The Skellingcorner

[alexreadsboooks]

Day 16 of #marchmonthofmythology is Antigone - character who stands up for what they believe in
*
Okay so I’m neither the hugest fan of Katniss nor of the trilogy as a whole, but Katniss definitely stood up for what she believed in, I can’t fault her for that.
The weather was so beautiful these past two day, I’m sad the weather report said it will get cold again tomorrow. But it’s still early in the year, well get there.
*
*
#bookstagram #bookish #booklover #bookworm #booklr #books #bibliophile #marchbookchallenge #bookstagrammer #booklove #booksofinstagram #instabook #read #reading #reader #buch #bücher #lesen #bookstagramfeature  #bookphotography #leser #igbooks #bookishallure

[its-a-writer-thing]

[writing-questions-answered]

Anonymous asked:

Do you have advice on how to write grand mystical elements/events without sounding pretentious? The scene in question is a transition between worlds, and the best I can quickly describe it is that it should be something akin to that trippy scene in Doctor Strange where Steven is thrown out of his body: vague, mind-expanding and out of reality. How to describe such a scene with grandeur without it sounding pretentious?

I think brevity is the key. Brevity, clear and precise description, relevant metaphors, and avoiding anything too ornate. 

1) Brevity - no need to go on at length, especially for something that may last only minutes or seconds for the character experiencing it. A few sentences can go a long way if you choose the right details. Focus on the sensory details that will have the most impact. If a detail isn’t necessary for the reader’s understanding of what’s happening, consider ditching it.

2) Clear and Precise Description - avoid beating around the bush with description. Instead of, “in the middle of it all was a gaping circular maw that appeared to lead to another dimension,” something like, “in the middle of it all was a portal that appeared to lead to another dimension.” Don’t be afraid to call things by name, and make sure you use the most appropriate word.

3) Relevant Metaphors - irrelevant metaphors are always a pet peeve of mine, but when you want to avoid sounding pretentious, you should definitely make sure you choose metaphors that aren’t completely random. Don’t describe the colors your character is falling through as, “rich as the most sinful dark chocolate” unless your character is transitioning to or from a candy world. In fact, don’t even do it then, because “rich color” and “rich chocolate” have nothing to do with one another. It’s a metaphor that makes no sense. 

4) Avoid Anything Too Ornate - this could maybe be 1-3 combined, but I think it’s still worth mentioning on its own, because you also want to be careful not to do it on ornate word choices. You don’t want your description to sound like you wrote out a sentence, then whipped out a thesaurus and swapped out every word for its most obscure synonym. Ornate words are fine once in a while, if they are an appropriate use of the word, but most of the time, a more common/simple word will do the job just fine.

I hope that helps!

———————————————————————
Have a writing question? I’d love to hear from you! Please be sure to read my ask rules and master list first or your question will not be answered. :)

[writerswritecompany]

Happy Birthday, Amitava Kumar, born 17 March 1963

10 Rules For Writing

1. Write every day. This is a cliché, of course, but you will write more when you tell yourself that no day must pass without writing. At the back of a notebook I use in my writing class, I write down the date and then make a mark next to it after the day’s work is done. I show the page to my students often, partly to motivate them, and  partly to remind myself that I can’t let my students down.
2. Have a modest goal. Aim to write 150 words each day. It is very difficult for me to find time on some days, and it is only this low demand that really makes it even possible to sit down and write. On better days, this goal is just a start; often, I end up writing more.
3. Try to write at the same time each day. I recently read a Toni Morrison interview in which she said: “I tell my students one of the most important things they need to know is when they are at their best, creatively.” It works best for me if I write at the same time each day—in my case, that hour or two that I get between the time I drop off my kids at school and go in to teach. I have my breakfast and walk up to my study with my coffee. In a wonderful little piece published on The New Yorker blog “Page-Turner”, writer Roxana Robinson writes how she drinks coffee quickly and sits down to write—no fooling around reading the paper, or checking the news, or making calls to friends, or trying to find out if the plumber is coming. “One call and I’m done for. Entering into the daily world, where everything is complicated and requires decisions and conversation, means the end of everything. It means not getting to write.” I read Robinson’s piece in January 2013, and alas, I have thought of it nearly every day since.
4. Turn off the Internet. The Web is a great resource and entirely unavoidable, but it will help you focus when you buy the Freedom app. Using a device like this not only rescues me from easy distraction, it also works as a timer. When you click on the icon, it asks you to choose the duration for which you want the computer to not have access to the Net. I choose 60 minutes and this also helps me keep count of how long I have sat at my computer.
5. Walk for ten minutes. Or better yet, go running. If you do not exercise regularly, you will not write regularly—or not for long. I haven’t been good at doing this and have paid a price with trouble in my back. I have encouraged my students to go walking too, and have sometimes thought that when I have to hold lengthy consultations with my writing class, I should go for walks with them on our beautiful campus.
6. A bookshelf of your own. Choose one book, or five, but no more than ten, to guide you, not with research necessarily, but with the critical matter of method or style. Another way to think about this is to ask yourself who are the writers, or scholars, or artists, that you are in conversation with. I use this question to help arrive at my own subject matter, but it also helps with voice.
7. Get rid of it if it sounds like grant talk. I don’t know about you, but I routinely produce dead prose when I’m applying for a grant. The language used in applications must be abhorred: stilted language, jargon, etc. I’m sure there is a psychological or sociological paper to be written about the syntax and tone common in such things—the appeal to power, lack of freedom—but in my case it might just be because, with the arrival of an application deadline, millions of my brain cells get busy committing mass suicide.
8. Learn to say no. This applies equally to the friendly editor who asks for a review or an essay, even to the friend who is editing an anthology. Say no if it takes you away from the writing you want to do. My children are small and don’t take no for an answer, but everyone who is older is pretty understanding. And if they’re understanding, they’ll know that for you occasional drinks or dinner together are more acceptable distractions.
9. Finish one thing before taking up another. Keep a notebook handy to jot down ideas for any future book, but complete the one you are working on first. This rule has been useful to me. I followed it after seeing it on top of the list of Henry Miller’s “Commandments”. It has been more difficult to follow another of Miller’s rules: “Don’t be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand.”
10. The above rule needs to be repeated. I have done shocking little work when I have tried to write two books at once. Half-finished projects seek company of their own and are bad for morale. Shut-off the inner editor and complete the task at hand.

Kumar is an Indian writer and journalist.

by Amanda Patterson for Writers Write.

[sweetlittlevampire]

Time for some serious lawyering! *cracks knuckles*

(I have to prepare a case study for my Media Law class, but…just please, let me keep on pretending that I do, in fact, live in Ace Attorney land :p )

[medievalpoc]

[medievalpoc]

Bitch Magazine Series: Girls of Color in Dystopian YA Fantasy Literature

This current guest series by Victoria Law includes book reviews, analysis of race and tends in YA literature, questions about race and gender in Dystopic narratives, interviews with authors and more.

• Do Girls of Color Survive Dystopia?
• A Short List of Great Resources for Racial Diversity in Young Adult Sci-Fi
• Black Girls Hunger for Heroes, Too: A Black Feminist Conversation on Fantasy Fiction for Teens (Zeta Elliott and Ibi Aanu Zoboi)
• Two YA Authors Explore Life After the Bomb (Ellen Oh and Julianna Baggott)
• Race & Body Issues in Nalo Hopkinson’s “The Chaos”
• Send in the Clones: Two YA Novels’ Treatment of Race, Gender, and Cloning
• YA Book “What’s Left of Me” is a Dystopian Take on Nationalist Fervor
• Can a Society Run by Women Still Be a Dystopia?
• Reading “Tankborn”— A YA Book About Race, Class, and Caste
• Dystopian Book “Partials” Imagines a Society of Forced Pregnancy
• New Book “Orleans” Imagines a World Where Blood Type Matters More than Race
• Dystopian Book “Shadows Cast By Stars” Revolves Around Aboriginal Race and Identity
• Finally! In “Immortal Rules,” One Girl of Color Survives Dystopia
• A 15-Year-Old’s Vision of Public School Dystopia
• Reading Race in Marie Lu’s Dystopian YA Hit “Legend”
• What if Cinderella Wasn’t Straight and White?
• Young Adult Books Too Often Present a World Without People of Color

[medievalpoc]

Reblogging for Fiction Week!

[firemoon42]

Ways to un-stick a stuck story

• Do an outline, whatever way works best. Get yourself out of the word soup and know where the story is headed.

• Conflicts and obstacles. Hurt the protagonist, put things in their way, this keeps the story interesting. An easy journey makes the story boring and boring is hard to write.

• Change the POV. Sometimes all it takes to untangle a knotted story is to look at it through different eyes, be it through the sidekick, the antagonist, a minor character, whatever.

• Know the characters. You can’t write a story if the characters are strangers to you. Know their likes, dislikes, fears, and most importantly, their motivation. This makes the path clearer.
  

• Fill in holes. Writing doesn’t have to be linear; you can always go back and fill in plotholes, and add content and context.

• Have flashbacks, hallucinations, dream sequences or foreshadowing events. These stir the story up, deviations from the expected course add a feeling of urgency and uncertainty to the narrative.

• Introduce a new mystery. If there’s something that just doesn’t add up, a big question mark, the story becomes more compelling. Beware: this can also cause you to sink further into the mire.

• Take something from your protagonist. A weapon, asset, ally or loved one. Force him to operate without it, it can reinvigorate a stale story.

• Twists and betrayal. Maybe someone isn’t who they say they are or the protagonist is betrayed by someone he thought he could trust. This can shake the story up and get it rolling again.

• Secrets. If someone has a deep, dark secret that they’re forced to lie about, it’s a good way to stir up some fresh conflict. New lies to cover up the old ones, the secret being revealed, and all the resulting chaos.

• Kill someone. Make a character death that is productive to the plot, but not “just because”. If done well, it affects all the characters, stirs up the story and gets it moving.

• Ill-advised character actions. Tension is created when a character we love does something we hate. Identify the thing the readers don’t want to happen, then engineer it so it happens worse than they imagined.

• Create cliff-hangers. Keep the readers’ attention by putting the characters into new problems and make them wait for you to write your way out of it. This challenge can really bring out your creativity.

• Raise the stakes. Make the consequences of failure worse, make the journey harder. Suddenly the protagonist’s goal is more than he expected, or he has to make an important choice.

• Make the hero active. You can’t always wait for external influences on the characters, sometimes you have to make the hero take actions himself. Not necessarily to be successful, but active and complicit in the narrative.

• Different threat levels. Make the conflicts on a physical level (“I’m about to be killed by a demon”), an emotional level (“But that demon was my true love”) and a philosophical level (“If I’m forced to kill my true love before they kill me, how can love ever succeed in the face of evil?”).

• Figure out an ending. If you know where the story is going to end, it helps get the ball rolling towards that end, even if it’s not the same ending that you actually end up writing.

• What if? What if the hero kills the antagonist now, gets captured, or goes insane? When you write down different questions like these, the answer to how to continue the story will present itself.

• Start fresh or skip ahead. Delete the last five thousand words and try again. It’s terrifying at first, but frees you up for a fresh start to find a proper path. Or you can skip the part that’s putting you on edge – forget about that fidgety crap, you can do it later – and write the next scene. Whatever was in-between will come with time.

[fuckyeahcharacterdevelopment]

[friendlytroll]

dear fiction writers: 

as far as I know, there is no large carnivore who would abandon actively eating a killed meal to chase live prey. chasing and hunting live prey is a risk, as a healthy live creature has the capability to injure a carnivore, or tire it out through the chase. If there is, say, a giant pile of dead bodies to eat, which abandoning would allow other carnivores or scavengers to steal and eat instead, it makes no sense at all. 

please stop doing that thing

[wallycaine]

The sole exception I can think of is if the large carnivore thought the live prey was another carnivore or scavenger, and was chasing them as a threat display to ensure they didn’t steal the dead bodies. Even in that case, though, it would only be a short, mock charge followed by returning to the pile if the opponent fled. With possibly whatever the animal’s equivalent of “and stay out” would be. 

[roachpatrol]

Another thing: most carnivores don’t like to fight. They have to mug something to death for every single meal, they have to stay in top shape while conserving their energy. Meanwhile, herbivores have plenty of extra energy because they eat stuff that comes out of the ground and doesn’t fight back, and they often live in big social groups, so they’re better at handling stress and more used to having to actually come to blows with other animals to get their way. 

So like, a zebra will try kick your ass just to see what’s up. A tiger won’t do shit unless it’s damn sure it can take you. I’d rather come face to face with a cougar than a stag— have you seen videos of what happens to hunters when a stag catches a dude on the ground? the stag tears the dude apart. Not even to eat him. Just because the stag didn’t like what was going on and decided it was time to curb stomp a motherfucker. 

So if you’re deciding what kind of Big Scary Animals to have be a threat, like, forget wolves and lions and eagles and velociraptors. Go drop in a moose.

[muttluver]

This is why loud noise can scare bears away. It’s a threat display that normally convinces them that the charge isn’t worth the effort.

[fuckyeahcharacterdevelopment]

-Exception:  

If a carnivore is Not That Hungry it might drop something dead to chase something that is doing Extreme Prey Behavior– but it’s not going to be serious about it. I’m thinking of things like a domestic cat that chases birds and mice for kicks. Honestly, I think that the t rex in Jurassic Park was a good example of predator behavior– she abandons something difficult (like the kids in the jeep) for the bright shiny thing she has been conditioned to understand means food (tightpants math guy with the flare + gruff dino man with flare). For the rest of the film, she chases things that run, and then quits and chows down once she has something. This has been one of my biggest beefs with the later JP films, especially Jurassic World– rather than the scares coming from being treated and stalked like prey by animals, the scares are based on monsters killing and eating randomly. (And what’s with the treatment of all the herbivores as good and gentle? Herbivores will fuck you up because they got scared or because you pissed them off and those are the two primary emotions of large herbivores– they won’t eat you, but they’ll still trample you).

+Addition:

The predators that aren’t snipers (like cougars or herons) tend to test individuals in a herd– they want to gauge your health and willingness to fuck somebody up before they commit to you as a target. If you stare them down with your cold dead eyes and gear up to wreck their shit they’ll piss off unless they’re completely desperate. (Like I said, the main emotions of prey animals are Time To Fuck Shit Up and Time To Run). 
So, I’m desperately tired of all these people running and screaming away from wolves and velociraptors and bears oh my. 

Consider:

How much scarier fiction could be if predators acted like actual predators that can be intelligent and patient and are pressing around the edges of your party to find weakness and fear. 

[of-cannibals-and-kings]

[runecestershire]

Angry shouty Scottish Coriolanus? Yes please.

[of-cannibals-and-kings]

mmmmm Alan ilu

[midenianscholar]

10 Writing Resources: Characters

From the basics to the very in-depth, these are some of the resources I go to when I’m developing new characters. Have a look at my favorites, and add your own!

1. 25 Things About Creating Characters

As a writer, creating characters is probably the most important thing you do. Get it wrong, and the story will be wrong no matter how well plotted.

2. Lessons From James Scott Bell: Characters That Jump Off The Page  

Readers are engaged by characters who do not always act in a predictable way. Think of how to have your character make decisions or respond in ways the reader won’t see coming.

3. Crafting Memorable Characters  

Successful main characters are the agents of their own destiny, they are someone we root for, and they grow or change during the course of the novel.

4. 6 Must-Know Tricks for Getting to Know Your Characters    

Most of us don’t start writing until we’ve come up with a character we just adore. But how can we make sure this character will also be adored by our readers?

5. Creating Your Hero’s Fatal Flaw

The most intriguing conflicts are the ones that come from within people’s own personalities.

6. Five Unrealistic Character Traits    

These characters have traits that are so unrealistic, the audience starts thinking about the author’s intention rather than the story at hand.

7. 100 Character Development Questions for Writers  

Answer these in character, but only in a situation where your character would be 100% honest with themselves and with the person asking the question.

8. Writing Crutches: Gestures  

What are gesture crutches, and why should we avoid them?

9. The Path to Deepening Your Protagonist

 Protagonists don’t write themselves. No character does. So why leave trait-choice up to the character?

10. Nine Kick-Ass Excercises to Find Your Character’s Voice  

Creating unique voices for each viewpoint character is essential in creating fiction readers want to read over and over.

What about you? What are your favorite blog posts about creating characters?

(cross posted over here)

[lady-fey]

When every character has a sob story, no one does.

One of the main faux pas that I see young writers make is this idea that that they need to give every character a tragic backstory. There can be no happiness in the past for our main characters. Their childhoods must be steeped in sorrow to make them deep and tragic because being deep and tragic makes them interesting and no. That is just not true. A character can be interesting even if they had a perfectly normal and happy childhood.

That’s not the reason why I’m talking about this issue, though. I’m bringing it up because of a very real problem that comes with giving everyone a sob story: when every character has one, then no one does.