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[epanamimnesko]

I know everyone has different views on both worldbuilding and characterization, and especially on the idea of consistency in both, but I wanted to share my feelings on both of them (which are kind of the same! people and places are sort of the same thing sometimes).

Consistency, to me, is about three things: rules, guidelines, and lies.

Rules are things that (whether they've been told explicitly or not) are immutable. They are the law of the land, and you don't break them. You don't actually need to tell the reader what they are, but you should know what they are. They can be simple or they can be extremely complex, but they are things that you stick with. Unless stated otherwise, readers will generally assume that the rules of the real world apply to your story.

For the world, that might be "water is H2O" or "mountains will not stand up and turn into giant creatures and walk away" or "vampires and werewolves can cross-breed but only if they have sex during a new moon" or whatever. For a character, that might be "this character will not kill under any circumstances, no matter what" or "this character won't every tell their parents about that one time they committed arson." It's easier to do never rules for characters than always rules, but you can do both.

Guidelines are things that generally happen but aren't a requirement. This is where people tend to get caught up in character/worldbuilding consistency. Most character traits are going to be guidelines, not rules, because most people do have exceptions or things that change their mind or just character growth. Most things in the world don't work exactly the same way 100% of the time. But there generally needs to be an implicit or explicit explanation for the guideline not being followed, or it just feels like the author screwed up.

For the world, these might be "water isn't flammable--except in those cases where it is" or "vampires and children can't have kids, except in those super rare cases where they can" or "that one time, a mountain stood up and walked five feet and sat back down, but other than that it's never happened so we're pretty sure it'll never happen again". For a character, that might be "this character's instinct is to run away from things that scare them, but this one time they will overcome that instinct to protect someone else" or "this character is generally happy-go-lucky but right now they are deeply sad because something tragic has happened".

Lies are where it gets fun. Lies are things that you have presented as rules that are actually not. Somtimes this is because a character is literally lying to the reader or to other characters, sometimes it's because characters don't have full information, and sometimes it's because some other factor has changed.

For the world, this might be "only people from the royal family can bond with dragons because they have been genetically modified to bond with dragons--oh, actually, that was a lie perpetrated by the government to keep people from trying to bond with dragons" or "there is no eighth continent on Earth--actually there is, it was just hidden from view by magic". For a charcter, this might be "this character would never under any circumstances kill someone--except they just did."

The thing about lies is that they need to have a good in-universe reason behind them, and they can't conflict with other rules you have. I always go back to Stephenie Meyer when I think about this. Early in the series, she set up two rules that she told the reader explicitly: 1) all of vampires' fluids are venom and 2) vampires have 25 chromosome pairs, werewolves have 24 chromosome pairs, and humans have 23 chromosome pairs. The lie that vampires can't have children with humans runs into the issue that it's in direct conflict with those two rules above--but those two rules are never rescinded. So it doesn't feel like a lie so much as it feels like an inconsistency. It feels like she messed something up.

When you're thinking about internal consistency, consider:

Is something a rule, a guideline, or a lie?

If a guideline isn't being followed, is it clear why (e.g., is it an exception? character growth?)

Why was the lie a lie?

Does the lie conflict with other rules in the world?

What does the lie or the exception to the guideline accomplish?

[epanamimnesko]

   —  Anna Akhmatova, "The Sentence," from The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova, translated by Judith Hemschemeyer

[text ID: Today I have so much to do: / I must kill memory once and for all, / I must turn my soul to stone, / I must learn to live again—]

[epanamimnesko]

page_01: fresh by wonhoutboy

live preview / code

• about page; • writing project status/progress page; • "other blogs" section; • can be used as a base code as long as you credit me; • icons used in the preview: x.

!disclaimer! this is my literal fist page published, so it is very simple. if you find any bugs/if anything doesn't go well or if you just struggle with customizing it, please reach out to me via private message or ask and i'll gladly help!

[epanamimnesko]

If it doesn’t impact the rest of the story, you didn’t raise the stakes

              I recently went back to a chapter at the midpoint of my novel and changed a huge detail of it because I thought it didn’t raise the stakes enough as it was. Because of this change, I had to go through every single scene and chapter beyond that point and edit it to fit in and make sense. It was annoying, but that’s how I knew I achieved what I wanted to.

              Raised stakes change everything about a story.

              If your characters can continue on as they were, then you didn’t really raise the stakes at all. This heightened pressure or danger has to be heightened enough that their lives as they know them are different now.

              Consider this: at the midpoint, you introduce a mutated form of a monster your characters have been facing that’s more deadly and intelligent than its predecessor. It’s a super scary scene, but after that, your characters go back to their safe house to talk over how best to kill it.

              Suddenly, this new monster doesn’t feel as much of a threat. It’s just another element of the same threat they’ve already been facing.

              To properly use this element as a way to raise the stakes, it should take away something the characters rely on—safety, allies, powers, etc. Something they can’t get back, and don’t get back for the rest of the story. They now have to adapt to new circumstances, and things will never be as easy for them again.

              So maybe instead, they flee to their safe house only to discover that it’s no longer safe—the monster is smart enough to get through their hidden entrance and corner them. Now they’re stuck out in the open, taking turns keeping watch and slowly deteriorating to sleeplessness and stress.

              That’s a delicious steak.

[epanamimnesko]

Anybody else got that Evergiven sized writers block

[epanamimnesko]

There's a very specific sword I'm just obsessed with

[epanamimnesko]

Does Your Scarred Character Have to Hate Themself?

[large text: Does Your Scarred Character Have to Hate Themself?]

(TLDR: no. literally no.)

A frequent topic that shows up around facial differences is the self-hatred, self-disgust, self-insert-negative-emotion that we must surely experience. I want to ask* writers without FDs - why? Why do you feel about us in such a way that that's the most common way of depicting us?

*- rhetorical question. I promise I know the answers, but I'm not sure if writers do.

It's frankly worrying to me. Is it really that common to assume that disabled people have this internal, never-ending hatred for themselves? The overwhelming majority of us don't. We hate inaccessibility, when people stare, or some symptoms when they get in the way, or how expensive being disabled is, but I find the concept of us being so completely disturbed by our own disabilities extremely strange. It’s “tragedy porn” intersecting “most basic ableism”.

“But trauma!”

[large text: “But trauma!”]

Trauma of what! People with facial differences don't have some sort of default trauma that we come with like it’s a factory setting. We are a group of people with tens of thousands of stories and experiences!

“Trauma of experiencing ableism/disfiguremisia” - that's better, at least this means something. If you're writing a story about this, please get a sensitivity reader with a facial difference. You can assume how we feel all you want, but in my experience these assumptions are often bizarre and unrealistic. Or just end up writing the same “disability so sad” sob story that everyone has seen a billion times. If you want to write about disfiguremisia, you need to understand the nuance and have more than just the basic level knowledge (which 99% of people don’t have either). If you can’t do that, don’t write about it. Simple as that.

“Trauma of the accident” - thankfully, the accident is an event and a facial difference is a disability. If you want to connect these two like they're one and the same, you're almost surely going to demonize disability. People with traumatic spinal cord injuries, acquired amputees, people with TBI, people with acquired facial differences - we participate in our communities, we have hobbies, we date, we play with our dogs. Disability isn't a death sentence. Media who make it feel like it is certainly don't help people who do suddenly become disabled, don't you think?

Here's a post by @blindbeta about blind characters becoming blind through trauma that’s better made than anything I could hope to write here. I heavily recommend giving it a read.

And, I can't stress this enough - most of us didn't have “the accident”, most of us are born like this! "Traumatic scars" isn't the only facial difference that exists, far from it, it's only one of thousands. It's 99% of our representation and "representation". If you want to make a character with FD - please consider that we aren't a monolith. Just like not all physical disabilities are "wheelchair user with paralysis", not all facial differences are "traumatic scar with somehow no nerve damage".

The overrepresentation of it is incredibly telling, and sometimes - or very frequently - feels like the writer doesn’t actually even want to deal with us. They want to use our disability as a way to cheap drama, moral metaphors, tragic backstories. Not to represent us as living people who are much more similar to you than you apparently think.

Now, I do have enough awareness to know that that's a big part of the appeal. “Horrific Thing #2456 happens” and boom, instant drama! Of course, it's a reasonable response that they would hide their disability for years, avoid talking about it in any way, and magically change their personality to be mean and reclusive, or at least be constantly soooo sad about how much it sucks to be disabled, right?

Do I really need to say that having your character becoming disabled be the worst thing ever is ableism 101? We have been talking about this for so long at this point. Writing about the process of adapting to a specific disability is better left to people who have actual experience in it.

To give an example that will hopefully resonate more with Tumblr users, I will use the fact that I'm also gay. It's not perfect by any means but probably much more familiar territory.

Imagine, let's say, a character. He's gay. The story he's in is supposedly progressive, certainly not trying to be homophobic. The character has experienced an incident, maybe an act of aggression or a hate crime, that happened because he’s gay, which was traumatic. Happens IRL, sure. So of course the character starts hating being gay. He talks about how gross and disgusting it is, he never lets anyone know that he could be “one of them”, certainly not take a stance against homophobia. You can't mention him without mentioning the accident, they're seemingly fused together. No gay love, joy, even basic happiness, he would actually choose to be straight in a heartbeat if given the option to and complains that he can't. This is shown as a neutral, obvious thing that a gay man would do, no one comments on it. He stays like this the whole time, unless there’s a plot twist in the last 10 pages where the world is now magically perfect ("we fixed discrimination, yay!"). This is the only LGBT character in the story.

Keep in mind that there are people similar to this in real life, living with extreme internalized homophobia.

Is this, in your opinion, realistic and thoughtful representation? How does it feel when written by a cishet writer, versus a gay writer who is recalling his experiences? Do you think that it's reasonable for the majority of media representation to be like this, or very close to it? How would it affect younger gay people who might already be uncomfortable with being queer? Are gay men the target audience, or are they not even considered as a group of people who read books? Is this helping or damaging the general public's idea of how it is to be gay? Why or why not?

The Masterpiece

[large text: The Masterpiece]

From 13 to 19 of May, we are celebrating Face Equality week (what a coincidence!). It’s important to me in general - and I wish it was more important to abled people, but I digress - especially its theme for this year.

“My Face is a Masterpiece”

Great statement, it represents the community well, I do enjoy how bold it is. Very cool stuff, I love the work our advocates are doing!

But why do I bring this up?

Well, to very non-subtly show that we aren’t a self-hating group of people. We are a community, a community saying “our faces are beautiful, look!”, we are saying “treat us equally, and do it now!”. Our activism isn’t about self-disgust. It’s about fighting your-disgust. 

Why can’t writers keep up? Why are you still stuck decades behind?

Is this the only reason I bring it up?

The Call to Celebration

[large text: The Call to Celebration]

FEI, the org behind organizing it, asks a very simple question (emphasis mine):

“Why do we so often see stories about facial difference as a ‘tragedy’, when they should be about triumph?” “Calling all artists, allies, creatives, galleries.  You can rewrite the story to bring about #FaceEquality and celebrate the unique artistry found in every face. Your participation this #FaceEqualityWeek will help to tell the real story, that there is a masterpiece in every face.”

Here. We are calling for you to stop. Directly from the biggest international advocacy alliance group that's out there. If you create, this is for you.

The last argument to not have your character with a facial difference hate themselves? Because we don’t want this. We are tired and frustrated. For me personally, I’m also offended by this kind of assumption. We aren’t tragedies or cheap entertainment for abled people to pity or be horrified by. We are people, and if you can’t internalize that, you have no reason to write about us.

For once, celebrate us. Happy Face Equality Week!

mod Sasza

[epanamimnesko]

“but AI art lets me create my OCs!” YOU WILL USE PICREW AS GOD INTENDED

[epanamimnesko]

The Art of Dusk: Soft Pastels Meet the Evening Glow 🌄❤️‍🔥

[epanamimnesko]

Hey writeblr :)), I'm Leah, and I'm looking for other writers to follow and interact with! My dash has been kind of bland recently, and I'm hoping to participate in some tag games with fellow writers! I don't mind reading works of any genre, as long as you're willing to discuss WIPs and swap ideas.

Some deets about me:

I write mostly fantasy

My main project's Mind of a Mercenary, a novel following the antics of cult-leader-turned-convict-mercenary Luna, after she gets caught trying to take over as major city with mind-magic

I also do a lot of short stories

I really, really, reeeaaaallllyyy love villain protags. Luna's one, for starters

Aroace and she/her

I live in Asia so my timezone is basically 12h apart from the US's

Reblog or like this if you want me to check you out and give you a follow ;) Or just tag me in a game, I don't mind

[epanamimnesko]

[epanamimnesko]

how do you write a liar?

How to Write Liars Believably

Language

The motive of every goal is the make the lie seem plausible while taking blame off the speaker, so liars will often project what they say to a third party: "Katie said that..."

Referring to third parties as "they" rather than he or she

In the case of a deliberate lie prepped beforehand, there will be an overuse of specific names (rather than pronouns) as the speaker tries to get the details right.

Overuse of non-committal words like "something may have happened"

Masking or obscuring facts like "to the best of my knowledge" and “it is extremely unlikely," etc.

Avoiding answers to specific, pressing questions

Voice

There's isn't a set tone/speed/style of speaking, but your character's speech patten will differ from his normal one.

People tend to speak faster when they're nervous and are not used to lying.

Body Language

Covering their mouth

Constantly touching their nose

fidgeting, squirming or breaking eye contact

turning away, blinking faster, or clutching a comfort object like a cushion as they speak

nostril flaring, rapid shallow breathing or slow deep breaths, lip biting, contracting, sitting on your hands, or drumming your fingers. 

Highly-trained liars have mastered the art of compensation by freezing their bodies and looking at you straight in the eye.

Trained liars can also be experts in the art of looking relaxed. They sit back, put their feet up on the table and hands behind their head.

For deliberate lies, the character may even carefully control his body language, as though his is actually putting on a show

The Four Types of Liars

Deceitful: those who lie to others about facts

2. Delusional: those who lie to themselves about facts

3. Duplicitious: those who lie to others about their values

Lying about values can be even more corrosive to relationships than lying about facts. 

4. Demoralized: those who lie to themselves about their values

Additional Notes

Genuine smiles or laughs are hard to fake

Exaggerations of words (that would normally not be emphasized) or exaggerated body language

Many savvy detectives ask suspects to tell the story in reverse or non-linear fashion to expose a lie. They often ask unexpected, or seemingly irrelevant questions to throw suspects off track. 

[epanamimnesko]

🦇 𝐰𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐛𝐥𝐫 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧

═══════════════════⊹⊱≼≽⊰⊹═══════════════════

✦ Hello all! Very new to writeblr, though I've been writing on and off for years now. I go by Lamia. 27, they/she, black.

✦ I write mostly high/dark fantasy with romance themes. Expect a lot of (gothic) horror and (some) science-fiction every once in a while. Enemies to lovers is my bread and butter, angst my drink of choice. Throw in a little tragedy, a few metaphors about the terror of religion, blood, and it's a feast. My writing is explicitly queer and so am I.

✦ Fanfiction and personal works will both be housed here. I am currently drafting a novel with a magic system that uses dragon remains as its primary fuel. Heavily in the research process, might even dabble with conlangs.

✦ I consider my main writing influences to be Anne Rice and Angela Carter. I do an awful lot of reading as well, so feel free to talk to me about anything book related! Some of my other favorite authors are Mary Shelley, Brandon Sanderson, and Holly Black. Please give me all your horror recs 🖤

✦ Asks and requests are encouraged, especially if they're about my OCs. I'd also love to learn all about yours!

✦ Mature and erotic content will be very much present in my works, though I will always do my best to tag appropriately. Please read any tags/warnings thoroughly. 18+ only.

✦ main blog is @princeofhags. ao3 is bitterhags.

writing | wips

[epanamimnesko]

WIP Intro & Call for Beta Readers!

Premise:

When the sole survivor of a small town serial killer swears his ghost has come back to haunt her, she tracks down the detective who originally caught him to uncover the secrets behind the killer and put him down for good.

genre: contemporary fiction/lit fic (and paranormal + suspense elements)

themes: overcoming fear, identity/being able to change

tropes: unreliable narrator, revenge, emotional hurt/comfort

cw: explicit depictions of trauma/violence/panic attacks, mental health issues (some suicidal ideation), paranormal hauntings and stalking

length: ~49k

beta period: starting around mid-June, ending in mid-July (4-6 week beta period, specific dates TBD). I'll choose betas by May 30 at the very latest.

No beta experience required - I want genuine feedback from people interested in the story!

Sign up to be a beta here!

Signal boosting would be super appreciated! :'-)

↓ Excerpts and more story details under the cut ↓

Marissa is a survivor fueled on paranoia and spite. When she realizes she's being haunted, she's determined to do whatever it takes to get rid of the killer's ghost - even if that means uncovering the secrets of the case and returning to a town more haunted than she is.

"Marissa takes a step forward and the man’s eyes dart around, panicked. It feels good to be the cause of it, to have some semblance of control for once. She takes another step."

//

Cary is a dedicated son and friend, fiercely loyal and totally out of his depth. He's back in town eager to connect with his mother and bring her out of the darkness she's wallowed in for so many years.

"Cary moves around the kitchen quietly. It’s different from the way Talia moves and different from Marissa too... Cary is quiet because he loves his mother."

//

Talia is a former detective stuck in the past, resigned to spend the rest of her life rotting away in her home. She wants to help Marissa but it's clear she's not the woman she used to be — although maybe that's for the best.

"Talia Hayworth moves around her kitchen like she barely lives in it; she reopens the same three cabinets twice before she finds two mugs hidden behind a stack of plates."

☆ wip tag / pinterest / song insp / photo credit

[epanamimnesko]

— Anna Akhmatova, The Guest

[text ID: "What do you want?" I asked. / "To be with you in hell," he said.]

[epanamimnesko]

free resources to write a novel in 2024

hello hello! it's me, rach!

as the new year approaches, many of us set goals and resolutions - myself included. one of my goals for 2024 is to write a novel (I've been procrastinating on this for quite a long time now). i assume that some of you might have the same goal, that's why I'm writing this post today.

over 2023 i've been releasing some freebies for authors just like me, so I thought I could compile my favorites in this post. hope you find this useful :)

1) the writer's workbook

this workbook has over 60 exercises to help you develop characters, scenarios, etc. if you're ever stuck, I'm pretty sure this workbook will be your best friend.

2) author's corner (notion template)

this is the most downloaded freebie in my shop! it is a notion dashboard with everything you need to organize your writing and has some templates included (like scrivener)!!

3) another notion template

this one has two themes you can choose from: cottage-core and dark academia. they're very similar to the previous template, but this one is more recent and I added some new features. feel free to explore both and pick the one you like the most.

4) the author's journal

this is a cute printable with 20 pages that will help you stay on track and manage your social media accounts as a writer who shares their work online. you can also register what you're currently writing and your personal research and resources.

5) plan your book printable

this is a 6-page printable for you to fill out and plan your book easily and effectively.

6) excel sheet to organize tasks & word-count

this is a simple excel sheet, but it is very effective for keeping track of your tasks & word-count of your novels. also, it is 100% customizable to your liking!

that's all for now! feel free to explore my gumroad shop where I have plenty of freebies to grab! also, don't forget to subscribe so that you never miss any opportunity to get a goodie for free :)

hope this post was useful!

have a nice day,

rach

[epanamimnesko]

I packed my bag without forgetting my camera and digital video camera. The rain keeps falling from yesterday dotted by lightning, this will not change my decision.

Wind, rain, glass, by Abbas Kiarostami, 2007.