avsanderoth

[avsanderoth]

Writing Techniques #1b: Characterization

Hey all! This post will be focusing on how you write your side characters, both major and minor. Hope you enjoy!

Where to start First of all, the foundation to your side character is really no different than your protagonists. What is their place in the world, what is their goal and why do they have that goal? The biggest difference is that you will want to design your side characters to have goals that run parallel or directly against those of your protagonist, so as to keep them from being awkwardly isolated from the rest of the story. Notably, the ideal place to be with a side character’s goals is actually somewhere in between the two extremes I just described - neither utterly complacent nor wholly inversed. This applies to all characters, including your villain!

To argue or agree A significant component to writing a believable world is to make your characters’ reactions feel reasonable. By that, I really mean just having your characters get mad when they would actually get mad, not just for the sake of driving the story forward, and having your characters “go along with it” to a similarly reasonable degree. Constant friction will slow your book to a crawl, but if nobody sees consequences for their decisions, it’ll remove all tension. Ultimately, the balance in between is best found by testing different characters and how they interact with each-other, immersing yourself in them until you feel like you know what makes them mad and what makes them surrender. 

Who to focus on

You might run into the issue of not wanting to give more focus to your side characters than your protagonist, though you simultaneously have the urge to explore them more or feel like that is where the story should go. There are definitely times where you should go through with exploring them, and times when you shouldn’t: this largely depends on the side character’s presence in the story. You’ll be forgiven for taking the time to delve into the protagonist’s best friend, but the blacksmith’s apprentice they see maybe twice a year probably shouldn’t get the same focus unless you plan to do something significant to the story with them. 

Additionally, I just want to say that there is nothing wrong with wanting to explore your side characters - in fact, that’s fantastic! Whether you go through with writing it or not, just allowing them that presence shows you care for the world you’re creating, and it gives you a better sense of how the world works. There is also nothing wrong with that intrigue exceeding what you, in the moment, feel for the protagonist - they are (presumably) sticking around for the whole story, after all. You settle into feeling a certain way for them, like when you love someone for a very long time. 

A plot device with a face Then, there is the inverse problem. One of the biggest writing sinkholes I can think of is when you write your side characters as tools that provide specific things to completing the protagonist’s objective. 

The thief they recruit exists purely to pick open locks without a name or real personality beyond “sneaky and maybe witty”; the mayor is there for them to convince into allowing the conference room to be used for meetings, with no other connection or major influence upon the story despite his position and all it has taken him to get there. These characters do not contribute any more to the story than physical tools do, and accomplish little besides steering the reader’s attention to what seem like points of interest, only to fall flat. 

Do not do this! If a character is not important enough to the story to have beliefs and skills and a history that leads them in life, either leave them out or rewrite them to where they do. You need to give your characters the time and love necessary for them to shine, or else you will end up with what is very vaguely called… A two-dimensional character!!!

Connections matter Even with a well-designed, multifaceted character, it is important to consider how they connect to the rest of the world. Have they met other side characters or even the protagonist in the past? Are they familiar with key locations and concepts that they can then elaborate on or otherwise help with? These connections make your world easier to comprehend, easier to visualize, which is a great boon to the reading experience. 

Value of a craft This is kind of obvious, but all your characters must contribute something to the story. Be that through who they are, their resources, their skills or the sheer situation they have been forced into, you need to show the audience why a character is worth following. Simultaneously, you cannot have any character in your story be an everyman - they must have flaws, both personal and practical, things they are worse at and things they simply cannot handle. Characters with a great deal of practical skills, assassins or scholars, may fall short in things like emotional intelligence, failing to comprehend their own feelings and their sources. Inversely, characters who possess great kindness and empathy can become a crutch for the aforementioned practically skilled. If you want to make a heartwrenching moment in your story, having them lose that person may be worth looking into. 

The End Thanks for reading! This is a slightly shorter post, because I have a headache and cannot think of anything else to say that wouldn’t at least double the length of this thing. It feels kind of silly, trying to condense a topic as vague and broad as “side characters” into a single post but I’m already doing, like, four parts for the very first writing technique and I don’t want to drag this out even longer. 

You might also notice that the style between these posts is shifting a lot, and that’s because I’m still trying to figure out what feels best. This post also doesn’t have any written examples, like the fury post did, but that’s because I went completely off track and wrote an example better fit for a post about protagonists and dynamics and stuff, so… I guess I’ll be posting an addendum to that one fairly soon! 

By the way the post on Fury is almost at 20 notes and I mean holy crap I’ve been here for like four days this is insane!!! Thanks so much for reading these things!!! And if there’s anything you’d like to see more of in future posts don’t be afraid to message me or comment or send asks or whisper my name precisely thirteen times before you go to bed!!!

[avsanderoth]

Sorry, but probably no post today :((( had to come home from Stockholm and that's like six hours of travel by car so I have been left weary and tuckered out

Tomorrow speaks for a new writing technique post, though!!! Or a new writing emotions one!!! Whichever sounds the most fun!!!

[avsanderoth]

Writing Emotions: Fury

In this series, I will detail my thoughts on describing characters who experience various feelings. In this first chapter, I will detail fury. You will find the effect it has on the reader, how it affects characterization, and methods that work well to portray it. 

Fury is a multifaceted thing - two characters will seldom feel it the same way. For some, fury is red hot and uncontrollable, all-consuming and undiscerning. For others, it runs ice cold, for them to wield and direct unto those who deserve it most. 

Fury is tense In that regard, anger is best leveraged in your work for two things - discomfort or satisfaction. Make your reader uncomfortable as the protagonist watches the cruel, enraged manor lord punishing his servant for the tiniest mistake. Then, glue your reader’s eyes to the page in satisfaction as the protagonist erupts before the injustice unfolding. 

Fury is a means of leveraging control, because it is everything but. When the protagonist is consumed in anger, or is placed before someone too furious to reason with, it shakes the reader’s sense of control, of the story going as it “logically” should. Fury is unpredictable, wild and unassuming - that is what makes it terrifying. 

In that regard, there is much I can recommend. For one, do not skimp out on fury. If a character makes a mistake that another has reason to be pissed off for, let fury be the vehicle for the consequences. Let those consequences be grave, and let the reader feel them. Simultaneously, make those moments all the more intense by letting your characters calm down when reasonable. It’s never good to let a single “reaction” steer your story, even if that reaction is very enjoyable to write. 

Fury burns bright When used, fury plays a massive role in characterization. Its overbearing and downright primal nature gives it a sort-of “priority” for coloring your characters. If you introduce a character when they are already angry, even if they’re not written to be hot-headed, that will paint your reader’s perception of them, and sometimes for the worse! Keep in mind that fury is most effective when it is contrasted by calm - when your reader knows how a character is when they’re in control of themselves, and that the state they’re in now has taken that from them. 

This applies to all emotions you focus on, but overuse of “fury” will numb the reader. Anger doesn’t hit as well if this is the fifth chapter in a row where the main character is thrown into a fit of rage. That does not mean you can’t have a character, even the protagonist, heavily rely on anger in order to retain their sense of power or dominion…

But what if that fire is quenched? What then?

Fury burns briefly She stands amidst charred bodies. The sky is tinted red by a setting sun, one she cannot bear to meet with her eyes. Not for the bright light, or the dripping blood that threatens to seep past her eyelids and blind her… But for the end. Her breathing is heavy, the blade in her hand yet heavier, though her heart feels the heaviest. Where has the heat gone? The heat that spurred her to lead this very war, that has left her alone in a field of corpses?

The body ahead glares at her with empty eyes. Eyes she recalled bursting with love, when ash-heavy air was roses and peonies and the great tree in the middle of the castle garden. When her father was yet to turn mad - when she was yet to follow in his footsteps. The itch scratches at her still, an urge to declare herself victorious, for she was - for her rebellion was won, and she lived to bathe in the glory that was sure to follow. 

But there was no glory here. Only the setting sun.  

Fury consumes every ounce of energy you possess, then leaves you empty. Few will feel any satisfaction when it fades, only the withdrawal that follows losing what may be the greatest source of adrenaline available to humanity. 

If what brings your character to fury is devastating, make the come-down even worse. Make them mend wounds they opened, make right where they upended everything in the first place; make them feel regret. 

And then, have them come back to the very emotion that started it all. 

Fury takes many forms But then, how is one to connote fury? Well, with this emotion in particular, the body language is much more important than what your characters say. 

Fury makes your body tense, it makes you reach for things to support you. Gripping doorframes and tables and chairs, whatever is closest, and with all the force you can muster. It sends chills down your spine though your head flushes with heat, sends your brain buzzing with a monsoon of impulses, both verbal and physical.

Things you want to scream, or force through gritted teeth - things you want to hurt, or wield, or force out of your way. Anger activates your fight-or-flight, and when you experience it, one side of the scale becomes much heavier than the other: I am sure you can imagine which. 

Anger is sudden, flares and ceases then flares again. Mayhaps your character feels that flush of heat, though they don’t burst yet - maybe they restrain themselves for as long as they can, until a final, taunting remark sends them over the edge. Maybe their outburst is physical violence, or a series of roared insults, or maybe they force themselves elsewhere - to tears, to utter indifference, or to disassociation. 

Below is a list of some miscellaneous things you can do to connote your characters becoming angrier. 

Taking slow, deep breaths that grow faster as they get more stressed.

Clenching and unclenching their digits, pulling zippers open and closed, pressing their pen rhythmically (ala Spiderverse Kingpin).

Staring at the source of their anger intently, eyes lidded, wide open or (contrastingly enough) rapidly blinking.

Being unable to sit still OR remaining firmly where they are.

Glancing at exits, means of leaving the scenario (especially for confrontation-averse characters)

Speaking far more concisely than usual, sometimes in a deeper voice. Saying things they would not usually say - demeaning things, things that are supposed to hurt so they are left alone.

Testing the source of their anger, asking if they really mean what they’re saying. Characters who are very familiar with fury, or who even enjoy it, may use this tactic to justify an outburst.

Attempting to focus on something else - their work, the dishes if it’s a familial conflict, a newspaper, anything - to calm themselves.

Disassociation. Let the words that hurt join the backdrop, so they can imagine themselves somewhere else - or, imagine themselves nowhere at all. You cannot be hurt if you are nothing.

Biting nails, scratching at sudden itches, all forms of fidgeting connote stress and unease. 

There are many more, but I cannot fit them here. I hope you enjoy this guide. Feel free to do things differently, or to utilize these tips for different ends. You know many things I do not. Thank you for reading, follow for more. 

[avsanderoth]

New post this evening! It'll be on writing fury, and the start of a new series I want to do on how you describe and enact emotions in your world!

[avsanderoth]

Writing Techniques #1a: Characterization

Hello again!!! Sorry if the last writing problems thing on editing was a little terrible, I did not proofread that thing properly. Anyway, here’s another series I wanna do: writing techniques!

Whether your book has one protagonist or six, is a solo adventure or has the protag join with a slew of side characters, takes place in fantasy medieval times or the far future, the way you write your characters will play immensely into the perception of your world and its inner workings. 

This post is titled #1a because I will be making multiple posts talking about characterization. In this one, I will try to go through how it affects the protagonist. The following posts will regard side characters, antagonists and also love interests in broader or slimmer strokes depending on the scope of the topic. Enjoy!

Why is your protagonist?

A common point to start at when beginning a new work is to establish the goal of the protagonist, and more importantly, why that goal matters to them. The second part is important because this is the first bit of characterization you will be enacting upon your little goober. Any character can potentially do anything, but it’s why they’re doing it that makes them unique. 

To exemplify this, here are two separate short backstories for a character. Both have the same goal, but the reason behind it differs.

For the last five years, Hans has been set on a path of revenge against the merciless king of his home country. After losing his mother to sickness she could’ve rested away when she had to work to keep up with the absurd taxes, he realized that the only way to bring the change his country needed was to remove its rotten core.

It’s been five years since Hans set off on his path of revenge against the merciless king of his home country. His business, his imports, all was taken from him in the name of a merger he had no control over. Without a thing to call his own, Hans has realized that the only way to allow his business new flourishing is to remove the festering leeches ready to suck the blood out of it as soon as he starts anew. 

I will admit the second example is kind of absurd, but it can happen! Here, we see Hans seek the same ultimate goal - taking revenge on the king - but for vastly different reasons. One version has a mother he lost, and the will to avenge her death. The other has no immediately obvious family, and through his actions, seems rather self-serving. 

Now, the fact of the matter is that these two versions of Hans can very well grow in and out of each other. Hans 1 may initially be more motivated by reducing the ridiculous taxes than really avenging his mother, and Hans 2, in his attempts at destroying the king, may find someone to love or take care of who changes his perspective on life. 

To summarize, your character’s initial goal and why they have it is, in many ways, the foundation of their personality. Now, how to go about building on top of it?

Who is your protagonist?

To grant your character a personality is, broadly, to grant them features and quirks that make them feel human. Unique ways in which they react to what happens around them, dynamics they form with other characters, insights and ideas that only they have. Making a good character, in that regard, is very much about immersion. 

Put yourself in the shoes of the character you want to write, and try to imagine yourself as someone else. Someone who would see or hear the same thing, but respond differently. Take different choices, and be shaped by those choices in different ways. What would your character eat at a diner? If they got a surprise day off, what would they do with that time? Removed from their job, from the obligations of the plot - what does your character enjoy for themselves?

It doesn’t have to come immediately, nor do you need a fully flawless idea of your protagonist before you start writing. In fact, I’d say writing their story is a fantastic method of figuring them out, letting them grow as you get opportunities to splice their personality into your pages. 

And on that note, I want to give my first and foremost tip when it comes to characterizing not just the protagonist, but just about any character: let their personality gradually reveal!

When your work starts, lay the groundwork for the main character. This can be through the narration, whether it’s in third or second person; it can be through how they remark on the world, what words they use to describe it, and then the way their moving and acting is described. Compare the two opening paragraphs below, for example. 

Thunder hammered at Castle Hemlock’s windows, sending shocks through the cut stone. Armors on stands casting eerie shadows, figures wielding great swords silhouetted against faded paintings of past rulers. Agnes kept her head down as she walked down the hall, wishing the sound of her clicking heels could be just a little quieter. This place was not for her.

Thunder hammered at Castle Hemlock’s windows, sending shocks through the cut stone. Armors on stands casting eerie shadows, figures wielding great swords silhouetted against faded paintings of past rulers. Agnes was one with it all - head held high as she strutted down the hall, the clicking of her heels pronounced as if to announce her presence. From now on, these halls would be hers. 

Agnes walks the same halls, though she walks them differently, remarks on them differently. In one, she aligns with the dreadful, hushed tones of the scenery - in the other, she contrasts them, fights the heavy air and lavishes in her royalty, or whatever it is that lets her be so confident. This is a fairly brash example, and I could probably make these excerpts a little cleaner, but the point stands - even in the very first paragraph, you are characterizing!

When and where is your protagonist?

There is much more that can be done for defining your protagonist, though. Below are some miscellaneous techniques that I use!

Confrontation is important. If your protagonist takes a stance against something, that builds out their character. Who is your protagonist comfortable with confronting? Is there someone they don’t dare to speak against, or someone they love too much to deny?

Body language factors in greatly. In the example scenes above, I put emphasis on Agnes’s head - whether held low or high, both connote feelings of diminutiveness and importance respectively. Having your protag fiddle with their hair, or their clothes, or shrink and grow as they feel more or less confident makes them feel alive, and gives a super vivid scene of what they’re doing.

Environmental storytelling! Maybe an early scene takes place in the protagonist’s room, and there’s instruments all over the walls? Badabing badaboom - your protag now seems to be interested in music. You’ve set this up as a potential plot point, and can now insert it later when necessary. Hobbies as a whole are very important to making a realistic character, because if your protagonist only exists for their ultimate goal… Well, that leaves them kind of flat.

Like I said before, dynamics are great for characterization. How does your protagonist act around their best friend? How do they bounce off each-other, and where are they more abrasive? What if they’re separated - do they act differently? Feel less confident? You can do the same thing with a love interest, parents, classmates, colleagues - the list goes on!

There’s more I could think to say about this, put this post is already WAY too long. I hope I didn’t lose the message in all the nonsense, but what I’m trying to say is: let your character evolve naturally. Insert their traits where it feels like it'll work best. Gut feeling is incredibly important!!! Yes!!

[avsanderoth]

Writing Problems #2: Editing & Rewrites

Hello again! Still figuring out the formatting for these things, but that’s beside the point. 

This time, I want to talk about editing - the sometimes dreaded, sometimes loved(?) part of writing anything where you read your work back, looking for anything and everything that feels off, or is misspelled, or just didn’t pan out the way you thought it would. 

A lot of the time, this process can end up feeling kind of overwhelming. It can be you find a massive, chapter-spanning issue that will require a huge amount of work to fix; reading back your most recent pages and something just feeling off; potentially worse, discovering a plot hole you haven’t the slightest idea how to fix. 

It really sucks. For me, it’ll feel like editing or adding things will result in the wrong “flow”, like I can’t recreate the supposedly ultra-specific writing style I had going for a particular chapter. Either that, or the masses of text that feels so tantalizingly close to done encompassing my error(s) makes it feel like trying to pull a piece out of a jenga tower on the verge of collapsing. 

When editing, there are a few things I like to remember for myself in order to make it feel less daunting. 

It can be good to isolate the issues as bullet points, freeing them from the hurricane of incoherence that is the human mind trying to concoct a comprehendible story. Then, once you have them isolated, don’t force yourself at their respective parts in your story like the answer to the issue is gonna come to you immediately! Give your brain time to simmer in it - rushing the process, as with all writing, will make you take shortcuts. Shortcuts that will take your work down paths you didn’t want it to, or make the worldbuilding less interesting, or introduce even more issues you’ll need to wrack your brain over. Think things over! Go for a walk! Live your life!

Prioritize continuing the story over editing it. This might sound counterintuitive - after all, you’re basically just increasing your future workload - but with every word you write, you solidify your idea of how the world works, how the characters operate, how the story is supposed to go. Obsessing over editing while your work is in its infancy might lead you down a spiral of second-guessing every significant and insignificant moment you write, and it’ll slow your progress to a crawl and make you spend 90% of your time wondering if anything and everything is good enough. Yes. Yes it is. You don’t need to do anything to write a “good enough” work. You don’t need whatever I’m saying, or any other “writing tips” account’s strategies. Just the spirit to write, and the self-love to appreciate what makes it out of your head and onto the paper. 

This point is very significant, so it gets its own section: rewriting. 

I started writing my book in february of last year. By may or june, I had well over 60 pages down, and I was so proud. That was the most work I’d put into a project without blanking out and moving onto the next, and I felt so hyped to see where else I could go with what could actually end up being a full book!

Then, at some point, I looked back. I read what I had written over the course of those months, and… Well, it didn’t seem so good anymore. 

Sure, I liked the way I worded things, and the language I used, but the pacing was all off. My protagonist wasn’t reacting in ways that felt realistic to the things happening around him, the story was jumping between really zoomed-in moments and massive timeskips, it felt incoherent and shallow. It was tough - really tough - but I had to make the call to erase some 20,000 words and fix my errors. 

It was heavy, and I wasn’t sure about myself for over a month after that. Over summer, my progress slowed down massively due to week-spanning activities that left me short on time. A lot of that time was spent asking myself, “did I really waste two or more months writing, only to throw it all away?”

No, I didn’t! It’s like I said before - even if you delete what you write, you still wrote it! And there is NOTHING quite as instrumental to getting better as a writer, than… Well, writing! I am so unfathomably proud of what I’ve made of my book since then, though it’s still a work in progress and I’ve been working far slower than I’d like to be since. I’m being more particular about things now, seeing potential sinkholes in my plotline where I would’ve steamrolled right over them when I started. 

Now, please don’t read this and immediately delete your multi-thousand page draft because something doesn’t feel right. There were definitely things in my original draft that I could’ve salvaged but didn’t because they were veneered under my more significant mistakes, and the sheer time loss I suffered for that cannot be understated. Editing is almost always better than rewriting, because of the retrospective and ability to compare that it provides you with. 

I guess my takeaway would be “don’t be afraid to start over, but understand that you seldom need to.” 

Thanks for reading! This one felt a lot more sporadic than the last, but hopefully it’s still kind of useful to somebody. Feel free to follow for more cool strategies and stuff!!!

[avsanderoth]

let you story marinate. keep it in your head. create little what ifs in your head and let your characters simmer in the stew until they take on a life of their own

oh and please give them a name. no placeholders in this household

[avsanderoth]

Wielding it's proboscis with every ounce of sanguine fury containable in two-and-a-half milligrams, it roared "avast, biped, be I disease and itchy skin," though it saw not the unflinching hand of God descend, and found its rebellion swiftly quenched.

I dunno if this counts it's just a fancy way of saying "the mosquito buzzed and was promptly squished" but they call me Mr. Revolutionary

Writing challenge: Reblog with the weirdest sentence you can muster

Bonus point if the sentence makes sense

[avsanderoth]

The innocence of the soul is only suppressed, never erased... This is so epic...

My favorite niche trope to write will forever be when characters are at war or on the run for years and it’s been forever but someone offers them a home-cooked meal or a baker gives them their favorite sweet and they absolutely lose it cause it’s been so long since they had something so nice and it’s like they’re a kid again for a moment and the world is right once more

[avsanderoth]

write a new scene → realize it contradicts something from chapter 3 → fix chapter 3 → now chapter 7 makes no sense → cry → repeat

[avsanderoth]

Writing Problems #1: Motivation

Motivation is, in many ways, the “great decider” of creative hobbies. If you feel like you have the motivation to write, you do; if you feel otherwise, you don’t. There’s nothing wrong with that idea of motivation, because for most people, it’s completely true - if you sit down to write with zero will or lustre to do so, it’s not gonna go well! If you’re at all like me, it’ll end up with you sitting there for thirty minutes getting practically nothing done until you say “oh, screw this.” and proceed to do something else. 

Where motivation becomes tricky, and also quite deceiving, is in how you define it. I’m sure we can all recognize the feeling of knowing we probably should be writing, but instead choosing to “let motivation come” so that we know we’ll be at our best. After all, if you’re not in tip-top shape when writing, what’s the point? Chances are you’ll have to delete whatever you force out of yourself and start over. 

But that’s not true. Motivation isn’t this gradual wave that comes and goes throughout the day, it’s a reaction that you must coax from yourself and direct towards the effort you want to make progress on. In committing to a hobby, any hobby, you commit your motivation - be that videogames, reading, writing, both creative and consumptive hobbies work the same way. 

Quick disclaimer, I want to say that this is all based on my own experience. I don’t want to speak for how anybody’s brain works, but I know that I see cases like mine in other blogs extremely often. Whether or not their issues stem from the same root problems as mine, I cannot say, but I think the strategies I’ve worked out are pretty decent nonetheless.

The biggest and most important thing you can do for your motivation is to not wait to direct it where you want it to go. Start writing in the morning before you get sidetracked doing other things, because it’s much easier leaving the writing state than it is to enter it. That sounds a little melodramatic, but writing really does mean a certain mindset in terms of getting in the “zone” for describing your characters, the world they live in and the forces that control it. For me, that zone is easiest to get into when my mind is a blank slate. 

What I consider the second most important thing (though this is debatably just as important) is to not go into a writing session thinking “I have to get this many pages or words done in this amount of time!” because that thinking will only lead to disappointment. The only requirement you need to put on yourself is to get something out of writing, and that isn’t bound to how many pages you’ve written, or how long you write for, or even how much progress you feel you’ve made! 

For me, writing is stimulating in the sense that I feel like it lets me be more than I am in the real world. Or, that it lets me make more of the world than what it has to offer at face value. I explore myself through the characters I write, and I explore my view of the real world through the one I describe and how I describe it. That doesn’t feel more or less fulfilling if I get 3 pages done in an hour or only make it halfway through one, it’s the very process that makes me feel good. 

Again, writing - like all creative hobbies - is an intensely personal thing. You probably won’t have the exact same motivation as me, it won’t come at the same time, and it might require a slightly different effort to coax out of yourself. Still, I want to believe that every one of us can control our motivation, rather than letting our motivation control us.

I have some other miscellaneous tips that can massively help with motivation, but they’re not universally applicable:

Make a playlist for your story, or find one that feels fitting. Music and storytelling go hand-in-hand for me, and I have a playlist dedicated to the book I’m trying to write that goes a huge way in getting me in the right “mindset”. Listening to it as I write makes me feel like I know my story better.

If music isn’t your thing, surround yourself in other stimuli that makes you think of your story. Change your browser theme to a color that makes you think of it, or (if you have them) change the LEDs in your space to do the same thing. It’s about establishing a “vibe” that you associate with your work.

I haven’t tried this a huge number of times myself, but freewriting on a separate paper about random, only semi-related things can help focus your mind on a certain kind of writing, or a particular story. Like warming up your brain!

This one is a little more bizarre, but I sometimes like to look at sites like pinterest to see art that, aesthetically, reminds me of my story. Be it imagery, or even pictures of what you envision your character to look at, or sceneries that I can use as a reference. It’s honestly really inspiring, if sometimes unreliable. 

That was all I had to say about motivation without going completely off-track. Thanks for reading, and I hope this helps you!

[avsanderoth]

Hello, people!

I am A.V. Sanderoth, a Swedish writer of six years in his late teens who’s itching to give back to the writing world to which I owe so much of my experience. Through this blog, and what else I have to offer, I hope to inspire writers to approach their hobby with new ideas and perspectives. It doesn't matter if you're looking to write professionally or are doing it just for fun, I want to be equally valuable for all.

Much of my journey as a writer has been sort-of idly absorbing the writing techniques and such of the people I’ve interacted with, and while it did work for me (eventually), I can’t help but wish I had that guiding light; someone knowledgeable in the things with which I struggled most, someone who could give me the inkling I needed to start on the right path. Not necessarily holding my hand all the way there - at that point, what’s the point in a creative hobby? - but pointing me in the direction I was looking to go, even when I didn’t have the words or experience to describe it myself. 

I would like to try and be that person, now. Of course, I’m not an eldritch entity with writing experience dating back to the art’s invention and wielding the ability to close read 500-page manuscripts in picoseconds (I’m only one of those things). But, I still want to try and make use of all the things I’ve learned, and helping others seems like a real fun way to do it. 

I’ll use this blog to post about things I personally found used to trip me up when writing, or things I still struggle with. Be that motivation, pacing, characterization, exposition, getting past writer’s block, or whatever else I think of. 

Of course, if you have anything you want me to talk about in specific (or just want to ask me about), feel free to DM me or send an ask! Thanks for reading!