Hey everyone! I had an idea and want to see how well it works out. Leave a reblog or note with something or a few things about something about your culture, disability, gender, sexuality, religion, etc. that doesn't get represented or shown in media accurately or even at all, so that we can all learn more about writing and drawing authentic characters. If this post gets a decent amount of additions to it I'll compile an organized Google Doc with it and make a reblog of it, and try to update it as more come in!

What are your writing essentials?

We love a quiet corner and a good playlist!

The thing to keep in mind is that all authors are chefs and writing is stovetop cooking, not oven cooking, so you have a little more leeway and room for modifications according to taste. When they give writing tips, they’re showing you how to do their favorite recipes. You can safely follow all their advice if you like their sauces and feel like they know what they’re doing, but it’s not the law.

Feeling uninspired to work? to finally finish that WiP? to write that next chapter?

Well, you're not alone. We've been there and so have many others!

We find it helps to simply start. It doesn't have to be good. It doesn't have to make sense. But it can help jumpstart your creativity and get you in the right headspace.

Using a prompt that interests you can have the same effect.

Just remember, writing is supposed to be fun, not stressful.

Write for yourself, not for other people.

How do you guys get inspired to write? Send us your tips and tricks!

Alrighty I’ve been experimenting with short stories recently (mostly flash fiction), and it’s the coolest thing! Partially because there’s that joy of “hey I just finished this thing” and partially because you can do so much experimenting without having to worry about sustaining it for a long period of time. Thus, here are a few reasons why you, dear reader, may benifit from writing a few short stories.

1 - Characterization

You don’t have a lot of space to breathe life into a character. Whatever you do, it’s gotta be fast, and it’s gotta be enough that you can focus on other parts of your story instead of just establishing who this person is. Your reader doesn’t need to know everything, but they need to know enough that they can follow this person for the duration of the story. The same is true for a novel - you want to establish who your characters are quickly, because that will give you more space to create arcs and show them changing.

2 - Implications

Basically, with a novel the instinct may be to spell everything out for a reader - you have all this space, why not use it? But the thing is, if you can imply something well enough that your audience knows what’s there even if you don’t have to go and directly show them, it’s going to hold a lot more power. With a short story, you a) often don’t have enough space to tell the audience literally everything, and b) it’s easier to wrangle, so you can focus on taking out the parts that are basically implied anyway - it’s a better sandbox for that kinda thing, I guess.

3 - Voice

This is a big one. With a short story, you can be really deliberate about what type of voice you want to have, and really tailor it to the story. Yes, you can do this in a novel, but it’s a lot harder to maintain without practice. Because short stories are also, well, shorter, you can also try out voice styles that you would probably have a very hard time making work for a longer piece (for example, a character directly addressing another character and directly telling it to another character - yes you can set a novel up this way, but the voice is going to be different if it’s going to carry a whole book). You can also set stricter rules for yourself when writing a short story that might get frustrating to write under if you were working on a project for an extended period of time. What you learn about voice and how it works you can also translate back into your novel-writing. You probably won’t be able to bring that exact same voice back, but the tools you learn to use are still going to be in your arsenal.

4 - Feedback

Writing a novel takes about a metric eternity, give or take a couple billion years, and getting to a place where it’s ready for feedback takes a looonng time. A short story however, does not take this long. If you’re editing it a lot, it can still take a while, don’t get me wrong, but fundementally, there’s just less material there for you create and change. This means you can get feedback sooner and you can get more of it overall. Learning how to take feedback and use it in your work is a game-changer, so I highly recommend putting yourself in a place where you can receive it.

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tagging: @bookdragonfanish  @book-limerence  - as always if you want to be added or removed from any of my taglists (posted at the top of my blog), let me know!

Trailer

Of the various marketing techniques, one of the better ones is to create a trailer for your work and post it on YouTube. To do this you need some skills making videos or assistance from someone with experience. I lack the skills and have never tried it but I think it’s a good strategy for attracting attention to your book.

10 Grammar Checkers and Editing Tools to Make Your Writing Super Clean - by Amanda Shofner & Farrah Daniel...

10 Grammar Checkers and Editing Tools to Make Your Writing Super Clean – by Amanda Shofner & Farrah Daniel…

Amanda Shofner & Farrah Daniel on The Write Life: Have you ever wanted a magical editing wand? Just imagine: A flick of the wrist is all that would stand between you and the end of editing your writing. No frustration. Minimal time investment. An amazing manuscript or blog post. Alas, no such magic wand exists. But we do have grammar checker tools, which are the next-best things. Just remember…

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Writing things that I think are not valid

My thoughts, don't think these are rules!

Your ocs don’t have to have hobbies necessarily.

How many times did you see those “30 things you must know about your ocs” and then you find something like “what’s their hobby?”

While this can be interesting to know in general, it’s also true that many people don’t have hobbies. Do you have a hobby that you carry on constantly throughout your life? I don’t, for example. My best friend doesn’t, my mother doesn’t. Especially if you're a fighter living in a very difficult condition or constantly scared for your life, how can you have a hobby?

Don’t use purple prose

Yes, purple prose is bad to use throughout the entirety of your book, but you can and should use it somewhere, because that’s probably the best way to make your voice come out!

If you look up agents to send your manuscript to, you’ll find many of them asking for voice-y books. This can’t be achieved without a liiiittle purple prose.

Now, this kind of elaboration of the writing has to be done in very specific moments. You can’t use flowery and lengthy metaphors for a fighting scene that would last 5 seconds in real time, but I think it’s wonderful to use these devices for big moments like a character death, two characters finally falling in love, a victory, etc.

Nothing is original, so stop focusing on trying to be original

This can’t be true.

While it might be true that many of the big YA bestsellers sound pretty much like each other (strong female lead, falls in love with boy, there’s a war or a fight against an enemy, the story ends with a solution and not a tragedy) and are inspired by the same tropes over and over, it’s not true that you shouldn’t try to make your book original.

By original, of course I mean that it has to have a relationship with the world we live in but bring a fresh wind to it. If you tried to write about something totally external to our society as humans, yes, things would be a little hard to sell, but even books like Flatlandia became classics, so, who are we to tell you what to do?

A book, in my opinion, deserves the chance to be as original as you can make it, but give the reader a sensation to be in touch with it anyway.

In my books, both in Tale of Space and Tarot and Hastar my world is made of a new, unique force that shaped it blowing in the residue of creation, but the concept of magicians is rooted in many cultures, and everybody can immediately understand what I mean by that word.

Your writer friends are also your competition

Alexa Donne has made a video about how this isn’t totally true, but let me make a personal analysis that is partially related to what she says in her video (which I recommend you watch)

Many authors want to self publish. If you want to be traditionally published, they’re not a competition for publication.

The people that will: a) research an agent thoroughly, b) write an amazing book AND query AND synopsis AND pitch, c) follow guidelines are not as many as you think! Doing all of these things is seriously hard and not many people succeed, sadly. Or, simply, some of them don’t want to do it. Some of them send the same non personalized query with “Dear Agent” at the top of the page to 30 agents (facts, I’ve heard of that actually happening).

Now, just in the USA there are something like hundreds of agents. I understand that maybe you think that you and your Instagram writer friend write exactly the same genre in the same age target with similar tropes, but since an agent-writer relationship is unique, it’s probable that either you or your writer friend won’t be a good fit for that agent simply because … you’re people who work in different ways.

Let’s say that you both get an agent to represent you. At this point, you’ll go on submission, and your agent is going to submit to a lot of different editors, to a lot of different publishing houses.

With that being said, you can easily imagine how watered down competition is.

People by new books all the time because they like to read. If your book is good and salable and if you meet the right agent and the right editor, it will certainly be published!

What I’m trying to say is that you shouldn’t worry about the competition, because this market isn’t made of numbers only. It’s a people’s market, one where knowledge, skill, and relationships matter more than being the first or scoring high.

This is all for now! Let me know if you’re curious about having part 2!

Preparing for a Successful StoryADay May 2021

Is this the year you transform yourself into a writer? Thinking about participating in StoryADay May? I have tips, tricks, and behind-the-scenes info from the 12th annual StoryADay May. Make sure you're signed up:

::LINKS::

https://storyaday.org/signup

https://stada.me/writer-code

Be A Best Seller Summit with Emma Dhesi - https://stada.me/emma

Reading Room: https://stada.me/read

  The StoryADay Podcast

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My Top Ten Tweets for #writers

My Top Ten Tweets for #writers

My Top Ten Tweets I love to write, but with writing comes marketing, the bane of my existence. I began gathering tips about writing and marketing from various blogs for easier reference. One day I thought why not share? So here we go. Follow me on Twitter @roxannesmolen for more tips. Three Things Your Query Letter Needs to Stand Out https://buff.ly/2Qtj2Tt #writingcommunity #writerslife How…

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An introduction to outlining and editing your writing using tarot archetypes as a focus tool.

So I'm writing on Medium I now decided yes.

I think half the people I know were not surprised to see something tarot-related as my first post. But it's what's powering me through Camp NaNoWriMo this year — or the catchy National Novel FINISHING Month rebranding they got going on this April. Archetypes and tropes in tarot really help focus my messy mind, and that's what my whole Medium will be about. Writing Methods for Messy Minds!

This one is a tip of the hat towards a specific skeptical writing buddy who kept calling it witch magic and will hopefully take my offer now to make a few plot and character spreads together.

Writing tips I guess?

- ppl aren't often "baffled" or absurdly confused when someone offers them things? Usually when u offer someone something, the answer is yes or no.

- think of the fluidity of the sentence. If you can't say it without losing ur breath, put in punctuation.

- Guys don't go al gooey eyed at partners. This isn't a Disney movie, please don't write ur character barely able to walk just from looking at (insert thirst trap).

- if ur gonna add a pet/house hold animal, make sure you don't just write about them once and forget. Animals don't just go away, they always come back for attention and usually they do it when there's lots of conversation happening.

- it takes about 20 minutes to finish a meal. Keep that in mind. breakfast, lunch, dinner etc should not be done in a few bites.

- ppl don't often ask "You got me ____" or "you made me ______" after receiving something. They accept with with a thank-you or decline with a no thank-you. You don't need to write a whole beginning thesis about Bucky Barnes bringing you a cookie.

Living Room Mood Board

Some basics to keep in mind while designing civilizations.

Writing Tips 4

Writing Tips 4 - here are some more tips to help keep you writing. #WritingCommunity #amwriting #writerslife #tips #writingtips

Hi everyone! I’ve not written a ‘Writing Tips‘ post for a long while and seeing as I’ve had a little time today, I thought I’d write one now – So here are another six tips. Titles When you’re writing a title for your article or anything else that might require a title, you should not capitalise every word. Though different publications will have their own styles with which they work, generally…

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How Does Writing Offer Perspective?

How Does Writing Offers Perspective… Writing is amongst one of those few arts that when performed feels like you’re performing magic. It induces an out-of-the-world feeling while you’re performing it, a feeling that is not easy to articulate into proper words (and I’ve tried, trust me!) However, what I would like to discuss in this blog post, and what I think is the most important of all, and…

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All you could do was laugh.

What other response could you have after seeing death run rampant through your world? The old lady buried one morning when the sun felt harsh and new, then her tiny grandchild ready to be buried soon before the sun set heavy and ripe that very same day. Watching as the people took over the streets howling right in the open, drowning out everything else in their grief. Then watching as those same people burnt down the walls of all the lives around them, smashed the whole world to rubble under the stampede of thousands of charging feet, when all that unanswered grief of theirs turned into righteous rage.

What more was there to do than sit back and laugh at them?

I had warned them. As had many others before me, and after me. We were silenced, all of us. Told we were being too negative for their comfort. Told we shouldn't tell them of the open dangers they faced, unless we gave them the choice to run from such uncomfortable topics beforehand. We, the ones who could see the dangers, had been screaming our warnings at these people for years. We who had already been dying had been begging this blind public for that justice they loved dearly for so very long now. Our suffering had not mattered to these people who thought of themselves as Good People. Where was all of that elitist high ground they once waved above us beggars? Above those of us who had all been denied the basics of human life; and yet we all ended up watching them crumble at our feet for so much less than we had already survived.

We could do nothing but laugh. Throw our heads back and shake from the gasping breathing that came with the horrid and hysterical laughter of those who had been pushed too far for too long. We the people who have only just realized that the others who put us there always knew that our suffering was the worst possible thing anyone could live through. Those awful Good People had let us all suffer while knowing these things; simply because they couldn't care less to act on helping others if they couldn't get something for themselves out of it. Why did such people still dare call themselves "good" to our faces?

We laugh as they fall at our feet, suffering too, in all the ways they looked away from dismissively when that suffering was in our lives once.

We laugh as they bleed out in front of us, blood pooling in a dark river that twists with whirpools of tears, and the many empty, begging promises of desperate human beings trying to avoid the consequences of their own misdeeds brought to their feet.

We laugh as they call us evil, for those moments are the only truly humorous times we still have in our lives, after all this madness.

Because they don't realize they lost that right to feel morally superior to me so very long ago.

We no longer see a human being in our own reflection these days.

We no longer want to.

For all those humans we have seen walking through our life are not what we wish to ever see ourselves become.

The cruel actions those humans who call themselves good take when they simply feel justified in destroying everything they find distasteful are not those we seek to emulate.

So, we will destroy every last human being, and the destructive despair they drag around them like the chaotic wake behind a great storm.

I am perfectly fine being the grinning villain these days.

For if such beings as humans call me evil, then I must be doing so very well as a person.

Isn't that funny?

Just absolutely hilarious?

I see humans, but no humanity.

All you can do is laugh.

[Just a Random Writer in the Electronic Void. Don't mind me. I just got bored. Sorry about the rough copy /Edit: Went back and edited for spelling and grammar because it bugged me, no longer a rough copy/. Not sorry about the chills. Villains are such an interesting topic. Any of us could be one to somebody else. Enjoy this one, or don't. Not exactly my best work after all. Guess I should just laugh it off, huh?]

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End Copypasta

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This right here is copypasta from my YouTube commentary. The video was a wonderful VillainCore playlist, titled "i see humans but no humanity: a villain playlist", posted by username "cupid". (Quote marks are mine. I sincerely apologize for not linking it here. I like giving credit to the creators, but I have no clue how to link that through my phone app here. Sorry!)

I designed this for the authors notes to be at the end, to increase the impact of the writing. In commentary style story posts, putting the authors note at the top deters people from reading by breaking that story immersion. If you put those authors notes at the end of the comment-story you are writing? You get more readership, because the hook for your story can do it's job properly. That's an important tip I recommend you keep in mind if you post stories in places like commentary or reply sections. Just make sure your hook strikes well!

Anyway? Because this was designed for that hook to hit first? I do apologize for having to drop my copypasta without context. It is what it is.

Before I'm done? I would like to make another more personal apology. Someone accused me of "humble-bragging" after the original note to this. I had no idea what that meant. I looked it up. Honestly? I was appalled that they thought that, and confused. When I brag I'm not subtle about it! I also wasn't sure why they would think anyone would over just what I wrote there. I asked some friends. Turns out? My writing is better than I thought it was. I know I'm good, but I didn't think a quick short story like this, done in an hour could be well written for me. I was corrected on something. My standards for excellence were significantly higher for myself than they were for my readers. So, what I legitimately thought wasn't good enough, everyone else thought was me humble-bragging.

I felt the need to apologize for this. I didn't want to alter my original post, for personal reasons. But I want to apologize now, before anyone says I'm doing that. I wasn't, but I'm still struggling to wrap my head around the fact that I'm not just a good writer. I'm a writer who is apparently, on occasion, so good at what they do that they make people think I must be full of crap if I say I don't believe I did well.

Do you know how hard that is to accept?! I'm freaking out. My image of myself does NOT match with that! Even if I was confident about being a good writer, this is still a shock. I'm working on it. It's just taking me a while.

So, on top of my writing tip today?

Take this to heart.

Just because you think you aren't good enough yet, doesn't mean you aren't great already.

Your lackluster effort, just might be a high quality piece in others eyes.

Look at your stuff through some of your biggest supporters eyes at some point.

It could be the best thing you will ever do for your self-confidence.

I hope you all have a weird and wonderful day from here.

~ Tapestry