When you’re writing aND YOU CAN’T FIND THE RIGHT WORD
http://chir.ag/projects/tip-of-my-tongue/
you’re welcome
(via ellieelephant)
I Promise I’m Not a Murderer: The Story of a Researching Writer
now with a sequel:
I Swear I’m Not Pregnant, I’m Just Naming Characters
Don’t forget: I’m not Trying to Break Into This Building, I Just Need to Know the Layout of it
The Sequel: I’m Really Not Poisoning Anyone, I Just Need To Know The Symptoms OF Poisoning And How Long They WOULD Take To Die From It.
Additionally: Please Don’t Put Me In A CIA Prison, I’m Just Trying To Figure Out How A Character Could Sneak Into Afghanistan From Pakistan While Avoiding the Border Police and the US Military.
Spinoff: I’m Not a Terrorist, I’m Just Curious About How Bombs Work
(via semigetsbored)
Giving my own characters a hard time
Seeing someone else’s characters have a hard time
I am a reader. I am a writer. People assume I do these things to escape. You couldn’t be more right. I’m escaping a world I don’t like. A world I have no control in. In this world, I am nothing. I am a color, a height, a weight, a number. But in the world of books and writing, I am amazing. I am powerful. I am different. People are better. Worlds are endless. Change is possible. Life is manageable.
(Source: writingfromyheart, via semigetsbored)
ROLEPLAYING RELATIONSHIPS
No one ship is exactly the same. Each couple tends to come with their own quirks, their own traditions, their own struggles.
I’ve recently dug up an interesting article that categorizes relationships into 10 different kinds.
- Survival relationships
- Validation relationships
- Scripted relationships
- Acceptance relationships
- Individuation-Assertion relationships
- Healing relationships
- Experimental relationships
- Transitional relationships
- Avoidance relationships
- Pastime relationships
If you’re interested in using these to help you roleplay a relationship that seems in at least some way, realistic, continue reading.
Survival relationships:
- This is made up of people who don’t feel as if they can survive on their own.
- They feel as if they have to have someone be anything. In some cases it may literally be a case of survival.
- Think someone who provides shelter, food, job, money etc. It’s important to note that these two are codependent.
- The relationship is often hostile and sometimes abusive.
- Feelings of insecurity tend to run rampant!
Validation relationships:
- People in these relationships are those who seek validation of their physical attractiveness, intellect, social status, sexuality, wealth, or some other attribute.
- Teenagers and young adults who are looking for a sense of identity form relationships based on sexual validation.
- The relationship tends to be a little insecure and need constant validation.
- “Do you really love me?”
Scripted relationships:
- Seems to be the most perfect of relationships and everyone around them sees it as a great relationship.
- The partners are the most perfect boyfriend or the most perfect girlfriend.
- There are often power struggles in this type of relationship.
- Sexual attraction or involvement if often lacking.
- The partners are often stuck in routines.
Acceptance relationships
- A trusting, supporting and enjoyable relationship.
- A very healthy and happy relationship.
Individuation-Assertion relationships
- Both individuals know what the others wants and needs are.
- Respect is a key factor in this relationship.
- Partners are supportive of others aspirations and dreams
- They both recognize their individuality.
NOTE: All types from here on tend to be transient.
Healing relationships:
- These occur after periods of loss, struggle, depression, stress or mourning.
- They’re looking for someone to “fix them”
- Couples tend to talk about the past and their losses a lot.
- Gentleness, support, and comfort characterize this relationship srather than great passion.
Experimental relationships
- These are experimental relationships.
Transitional relationships
- This is a relationship that is a cross between the kind of relationships you use to have the kind you want.
- An “almost but not quite there”
Avoidance relationships
- They’re together but not close.
- They want to avoid their own deeper feelings.
- Don’t want to “get too close”
- Self-disclosure is low and mistrust is high.
Pastime relationships
- Just something recreational and for fun and games.
- Often emphasis is on fun and not deeper feelings.
- Not one likely to last.
- One night stands fall under this.
- Me while reading: Noooo! My poor sweet babies! AUTHOR, WHY MUST YOU TORMENT YOUR CHARACTERS SO?
- Me while writing: This character has been orphaned, whipped, sentenced to death, thrown overboard by pirates, captured by enemy soldiers, near-fatally poisoned, put on trial for his life before an angry mob, tortured in front of his best friend, and thrown into prison again.
- Me while writing: ...
- Me while writing: Let's stab him.
I think, as a writer, one of my favorite things is to break a character and see what happens. I like to knock them down and watch if they can get back up. I like to knock them down to their absolute lowest moment, and see how those around them react, how they react, if they crumble or get up, or a combination thereof.
I doubt I am alone in this, but it just tells me so much about them.
I also prefer to do it after I’ve given them a really huge high, a nice run of bliss that puts them in just the right place to fall even further. I want that rock bottom to hurt, but I also want them to have something to grasp on the way down and to pull at as they reach out.
Hardly profound, but I’m just typing out loud.
Describing Skin Colors
Having trouble finding synonyms for ‘white’, ‘black’, ‘tan’, etc? Have any clear idea what tone you’re going for? Here’s some web pages for skin tone description and references:
Words Used To Describe Skin Color
Handy Words for Skin Tone (Includes palettes and comparisons)
Describing Characters of Color
More Tone Synonyms w/ Pictures
7 Offensive Mistakes Writers Make (includes more than just skin color)
Oh, my, god. That last link alone is worth it because I can not deal with people writing accents phonetically, and no one ever listens when I tell them why. It’s not cool. It’s exploitative and othering. And it is unfriendly to readers who are not native to the language the overall piece is written in. Secondary language learners sometimes have trouble with slang, and writing it in a phonetic context makes it nearly incomprehensible.
Oh God writing phonetically drives me up a fucking wall. Because it’s always characters who are poor, uneducated, foreign, etc. who get that treatment. And it just is really obnoxious to any readers who actually are OF THOSE BACKGROUNDS who might try to read your work. Not to mention how incredibly insulting it is to see somebody lazily phoneticize your own dialect and get it WRONG.
You can get the same idea across with vocabulary and grammar patterns. You just have to do some research and treat your characters with some basic respect.
(Source: thewritershelpersdeactivated)
"This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals—sounds that say listen to this, it is important."
— Gary Provost (via perfect)
(Source: qmsd, via ellieelephant)
The tragedy of INFP is that we live in a world that is immaculately breathtaking, beautiful, meaningful, where hearts connect and every human being is in love with the perfection of every other human being in their world. We live in a world of sunrises and sunsets, of dawn and twilight and in the brilliance of stars in the darkest night sky and in the wholesome eternity of the variegated gray sky on the coolest of cloudy days. We live in the spirals of fire-red leaves as the wind whips them off the skeletal branches of trees, in the feel of the air rushing around your face. In our wildest, most beautiful imagination, the one we spend all our lives in, this is our world.
And then we are called back. By the cruelest clock to classrooms of dusty cinderblock and grey-haired teachers lecturing us about internal assessments and Hamlet, to the hallways full of these faces you recognize so well but know nothing about, and the whole world seems false, fake, plastic, made up. Reality could not be so cruel, and these people cannot all just live every day in and out like this, listening (or not) to teachers and laughing about nothing at all with friends and wearing makeup and “statement” necklaces and doing homework so dutifully and coming back and worrying about college. Where’s the air, the space, the spirals of color, the love, the wonder, the sky?
And that’s when you start to believe this world must be just a production of your consciousness, some faulty creation of some discarded corner of your imagination, because “Reality” cannot possibly be as empty as it seems.
That’s why we have these mood swings, between eternal wonder and cynical despair at the flat two-dimensionality of everything here.
Just if you’re wondering, non-INFPs. That’s what’s wrong with us. That’s why we never seem quite entirely there. Because we’re always wondering what happened in the gap between the idealism and Reality.
(or maybe that’s just me. sorry, if I’m wrong and it is.)
(via veritablecesspool)
