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Writing Tip

because I see this everywhere and most people don’t know about it. The hyphen(-), the en-dash(–) and the em-dash(—) are three completely different things with completely different uses. If you write fanfiction, it’s likely that your readers won’t care, but if you want to submit a manuscript for publishing, you need to know the difference. 

The hyphen (-) is the basic symbol you find on your keyboard, and it’s meant to only be used for hyphenated words (well-being, two-thirds). 

The en-dash (–) is a slightly longer dash. It’s usually the width of an uppercase N, hence the name. You can find it by looking through the ‘insert symbol’ option in MS word or many word processors, and it is meant to be used to show a particular distance, or for intervals (May–August, 1900–1916, pages 12–22)

The em-dash (—) is what people most commonly use, but they refer to it as a hyphen. It’s the longest dash, about the size of an uppercase letter M, and you can either find it through the list of symbols in your word processor, or some word processors actually automatically transform two hyphens (–) into an em-dash  (—). It is meant to be used as a break in the sentence, in a place where a comma, semicolon or colon would normally be used or as a break in dialogue. (Her niece—the daughter of her oldest sister—is the one over there.) 

*All three types of dashes are normally meant to be used without any spaces on either side of the dash. 

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Injury angst for writing dummies.

Hospitals and injury are always such a staple of angst fics, but 9 times out of 10 the author has clearly never been in an emergency situation and the scenes always come off as over-dramatized and completely unbelievable. So here’s a crash course on hospital life and emergencies for people who want authenticity. By someone who spends 85% of her time in a hospital. 

Emergency Departments/Ambulances.

Lights and sirens are usually reserved for the actively dying. Unless the person is receiving CPR, having a prolonged seizure or has an obstructed airway, the ambulance is not going to have lights and sirens blaring. I have, however, seen an ambulance throw their lights on just so they can get back to the station faster once. Fuckers made me late for work.

Defibrillators don’t do that. You know, that. People don’t go flying off the bed when they get shocked. But we do scream “CLEAR!!” before we shock the patient. Makes it fun.

A broken limb, surprisingly, is not a high priority for emergency personnel. Not unless said break is open and displaced enough that blood isn’t reaching a limb. And usually when it’s that bad, the person will have other injuries to go with it.

Visitors are not generally allowed to visit a patient who is unstable. Not even family. It’s far more likely that the family will be stuck outside settling in for a good long wait until they get the bad news or the marginally better news. Unless it’s a child. But if you’re writing dying children in your fics for the angst factor, I question you sir. 

Unstable means ‘not quite actively dying, but getting there’. A broken limb, again, is not unstable. Someone who came off their motorbike at 40mph and threw themselves across the bitumen is. 

CPR is rarely successful if someone needs it outside of hospital. And it is hard fucking work. Unless someone nearby is certified in advanced life support, someone who needs CPR is probably halfway down the golden tunnel moving towards the light. 

Emergency personnel ask questions. A lot of questions. So many fucking questions. They don’t just take their next victim and rush off behind the big white doors into the unknown with just a vague ‘WHAT HAPPENED? SHE HIT HER HEAD?? DON’T WORRY SIR!!!’ They’re going to get the sir and ask him so many questions about what happened that he’s going to go cross eyed. And then he’s going to have to repeat it to the doctor. And then the ICU consultant. And the police probably. 

In a trauma situation (aka multiple injuries (aka car accident, motorbike accident, falling off a cliff, falling off a horse, having a piano land on their head idfk you get the idea)) there are a lot of people involved. A lot. I can’t be fucked to go through them all, but there’s at least four doctors, the paramedics, five or six nurses, radiographers, surgeons, ICU consultants, students, and any other specialities that might be needed (midwives, neonatal transport, critical retrieval teams etc etc etc). There ain’t gonna be room to breathe almost when it comes to keeping someone alive.

Emergency departments are a life of their own so you should probably do a bit of research into what might happen to your character if they present there with some kind of illness or injury before you go ahead and scribble it down.

Wards

Nurses run them. No seriously. The patient will see the doctor for five minutes in their day. The nurse will do the rest. Unless the patient codes.

There is never a defibrillator just sitting nearby if a patient codes. 

And we don’t defibrillate every single code. 

If the code does need a defibrillator, they need CPR.

And ICU. 

They shouldn’t be on a ward. 

There are other people who work there too. Physiotherapists will always see patients who need rehab after breaking a limb. Usually legs, because they need to be shown how to use crutches properly.

Wards are separated depending on what the patient’s needs are. Hospitals aren’t separated into ICU, ER and Ward. It’s usually orthopaedic, cardiac, neuro, paediatric, maternity, neonatal ICU, gen surg, short stay surg, geriatric, palliative…figure out where your patient is gonna be. The care they get is different depending on where they are.

ICU.

A patient is only in ICU if they’re at risk of active dying. I swear to god if I see one more broken limb going into ICU in a fic to rank up the angst factor I’m gonna shit. It doesn’t happen. Stop being lazy. 

Tubed patients can be awake. True story. They can communicate too. Usually by writing, since having a dirty great tube down the windpipe tends to impede ones ability to talk. 

The nursing care is 1:1 on an intubated patient. Awake or not, the nurse is not gonna leave that room. No, not even to give your stricken lover a chance to say goodbye in private. There is no privacy. Honestly, that nurse has probably seen it all before anyway. 

ICU isn’t just reserved for intubated patients either. Major surgeries sometimes go here post-op to get intensive care before they’re stepped down. And by major I mean like, grandpa joe is getting his bladder removed because it’s full of cancer. 

Palliative patients and patients who are terminal will not go to ICU. Not unless they became terminally ill after hitting ICU. Usually those ones are unexpected deaths. Someone suffering from a long, slow, gradually life draining illness will probably go to a general ward for end of life care. They don’t need the kind of intensive care an ICU provides because…well..they’re not going to get it??

Operations.

No one gets rushed to theatre for a broken limb. Please stop. They can wait for several days before they get surgery on it. 

Honestly? No one gets ‘rushed’ to theatre at all. Not unless they are, again, actively dying, and surgery is needed to stop them from actively dying. 

Except emergency caesarians. Them babies will always get priority over old mate with the broken hip. A kid stuck in a birth canal and at risk of death by pelvis is a tad more urgent than a gall stone. And the midwives will run. I’ve never seen anyone run as fast as a midwife with a labouring woman on the bed heading to theatres for an emergency caesar.

Surgery doesn’t take as long as you think it does. Repairing a broken limb? Two hours, maybe three tops. Including time spent in recovery. Burst appendix? Half an hour on the table max, maybe an hour in recovery. Caesarian? Forty minutes or so. Major surgeries (organs like kidneys, liver and heart transplants, and major bowel surgeries) take longer. 

You’re never going to see the theatre nurses. Ever. They’re like their own little community of fabled myth who get to come to work in their sweatpants and only deal with unconscious people. It’s the ward nurse who does the pick up and drop offs. 

Anyway there’s probably way, way more that I’m forgetting to add but this is getting too long to keep writing shit. The moral of the story is do some research so you don’t look like an idiot when you’re writing your characters getting injured or having to be in hospital. It’s not Greys Anatomy in the real world and the angst isn’t going to be any more intense just because you’re writing shit like it is. 

Peace up.

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All About Writing Fight Scenes

@galaxies-are-my-ink asked,

“Do you have any advice on writing fight scenes? The type of scene I’m writing is mostly hand to hand combat between two experts. I’m definitely not an expert so when I try to write it, the scene ends up sounding repetitive and dull.”

Fore note: This post is coauthored by myself and one of my amazing critique partners, Barik S. Smith, who both writes fantastic fight scenes and teaches mixed martial arts, various artistic martial arts, and weapons classes.

I (Bryn) will tell you a secret: I trained MMA for seven years, and when I write authentic hand to hand fight scenes, they sound dull too. 

The problem with fight scenes in books is that trying to describe each punch and kick and movement (especially if it’s the only thing you’re describing) creates a fight that feels like it’s in slow motion. 

I write…

Lowering her center of gravity, she held her right hand tight to her face and threw a jab towards his chin. He shifted his weight, ducking under her punch. His hair brushed against her fist, and he stepped forward, launching a shovel hook into her exposed side.

But your brain can only read so fast. In real life that series of events would take an instant, but I needed a full eight seconds to read and comprehend it, which gave it an inherent lethargic feel. 

So, we have two primary problems:

How do we describe this fight in a way the reader can understand and keep track of? 

How do we maintain a fast paced, interesting fight once we’ve broken down the fight far enough for readers to understand it? 

(We will get back to these, I promise.) But for now, let’s look at…

Different types of “fight scenes:”

Keep reading

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All About Writing Dreams.

anonymous asked:

I’m having trouble writing a scene where the character is dreaming. The thing is the chapter opens up with the dream so neither the character nor the reader know that it’s a dream and I’ve no idea how to give the scene lucid feel of dreaming and I’m also having some trouble of have to transition smoothly from the dream to the character waking up :/

I take it what you have is a situation where the reader assumes the dream is the real world at first, but as stranger and stranger things happen, they slowly grow to understand it’s not real, until it’s undeniably a dream. Some pros and cons of this type of dream sequence are:

You don’t have to shove any dream-like things into the opening of the dream.

The reader has a sense of accomplishment for figuring out it’s a dream.

Alternatively, the reader may feel cheated if they don’t figure out it’s a dream by the time the dream ends.

If you so desire, you can transition into waking by having the dreamer realizes the dream is too weird to be real.

Your other options here are to:

1) Present the dream as a dream upfront, which you could do either by writing the character falling asleep, or by very specific inclusion of dream-like places and actions at the very beginning of the dream.

2) Not let the reader understand that the dream is a dream until after the dreamer wakes. This bares the issue that there really isn’t much in the way of a dream-like world which you can create, because it will be obvious to the reader that something is off. Dreams in all mediums of storytelling are too widely used to reasonably create a world which feels like a dream without the reader/viewer jumping to the conclusion that it is, in fact, a dream.

A list of some of the things I associate with dreaming, and with the world of dreams:

Keep reading

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10 outline techniques for writers

With this post I listed 10 outline techniques to help writes move their story from a basic idea to a complete set of arcs, plots, sequences and/or scenes. Or to simply expand whatever you have in hands right now.

If you have a vague story idea or a detailed one, this post is for you to both discover and organize. A few technique will work perfectly. A few won’t. Your mission is to find the one that works best for you. That said, I advice you to try out as many techniques as possible.

So, are you ready? Open your notebook, or your digital document, and let’s start.

1. Snowflake method: Start with a one-sentence description of the novel. Then, develop this simple phrase into a paragraph. Your next step is to write a one-page summary based on the paragraph, you can write about characters, motivations, goals, plots, options, whatever you feel like. From this point on, you can either start your book or expand the one-page summary into four pages. And, at last, four pages into a brief description of known sequences of scenes. Your goal is to make the story more and more complex as you add information, much like a forming snowflake.  

2. Chapter by chapter: List ten to twenty chapters, give each chapter a tittle and a brief description of what should happen. Then, break each chapter into three to five basic sequences of scenes. Give each sequence a title, a brief description and a short list of possibilities (possibilities of dialogues, scenarios, outcomes, moods, feelings… just play around with possibilities). From this point on, you can either create the scenes of sequences with a one-sentence description for each or jump straight to writing. Your goal is to shift from the big picture to a detail-oriented point of view.

3. Script: This might sound crazy, but, with this technique, you will write the screenplay of your story as if it’s a movie. No strings attached to creative writing, just plain actions and dialogues with basic information. Writing a script will take time, maybe months, but it will also enlighten your project like no other technique. Your goal is to create a cinematic view of your story. How to write a script here. 

4. Free writing: No rules, no format, no step, just grab a pen or prepare your fingers to write down whatever idea that comes up. Think of possibilities, characters, places, quests, journeys, evolutions, symbolisms, fears, good moments, bad moments, clothing, appearances. Complete five to ten pages. Or even more. The more you write, the more you will unravel. You can even doodle, or paste images. Your mission is to explore freely.

5. Tag: This technique is ideal if you have just a vague idea of the story. Start by listing ten to fifteen tags related to the story. Under each tag, create possible plots. And, under each plot, create possible scenes. Grab a red felt pen and circle plots and scenes that sparkle your interest.

6.  Eight-point arc: With this technique you will divide your story into eight stages. They are Stasis, Trigger, Quest, Surprise, Critical Choice, Climax, Reversal and Resolution. The Stasis is the every-day-life of your main character. Trigger is an event that will change the every-day-life of your character (for better or for worse). Quest is a period of your main characters trying to find a new balance, a new every-day-life (because we all love a good routine). Surprise will take your character away from their new found every-day-life. Critical Choice is a point of no return, a dilemma, your character will have to make the hardest decision out of two outcomes, both equally important. Climax is the critical choice put to practice. Reversal is the consequence of the climax, or how the characters evolved. Resolution is the return to a new (or old) every-day-life, a (maybe everlasting) balance.

7. Reverse: Write down a description of how your story ends, what happens to your characters and to those around them. Make it as detailed as possible. Then, move up to the climax, write a short scenario for the highest point of your story. From there, build all the way back to the beginning. 

8. Zigzag: Draw a zigzag with as many up and downs as you want. Every up represents your main character moving closer to their goal. Every down represents your main character moving further from their goal. Fill in your zigzag with sequences that will take your character closer and farther from the goal.

9. Listing: The focus of this technique is exploring new ideas when your story feels empty, short or stagnated. You’ll, basically make lists. Make a long list of plot ideas. Make another list of places and settings. Make a list of elements. And a list of possible characters. Maybe a list of book titles. Or a list of interesting scenes. A list of bad things that could happen inside this universe. A list of good things. A list of symbolism. A list of visual inspiration. A list of absurd ideas you’ll probably never use. Then, gather all this material and circle the good items. Try to organize them into a timeline.

10. Character-driven: Create a character. Don’t worry about anything else. Just think of a character, their appearance and style. Give them a name. Give them a basic personality. Give them a backstory. Develop their personality based on the backstory. Now, give this character a story that mirrors their backstory (maybe a way to overcome the past, or to grow, or to revenge, or to restore). Based on your character’s personality, come up with a few scenes to drive their story from beginning to end. Now, do the same thing for the antagonist and secondary characters.

So, when is it time to stop outlining and start writing?

This is your call. Some writers need as many details as they can get, some need just an basic plot to use as a North. Just remember, an outline is not a strict format, you can and you will improvise along the way. The most important is being comfortable with your story, exploring new ideas, expanding old concepts and, maybe, changing your mind many times. There’s no right or wrong, just follow your intuition.  

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Using the appropriate vocabulary in your novel

It is very important that the language in your novel reflects the time and place in which the story is set.

For example, my story is set in Italy. My characters would never “ride shotgun”, a term coined in US in the early 1900s referring to riding alongside the driver with a shotgun to gun bandits. 

Do your research! A free tool that I found to be very useful is Ngram Viewer. 

You can type any word and see when it started appearing in books. For example…one of my characters was going to say “gazillion” (I write YA) in 1994. Was “gazillion” used back then?

And the answer is…YES! It started trending in 1988 and was quite popular in 1994.

Enjoy ^_^

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How to Plot a Complex Novel in One Day

Now first, I have to say, that the plot you’re able to come up with in one day is not going to be without its flaws, but coming up with it all at once, the entire story unfolds right in front of you and makes you want to keep going with it. So, where to begin?

What is your premise and basic plot? Pick your plot. I recommend just pulling one from this list. No plots are “original” so making yours interesting and complicated will easily distract from that fact, that and interesting characters. Characters will be something for you to work on another day, because this is plotting day. You’ll want the main plot to be fairly straight forward, because a confusing main plot will doom you if you want subplots.

Decide who the characters will be. They don’t have to have names at this point. You don’t even need to know who they are other than why they have to be in the story. The more characters there are the more complicated the plot will be. If you intend to have more than one subplot, then you’ll want more characters. Multiple interconnected subplots will give the illusion that the story is very complicated and will give the reader a lot of different things to look at at all times. It also gives you the chance to develop many side characters. The plot I worked out yesterday had 13 characters, all were necessary. Decide their “roles” don’t bother with much else. This seems shallow, but this is plot. Plot is shallow.

Now, decide what drives each character. Why specifically are they in this story? You can make this up. You don’t even know these characters yet. Just so long as everyone has their own motivations, you’re in the clear.

What aren’t these characters giving away right off the bat? Give them a secret! It doesn’t have to be something that they are actively lying about or trying to hide, just find something that perhaps ties them into the plot or subplot. This is a moment to dig into subplot. This does not need to be at all connected to their drive to be present in the story.  Decide who is in love with who, what did this person do in the 70’s that’s coming back to bite them today, and what continues to haunt what-his-face to this very day. This is where you start to see the characters take shape. Don’t worry much about who they are or what they look like, just focus on what they’re doing to the story.

What is going to change these characters? Now this will take some thinking. Everyone wants at least a few of the characters to come out changed by the end of the story, so think, how will they be different as a result of the plot/subplot? It might not be plot that changes them, but if you have a lot of characters, a few changes that are worked into the bones of the plot might help you.

Now list out the major events of the novel with subplot in chronological order. This will be your timeline. Especially list the historical things that you want to exist in backstory. List everything you can think of. Think about where the story is going. At this point, you likely haven’t focused too much on the main plot, yeah, it’s there, but now really focus on the rising actions, how this main plot builds its conflict, then the climactic moment. Make sure you get all of that in there. This might take a few hours.

Decide where to start writing. This part will take a LOT of thinking. It’s hard! But now that you’ve got the timeline, pick an interesting point to begin at. Something with action. Something relevant. Preferably not at the beginning of your timeline - you want to have huge reveals later on where these important things that happened prior are exposed. This is the point where you think about what information should come out when. This will be a revision of your last list, except instead of being chronological, it exists to build tension.

Once you’ve gotten the second list done, you’ve got a plot. Does it need work? Probably. But with that said, at this point you probably have no idea who half your characters are. Save that for tomorrow, that too will be a lot of work.

Disclaimer for this post.

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A Killer First Chapter

Anonymous asked:

Do you have any advise on how to open a story? I have all my characters and my plot and my conflict and everything but I don’t know how to start. How to keep a reader hooked and interested enough to keep going.

This is a little ironic, because I’m about to rewrite my opening three chapters for The Warlord’s Contact from scratch for about the tenth time. But practice does make perfect, and boy have I learned a lot through this process.

Sometimes you look at a story and you just know how it needs to open. It’s the most obvious choice in the world, and it’s clear why no other option would work.

Unfortunately, that’s not often the case. Usually, the beginning to your book will take preplanning and rewriting and replanning and bit more rewriting, and all the while you’ll never quite be sure you chose the best spot to open to, or the right characters to introduce, or the proper setting. 

Here are a few specific methods of thought for tackling your first chapter…

Keep reading

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Writing Crime

Anonymous asked: I’m doing crime fiction in school and have to write a short story, but I’ve never written crime before and I don’t really know how. Do you have any tips? Maybe something on writing action scenes, creating suspense, and leaving clues? Thanks for any help you can give me!

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Are These Filter Words Weakening Your Story?

After putting my writing on hold for several weeks, I decided to jump back in. I expected to find all sorts of problems with my story–inconsistencies in the plot, lack of transitions, poor characterization–the works. But what began to stick out to me was something to which I’d given little thought in writing.

Filter words.

What are Filter Words?

Actually, I didn’t even know these insidious creatures had a name until I started combing the internet for info.

Filter words are those that unnecessarily filter the reader’s experience through a character’s point of view. Dark Angel’s Blog says:

“Filtering” is when you place a character between the detail you want to present and the reader. The term was started by Janet Burroway in her book On Writing.

In terms of example, you should watch out for:

To see

To hear

To think

To touch

To wonder

To realize

To watch

To look

To seem

To feel (or feel like)

Can

To decide

To sound (or sound like)

To know

I’m being honest when I say my manuscript is filled with these words, and the majority of them need to be edited out.

What do Filter Words Look Like?

Let’s imagine a character in your novel is walking down a street during peak hour.

You might, for example, write:

Sarah felt a sinking feeling as she realized she’d forgotten her purse back at the cafe across the street. She saw cars filing past, their bumpers end-to-end. She heard the impatient honk of horns and wondered how she could quickly cross the busy road before someone took off with her bag. But the traffic seemed impenetrable, and she decided to run to the intersection at the end of the block.

Eliminating the bolded words removes the filters that distances us, the readers, from this character’s experience:

Sarah’s stomach sank. Her purse—she’d forgotten it back at the cafe across the street. Cars filed past, their bumpers end-to-end. Horns honked impatiently. Could she make it across the road before someone took off with her bag? She ran past the impenetrable stream of traffic, toward the intersection at the end of the block.

Are Filter Words Ever Acceptable?

Of course, there are usually exceptions to every rule.

Just because filter words tend to be weak doesn’t mean they never have a place in our writing. Sometimes they are helpful and even necessary.

Susan Dennard of Let The Words Flow writes that we should use filter words when they are critical to the meaning of the sentence.

If there’s no better way to phrase something than to use a filter word, then it’s probably okay to do so.

Want to know more?

Read these other helpful articles on filter words and more great writing tips:

Filter Words and Distancing Point of View

The Reasons Editors reject Manuscripts

Filter Those words and Strengthen Your Writing

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5 Moral Dilemmas That Make Characters and Stories Even Better

Readers can’t resist turning pages when characters are facing tough choices. Use these 5 keys to weave moral dilemmas into your stories–and watch your fiction climb to new heights.

#1: Give Your Character Dueling Desires

Before our characters can face difficult moral decisions, we need to give them beliefs that matter: The assassin has his own moral code not to harm women or children, the missionary would rather die than renounce his faith, the father would sacrifice everything to pay the ransom to save his daughter.

A character without an attitude, without a spine, without convictions, is one who will be hard for readers to cheer for and easy for them to forget.

So, to create an intriguing character facing meaningful and difficult choices, give her two equally strong convictions that can be placed in opposition to each other.

For example: A woman wants (1) peace in her home and (2) openness between her and her husband. So, when she begins to suspect that he’s cheating on her, she’ll struggle with trying to decide whether or not to confront him about it. If she only wanted peace she could ignore the problem; if she only wanted openness she would bring it up regardless of the results. But her dueling desires won’t allow her such a simple solution.

That creates tension.

And tension drives a story forward.

So, find two things that your character is dedicated to and then make him choose between them. Look for ways to use his two desires to force him into doing something he doesn’t want to do.

For instance, a Mennonite pastor’s daughter is killed by a drunk driver. When the man is released on a technicality, does the minister forgive him (and what would that even look like?) or does he take justice into his own hands? In this case, his (1) pacifist beliefs are in conflict with his (2) desire for justice. What does he do?

Good question.

Good tension.

Good drama.

Another example: Your protagonist believes (1) that cultures should be allowed to define their own subjective moralities, but also (2) that women should be treated with the same dignity and respect as men. She can’t stand the thought of women being oppressed by the cultures of certain countries, but she also feels it’s wrong to impose her values on someone else. When she is transplanted to one of those countries, then, what does she do?

Construct situations in which your character’s equally strong convictions are in opposition to each other, and you will create occasions for thorny moral choices.

#2: Put Your Character’s Convictions to the Test

We don’t usually think of it this way, but in a very real sense, to bribe someone is to pay him to go against his beliefs; to extort someone is to threaten him unless he goes against them.

For example:

How much would you have to pay the vegan animal rights activist to eat a steak (bribery)? Or, how would you need to threaten her in order to coerce her into doing it (extortion)?

What would it cost to get the loving, dedicated couple to agree never to see each other again (bribery)? Or, how would you need to threaten them to get them to do so (extortion)?

What would you need to pay the pregnant teenage Catholic girl to convince her to have an abortion (bribery)? What threat could you use to get her to do it (extortion)?

Look for ways to bribe and extort your characters. Don’t be easy on them. As writers we sometimes care about our characters so much that we don’t want them to suffer. As a result we might shy away from putting them into difficult situations.

Guess what?

That’s the exact opposite of what needs to happen in order for our fiction to be compelling.

What’s the worst thing you can think of happening to your character, contextually, within this story? Now, challenge yourself—try to think of something else just as bad, and force your character to decide between the two.

Plumb the depths of your character’s convictions by asking, “How far will s/he go to … ?” and “What would it take for … ?”

(1) How far will Frank go to protect the one he loves?

(2) What would it take for him to stand by and watch the one he loves die when he has the power to save her?

(1) How far will Angie go to find freedom?

(2) What would it take for her to choose to be buried alive?

(1) How far will Detective Rodriguez go to pursue justice?

(2) What would it take for him to commit perjury and send an innocent person to death row?

Ask yourself: What does my character believe in? What priorities does she have? What prejudices does she need to overcome? Then, put her convictions to the ultimate test to make her truest desires and priorities come to the surface.

#3: Force Your Character into a Corner

Don’t give him an easy out. Don’t give him any wiggle room. Force him to make a choice, to act. He cannot abstain. Take him through the process of dilemma, choice, action and consequence:

(1) Something that matters must be at stake.

(2) There’s no easy solution, no easy way out.

(3) Your character must make a choice. He must act.

(4) That choice deepens the tension and propels the story forward.

(5) The character must live with the consequences of his decisions and actions.

If there’s an easy solution there’s no true moral dilemma. Don’t make one of the choices “the lesser of two evils”; after all, if one is lesser, it makes the decision easier.

For example, say you’ve taken the suggestion in the first key above and forced your character to choose between honoring equal obligations. He could be caught between loyalty to two parties, or perhaps be torn between his family obligations and his job responsibilities. Now, raise the stakes—his marriage is at risk and so is his job, but he can’t save them both. What does he do?

The more imminent you make the choice and the higher the stakes that decision carries, the sharper the dramatic tension and the greater your readers’ emotional engagement. To achieve this, ask “What if?” and the questions that naturally follow:

What if she knows that being with the man she loves will cause him to lose his career? How much of her lover’s happiness would she be willing to sacrifice to be with him?

What if an attorney finds herself defending someone she knows is guilty? What does she do? What if that person is her best friend?

What if your character has to choose between killing himself or being forced to watch a friend die?

Again, make your character reevaluate his beliefs, question his assumptions and justify his choices. Ask yourself: How is he going to get out of this? What will he have to give up (something precious) or take upon himself (something painful) in the process?

Explore those slippery slopes. Delve into those gray areas. Avoid questions that elicit a yes or no answer, such as: “Is killing the innocent ever justified?” Instead, frame the question in a way that forces you to take things deeper: “When is killing the innocent justified?” Rather than, “Does the end justify the means?” ask, “When does the end justify the means?”

#4: Let the Dilemmas Grow From the Genre

Examine your genre and allow it to influence the choices your character must face. For instance, crime stories naturally lend themselves to exploring issues of justice and injustice: At what point do revenge and justice converge? What does that require of this character? When is preemptive justice really injustice?

Love, romance and relationship stories often deal with themes of faithfulness and betrayal: When is it better to hide the truth than to share it? How far can you shade the truth before it becomes a lie? When do you tell someone a secret that would hurt him? For example, your protagonist, a young bride-to-be, has a one-night stand. She feels terrible because she loves her fiancé, but should she tell him what happened and shatter him—and perhaps lose him—or keep the truth hidden?

Fantasy, myth and science fiction are good venues for exploring issues of consciousness, humanity and morality: How self-aware does something need to be (an animal, a computer, an unborn baby) before it should be afforded the same rights as fully developed humans? At what point does destroying an AI computer become murder? Do we really have free will or are our choices determined by our genetic makeup and environmental cues?

#5: Look the Third Way

You want your readers to be thinking, I have no idea how this is going to play out. And then, when they see where things go, you want them to be satisfied.

There’s a story in the Bible about a time religious leaders caught a woman committing adultery and brought her to Jesus. In those days, in that culture, adultery was an offense that was punishable by death. The men asked Jesus what they should do with this woman. Now, if Jesus had told them to simply let her go free he would have been contravening the law; if, however, he told them to put her to death, he would have undermined his message of “forgiveness and mercy.”

It seemed like a pretty good trap, until he said, “Whoever is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone.”

Nicely done.

I call this finding the Third Way. It’s a solution that’s consistent with the character’s attitude, beliefs and priorities, while also being logical and surprising.

We want the solutions that our heroes come up with to be unexpected and inevitable.

Present yours with a seemingly impossible conundrum.

And then help him find the Third Way out.

I hope this helped! I’ve been really busy today, seeing how my mom had surgery and I’ve been trying to continue writing my novel today as well. I thought I’d squeeze in some more stuff for you guys!

If you have any questions or just want to talk, feel free to visit my ask box!

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This is a thing that I did. It’s a chart to help you write fight scenes! If you have any questions, feel free to shoot me an ask.

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I’m sorry but this is straight up bullshit.

“whiteness by nature puts itself first”

“white saviour”

bitch, what?

I agree you have to research. You have to research everything in order to get it right but research has nothing to do with skin colour.

I’m sick of 

a. being blamed form not having enough representation or 

b. being blamed because your representation is “not good enough”

I encourage writers to write both what they know and don’t know and learn from their mistakes. Research until you’re happy with the information you've gathered from reliable sources and write. You want representation in your books/stories/fics? Research it, write it. Don’t want any? Don’t let anyone bring you down for writing what you know/want/love.

So You Want To Save The World From Bad Representation

Stop.

Wait a minute. Realize we can’t fill your cup for you.

Wanting to stop bad representation is all well and good. It’s noble! But just as fetishization can turn “I love this culture” into a negative because you actually love your idea of the culture, wanting to save the world from bad representation can also turn very negative.

Why? Because you want to play saviour to PoC.

We don’t need a saviour. Chances are, we’ve already written about the issue you want to write about. In your valiant effort to give accurate representation, tripping over yourself to ask what’s okay, what to avoid, how you can properly write this situation, how you can be a Good Ally and get cookies and generally stop being a White Person that’s discussed whenever PoC talk about racism… you add to the burden of emotional labour instead of detract from it.

You’re putting your own desire for immediate knowledge above everything else.

Instead of turning to Google and educating yourself, instead of going through our guides over and over again, instead of educating yourself across an extended period of time, instead of searching for authors of colour you can lift up, you want answers to your questions right now so you can stop being a White Person and just be a white person.

You won’t stop being a White Person overnight. You will not go from 0 to Passable Representation thanks to one question and one conversation. Even if we were to give you a list of what to avoid (which, honestly, our blog is a very large list of exactly that), it would still take you years of noticing your own behaviour to change. 

Take for example our most recent correction: using a Chinese example when the ask was about Tibet. Despite a fair chunk of education and several posts about how much China has taken over lands that do not want to be taken over by China, that mistake was still made. 

And that’s with education. That’s with knowing, intellectually, the context of China/Tibet relations. If you’re jumping in from scratch having only taken in enough racism education— enough to know you should be representing diverse cultures, not enough to know where to start— you’re going to make even worse mistakes.

That isn’t to say you shouldn’t start learning! But recognize it is a process, and that wanting to save the world isn’t a sustainable reason to educate yourself and write good representation. You probably shouldn’t jump straight into the deepest depths of representation right away.

So What Can I Do?

Write stories you think are worth telling because they’re interesting stories, not because you want to “prove” how good/interesting they are. Write stories you are curious about, instead of picking the most under-represented group you can think of. Make sure your drive is from curiosity, not white saviour. You shouldn’t be trying to prove to everyone these stories are worthwhile; you’re very likely to fall into model minority because you don’t want to show anything “bad.”

Signal boost stories PoC have already written. You are not the first person to write about an issue, and chances are authors of colour have done it better. You can use your white privilege to lift up PoC narratives, bringing them to a new audience. Look through #OwnVoices or #WeNeedDiverseBooks as a starting place. Give value to authors of colour writing about their own culture, their own world, instead of thinking the value comes from your outsider take on it.

Realize you’re going to have to start small: background characters, adding diversity to friend groups, having more than one of any ethnicity to avoid tokenism. If you do fantasy writing, start by learning about trade routes such as the Silk Road and add in references to other countries’ trade links, while also realizing “exotic trader” is a very toxic trope.

Also, realize you’re going to be in this for the long haul. If you are interested in a fully immersive story set in another culture, you’re going to be spending years, perhaps a decade, learning enough about it to do it justice.

You don’t need to ask us to get the basics (food/clothing/religion/trade relations) of a culture. We can tell when you haven’t researched it.  

Writers are renowned for our research ability. How long will you spend looking up the weather in 1600s England, the process of learning how to be a swordsman, the average medical knowledge of a farmhand? The same applies to learning about PoC settings. You might be starting from scratch, but simple searches like “clothing in 1500s China”, “goods that traveled on the Silk Road”, and “Native American cities pre-contact” are starting places. It might be a little more basic because of unfamiliarity, but remember that you didn’t know stuff about Europe once upon a time.

Learn the definitions of appropriation, fetishization, and white saviour. Realize they all come from the same roots: a person’s ideas about a culture over the actual reality of the culture. Instead of assuming you know what there is to know, research to find out if you “know” a fake thing. You might “know” how horses work, but do you know the Disney version or the horseback rider version? 

The research we are asking you do is the same research. It’s the same steps of searching for a particular fact and building your story based on the details you uncover. It’s not some murky waters of hard to find information— especially as the internet is ever-expanding, and sometimes a few years or even a few months down the line you discover the information has been made available (“weather in India” wasn’t a wikipedia article 12 years ago, for example).

Learn you and your ideas are secondary. The facts are first. It will take time to learn that you are secondary, because whiteness by nature puts itself first. It is not an instant process because you don’t realize how deep it runs. You will mess up. You will get corrections.

Apologize (genuinely— no “I’m sorry if I offended you”; say “I’m sorry I made this error”), admit you were wrong, and do better. Research more, take more time, maybe even edit the previous work with your new knowledge so it really sticks. This is, after all, a process! 

You just have to do the work. You can’t come to us and say “how do I represent this group”, because we can’t tell you in a reply to one ask. You have to dive into the history, current situation, and culture of the people you want to represent. 

You have to fill your own cup of knowledge, and willingly drink all parts of culture: sweet and bitter alike. Drink from cups we have offered you already instead of trying to build your own. You can’t just take the sweet (finding it a fantasy world) or the bitter (the trauma of racism) and think you have enough.

—WWC

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Hi! Love your blog (and all of the Scriptfam)! I have a question - I'm writing about a world where people have superpowers, but I'm wary of running into that trope of disabled people's powers being that they've overcome their disability (Daredevil in particular comes to mind). Do you have any tips for writing about this? Thanks!

Hi anon!

My biggest tip here is to not have the character’s abilities directly “make up for” their disability– deaf telepaths, blind clairvoyants, people with mobility issues and telekinesis, things like that. Being aware of the issue is a large part of avoiding the issue. And honestly, I think the solution is creativity. Get as creative as you want with what people’s powers are! Think outside the box! I got really overexcited about this ask (fun fact: we here at ScriptSpoonie are big superhero nerds), so here are some ideas off the cuff of “superpowers that don’t “make up for” a character’s disability and aren’t any more hazardous as a result of that disability”:

A deaf character who’s pyrokinetic

A blind character who can teleport

A wheelchair user who can manipulate time!

A character with Crohn’s who can fly

A character with diabetes who can manipulate probability!

A character with Multiple Sclerosis and superhuman vision

A character with chronic fatigue syndrome who’s telepathic

A character with PTSD who can change their size at will!

A character with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome who can manipulate disease!

A character with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome who can speak to animals!

A character with bipolar disorder who can see through solid objects!

A character with rheumatoid arthritis who can manipulate light!

A character with Grave’s Disease who can raise the dead! Puns can still be fun when they’re respectful!

A character with lupus who can manipulate color.

A character with major depressive disorder who’s a shape-shifter

A character with Evan’s Syndrome who can manipulate metal!

A character with chronic lyme disease who can manipulate temperature!

A character with chronic pain who can manipulate the weather!

A character with narcolepsy with cloning abilities!

A character with POTS who can create illusions!

All in all, the easiest way to not have a character’s superpower “compensate” for their disability is just to not do that. Once you’re aware of the trope, it’s fairly easy to avoid, so do your research into the disability you’re giving your character and consider whether or not any symptoms associated with that disability feel like they’d be covered up by the superpower. We’d also be happy to help with simple sensitivity checks on that if you’re not sure!

Also, don’t forget that a disabled character  - take number one, the deaf pyrokinetic character - can use their super powers as tools to help them with their disabilities without having their powers directly overcoming their disabilities or ‘making up’ for them. Like the deaf superhero from number 1 could use fire signals with people who aren’t fluent in sign language, or the character with PTSD from number 8 (maybe PTSD from a severe fight with their nemesis?) could be battling paranoia about the noises in the house so they grow large enough to take on anything that might be there. These don’t make the disabilities null, but it adds another cool element to disabled superheros and what they can do! 

Go forth and make many disabled superheros! Happy writing!

~Mod T, Mod Riley

(If anyone writes something using one or more of these characters (number 5 is an OC of mine, full disclosure) and posts it on here, feel free to tag us in it! I would love to see it!)

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