#tips for writing

[aspiringfictionwriter]

Reminder for writers: you’re supposed to enjoy writing

I’ve been worried about my writing quality recently, since I’ve felt it’s taken a huge plummet over the last couple chapters since they’re getting shorter. They’ve been averaging four pages instead of eight or nine, and I’ve been really worried about it.

But I stepped back and reminded myself about why I started writing. To bring myself joy. And I’ve been forgetting to enjoy the writing that I’m doing, and when I started doing that again, I’ve been a little more comfortable with my writing again.

[em-dash-press]

6 Tips for Writing an Underdog Character

People love reading about an underdog. There’s something within all of us that relates to persevering against the odds, even when they’re crushing. Anything becomes possible—but how do you write that kind of character successfully?

Here are a few tips to get you started.

1. Create Their Disempowerment

Underdogs need to lose something or have one thing less than those they fight against. It might be something they hope to gain back or something they hope to gain at all.

Let’s use The Hunger Games as an example for this post. Katniss comes from District 12, but she’s already at a disadvantage when she volunteers as tribute. Restrictions on her district kept her from food security for most of her life. Without a lifetime of basic nutrition, her body is already at a disadvantage in the physically-demanding games.

District 12 is also one of the less appreciated districts in her country. She doesn’t think anyone will care about sponsoring her in the games, which makes survival much less likely.

But we still root for her! She volunteered to save her sister, which is heroic. There’s so much potential for more heroic growth that we keep turning the page, even though she’s not the most likely person to survive.

2. Make Your Protagonist Likable

Getting excited to see a character grow might be something you feel as a creative writer, but the average reader also needs an underdog protagonist to be likable in some way. Katniss will do anything for her family, including hunting where and when she isn’t supposed to. Many people would feel the need to do the same for their families.

She also feels deep compassion for people, which she covers up with her gruff demeanor. We’ve all felt like we got hurt because our hearts opened too wide for someone. We can relate to her building defenses into her personality, which might make her likable to more readers.

Katniss also has the core value of loyalty. People always seek loyalty in new connections. It’s how we trust new friends. It’s also how readers trust characters.

This site has a few more tips on crafting likable characters. Part of that happens while you’re creating the characters during your planning process, but you can also do it while you’re writing. As your underdog becomes more of a real person in your mind, you’ll know which primary character traits make them most likable to readers.

3. Plan Their Rock-Bottom Moment

Underdogs always reach a point where they feel they’re at their lowest. Even when they feel crushed or defeated, they choose to find strength and continue with their journey. It makes readers support them even more, but it’s also the defining moment of an underdog’s arc.

Your underdog’s rock-bottom moment will be the scene where they resist the temptation to give up, change their dream, or change who they are. It will be the choice that keeps them moving toward their end goal, instead of taking the easy road.

You could argue Katniss has a few rock-bottom moments. It might be when she hears her sister’s name called at the Reaping. It could be when Rue dies and she chooses to spearhead a revolution.

There could be multiple moments for your underdog too. It depends on the shape of your narrative arc and how many acts your story has.

4. Show Them Trying and Failing

It’s time for an important caveat—underdogs also fail. If they were perfect, they’d be god-like figures that readers couldn’t personally identify with.

Maybe your underdog achieves their ultimate goal, but they experience failure along the way. Their failure helps them grow or makes them pursue their goal with more conviction and determination.

Katniss begins her journey with a mindset of self-preservation. That makes her slightly selfish and automatically distrustful of people. She makes some choices readers would probably disagree with, but then she learns from them. By the end of the series, she’s as selfless as a human can get. 

Characters don’t grow if they don’t make mistakes. Even underdogs should fail. However, that failure shouldn’t make them quit. It should either motivate them to keep going or give them a new perspective on how they can achieve their ultimate goal.

5. Train Them Along the Way

Underdogs start out as unlikely heroes because they don’t start with everything they need to succeed. That might be a societal problem, like coming from an economically disadvantaged family or a biased society. Maybe they don’t have the skills they need, like the ability to fight in hand-to-hand combat, outsmart their antagonist, or solve mysteries.

Usually, characters learn these things during their arcs. Your underdog will likely pick up what they need to succeed through the relationships they make and experiences they have. 

Katniss already knows how to hunt when she volunteers for the games, but Haymitch mentors her to win over much-needed sponsors to survive. Peeta teaches her how to soften her heart and think outside the box. She wouldn’t have made it through the series without the people in her life. Other underdog characters can’t either.

6. Reward Them at the End

Underdogs work hard and transform themselves to achieve their goals. At the end of the story, they often gain a tangible reward, power, knowledge, a new title or a new community. Your underdog should get what they set out to achieve, plus a few extra things they didn’t expect.

Katniss wins the Hunger Games. She gets her primary objective: to continue living. She also protects her sister. In addition to surviving, she has her (albeit rocky) relationship with Peeta, a new mentor in Haymitch, a comfortable living in the Victor’s Village, and an audience of fans who are another layer of protection against President Snow’s desire to kill her.

The extra rewards propel her through the remainder of her storyline. They also set her up for more success with the new lifepath she sees for herself: aiding the revolution to end the games for good.

A new goal is sometimes a reward in itself. It depends on if you want to continue writing about your character or if you want a one-off story.

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I hope this helps gives you a new perspective on future protagonists! Adding one of these factors into your character’s growth could remove your writer’s block too. They set up a path forward for your protagonist and help shape their journey.

You can also use these resources to learn more about the underdog archetype:

Character Archetypes: The Disruptor and the Underdog

Writing the Underdog: Effort Matters Most

7 Tips to Writing Underdog Heroes

[sincerely-sofie]

I'm struggling to name my own charmander, do you have any tips?

I want the name to sound natural for a pmd environment (aka not a human name)

Smol bits of character I have are:

- likes to fight

- acts first, ask questions later,

- bit of an airhead

- nerd

Oooh, this is a topic I love. Names are such a joy to tinker with when creating characters. I'll start out with a preamble on naming characters in general before getting into specific names I'd recommend for this charmander in particular!

Something to keep in mind about characters when you're naming them is who in the story is doing the naming. What is their relationship with the character? What is their opinion of them? What is their personal background? All of these things will influence the types of names your character might be given. The same is true if your character is naming themself. 

(You can ignore these things if you want to free yourself up as you name your character, of course! I just find it helpful in narrowing down my miles-long lists of names I end up with.)

In the case of Twig, I knew Grovyle was going to name her, and that he was going to come from his grass-type background with most names he had been exposed to. He named her Twig because that's a common name amongst grass-type communities that implies smallness, youth, and on the namer’s end, a devotion and determination to protect the one being named. 

Note that there's no such real-world implications in the English word Twig. It's more often used as a way to call someone scrawny and weak. The beauty of writing a story is that you can do what you want in it, and if you want the pokemon language to have a whole plethora of implications and connotations in their naming system, go for it! Just try and communicate it in the narrative somehow so that readers can enjoy it in full. 

Alright, preamble over. Let's get into the names I've found after searching up “fire related words” and exhausting every online thesaurus known to man. I'm going to assume that your charmander character is named by a fire-type, likely a family member, which will center most of them around literal flames and heat, but I'll throw in some less obvious connections as well

Hearth. This name implies a more cozy, homey setting along with a tame sort of fire. However, it may be fun as a contrasting name for a hot-headed character. 

Ember. A classic fire name, and one with a gentler sound than some of the harsher names below. 

Spark. This might be a good name if your character has moments of brilliance despite their airheadedness— like if their nerdy streak has applications that seem to give them sparks of genius. 

Pepper. An indirectly fire-related name, which may be given by a grass-type or its botanical root or a character who enjoys cooking. 

Illumina. A name describing light— again, something that might be fun for emphasizing a nerdy streak!

Fizz. An onomatopoeia of a campfire hissing and crackling. It might be good for a character that surged up in their temper, but is quick to fizzle out. I think this one is really fun, but that's just me!

Wick. Like a candle wick. I love how this sounds. 

Halo. This name emphasizes light and purity, and might not make much sense with its Christian implications in the PMD world. However, it could be used to refer to halos of light around the sun and similar things, which would negate that issue!

Aurora. I see this as being a name popular among both ice-types and fire-types. 

Sol / Soul. Depending on how you spell it, this name is a reference to either the intensity of the sun or your character’s shining spirit. Or both, if you use some fun worldbuilding shenanigans!

Pine. A bit of a stretch, maybe, but I like the idea of referencing pine cones which release seeds amidst forest fires. 

Mallow. Like the above, a reference to bush mallow and baker's globe mallow, types of plant that thrives in the aftermath of fires. 

And finally, Lychee, at my little sister's recommendation!

[blueparadis]

hi! do you have any tips for writing long fics?

helo helo :> i just layed out the framework the way i prefer to do. I'm still working on it, writing long fics.

Ask yourself how long its gonna be? 5k? 10k ? 20k?; set a word count of the fic ( just an approximation)

divide them in parts — i generally do it like this, not a special thing to follow but just a framework.

[a] Exposition: A direct way of telling the reader/audience what's happening in the story before it starts. It sets the tone of the whole story including establishing the characters and where the story is going to take place.the introduction of the plot.

[b] Inciting Incident or Rising Action: Because of what is established in the exposition, the characters in the story are led to do something. This part gets more suspenseful as the story progresses making the audience wonder what's going to happen next. That's why it's a "rising" action. Be specific as you can be since you won't be able to add plot details in next part

[c]Climax: This is usually the most important part of the story. It's the culmination of everything that's happened in the story so far and the point where a choice or an action is made the affects every part of the story. It is the most descriptive part but please be mindful not to slip in too much info, just how the characters are feeling, reacting, thinking to do.

[d]Falling action: This is the part of the story which shows the consequences of climax and the "fallout."You can info dump here again apart from adding Redemption, regret, reconciliation ( if any ).

[e] Denouement or Resolution: This is the conclusion of the story that wraps everything up and fills in any details that hadn't been revealed before so that the story is fully understood. And it gives you an indication of what's to happen once the story ends too or you can give a open ending if you'd like to continue in future.

Set a word count for each of the parts. don't worry if it doesn't match the overall approximating word count you had in the first place for this fic. None of them will be same at the end.

Start writing a synopsis for each part, jot down points you want to touch, even if it's just broken sentences. No one's gonna check that, the result MATTERS. So, write anything in anyway which you won't forget. Sometimes I have oneliner musing to remember the dynamic,the emotional elements that I want to write.

NOW, there must be a scene, a part that you're dying to write, that made you write this long fic in the first place. If you feel restless to write that, please do. It'll get easier to finish and you'll get a huge boost to write the rest of the part. It can be the climax, anti-climax or even the conclusion.

try to finish a part a day, at least a part of part. Be patient with writing otherwise it'll get tiring when you'll be proofreading

listen to music. Yes music, not songs. Only music. Lofi works the best but feel free to pick your niche. It'll help you focus if you're very excited to write the fic.

After completing all you have to do is to beta read. This is harder than you think. It is the same fic that you've been writing for days , maybe months and you might grow monotonous of reading it again. So, beta read can be done in two ways.

one— you can take a day's gap (or whatever you deem fit ) and read, make the necessary corrections in one sitting.

two— do it by parts. starting with your favourite scene or going from the last part to the first part.

Or you can ask someone to beta read. I don't because I can't let someone go through my 10k of brainrot because of one particular scene.

Thank you. i wish you all the best in writing your fic <333

[samandcolby-ownme]

Do you have any tips on starting to write one-shots?

Be creative. Go with your own flow. Write out drafts and ideas you want to put into your one shots. Don’t push yourself or stress about them, once you find your own flow, it’ll come easy.

[maddipinkkitty]

Why isn’t this story working? Three Questions to ask yourself:

-Do I want to write this? yes, I know it may sound weird. But many of my writings that weren't good were often that way because I just wasn’t passionate about it, or I put some perimeter around it which made it less fun. Asking this is a good way of finding the purpose of writing it and can be broken down from there.

-What am I missing? Sometimes I write scenes that just feel....blah. Not working. When encountering this question, it’s usually because I forget to interact the other characters besides the main ones when they should be doing something. Vague, yes, but can be thought-provoking.

-Where do I go from here? Another issue I can have? Running out of outline material, leaving a chapter to feel dead. If the writer doesn’t know where to go next, the reader sure as hell isn’t either. Purpose is again important here. What will the characters want next? What plot point is going to happen next? How will it affect the characters? Knowing a way that is logical and utilizes the characters the best can help ease the blah-ness of a story.

[sserpente]

I finally did it! I've finished working on the first live version of my official website to show it to the world!

I have a proper homepage, an About Me page and even a blog page where I just published a silly little blog post with random writing tips that have always helped me out!

As you can see, the post is available in English and in German! You can check it out if you’re up for it, I would love to see some of you there, it’s all free obviously, and any sort of traffic on my socials and my website really helps me grow my writing persona for my books! 💚 Big hug, everyone!

Now, back to writing... 😋

[ksbbb]

I was going to post but I’m in the middle of a sinus infection or maybe an ear infection? Not sure. I’ll have to go to the doctor tomorrow which is the worst. I hate having anything bothering my ears. Anyway, sorry. Fjfjfj it will be delayed until I feel better.

[seaside-writings]

Sometimes you just have to force yourself to write.

Just pick a scene, any scene at all, and start writing.

I know you might think it’s bad right now, but you can always change it later.

[cherry-pop-elf]

Opening Up To Writing Prosperities

I have been thinking of opening up to writing on AO3 like stories that would be more graphic, chapters, and just shipping stuff. But idk if anyone would enjoy reading them, and I don’t really quite know how AO3 works. Despite having an account already. Any advice would be nice!

Along with a place I can dump commissioned writings, and a good way to help show what my skills offer. Given tumblr is still relatively limiting

Any advice would be nice!

[improbablyscreamingrn]

alas, this is the tragedy of living:

slow dancing with compliancy

in a lavender haze,

embracing deceit

in a velvet green smog,

kissing the lipless

under a withering mistletoe,

…..IDK WHAT ELSE TO SAYYYYY

[aspiringfictionwriter]

Reminder for writers to not stress about changing their storyline plans!

As I was writing, I found myself deviating from the timeline I had meticulously set up in order to keep things properly set, but I didn’t notice until today.

But that’s okay!

I realized it flowed better with the story much better than my initial plan, so I made some small changes to my timeline, and I made it work!

Don’t stress yourself over things that just naturally happened as you wrote, since clearly you thought it went well with the story if you deviated from the path!

[celestic-celestia]

Okay but like why is it so hard to write stories? I swear I'll have so many ideas but the moment I start typing I'll lose all my writing knowledge and create a mess. Any writing tips?

[robynthewriter]

writing help #3

the train now approaching platform 1 is not for passenger use; please do not attempt to board this train.

[a-world-of-whimsy-5]

Turns out, this is a thing. 

[snowpetaly]

Valentine's Writing Prompts 💌✨🖋️

Hello everyone!

I come with another monthly "writing prompts" this time with the month that we associate with love. Valentine's day! 🎉 💖

Below I present a board with slogans/suggestions that are only to awaken your senses and become the starting point of your romantic story!

Don't forget to share your amazing stories!

You can use #ValentinesWritingPrompts2023 for this on any web platform ♡

May the writing spirit be with you!

~ Love