The Skellingcorner

[thewickwheat]

@janearts let me dress up Bodran and now I’m at peace in my soul

We also learned looking at all the different concepts sketches that we were giving Bodran a very fantasy/medieval biker aesthetic. 

[nimblesnotebook-blog]

In case you still don’t understand why it’s bad to write fiction with a disabled character who is magically “cured”:

[therosielord]

Imagine this for a second: you’re a kid in a wheelchair.

It’s pretty isolating. You love reading, but every book you read has a hero who can walk. After a while, you start to get the message: only kids without disabilities are allowed to have adventures. Because of your condition, you’ll never be able to have a story worth reading.

Now imagine you discover a book about a kid in a wheelchair.

It’s fantastic. All of a sudden, there’s someone like you who gets to go on awesome adventures. Maybe your story actually is worth telling after all!

But then the hero gets their greatest wish granted: their legs are fixed and they rise from their wheelchair, healthy and strong.

And there you are, the reader, still stuck in your wheelchair.

Your legs will never be fixed.

You will never be granted that magical wish.

And the character who used to just be like you is now something you can never be. The writer has decided that their story is only worth telling if they end up magically abled.

But you will never end up magically abled. So what does this tell you?

Your story will never be worth telling.

Now do you understand?

[nimblesnotebook-blog]

[amandaonwriting]

How to pack an emotional punch in a scene

[nimblesnotebook-blog]

thebookdesigner.com

3 Mistakes You Made Writing Your First Book (and How Not to Make Them Again) - The Book Designer

By Jennie Nash In publishing, everything starts with the quality of the book. Today you’ll hear from editor and book coach Jennie Nash.

[the960writers]

[…]

What mistakes are the most common?

1. There is no clearly defined target audience.
2. There is no point.
3. There is no room for the reader.

[…]

[nimblesnotebook-blog]

#AskAgent

[newleafliterary]

What’s your biggest pet peeve that you see in first lines / paragraphs / pages?

Jackie: Physical descriptions of a character in the first paragraphs. I like to be submerged right into the world, so too much “explaining” in general in those first pages is off-putting to me.

Kathleen: Anything that reads as info dump or trying too hard to paint a picture. I want opening lines that make me want to immerse myself in a story (see post on best first lines).

Mackenzie: Too much passive voice (or general lack of an original voice) and too much telling. Let me discover for myself the characters and world you’ve created.

Danielle: Throwing us into backstory–I like when the story starts, and we get snippets of backstory and worldbuilding as we go. Also, when the main character has a lot of questions right away, this slows me down because then I have all those same questions too, rather than allowing the questions to come to me organically.

Suzie: So I know everyone says that writers should start in the middle of things–and this is true, but I hate when the opening starts too late. If a manuscript opens with something super emotional and there’s no lead up to it, there’s nothing to make me feel the same emotions as the characters. As a result, the drama and conflict is lost on me.

I also can’t handle a character looking into the mirror and talking to themselves as an opening.

Pete: When the character is too passive, or when there’s action but no insight into who the characters really are (and why we should care about them). In the first pages, more than anything, I need to be drawn into the character(s). Then I’ll go wherever they’re taking me.

[nimblesnotebook-blog]

What White Writers worry about when Writing PoC

[eclecticcreative]

Most White writers with questions, claiming the white bubble usually do the following.

1. OMG, the skin.

And then after that the features.

There is a fix for that. It’s called reading PoC fiction by PoCs. When you ask them, “Have you ever read a book by a PoC author in your genre?” The answer is usually, “No.” Or “I never thought of that.”

Really??? You are writing about PoC, but have no intention of reading books and referencing books by PoC. No wonder you are in this mess. Go and read. Support the cause before you try to write it.

2. What Physical features are different from White people.

So for example: How do I describe black hair? (Ebony Magazine?)
How do I describe Asian Eyes?
Can I describe X about X race that’s totally different from white people.

Have they forgotten that we are human too? We have other features—like short, tall, chubby, skinny, thin, lip size, hair length, face shape, hair shape, and so on. This is not like all Asians are… short, have so-called “slanted” eyes (or almond *gags for both*) straight hair and the exact same complexion.

And can’t we have something other than the stereotype? Maybe even words that we use to describe ourselves.

I get it, white dominant culture erases the diversity within the diversity. It’s your job as the writer of this diversity to find that diversity again. So you might end up with a really cool say… Chinese Artist that doesn’t particularly like Calligraphy. A black person who specializes in computer engineering. A Mexican businessman working in a Fortune 500 as a top executive.

…. And then the conversation ends.

Most of the time people skip over all of the culture parts. They are outright scared of being called racist. They don’t want to ask about what’s the taboo about calling a person’s hair “nappy” in the black community. What are Ashy knees? How does AAVE/BAE work? What kind of erasure of history has PoCs gone through.

What is the difference between X culture and X culture?

Be called a racist. It’s not that hard to take. I’m serious. Would you rather live your entire life ignorant that you have some crap that can come out of your mouth that you believe to be true of everyone of that ethnicity to hurt someone or would you like to *fix* that part of yourself, learn and become *less* racist. We all internalize crap. The difference is, out of a white person’s mouth it’s racist. Out of a PoC’s mouth it’s internalization. Get rid of the garbage in your head. It’s worth it.

Besides, racism to me, as a PoC, is about the system/culture/institutions that taught you that crap in the first place

…or “Tell me everything about being X”

Tell me everything about being PoC. I do not understand. Tell me everything about the black experience. Tell me what it’s like to be Native American. I have the right to know—how am I going to learn if no one talks to me?

In another words, you didn’t do your research and didn’t select the experiences that you want to portray. You’re asking for a mountain of info which you could have used the internet for. Hint: Sociology, History, Ethnic Studies and Cultural Anthropology will give you the academic inside before you ask those questions. Television made by those people, movies made by those people, Books made by those people, and magazines made by and targeted to those people will help. Exactly why aren’t you consumming those things in the first place and claiming your white bubble?

Bottom Line

Research before asking a PoC. Ask targeted questions. Stop treating PoCs as completely other. Reach out to the PoC community in your area. And please, please consume PoC-made for PoC materials.

[nimblesnotebook-blog]

Racism in Young Adult Literature; A List of Articles

[magic-in-every-book]

White Washing

• It Matters if You’re Black or White: The Racism of YA Book Covers
• Cover Matters: On Whitewashing
• Why is Children’s Literature White-Washed?
• The Disappearance of Race and Ethnicity from YA Covers
• Don’t Judge a Book by its Cover
• Why the Pretty White Girl YA Book Cover Trend Needs to End
• The Mortal Instruments and White Washing
• Whitewashing & YA Book Covers, A Presentation

 Race in Y.A. Literature

• Race in Y.A. Lit: Wake Up and Smell the Coffee-Colored Skin!
• Race in Young Adult Fiction
  
• Racial Stereotyping in Young Adult Lit
• Writing Race in YA
• Diversity is Not Enough: Race, Power, and Publishing
• I’m Sick of Reading YA Books about Hot White Kids
• Why is There Not More Diversity in Young Adult Fiction
• Straight Talk on Race: Challenging the Stereotypes in Kids’ Books
• The State of Race in YA Literature

Websites:

• Diversity in YA
• We Need Diverse Books
• Racialicious
• Racebending.com
• White Girls on Book Covers
• Reading in Color

[its-a-writer-thing]

Writing Love, Not Attraction

[lizard-is-writing]

Anonymous asked: “How can you make two characters fall in love? In my story there is two gangs. The A gang takes the B gangs Daughter, so that the B gang can cooperate with them. The Daughter wants to get revenge and starts to seduce the A gangs Son, but later she realizes that she’s fallen in love with him. Point is, how can they fall in love without the whole instant attraction.”

Great question, anonymous! One of my biggest pet peeves in novels (often in YA) is when attraction is used synonymously with love. Love is not attraction. Love does not have to be physical or even romantic. I’ve read fantastic love stories where the couple is undoubtedly in love but haven’t even kissed. I’ve read great stories too where the couples are incredibly attracted to each other and get physically intimate yet are definitely not in love. 

Love is a complicated emotion to write about. It can make you feel like your writing is ridiculously cheesy very quickly. Love has that effect. It takes a lot more talent to write a artful love story than it does an artful tragedy. 

When writing about love, don’t focus on the sappy scenes. Write about the relationship. Build a relationship on the page - show the characters getting to know each other - even if they have known each other awhile, they are building a relationship that is deeper, sharing more of their lives with each other, and have concern for each other’s well being. Love can come out of developing that relationship, seeing what chemistry exists between your characters and putting them into situations where they can either show or figure out their feelings for each other. That’s oversimplifying it, but that is one way to avoid the whole instant-attraction-to-love thing. I hope this helps! Happy writing! 

[sweetlittlevampire]

Currently trying to write a short story in my mother tongue…which is far more difficult than anybody who´s unfamiliar with Luxembourgish might think.

[alexreadsboooks]

Day 11 of #marchmonthofmythology is Hermes - Translated Book
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QOTD:Do you ever buy books just to have them?
Because that’s me and this one. It’s the seventh Harry Potter book and I read it in English soon after it came out so I didn’t get the German edition until recently. In fact the only reason I got it was so I had a complete matching set. Which isn’t actually a matching set because they changed the look of the title after book 3 (I’ll post a pic on my story later) 😂
*
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#bookstagram #bookish #booklover #bookworm #booklr #books #bibliophile #marchbookchallenge #bookstagrammer #booklove #booksofinstagram #instabook #read #reading #reader #buch #bücher #lesen #bookstagramfeature  #bookphotography #leser #igbooks #bookishallure #harrypotter

[sweetlittlevampire]

If this isn´t the most fabulous perfume bottle you’ve ever seen, then I don’ know.

Found it at the antique flea market today and just had to get it!