, one of Harry Potter’s character flaws was also used as a strength, but he had a hero complex.
- Is this character flaw completely negative? (Gaius Balter’s extreme victim complex in Battlestar Galactica)
- Or is this character flaw also a strength?
- How does this flaw affect their storyline?
- How does this flaw affect others? Is it a fatal flaw?
- Is this flaw an Achilles’ heel?
- How does your protagonist view if this flaw if the protagonist is aware of it?
Writing Child Characters
A couple of weeks ago I made a post on writing teenagers, I don’t believe we’ve made a post on child characters recently. So here we go!
Child characters are different to adult characters for several reasons which are stated below. However these differences should make no difference to how you develop your character. A child character has likes and dislikes and both positive and negative traits.
Innocence
Depending on the age of your child character and the life they have led, they will be more innocent to your adult characters. This does not mean they think that everything is nice and fuzzy but that they aren’t aware of a lot of the evils of the world. You have to be careful how you play innocence, for example I bet most 9/10 year old know exactly what sex is. So think carefully about how you portray this!
Naivety
Children are naive, this does NOT mean stupid. They have less world experience and have no independence so they haven’t really seen everything in the world. This makes them naive to other cultures other people. How naive they are depends on their age, personality and background.
Impulsive
Children are more impulsive than adults. We learn through making mistakes and children are still learning (aren’t we all). So children are more likely to display impulsive behaviour. This involves saying exactly what they think. Small children of 5/6 don’t really have a dam, they just say what pops into their head.
Intelligence
Children aren’t stupid. In fact you can have a pretty good conversation with a small child and be surprised what they say. But children haven’t learnt as much as adults and their knowledge grows as they do. Intelligence however isn’t just what they know but how they apply it.
Dialogue
Dialogue is where you are going to slip up with your child characters. This could be by making the language too mature or not mature enough. You need to know before you start writing how a child would talk, you may have to do research for this.
It’s hard to remember what we talked like when we were that age so you may need to talk to others, watch some movies with children and read books to see how other authors have portrayed characters of a similar age.
So how do I make my child character realistic?
Research!!! If you know friends or family with young children spend some time with them, see how they interact with others and take special notice to how they speak and what words they use. The wording in dialogue is the kicker in making children realistic.
Think back to when you were a child or look at family videos, how did you act around family? How did you play?
Mibba: Writing Realistic Children
Writing Child Characters for Adults
Writing from a childs perspective (forum)
Writing from a unique perspective
The voice is the most difficult part of any character development and finding a voice for your child character is even harder. But if you can find the right voice that suits the age of your character then that’s fantastic. Don’t be put off if you don’t get it right in the first few tries, keep trying.I look forward to seeing more children characters in your works :)
Hope this has been useful to some of you!!!
-S
Goody, someone was asking and all I know about kids is based on childcare and I may have a lot of the time compared them to puppies. Enjoy, dears. -Evvy
Things I wish I’d see more in YA books but don’t so fuck it I’ll do it myself
Characters:
- a main character who isn’t interested in romance/doesn’t pursue a romance/doesn’t end up in a romantic relationship
- characters who are overweight but are not characterized simply as ‘the fat one’
- same as the above but for LGBT characters
- and again for all ethnic characters
- adults who actually do stuff rather than take a backseat as the teens run around and save the day
- well-developed villains with understandable motives who have an actual chance of succeeding
Issues:
- the importance of friendships when your family unit is broken/unstable
- coping with depression/anxiety/suicidal thoughts- realistically.
- how a person can be strong without being physically powerful or slapping a different person in the face every week
- that crying doesn’t make you weak, no matter who you are
- supporting someone else’s right to believe what they want, even though you might personally think it’s a load of rubbish
- how love isn’t all heartfelt confessions and spontaneous french-kissing
- the importance of having the courage to let go of the things and people who are bad for you— even if you love them. Even if they’re family.
- doing well in school is fine, but if you fail you can still be successful in life
- how good people can do bad things sometimes and what to do when your entire impression of a person is wrong
- that death is something that happens, but not something to fear
- that sexuality, gender and religion don’t matter, it’s what a person does that matters.
- that being in a relationship is not the only thing in life that matters
And there are so many more things that I’d like to see as well. I’m just so tired of seeing the usual “fitting in isn’t always important!” and “be yourself, kids!” messages in YA books, coupled with a disgusting amount of “Be in a relationship or your life means nothing!”.
Teenagers know that fitting in isn’t important, and they know they’re supposed to “be themselves”. The problem is that they’re teenagers and they’re not going to know who they are for another ten years- and even then it keeps on changing and changing until you’re dead!
I’m turning twenty next month, and while I may end my teenage years relatively unscathed, I have friends who aren’t so lucky. They’ve been given hard lives that you only see in books, TV and movies for the sake of drama. We need YA authors to take a break from writing these cheap, pandering books about ‘that cute, mysterious guy who just enrolled in class’ that they think “empower” teenagers, and actually write something that could help them. That could’ve helped my friends. That could’ve helped me.
You can change lives with your writing. You can do it. All of us can.
For all the writers out there, you’d be doing a great service to keep this on file, and keep it in mind.
(Source: voldlyvisceral)
