goldenboiwrites

[goldenboiwrites]

Good stuff.

[goldenboiwrites]

Attention Fantasy Writers!

Do you write original fantasy fiction? Do you need a map of your fantasy world? I can help!

I will make you a FREE, that’s right, 100% FREE, fantasy map for you to use for your WIP. No string attached.

I can do basic maps,

Maps with some scatter islands,

Maps with MORE (or less) scatter islands if you want,

You want me to mark some locations for you? I can do that!

Want me to add borders? Split up different kingdoms? I can do that!

Want me to add rivers? I’m on it!

Mountains? I got you covered babe.

Cool title of your fantasy world? Easy.

Just shoot me a message and we’ll work on making you a cool map for your story! With as much or as little as you want on it! You can even pick and choose features! You want maps and rivers but no locations marked? Sure! You want birders and locations but no mountains or rivers? I’ve got you covered!

(Just remember the more you want, the longer it will take.)

This weekend I have the time to make FIVE maps for people, so message me quick, the first five get a map!

( if you miss out this time, don’t worry, this offer WILL be brought back in the future!)

-Love, your writer mom. ❤

[goldenboiwrites]

a note to all aspiring novelists…

sometimes you should just use “said”

[goldenboiwrites]

i just found this website that can randomly generate a continent for you!! this is great for fantasy writers

plus, you can look at it in 3d!

theres a lot of viewing options and other things! theres an option on-site to take a screenshot, so you don’t have to have a program for that!

you can view it here!

[goldenboiwrites]

How to write fic for Black characters: a guide for non-Black fans

Don’t characterize a Black character as sassy or thuggish, especially when the character in question is can be described in literally ten thousand other ways..

Don’t describe Black characters as chocolate, coffee, or any sort of food item.

Don’t highlight the race of Black characters (ie, “the dark man” or “the brown woman”) if you don’t highlight the race of white characters.

Think very carefully about that antebellum slavery or Jim Crow AU fic as a backdrop for your romance.

If you’re not fluent with AAVE, don’t use it to try to look cool or edgy. You look corny as hell.

Don’t use Black characters as a prop for the non-Black characters you’re actually interested in.

Keep “unpopular opinions” about racism, Black Lives Matter, and other issues pertinent to Black folks out the mouths of Black characters. We know what the fuck you’re doing with that and need to stop.

Don’t assume a Black character likes or hates a certain food, music, or piece of pop culture.

You can make a Black character’s race pertinent without doing it like this.

Be extremely careful about insinuating that one or more of a Black character’s physical features are dirty, unclean, or ugly.

Feel free to add more.

[goldenboiwrites]

whats another word for the word word

[goldenboiwrites]

I will never let go of the “old wise man with a beard” trope.

Y’all would have to pry it from my cold dead hands

[goldenboiwrites]

What is Scale Armor ?

Scale armor is a type of body protection using a number of hard plates attached to an usually flexible base. Material for the scales include metals like bronze or iron, but also horn, wood or even pangolin scales. Unlike lamellar armor, the scales of a scale suit of armor are generally not linked together, but only to their textile or leather base. They are however still overlapping, with the bottom edge of each scale covering the attach point of the ones below it, meaning only an upward blow can directly sever those by sliding between the scales - that is if the scales are indeed scale shaped, since small round plates or even coins are sometime used that have a central attach point. Scale armor uses exposed scales, and should not be confused with the later brigandine.

Scale armor is pretty easy to conceptualize by anyone with access to fish, so it’s no wonder that it is one of the earliest and most widely used type of armor in the world. It can be found in Scythian art and graves since the 9th century before-arbitrary-point-of-time, and was still used in South-East Asia in the 19th century to some extant.

Related Vocabulary:

Kozane: Japanese scale armor.

Lorica Squamata: Republic-era Roman scale armor.

Cataphracts: Iranian or Byzantian heavy cavalry equipped with a full set of scale armor for them and their horses.

-mod Burgonet

[goldenboiwrites]

unpopular opinion but that post that’s like “I don’t consider fantasy world building complete until you can tell me about common grammar mistakes in your conlang and what books are popular now verses in the past” is a bad post. 

When you’re world building, you should really, really stick to the stuff that’s going to be relevant to your story. You should NOT throw in details into a story that are unnecessary to that plotline. A dedicated fan of your series might really want to know more about the humor of your world’s people, but generally speaking that’s where they start to fill in the blanks themselves. 

I don’t know a damn thing about toy production in Lord of the Rings or common grammar mistakes in Dovahzul. I don’t want to know about how people in Narnia get an education or what people in Westros read for fun. It isn’t important. DONT waste your time developing these things when you can be spending your time actually writing your story. 

[goldenboiwrites]

Writing More than One Plot Line

“How many plot lines are too many?”

Keep reading

[goldenboiwrites]

Character Development: Appearance

Your character’s appearance is pretty useful for a reader. This doesn’t just include hair and eye color, but accessories, how they view their own appearance, and body language. The character’s appearance helps your reader to not only visualize the character they’re reading about, but also to let them know something about the character. Here’s a list of the different components in a character’s appearance:

eyes (color, shape, emotion, etc.)

hair (color, style, wavy/curly/straight/etc., long/short)

skin (color, texture - like is it smooth, pockmarked, covered in spikes, etc.)

build (height, weight, muscle, type of body)

body language (how they stand/move)

clothing - normal (e.g. what they’d wear while out and about in public or in general)

clothing - dressed up (e.g. when they’re trying to be fancy)

clothing - comfortable (e.g. when they don’t care about what they look like, only comfort)

footwear/accessories (shoes, bags, hairthings, jewelry, tattoos, etc.)

how do they feel about their appearance (e.g. are they proud of it, ashamed, or just don’t care?)

how they see themselves vs how others see them (tied into the one above - like if they don’t care about their appearance and see their appearance as perfectly fine, but other people think that they don’t wear good clothes. In other words, how does your character’s appearance influence their interactions with others?)

items/things that they carry around with them or that appear with them that don’t really fit into the accessories category (e.g. Disney princesses and their animals, or the Log Lady and her log in Twin Peaks) 

Of course, not all of this information will appear in your writing (unless you’re working with visuals, like film or comics), but it’s good to keep in mind as the author.

When you do describe your character’s appearance in writing, remember:

SHOW, DON’T TELL.

I know, you’ve heard it all before, but it’s pretty important. 

For instance, if you have a tall character, instead of saying

He was tall.

say

He carried himself the way many tall people did - slightly bent down so that people could talk face-to-face with him.

or

He was always accidentally hitting his head on doorways that were too small for him, or on strings of lights at parties hung to accommodate people much shorter than him.

From these descriptions, the reader knows that not only is your character tall, but also how his height affects him and others around him - he’s courteous and tries not to loom over people, and his surroundings aren’t built with his height in mind, indicating that there aren’t many tall people where he lives.

By showing, not telling, you’ll be giving the reader more information about your character and in a way that develops character/the story.

However, there are times when you shouldn’t spend a lot of time on description. If it’s not important to your character or story, don’t feel bad if you say something very simply. And if your character isn’t the type to notice appearances that much, then it wouldn’t make sense for them to suddenly notice appearances with no explanation.

For example:

We have two characters noticing the same guy. The first character is a girl who loves art and poetry; the second character is a girl who likes math and science.

Character 1: “The stranger had deep blue eyes, like the depths of a still pond. I kept peeking at him all through second period, dying to pull my sketchbook out and start drawing.”

Character 2: “The stranger was good-looking, I guess - all the other girls were cooing over him in first period English today. I wasn’t really listening; problem number 87, part b, was a bit of a challenge.”

To the first character, description with colors and metaphors are important, and so it makes sense that she would describe the stranger this way. But to the second girl, who isn’t very poetic, it wouldn’t make sense, so all she would say is “he’s good-looking and the other girls like him,” and the reader can fill in the blanks.

In conclusion, remember:

not all of your character’s appearance is going to make it into the story

try to show, not tell

[goldenboiwrites]

How to Dump Info without Info-Dumping

For a while I’ve been wanting to post an article on info-dumps, because they are so easy to do and so awful for a story. An info-dump is what it sounds like. A big ol’ chunk of info that a writer splats out into the middle of a scene. They can bring the pacing of a story to a grinding halt while the audience has to sift through more information than they care to know about X, Y, or Z.

Info-dumps can literally be about information and facts, other times they are whole backgrounds and backstories about characters, or the entire history of a setting or object. Often this happens because the writer is convinced the audience needs all of the information in order to fully “get” and appreciate the story and characters, sometimes it happens because the writer simply loves the information on a personal level, other times the writer “discovers” the information when writing a first draft and hasn’t bothered to fix it, and finally, it happens when the writer is a beginner and simply doesn’t know better.

Science fiction author Shallee McArthur wrote a nice article on info-dumps and also taught a class on it at a writing conference. So today I asked permission to share it here:

I am a nerd. As a kid, I spent my summers doing science experiments in my giant white science book. For fun. And to this day, I get excited about things like sea slugs that absorb plant DNA and become photosynthetic. I get weepy about the space shuttle’s last flight. It’s why I write sci fi– because I’m a nerd, and I love all that science stuff.

Here’s the thing about writing sci fi: there’s a lot of science in it. Which  means there tends to be a lot of necessity for explanation, which leads to a lot of potential info-dumps. This isn’t unique to sci fi, of course. Most authors have a lot of information to convey, and sometimes we have no choice but to reveal large bits of it at a time, potentially boring our readers just so they understand what the heck we’re talking about.

I had some trouble with info-dumps in one of my novels, and it took me lots of revisions to get it right. And some of the biggest lessons I learned were actually from the movie Inception. There’s a LOT of information they have to convey, but the movie never lags in its pacing. Here are the things I learned to apply in my writing. (Warning– there are a few small spoilers if you haven’t seen it before!)

1. Early in the story, weave as little information as possible to keep your reader engaged.

Inception doesn’t start with Leo DiCaprio’s character Cobb explaining the ins and outs of shared dreaming. We start with tension–he’s trying to convince Saito that he needs to train his mind to not be vulnerable to idea theft. Here’s the thing. We learn, in a few brief sentences of dialogue, that someone can steal your secrets through shared dreaming. And THAT’S IT. We don’t know how it works, or who can do it, or the history behind why it was developed in the first place.

We know just enough that when we learn everything we’re watching IS a dream, we get it. Maybe we don’t understand why Cobb gets dumped in the tub to wake him up, but we get it enough to be invested and intrigued. It’s the technique of weaving small bits of information into a scene so we get small bits instead of large chunks. And especially for the first 30-50 pages of a novel, that may be as much as you need.

2. Have a character who doesn’t understand what’s going on so someone can explain things to them– and the reader.

Enter Juno–er, Ariadne. She’s new to the team. She doesn’t understand any of the history or the hows and whys of dream sharing. The team teaches her all the ins and outs, and as she learns, so do we. This neatly evades the “maid and butler” dialogue of “As you know, your subconscious is represented by all these people,” and “Yes, Cobb, and they will attack us if they sense something is wrong in the dream.”  It’s natural for Ariadne to be learning it, so it’s natural for us to learn it too.

3. Don’t explain everything at once–use small chunks in addition to weaving.

The first time Cobb takes Ariadne into the dream, we don’t get all the information about how dream sharing works. We get small bits. We understand that the dream can be changed by the people sharing it, sometimes in fantastic ways, and that the subconscious of the person dreaming can become aggressive when it’s messed with too much. And, very briefly, we see again Cobb’s projection of his terrifying wife. We don’t learn much about the other parts of shared dreaming, such as the use of chemists, or about what on earth is wrong with Cobb’s deranged wife. These things are woven in later as scenes.

Which brings us to another point.

4. Information should always be revealed as part of a scene.

A.k.a, NEVER SIMPLY TELL THE READER. Paragraphs that say, “and this is the history of x, and this is how y works,” are the exact definition of bad info-dumps. In Inception, every single bit of information is worked in as part of a scene. In other words, it is not just giving you information. It’s developing character, deepening mystery, and furthering plot at the same time. It brings tension around the very information we’re receiving, and we’re so engaged, we don’t even recognize it as an info-dump.

For example, the scene where Cobb risks going behind enemy lines to find Eames, we learn about how inception is possible, and we learn about the idea of a chemist and using dreams within dreams. All around this information is the tension of Cobb being potentially caught by people who want him dead. And then, when we have just enough information, we get some action as Cobb is chased through the streets of Mombasa. We are kept engaged because it’s a scene in a story, not an aside of information.

[goldenboiwrites]

Pros and Cons of Different Points Of View

Objective Point Of View

“With the objective point of view, the writer tells what happens without stating more than can be inferred from the story’s action and dialogue. The narrator never discloses anything about what the characters think or feel, remaining a detached observer.”

Pros

Adds a potentially useful suspense to the events of the story, as the reader cannot predict as easily what will happen next based on the characters’ internal thoughts.

More direct with the events and description of elements of the story, such as setting and the rate at which time passes in the story, which can be muddled in stories in points of view like third person, where these details can be overshadowed by descriptions of thoughts, feelings, backstory, etc.

Descriptions can come across more fluidly and make the actual images and scenes visualize more easily in the readers head. It is the closest point of view to a movie, as films don’t typically focus on what the audience is explicitly being told, but what they see and what they can deduce from the images in front of them.

Cons

This point of view can be more difficult to relate to as readers, due to the story being told and described in a more detached way, rather than being pulled into the story in a way that makes them feel like a character themselves.

You have to really utilize subtext and context with this perspective. You can’t convey the story’s tone through any of the characters’ thoughts or feelings, so you have to rely completely on the pure course of events to tell the story and grip the reader emotionally.

This makes it really hard to connect to the characters and understand their motivations unless the reader is looking really deep into the context and reading between the lines.

Third Person Point Of View

“Here the narrator does not participate in the action of the story as one of the characters, but lets us know exactly how the characters feel. We learn about the characters through this outside voice.”

Pros

This is pretty much exactly like first person narration, but with different pronouns. Instead of “I walked to the store” it’s “he walked to the store” and eliminates the reader’s potential skepticism of the narrator’s reliability while still telling the story in the same words.

You have the potential to divulge more about what other characters are thinking or doing at any point in time because you’re not technically limited to one character.

It’s a pleasing way of telling a story. It doesn’t take too much analysis for the reader to imagine how the perspective could be tainted by emotion in some way. It doesn’t require too much brain power to read. It flows nicely.

Cons

This isn’t as much a con as it is a warning. Your characters need to be rounded and diverse if you’re going to write a story in third person. If they all share the same characteristics and motivations and emotions, your story will fall flat super fast.

Third person has a viewpoint character, typically. If you want to be able to tell whatever you want about whomever you want, then you need an omniscient point of view. Third person usually focuses on a main character and occasionally shares about other characters when it serves the story.

Second Person Point Of View

“Second person is a point of view (how a story is told) where the narrator tells the story to another character using the word ‘you.’ The author could be talking to the audience, which we could tell by the use of ‘you,’ ‘you’re,’ and ‘your.'”

Pros

Your reader feels what you write so much more intensely, because you’re referring to them specifically. It’s a reader insert point of view. You’re speaking directly to them. 

Action and romance are really good genres for this, I imagine, because those are stories where readers often put themselves in the place of the protagonist anyway, so second person would amplify that to your advantage.

There works so well when it’s done correctly, and if you take the time to practice with it and master the pacing and what really makes a reader tick in second person point of view, it will grab that reader and pull them very, very quickly.

Cons

You usually have to be really really vague about descriptions. If your reader doesn’t have blonde hair and hazel eyes, but your character does, this will really put a damper on their experience because every time you describe how their blonde hair blows in the wind, they’ll detach from the story.

Sometimes your reader may feel confused because second person is a very hard point of view to read about at first. It takes some time to get used to. A lot of fanfiction (mainly reader-insert) is second person point of view and I’ll be the (not) first to say that it took so time to adjust to, at least for me.

First Person Point Of View

“In the first person point of view, the narrator does participate in the action of the story. When reading stories in the first person, we need to realize that what the narrator is recounting might not be the objective truth. We should question the trustworthiness of the accounting.”

Pros

Is not limited to the point of view of the main character, as displayed in books such as The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

A certain connection between the reader and the character can create a sense of authenticity and intimacy between the reader and the story as a whole.

The themes and motives behind the story can become easier to decode, as they are disclosed in a more clear and direct manner.

The character can be easier to understand and relate to, as everything is being told by them, with their bias and interpretation included.

It puts the reader inside of the story rather than having them watch from the outside. The intimate details and description can make put them in a position to experience the story from inside and therefore make the story mirror their reality in a way.

Cons

It may become difficult for the reader to differentiate who is speaking to them in the story, as many sentences will begin with “I” or “we” and create a repetitive narration and lose the reader alone the way.

The reader may become bored with hearing the story from only one’s perspective. The style in which the story is told {the adjectives, the themes, the personality} may not vary enough to keep them entertained. 

Imagery can be difficult to pull off in this point of view because the writer may get into the habit of telling the reader what is happening instead of showing them through smooth interjections of descriptive vocabulary. 

The writer may experience a dependence on dialogue to try to compensate for lack of description of events, and the reader may lose track of story details that may become imperative to events later in the scene/story.

This makes it a lot easier to pull an “unreliable narrator”, as first person is only the perspective of a person, rather than the story told from a purely factual position.

Omniscient & Limited Omniscient Points of View

“A narrator who knows everything about all the characters is all knowing, or omniscient. A narrator whose knowledge is limited to one character, either major or minor, has a limited omniscient point of view.”

Pros

This makes it really easy to include details about many characters that you wouldn’t be able to from the perspective of a single person.

You are writing as yourself. You are the author, you have all the information to give the reader, and you get to give it in the least convoluted way you could ever desire, and in your own words. In any other point of view, you are pretending to be somebody else, even in third person, so this allows you to really demonstrate your unique voice as a writer and express your own style.

You can write fast paced scenes without the reader questioning what an individual character is feeling all the time. You can slip in whatever information you want at whatever point you wish and it just sounds natural to the reader.

Cons

Plot twists are ten times more difficult because there’s no reason why anything would be a surprise. Your reader technically has access to all information and foreshadowing required to predict what will happen next, so if you’re planning a big surprise, prepare for a challenge delivering it.

Keeping the focus on one subject is more important when you’re writing for younger, less experienced readers. You have to have a protagonist and a linear story for them to follow, which can be tricky with omniscient point of view. It’s important to keep your audience in mind if you’re going to choose any point of view, but especially this one.

These pros and cons are subjective, depending on what you are intending to convey in your story. Please consider this with a grain of salt and take the detail and unique qualities of your own work into account when using this resource. Not all pros and cons in this piece will apply the same to every story, and that is something to keep in mind. I hope this will be useful to you all. Cheers! 

Ext. Sources ~ x x x x 

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[goldenboiwrites]

Pro tip: Cut the fidgeting

Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, we don’t need to know that someone crossed the room, reached for a coffee cup, turned sideways, took a step forward, or glanced to the left.

Visual writers have an especially hard time with this (writers who “see” their story in their head, and write down the images blow-for-blow, as though narrating a movie).

There’s nothing wrong with this writing process, of course. Just know that you’ll be more prone to adding excessive, pointless movements to your story. Then, when revising, ask yourself if they are important to the story (sometimes, it *is* important that someone took a step forward!) and take out the ones that aren’t. Or, better yet, delete them *all,* then put back only the ones that have left holes in their absence. More on this soon!

[goldenboiwrites]

What advice do you have for writers who are hesitant to start writing?

As someone who has struggled with this problem for about a year and a half now, I feel sort of unqualified to give anyone advice, as I still have trouble with this every day. There are so many little voices that every writer hears when they even consider sitting down and writing even the shortest of stories. 

“This is a waste of time”

“Whatever you write will never be good enough”

“You aren’t creative enough to write anything worth reading”

“Your work will never amount to anything other than a few hours of your time down the drain”

“You’ll just get writer’s block half way through and give up anyway, so why try?”

I’ve been dealing with these stupid little voices since I started writing, and I truly doubt that they will ever go away. No matter the reason you are hesitant to start writing, I can promise you that those reasons will only be validated if you give into them. If you think that you shouldn’t write that story that’s been swirling around in your head for months, simply because you think it won’t ever get published, then don’t, and that little voice will be proven correct. You can’t publish anything when you’ve got nothing to share. If you think that you aren’t creative enough to create a whole fictional universe that millions upon millions of people will love, and you decide to give up before you even start, good job, because there’s no way you’ll ever find out.

The bottom line is, procrastination is the thief of time, and hesitation is procrastination’s sister. You are a writer, so write, shamelessly and without fear of failure. I, personally, pity those who spend more time worrying about failing than actually doing it, because there is no chance that you won’t fail at least once or twice, but that’s all part of paying your dues in this world and the sooner you fail, the sooner you learn and succeed. Just remember that. 

You have a 0% chance of achieving your goals if you don’t try, and even having a .000001% chance higher of succeeding, just for putting forth an effort, is a chance I’m willing to take any day, and I hope that someone out there can relate.

I can’t give you life changing advice. I’m only a teenager and I haven’t made it in the writing world and I still struggle with this every day, but hopefully I and others can read this whenever the need for a reminder of it pops up.

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I’d also really appreciate it if you would check out my separate blog dedicated to my current work in progress.

[goldenboiwrites]

I have two writing modes:

Dialogue Only

Paragraphs of pretentious description with No Dialogue Ever

[goldenboiwrites]

I literally only have one rule in my writing and it is this:

No matter what I put my characters through, they make it. They get to make it to the end of the story and have everything work out and be ok.

Because that’s the story I need. So it’s the kind I write.