The Skellingcorner

[fuckyeahcharacterdevelopment]

[worldbuildingjune]

World Building June 2017!

Hello friends, its that time! What time? World building time! World Building June is right around the corner and its time to prepare your mind, body, and building supplies for 30 days of building worlds with some of the coolest cats this side of the internet!

What’s World Building June exactly?

WBJ is like other casual creative challenges where you create something every day! But how you approach WBJ is up to you! Are you mainly a writer? Write up articles and exploratory stories about your world to help flesh it out. Are you more of an artist? Make illustrations and concept art which helps visually flesh out your world. Are you more comfortable combining both art and literature? Do just that and create an illustrated guide!

How much or how little you build is up to you, as long as you build! The main purpose of WBJ is to get that world you’ve had on the back burner and finally making progress on it! Just get it on paper and you’ll be one step closer to putting that world into action!

Comic artists, Novelists, Roleplayers, dice rollers, game designers, this is for anyone who has a world that needs building! Even if you don’t have a world that you’ve had locked away you can take this as a creative challenge to make one from scratch!

Cool! How do I join though?

Just make a piece every day of June! Easy! But you can also show off your progress to the rest of the builders by tagging posts as #worldbuildingjune

Also you can follow this blog and we’ll be posting prompts and tips every day to help figure out what you can build further on!

You can also join us at our discord channel: World Building June Discord, and you can ask fellow builders for input, trade tips, and hoard resources for when you’ll need them!

We’ve been doing WBJ since 2014 and are about to break 3,000 builders!

So invite your friends! Invite their friends friends! Build your inspiration folders and crack open that journal you haven’t been using. But most of all…

GET BUILDING!

[build-me-a-home]

[davidhansendesign]

Art Deco Edificio Petronio

[imoutsidelookingin]

[writerswritecompany]

[its-a-writer-thing]

[just-shower-thoughts]

My ability to proofread increases by 1000% after I hit “Submit”.

[greaseonmymouth]

this is often because when you’ve submitted something (like fanfiction to ao3) it will be in a different font, size and framing than in your word processor. The text will look different in the new environment so your brain stops skipping what looks familiar (like a typo that has been there since the beginning).

So, tip: revise your work in a different font and size. I guarantee you’ll catch more typos and mistakes than otherwise.

[halespecterwinchester]

For all my writers (ones I follow and the ones that thankfully follow me)

[mycreativeoutlet1]

Thank god it isn’t just me. Definitely going to have to do this!

[fantasy-writing]

Anonymous asked:

How descriptive should I be when writing about a device/item/piece of equipment that is a core part of a story? How can I subtly tell my readers it's a core part of the story before it is actually revealed without spoiling too much?

Honestly, you don’t have to describe much.

In foreshadowing, if there is a specific detail that you have in mind, specifically one that would help the main character or characters recognize the object whenever it comes up again, describe it. If it’s a small detail, seemingly unimportant, people will wonder why you even bothered to describe it. If they see it later on, they’ll know why.

However, this brings another matter up; you do not have to describe everything. You don’t have to write down exactly what everyone is wearing, exactly what’s on the tavern bar, etcetera. They are wearing clothes, people assume they are. If the tavern is busy, people will assume there are mugs and plates there.

If you describe everything down to the last detail, you no doubt have a powerful mind’s eye, but you will, no doubt, have boring prose. Keep the details for your foreshadowing, things that caught the eye of your protagonist, things they found strange or found ordinary, it doesn’t matter. If it’s worth noting, note it. If it’s not, why bother?

The item itself shouldn’t spoil it’s own foreshadowing. If the readers don’t know what it’s for, they don’t know what it’s for, they just know that it exists. A few details on what it may be is fine, though.

Example: The protagonist notices someone holding a flask of dark green liquid. Off the top of my head two observations the reader may make are…

It’s suspiscious, if it’s not that character’s job.

Green? Poison. Classical, spooky poison color.

But let’s make our foreshadowing a little neater, what if it IS the character’s job?

We see a character, an alchemist perhaps, or an herbalist, with a flask of dark green liquid, and a few named ingredients. Later, the protagonist may find out from whatever source possible, that a dark green liquid made with a few specific ingredients will have a certain effect, which would be tied to the plot.

The ingredients alone could be a more subtle way to foreshadow this. A key part of foreshadowing is subtlety as well. Pointing out the ingredients simply being there may be bland. Perhaps the herbalist asking the protagonist to hand them the ingredients is a more interesting, more subtle way to introduce our object.

Think on it. Be creative! You can hide a bit foreshadowing to sub plots and the main plot behind every corner if you wish, so that whenever someone reads the piece, they find something new.

I hope that helps!

- The Artificer

[raspberryfaery]

[g-grose]

Fashion details in paintings (pink tone)

[writerswritecompany]

[incidentalcomics]

Stages of the Reader

What stage are you on? I’m about to escape number 5… my first book will be published on Tuesday! I’m hoping to land somewhere between 7 and 8. 

You can find my book via Abrams Books, on Amazon, or wherever books are sold.

Posters are available at my shop.

[writingwithcolor]

aroallo-poodle asked:

In this story idea I've been tinkering with, the four main characters all ended up being Chinese Hong Kongers, most likely because that's what I am and what I mainly saw growing up so I suppose it's my 'default'. Side characters have different races and ethnicities, but should I make the effort to diversify my main four? For what it's worth the story will be written in English and set in a fictional UK university.

An All-Chinese Main Cast: Is it okay to have MC’s of Color that are all the same race?

Short answer: the concept looks fine as is. 

Longer: we don’t see a lot of Chinese-people-in-UK stories. The majority of UK stories, to me, have white characters, which is where the diversity talk comes in, because in reality it’s more racially diverse. Considering the size of the group (four) it’s not unrealistic, although I would definitely recommend to keep the side characters outside of them diverse. 

(I’m thinking of Zen Cho’s stories, where a few of them cover Malaysian Chinese students going to UK schools.)

-Mod Jess

Birds of a feather, let’s be honest. The fact there are four UK-Chinese people is pretty darn impressive, and I’d actually suggest to not tokenize the external characters— with multiple, you have more room to show a variety of people than you do if you try and force 4 different ethnicities into the same group.

-Mod Lesya

Some of my books have entirely Jewish casts.

–Shira

I don’t think there’s an issue of lack of diversity when you’ve got an all-poc main cast, whether they’re all the same or a variety of (non-white or more than white) ethnicities. That is the author’s prerogative, especially in stories set where said one race is the majority.

I think author’s should be allowed to be unapologetic about that, and I especially understand when it’s a Black author writing an all or mostly Black cast, Chinese author with an all-Chinese cast and so on. 

~Mod Colette

[writingwithcolor]

nikkikan asked:

Hello, I'm writing a fantasy piece in which a traveler from a Tibetan-coded nation describes their adventures as a storyteller years later. In this, they describe people from a Scandanavian-coded nation. I'm looking for a way to describe 'western' (non-epicanthic, bi-lidded) eyes but every single resource I've found starts with that as the norm to compare 'asian' (epicanthic fold, monolid eyes) against. Do you have any advice?

Asian Person (Tibetan) Describing a White Outsider

Honestly, why focus on the eyes? If you look up ancient Chinese descriptions of meeting Marco Polo, they’re more focused on his hair and skin. The original term “red skin” was to refer to white people, because Asians found the colour so strange.

Just because white people are so into describing one feature of an ethnic group, doesn’t mean the ethnic group is so into that same feature on white people. Every group focuses on different things based on their own reference, and from preexisting literature, we know that the Chinese didn’t focus so much on eyes.

As is the mantra on WWC: read literature from the people who came up with this stuff. If you look up trade descriptions from China and Tibet, you’re bound to find that yes, they traded with white people, and they had their own focus of what’s notable and not. They also had their own descriptions. Use them, and you’ll gain more authenticity in your work!

— WWC

P.S. We don’t suggest you use red skin in modern literature, seeing as that meaning has changed; referring to the redness of their skin doesn’t have to be a slur for another group.