The Skellingcorner

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legit-writing-tips

Legit Tip #143

Far too often, authors expect their readers to blindly agree with/follow along with whatever the protagonist plans, thinks, or does by the virtue of them being the protagonist of the story. This is a bad idea for plenty of reasons, the biggest among them being the fact that you can’t control the way your reader thinks. So what’s the best way to address potential flaws in your hero’s plans or way of thinking (or even to highlight those flaws in instances where your hero is in the wrong)? 

By introducing the skeptic character. The skeptic enters the narrative to raise those important questions, forcing your hero to either -

A. Gain some introspection and realize he is in the wrong. 

B. Ignore said skepticism at his own (potential) peril

C. Prove that he was right

Various characters serve as the skeptic in Harry Potter, though the role is most often taken up by Hermione (and occasionally characters such as Draco Malfoy in the series’ darker moments). 

In Hermione’s case, she often serves as the skeptic in instances where the characters must make hard decisions between whether to accept and follow along with authority or to break the rules and do what’s right. The interesting thing about that is the fact that you can be certain the trio is on the right path depending on whether or not Hermione is fully on board. (For example, Hermione agreeing to help recover the stone in Book 1 vs. Hermione’s frustration with Harry in Book 6.) In this regard she very much serves as the skeptical voice of reason as opposed to emotionally driven Ron or duty-bound Harry.

I specifically point out Hermione because I want to make it clear that skeptics don’t necessarily have to be antagonists or rivals within a story (even though they most often fill that role). Malfoy and Snape present opposing ideologies and give the reader a more complex understanding of the morality issues at play in the story. Minor rivals (like the Hufflepuffs in Harry’s 4th year) point out legitimate flaws in Harry’s character and help you develop a better understanding of the character as more than just a “hero”. 

So bring in skeptics, and don’t be afraid to make those skeptics right on occasion. A hero who is always in the right is a boring hero.

writing writing tips characterization
goingforwards

more otp hot mess aus:

  • ‘you’re lying on the floor of the movie theater crying and i’m the employee who has to tell you another movie starts in five minutes so you have to leave and i’m really sorry but im also confused as to why a documentary on lightbugs affected you so much’ au
  • 'i found you sleeping on my balcony when i went out to water my plants why are you here and more importantly how did you get here we’re eighteen floors up’ au
  • 'i’m having a minor breakdown in the middle of bed bath and beyond and you’re a bewildered shopper who wants to buy plates but also to make sure i’m okay bc im wailing a little bit in the kitchenware section’ au
  • 'i asked a staff member and they said you’ve been coming to the pound every day to play with the dog i’m taking home today and that’s why you’re getting weirdly emotional’ au
  • 'why are you dancing in your underwear to kelly clarkson in a public bathroom while brushing your teeth’ au
otp prompts mine isabelle writes prompts
cutepippin
“ So I just found this while searching for some pics for a photoset, and omg i have never laughed so hard. I was born in Ithilien, very close to Mordor but now days I live in Rohan, a few miles from Helm’s Deep. This year I’m also going to visit the...

So I just found this while searching for some pics for a photoset, and omg i have never laughed so hard.

I was born in Ithilien, very close to Mordor but now days I live in Rohan, a few miles from Helm’s Deep.

This year I’m also going to visit the Elves of Mirkwood and on my way I will stay a day in Gondor!

this is too much hahahahhah SWEDEN AS ROHAN HAHAHAHAHAHA no Poland kinda fits as Ithilien as it's often attacked by the forces of Mordor aka Russia lord of the rings lotr the hobbit tfunetwork
fantasy-writing writeyoursteps

Resources: Master List of WQA Posts

writing-questions-answered

Beginning a Story:

New to Writing
Advice for Teen Writers
Getting Better at Writing
How to Perfect Your Writing
Creating the Perfect Writing Space
Finding the Time to Write
Beginning a Novel
Figuring Out a Plot
How to Give Your Story a Purpose
Building a Story Off a Loose Timeline
Outlining a Scene
How to Tell if a Scene is Necessary
Outlining and Planning a Series
The Series Arc vs Each Book’s Arc
Brainstorming for Ideas 
Finding Focus During a Storm of Ideas
Turning Ideas into a Story
Finding an Entry Point Into Your Story
The Opening Line
The Opening Scene
Introducing Characters
Where to Post Fiction Online
Concerned About Plagiarism When Posting Story Online
What is NaNoWriMo?
NaNoWriMo Tips
Collaborating With Another Writer
Coming Up with a Title

Character Development:

Character Authenticity
Recognizing a Flat Character
Fleshing Out a Flat Character
Different Kinds of Antagonists
Strong Female Protagonists
Name Resources
How to Write a Witty Character
Tricks for Visualizing Your Character
Figuring Out Who Your Characters Are
Creating a Truly Evil Villain
Ethnicity and Skin Tone
Literal Skin Tones: An Experiment
To Kill or Not Kill a Character
Alternatives to Character Worksheets
Finding Your Character’s Voice
Keeping Character Personalities Separate and Unique
Good and Bad Reasons to Kill a Character
Emotionally Muted Characters

Copyright:

Referencing Other Works in Fiction
Using Real People as Characters
Fiction Based on Original Works
Plagiarism & Sharing Your Story Online


Description:

Describing Skin Tones
About Describing Ethnicity
The Great Ethnicity Debate
How to Make Simple Writing More Vivid
Describing Physical Appearance
Writing Fight Scenes and Elemental Magic
Horror by Daylight
Horror in Darkness
Describing Actions
Describing Clothing and Appearance
Fight Scene Resources
Battlefield Scene Resources
Battlefield Aftermath
Avoiding the Info Dump
Give Your Story a Darker Tone
Weaving Details Into the Story
Describing Architecture
Describing Everyday Settings


Dialogue:

How Much is Too Much?
Cutting Dialogue Down
Portraying Sign Language in Dialogue
Balancing Description and Dialogue
Writing Dialogue
Writing Accents
Translating Foreign Language for the Reader
Making Dialogue More Detailed
Reducing Name Tagging
Smooth Dialogue & Tag Help
Dialogue Tags and Punctuation
“Said” and Dialogue Tags
Getting Dialogue to Flow Smoothly


Editing:

Ways to Tighten Up Your Writing
Expanding the Word Count


Grammar & Style:

Writing Concise Sentences


Motivation:

Getting Back to Writing
What to Do When Your Story Stalls
Moving Forward When You’ve Lost Interest (In Your Story)
Finding Inspiration When You’re Stuck for an Idea
Take a “Vacation” to Re-Charge Your Creativity
How to Get Excited About Your Story Again
Beating Writer’s Block
Frustrated with Writing Quality
Getting Better at Writing
Staying Motivated


Plot and Story Structure:


How to Develop a Plot
Plot and Story Structure
The Prologue
Should I Cut My Prologue?
Writing a Dramatic Ending
Cliffhanger Endings
Chapter Titles and Endings


Publishing:

Where to Begin
Typical Word Counts 
Contests, cover letters, and Query Letters
Posting Novel or Sections on Blog
E-Books
What Agents Do and Why They’re Necessary
Self-Publishing vs Traditional Publishing
Building a Writing Portfolio
Keeping Image Private
A Guide to Self-Publishing
Getting Published Abroad


Research:

Research Tips
How Much Research is Enough
WQA’s Guide to Internet Research


Romance:

How to Avoid Forced Romantic Sub-Plot
Kissing Scenes
Sexual Tension
Writing Romance without Experience
Subtle Signs of Love
Getting to Know Your Neighbor
Guide to Love Triangles
Delicate and Relevant Sex Scenes
Love at First Sight and the Stages of Love

Story Elements:

Tone and Theme
Suspense, Climax, and Ending
Conflict and Tension
Foreshadowing
Symbolism
Making a Point Without Tongue-Wagging
Writer Responsibility
Accounting for Lost Time in Scene Transitions
Flashbacks


World Building and Setting:

Establishing a Non-Traditional Fantasy Setting
Creating a Fictional Calendar
Creating a Language
Telling Time Without Clocks
Going Too Far with Fantasy?
Map Making
Creating Religion in a Fictional World
Cultural Appropriation
Creating and Naming Kingdoms
Setting Your Story in an Unfamiliar Place
Choosing a Setting for Your Story
Naming Things
Setting Your Story in a Fictional Town
How to Set Up an Oppressive Government


Writing Process:

How I Plan
Drafts
Timelines
Organizational Tools

ghostflowerdreams

Writing Research - Bow & Arrows

The purpose of this research post is to be helpful, more importantly educational. I certainly don’t condone the use of this knowledge for malevolent reasons. I want to help writers with their stories and I figured this would make their search for such information easier. 

This is great for the stories that take place in ancient times, apocalyptic setting, and/or contains characters that are archers. Maybe you’re writing fanfiction and it’s about one of these characters: Legolas Greenleaf, Bard the Bowman, Kili and Tauriel (The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit), Katniss Everdeen (The Hunger Games), Kagome Higurashi (InuYasha), Oliver Queen/Green Arrow (Arrow), Princess Merida (Brave), Susan Pevensie (The Chronicles of Narnia), Link (The Legend of Zelda), Hawkeye, Robin Hood, Lara Croft, and so on. 

This information would help make them believable. For example, if they are teaching another character how to be an archer it would be difficult to write about it without first knowing how it’s actually done in real life. The same can be said about when they are wounded by an arrow, just how would they deal with it? Or if your character is a survivalist or prepper and their story is set in an apocalypse world, they would probably know how to make weapons (like the bow and arrows) from the things around them in order to survive.

So this post is meant to make a writer’s life a little easier by giving them a starting point. It doesn’t contain EVERY information about bows, but if you know what you’re looking for than I encourage you to look it up. 

How To Make A Bow and Arrows

How To Use A Bow

How To Treat An Arrow Wound/Injury

Source: ghostflowerdreams
writing writing help bow and arrow arrow wound arrow injury writing research writing reference archery fight scene fighting scene battles The Lord of the Rings The Hobbit history medieval wounds medieval times fantasy writing zombie apocalypse apocalypse survival
douevencomicbro blackcomicbookguy
blue-eyed-hanji: “lotrlockedwhovian: “maybe-this-time: “ supernaturalshadowhunter: “ adventuretimetimeline: “ fuckier0: “ tempestuous-sovereignity: “ alittleworldofimagination: “ forgetpolitics: “ mariavontraphouse: “ philliciaglee: “ nowyoukno: “...
nowyoukno

See More Daily Facts Here!

philliciaglee

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAH

Sorry….kind of

mariavontraphouse

isn’t captain hook and his crew suppose to be a lost boys who escaped and that’s why he’s trying to kill peter pan

forgetpolitics

…what the actual fuck

alittleworldofimagination

I NEVER TRUSTED PETER PAN

tempestuous-sovereignity

nah everything in Peter Pan was fucked up. 

Tinkerbell and her fairy buddies were having an orgy when they found baby Peter. Tinks also extremely jealous, tricking one of the Lost Boys into shooting Wendy in the fucking chest.

Peter’s also crazy omnipotent. Like, he “make believes” he’s a doctor, and heals Wendy. When he’s hungry, he pretends to eat imaginary food and his stomach actually gets fuller.

He’s also a dick. He would teach children how to fly but never how to stop, so they’d fly for months on straight without rest or break, and they couldn’t sleep either or they’d stop flying. And when one of Wendy’s brothers actually fell asleep and plummeted into the ocean, Peter laughed his ass off. He only saved him when Wendy begged him too.

fuckier0

okay but that’s the point of Peter Pan. It’s not supposed to glorify never growing up, it’s supposed to show kids why growing up is not only good, but necessary otherwise they’d end up as fucked up as Peter. He never matured, never learned right from wrong, he never listened to his parents because - according to Peter - he ran away as an infant.It’s a tale to teach children that listening to their parents and growing up is good. As far as Tinker Bell goes, if you actually read Peter Pan you would know that fairies only feel one emotion at a time and they feel that emotion very strongly so the orgy? lust. Trying to kill Wendy? Jealousy. She embodies the seven deadly sins and what happens if you let your emotions get the best of you. (And as far as the new fairies series of films making her nicer it’s because you only see the jealous side of her in Peter Pan and you see other sides of her in the series because those movies are about her).
Rant over, you can go back to your regularly scheduled blogging now.

adventuretimetimeline

So if Peter Pan shows up in your window. Stab him in the fucking chest kids. You have school tomorrow

supernaturalshadowhunter

Reblogging because I believe this will be important to the Once Upon a Time fandom tomorrow.

maybe-this-time

It’s more complicated than that. Peter is kind of a tragic hero. He chooses not to grow up, he knows he is incomplete.

I mean, he cut off Hook’s hand because he thought it was a game. He clearly doesn’t know right from wrong. He also only knows the unconditional love of a mother to a child, which is why he thinks everyone wants to be his mother. He also switches sides in a fight just for fun, kill pirates for fun, and “thins” out the Lost Boys when they can’t fit in the tree anymore.

But, like, it wasn’t a cautionary tale to tell you to listen to your parents, it’s a story about death and youth. Why can’t Peter grow up? One of the popular theories is that it’s because he’s dead. J.M. Barrie’s older brother died when Barrie was little and he dressed up in his brother’s clothes to please his mom. His mom - who was always distant, whose love Barrie craved like Peter craves a mom - started crying and said something like “At least my baby will never grow up” and that idea stuck with Barrie forever. Then, as an adult, it’s believed he never slept with his wife because Barrie was just a kid. He was Peter Pan. He was too innocent for that. He befriended the Llewelyn-Davies boys and based Peter Pan off of them and their games. (Fun fact: The boy Peter Pan was named after, Peter Llewelyn-Davies, threw himself under a train). There was also a bunch of stuff about Barrie being in love with The Llewlyn-Davies boys’ mother, but that’s not important here.

People think Peter’s dead because he literally cannot return home. He tried and the window was barred and his parents had replaced him with another baby. Why? Probably because they had lost Peter to the flu. Why does Peter come in through the window? Because of the joke “I once had a bird names Enza. I opened up the window and ‘influenza’.” Because lots of babies died back then form the flu. The Lost Boys are children who fell out of their prams. Odds are babies could not survive falling out of their prams. Peter is liked the pied piper ferrying the souls of young children to the neverland/afterlife. Barrie believed that all children were “gay and heartless” but he didn’t think that was a bad thing.

Also, Hook and his crew are not old lost boys trying to kill Peter. Hook was once a British gentlemen (hinted at to be associated with Charles II and attended Elton) and he is afraid of growing old. His biggest fear is growing old and dying - that is why his nemesis is the embodiment of eternal youth. That is why the crocodile that chases him swallowed a clock and ticks. That is why when Peter finally decided “It’s Hook of me this time” the crocodile has stopped ticking and Peter started (he’s trying to trick them into thinking he’s the croc). At that moment - Peter is time and time has ran out for Hook.

Also, it’s not so much that Peter is omnipotent. All kids basically are in the Neverland. Like, it states that the island looks different to every kid because it’s the land of their dreams and stuff. Also, the island legit freezes when Peter leaves and thaws when he comes back. He’s been there so long he’s not human anymore - but fey. (keep in mind being fey isn’t good, just chaotic neutral). Peter even secretes pixie dust now. The island is so fine tuned with him because he’s one of the only people that stay, that it caters to him. Most likely any child that stayed as long as he did would become omnipotent to an extent.

As for Tinker Bell, the above stated is true. Fairies are so tiny they can only have one emotion at a time - “Tink wasn’t all bad” - and they also have really short lifespans so, like, Tinker Bell isn’t even that important to Peter Pan. He forgets all about her and Hook by the time Wendy is grown up.And the orgies thing is because in the legends fey are known for their revelries. 

And it wasn’t so much that Peter was a dick, he just doesn’t know when to stop. He’s a child. He doesn’t know right from wrong. He doesn’t know when to stop playing -cutting Hooks hand off was a game to him. He also has the memory of a child, so odds are he just forgot to teach kids how to stop flying or how to imagine food, etc. He is just carefree, like all children. Everything is a game to him, because he never learned anything else.

But like, no, Peter Pan is not a cautionary tale. Barrie loved his character and the story and brought up a lot of good things in it. He wrote Peter as an exaggeration of a cocky overconfident boy, but, like, Peter wasn’t afraid of death. It says “he felt scared, yet he felt only one shudder run through him when any other person would have felt scared up until death. With his blithe attitude towards death, he says, “To die will be an awfully big adventure”.” and with that Barrie is showing us both a naivety and bravery we possess as children but lose as adults and is basically telling us that we shouldn’t let that go. Like, the point is growing up is inevitable but you don’t have to lose everything.

And so yeah….I’m really passionate about Peter Pan.

lotrlockedwhovian

Today, I have learned.

blue-eyed-hanji

reallifetink holy shit

douevencomicbro

I didn’t wake up expecting to know so much about Peter Pan

thoodleoo

shit i’ve heard people in my classics courses say

  • zeus is kind of a man-whore
  • why do the greeks love dicks so much? why are there so many dicks??
  • i kinda want to punch ovid in the crotch, not gonna lie
  • achilles is such a manchild. *mocking voice* wah wah wah agamemnon took my girlfriend im gonna go cry in my tent
  • the romans had a god of dicks?? what the fuck????
  • so if all these people zeus had sex with did it when he was an animal does that make him a furry
  • maybe if odysseus weren’t such a slut he’d have made it home in faster than 10 years. just sayin
  • when you think about it, catullus is basically roman taylor swift
  • you know those persians, with their pants and their perfumed hair. absolutely barbaric
  • pompeii? like the song?
  • why did any of the other greeks ever listen to athens they’re just a bunch of assholes
  • maybe the reason the greeks always made the penises so small on their statues was so that they would feel better about themselves
  • why the hell did i decide to take greek
  • no seriously i hate this why am i in this class
  • this language makes no sense im gonna cry
  • vergil just called this character ‘flaming’ like 5 times i can’t deal
  • i mean, the greeks were right. you know us ladies. we just wanna be filled on both ends
  • this shit is so gay
tagamemnon history greek mythology i just love my classics courses queueusque tandem abutere catilina patientia nostra