how do write

So I’ve got this bad case of writer’s block. I CAN’T WRITE ANYTHING. Do you have any advice?

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thewritershelpers:

Okay! Don’t worry!

Everything we have on writers block

Writers block (writeworld prompts)

Towels on inspiration

This following paragraph is taken from an old post of ours;

Writer’s Block, otherwise known as The Wall or quite simply, a loss of inspiration, is where an aspiring writer has nothing to write about. As much as they want to, they have nothing. Some give up, others persevere and lose the fun in writing, and it shows.

Writer’s Block is not the end, however! Here are five useful ways of combating it:

  1. Leave it. Leave the story to one side for a while, and go do something else. Just passively think of where you could take the story while doing something else.
  2. Seek inspiration in similar things. Go and read, watch, listen to or play something on a similar subject matter. Don’t plagiarise, obviously, but use the little things to boost your creativity!
  3. Write something else. Sometimes, a change of scenery is needed. Most writers have more than one story on the go at a time! Often, when they hit The Wall with one, they switch to another, and by the time they come back to the original, the inspiration’s back.
  4. Create character profiles. Have someone from a character’s past show up, use a phobia or addiction to twist the plot.
  5. Just make something up. Seriously, just put pen to paper or hand to keyboard, then let yourself write. You’ll be surprised at what happens. [original here]

I hope this helps you, prompts are really awesome for writers block, writeworld and yeahwrite are brill for those. 

-S

Ways to keep writing while in school

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referenceforwriters:

keyboardsmashwriters:

From experience, sometimes our plates are so loaded that even remembering to eat becomes a luxury difficult to indulge in, and we’re catching up on reading assignments while sitting at stoplights.

But, remember that writing time doesn’t have to be several hours long – and also remember that it’s critical for mental health to take time for yourself. If you don’t, you risk burning out and dropping down to some of the lowest lows you might have ever known.

Taking time for yourself isn’t always easy, but here are some tricks you might try to get in the “you” writing time that you need for yourself.

  • Take a half hour in the morning and a half hour at night, perhaps when you’re even still sleepy. Why? When you’re tired, your inner critic is too, which means the inner critic has less of an opportunity to whittle your precious minutes away with overthinking and worrying. Try writing when you first get up, and also as the last thing you do before your head hits the pillow at night. Even if you only manage a hundred words, that’s a hundred more than zero.
  • Sneak in fifteen minutes between tasks. This was my favorite option while in school. I’d take a break from one subject by switching to another, rotating around each subject. But, between each jump, I’d take fifteen minutes to a half an hour to smash my fingers across the keyboard. I might even listen to one good song right before, just to get myself quickly into the right mood before I picked up where I left off.
  • Keep a notebook with you. Did you get to class a few minutes early? Take those three minutes to jot down a couple lines. Waiting for your order at McDonald’s? Take a seat and finish the last thought you had. On your fifteen-minute break at work? The Youtube video you need to watch has a fifteen-second commercial? Bits and pieces add up like pennies and nickels in a change jar.
  • Block your time, if you’re a scheduling type of person. Some people need to have their time scheduled out, so do that, and plan some writing breaks in there. Give yourself some allowances on homework time, some leeway, just in case you need a little extra time, and that way you’re less likely to eat into your writing time. If you’re not the scheduling type of person, definitely avoid this tip. Schedules can strangle some of us, after all.
  • Reward yourself. Seriously. Been working for four hours? Still have four hours to go? Stop. Park your butt. Put away the schoolwork where you can’t see it. Pull out your favorite pastry or tea or strip of manflesh along with your laptop or notebook. Treat yourself. “I worked four hours. I deserve this.” Remember to do this at least a couple times every day. You are a person, not a robot, and you have personal needs, not simply some oiling and maintenance check every now and then.
  • Procrastinate wisely. No, I’m not going to tell you “don’t procrastinate!” Because, wow, that is 0% helpful. What I mean is procrastinate in ways that will set you up for success – as in, for writing. Listen to your story’s playlist. If you don’t have one, make one. Make a folder of art that inspires you to write your specific story. Always add stuff to it. Keep your creative momentum high.
  • Perfection is the enemy. Don’t worry about continuity or even writing well when you’re taking these moments. Just worry about writing. Get the words down no matter how hard you grimace. Don’t seek perfection. This also applies to schoolwork – it’s okay to flub things, or to do as little work as you can while still getting the amount of credit you want. I managed to get a lot of A-’s this way, but my GPA doesn’t reflect the minus sign, only the A.
  • Read on habits and taking care of yourself. You always come first, even before school and work. You deserve to take care of yourself, so make sure you do.

God Bless KSW.

This goes along nicely with this other post. And since I’m betting a lot of my followers are going back/are already back in college or school, it’s good to remind ourselves not to overwork our minds.

Balance, people.

-Alex

Smut Writing with Master Jenwyn

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orpheusofthesea-archive:

For those who don’t know, I’m Jenwyn. I’m older than most of you, and I have a masters degree in fiction writing, and some of my most beloved friends were hoping for helpful information on writing smut. They used to call me the Tease Queen, so I figured I’d be an acceptable candidate. Plus there’s the whole teaching degree thing, but whatever. That just means I’ll ramble on like a professor. So apologies if I sound lecture-y.

If you’re interested in this topic, come join me for a discussion. If there are any other aspects of writing that you’d like me to talk about, just message me. I’d be happy to talk about most anything.

Read More

A Quick and Dirty Guide to Universal Conflicts

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fuckyeahcharacterdevelopment:

So, with that earlier post about antagonists versus villains, a lot of people brought up the idea of making a post about the different types of literary conflicts. And because I’m avoiding making character sheets, I thought I’d do just that.

There are seven predominant types of universal literary conflicts in fiction. You may have heard about them in your English class; they’re also known as the “Man vs. ______” conflicts. Basically, it’s your protagonist against whatever is keeping them from what they want or need to do. The types are as follows:

  1. Man vs. Man. This is one that’s pretty universally recognized. Good guy against bad guy (not like that). The protagonist has to go toe-to-toe with another one of his kind in order to get the outcome he wants. Examples: Harry Potter vs. Lord Voldemort, Randle McMurphy vs. Nurse Ratched, Hamlet vs. Claudius, Captain Kirk vs. Khan, The Doctor vs. The Master, Sherlock Holmes vs. Professor Moriarty.
  2. Man vs. Nature. The protagonist is fighting against a force of nature, such as a natural disaster, the environment, or an animal, usually for survival. Examples: Christopher McCandless toward the end of Into the Wild, 127 Hours, Jaws, The Old Man and the Sea
  3. Man vs. Society. The protagonist is fighting against the society they’re in. Maybe they want their freedom, or they want the rules changed, or they want the society itself gone. These are your rebellion-type stories. Examples: 1984, The Help, Atlas Shrugged, V for Vendetta, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Fahrenheit 451, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest also works here.
  4. Man vs. Self. The protagonist is struggling with some internal conflict, sometimes a moral battle of doing the right thing, sometimes over an important choice. Examples: The Catcher in the Rye, The Great Gatsby, A Separate Peace, The Picture of Dorian Gray, If I Stay, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
  5. Man vs. Supernatural. The protagonist is up against something beyond the realm of what is normal or possible, like ghosts, demons, or aliens. Examples: Ghostbusters, The Lord of the Rings, The Odyssey, Artemis Fowl, any episode of Doctor Who, anything about zombies, and any story in Greek mythology dealing with the gods. (Of which there are many.)
  6. Man vs. Fate. The protagonist is fighting against a seemingly inevitable choice or destiny. They’re the Chosen One, and they’re railing against it. Examples: Slaughterhouse-Five, Harry Potter, Aragorn throughout LOTR, Amelie, Pocahontas, Romeo and Juliet.
  7. Man vs. Technology. THE ROBOTS HAVE TAKEN OVER. This is when the protagonist is fighting something…well, technological. Robots, computers, etc. Examples: The Matrix, The Terminator, Frankenstein, 2001: A Space Odyssey, WALL-E, Battlestar Galactica

And there you go. Feel free to correct me on any of the examples. Hope this helps!

– Allie

Realistic Writing II

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slitheringink:

Handguns

We’ve all seen it in movies, comics and anime: the bad ass hero or the sexy heroine toting two handguns with barrels bigger than their forearms.

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It looks cool, in both the design of the guns and the ability to blow orange-sized holes in the bodies of opponents. But is that even realistic?

Properties of a Handgun – Stopping Power

To answer that question, I need to talk about a few different things. First is the point of a handgun. As the name implies, a handgun is a weapon that’s meant to be both portable and concealed with relative ease. In order to have these things, a trade-off occurs between them and stopping power. Stopping power is the ability of a gun to cause an injury that would incapacitate a target, regardless if death occurs or not.

Compared to other ballistic weapons, like rifles, handguns suck at this job. Their rounds are weak and bullet-placement (not having shitty aim) has a much greater effect on target incapacitation. It is in this way that stopping power is also a reflection of the shooter. If you are not accurate with your shots, then your handgun is going to have less stopping power.

If you haven’t heard of the terms “knock down power” or “one stop shot”, then I’m sure you’ve at least seen them in an action flick somewhere. You know the scene where the righteous law-man shoots the outlaw in the chest with one shot and then the bad guy is knocked flat on his ass? This is a myth propagated by Hollywood. There isn’t a handgun that can stop a man with one shot nor is there one that cause you to fall backwards. The energy of a bullet fired from a handgun is pretty low and simply doesn’t have the power to do either of those things.

Caliber

I don’t believe you! Those incredibly large guns look pretty powerful. They must be high caliber, and high caliber means more power, right?

Perhaps. Let’s take a look at what high caliber really means and then we can see the effect that it has on stopping power.

First, caliber is the internal diameter of a gun barrel. The size of the round is determined by what best matches that diameter. In terms of damage to the body, a bigger bullet is generally a better bullet. Higher caliber bullets have leave a larger permanent cavity, which refers to the hole left by a projectile. In research done with ballistics gel presented by Dave Spaulding (see sources below), the larger caliber bullets (.45 cal) did 15-20% more damage than smaller caliber bullets (9mm). Now that sounds significant but, that 15-20% was measured in millimeters. So, even if the larger bullet is better, it’s not going to make up for the shortfalls of the shooter.

But what about those orange-sized holes where you can see through the body of the victim?

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Yeah those!

I’m sorry to tell you guys, but that’s not realistic. I asked Teye, my former Marine and source of all things pew pew, what he knew about this. I was informed that the entry wound, (where the bullet enters the body) would be the size of the projectile, regardless of the caliber. If you shot someone at point-blank range with a .45 or a .50 caliber handgun, then you would probably see the exit wound (where the bullet exits the body) be of a significant size. That means you’re just not going to see the kind of through-and-through depicted above in a real world setting.

Alright then, what about explosive rounds?

Explosive rounds for handguns are fiction, pure and simple. They exist in the real world for heavy machine guns, anti-material rifles and other large weaponry. They’re called HEIAP (High Explosive Incendiary/Armor Piercing Ammunition) or SAPHEI (Semi-Armor Piercing High Explosive Incendiary). If you want to use smaller versions of these for handguns in your storyverse, then by all means do so. Just make sure it fits your world!

Let’s Talk About Recoil

Yeah, recoil gets its own section. Recoil, also commonly called knock-back, kick-back or kick, is the backward momentum of a gun when it is fired. The recoil is going to match the forward momentum. In terms of a handgun, the momentum is going to be transferred from the gun, through the body of the shooter and to the ground. Generally larger caliber handguns will generate greater recoil because the projectile is larger so it requires a greater force (and more gunpowder) to move the bullet. Larger caliber handguns also tend to be a lot heavier to accommodate larger ammunition.

When choosing a handgun for your character it is very important to keep in mind the amount of recoil that gun is going to generate and whether or not your character can handle it. Their level of experience with handguns as well as their weight, and strength are all factors to consider.

My protagonist, Kyu, was taught how to shoot by her grandmother, so she has range firing experience with handguns. The problem lies with the fact that she’s about 110 pounds, so giving her a weapon with a high kickback would be silly. She likely wouldn’t be able to handle the recoil from something like a Desert Eagle and might get whacked in the face.

Case in point: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIHotBcp0l0

And just to be fair: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-M7FgKedUk

Even considering the fact that both people in the videos are likely not experienced, you can still see the power behind a large caliber hand gun like the Desert Eagle. In both cases neither were expecting the recoil. The thing with recoil is you can learn to prepare for it and get used to it. My character has never fired a large caliber handgun before so the result certainly wouldn’t be smooth.

The gun I decided to use for Kyu was a Glock 19 since the Glock model is widely used by security and law-enforcement (the 22 and 23 are both used by the FBI). The 19 specifically is a compact model with low recoil and 9mm ammunition that I felt she would be comfortable handling. It’s also not nearly as loud as larger caliber models. Being comfortable with a handgun in all aspects generally leads to higher accuracy with the weapon. It is important to know what to expect from your gun, even when you don’t know what to expect from a situation where you have to use it. The less unknown variables you have to deal with, the better.

Glock 19 vs. a .45 fired by someone with more experience. You can still tell the difference in recoil from the slow motion shots: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5782pVYrwU

Gun Barrel Length

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The longer the barrel of your gun, the more time your gunpowder has to burn when you fire a shot. This allows for a greater pressure build up, which will propel your bullet at a higher rate of speed. This will cause your bullet to hit harder, and in terms of trajectory, have a flatter shot (meaning it doesn’t or has less of an arc, think of when you hit a baseball).

A gun has two sights, a rear sight and a front sight.

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Say you were looking at a target at a firing range. You line up the rear sight with the dot on the target that you want to hit and then adjust the front sight so it intersects that dot. The longer the gun barrel, the more accurate the shot because your front sight is going to be closer to your target than it would if your gun had a shorter barrel. There is going to be a smaller margin for visual human error when aiming.

The only issue with large barrels is that having one severely decreases the portability and concealability of your handgun.

Shooting Two Handguns at Once

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It’s possible, but the human eye cannot aim two guns at once so your accuracy is probably going to suck. Those pinpoint shots you see in movies are bullshit. With two guns, you’re going to be stuck using point shooting, which relies on instinctive reactions and is often used in life-threatening situations when you simply don’t have time to aim a shot. You’re also going to have to deal with holding two guns at once, having one arm to support the weight of each and their recoil, so if you’re character isn’t strong, they may have a hard time pulling this off.

Since dual wielding is inaccurate, your character will probably empty the clips of both weapons just to make sure he killed whatever he’d been shooting. Handgun ammunition capacities have a pretty extensive range. Revolvers tend to be either 5 or 6 rounds while other handguns (pistols) can be modified with extended clips of about 30 rounds or drums to increase their capacities to about 40. There are ways to extend this further of course, but that dips into serious modification territory and I question why you wouldn’t just switch to an Uzi (32-round standard, 40-50 round extended, 22 round for the micro version) or another submachine gun at that point.

Regardless of what you use, reloading is going to be an issue. Reloading a weapon is meant to be quick and since you no longer have a free hand while dual wielding, you’re character is going to have to waste time setting one of the guns down and putting in a new clip. He’s also going to have to do it again. In that time whoever he’s fighting is probably going to kill him or find a way to get around his cover. So unless you can come up for a realistic solution to this problem (and don’t use the infinite ammo cop-out), dual wielding handguns is just going to end up being silly.

Well what about in Underworld or Resident Evil where they have ways to quickly reload spent clips from their belts or holster straps?

Yeah those sorts of things don’t exist right now. There is some liberty with reloading methods if your story takes place in a futuristic setting, but if your story is in modern times, you’re SOL.

Fun with Tropes!

Mythbusters tests out the dual wielding trope. They hit the targets but if you compared the dual wielded shots to using a single weapon, there wouldn’t even be a contest when it came to the overall accuracy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HhY2xQr0zw

TV Tropes Page (I’ll never see you guys again D:): http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GunsAkimbo

Conclusion

What you’ve seen in media is lies, liiiieeees.

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But, just because Hollywood, comic books and anime tend to embellish the truth, doesn’t mean that they’re portrayals aren’t awesome. You can feel free to modify the way handguns work with your characters and your world, as long as you remember the real concepts behind them. That’s what being creative is. 🙂

-Morgan

Sources:

  • My boyfriend Teye, a former Marine.

  • The work of Dave Spalding, a 28-year law enforcement veteran who retired at the rank of lieutenant, and then went to work for a federal security contractor. He’s currently a trainer for law enforcement and his website can be found at: http://www.handguncombatives.com/.

  • The work of Jeff Cooper, a former Marine. He is considered the father of “the Modern Technique” of handgun shooting.

  • The first three images are from Hellsing by Kouta Hirano.

  • The image in the dual wield section is from the film Equilibirum.

  • I did pluck the recoil definition from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recoil). I rarely use Wiki directly but that information was actually solid.

External Links:

Side Note: I’m not picking on Hellsing with this article. I love Hellsing. It’s just the only example that came to mind when I thought of oversized handgun, unless you wanted me to use this:

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What, he’s using one hand. It totally counts, right? Curse you Superman at Earth’s End (which belongs to DC).

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Wanna be a writer? Find a different way to say “I’m going to the store” every single time you say it. Come up with nicknames for all of your friends. Ask people questions, welcome conversation from an outside perspective, do not drop a topic until you are satisfied. For every different room in which you find yourself on every single day, point out at least one thing that is there, but shouldn’t be there, and why it shouldn’t be there. Then take maybe ten minutes a week to get it down on the page. Writing only takes a long time when the only time you think about writing is when you are writing.

Toni Morrison (via ethiopienne)

Revealing Backstory

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fuckyeahcharacterdevelopment:

About back story: My characters tend to have a lot of it, and I understand that this is a good thing. But I also have trouble /pacing/ it throughout the story so that the reader doesn’t get overwhelmed. And it just feels like I’m doing this: IjustlovemycharactersomuchandIwanttotellyoueverythingaboutthemrightawaysothatyoulovethemtooooooooooo. And yeah, that’s annoying and the reader will probably get a headache. So, do you have any tips for pacing character back story?
 Anonymous

When it comes to revealing backstories, I really think that less is more, and I’ll tell you why.

  • Realism: Real people (and good characters) are complicated, multilayered, and have been living their own lives prior to when you met them. However, when you first meet someone, do they pour out their life story to you in a Scheherazade-like epic retelling? Not usually. Usually, you get to know them over time, and you learn new things when they come up in the time you spend together. In time, you may even know quite a lot about that person- but it takes time. Knowing about someone’s history, their childhood, and their current life is a mark of trust and a lot of time spent together. I can only claim to know a handful of people as well as you’d normally get to know the protagonist of a book. 

In short- there’s a lot about characters and people that you don’t know. Trying to tell your audience ‘the whole story’ about someone will likely only cause you (and your reader) a headache. While they may learn a great deal about the character over the course of the narrative, they’ll learn it better in bits and pieces. 

  • Relevance to plot: While it’s good to throughly develop a character’s background for your own purposes, when you’re writing, ask yourself: Is this relevant to the story at hand, or would this be something that would be better placed in a prequel about that character (whether you intend to write one or not). 
    For example: If I’m telling you a story about how Pen and I got chased by a dog, it’s relevant that she’s scared of dogs after one treed her as a child, and would come up in the narrative naturally. It’s irrelevant that I had a bad experience with lemon popsicles as a child, and would feel out of place.  

Additionally, your character will probably be developing and changing within the story- so the focus should be on how they’re becoming a different person than who they were in the times of their backstory. People evolve continually, so really, ‘backstory’ is kind of a broad term. Exceptions include purposefully static characters, characters who are caught in the past themselves, and the like. 

  • Finally, why it’s good to keep readers in the dark just a little bit: Now, I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase ‘show not tell’ approximately 10^23 times by now. But it applies here too! When possible, it really helps to try and demonstrate a character’s backstory, rather than tell it straight. Harking back to Pen and I’s hypothetical dog adventure- if she turns pale when we go by the dog park, the reader can infer that something happened in her past involving dogs. This in many ways is better than flat telling, because a block of telling backstory can be boring, but if you make it just enough of a puzzle, the reader will feel really clever for having figured out something about the character that wasn’t explicitly stated (and we want them to feel clever, it keeps them interesting). From there, you need to decide if the shown not told detail is a segue in to a written explanation, or a noodle incident. Segues are good if you need to do a lil bit of an infodump that’s relevant and important and all that to the plot. The trick is, keep the reader feeling clever. The ideal is that when you reveal that Pen has a crippling fear of dogs since she was five, the reader screams bloody murder about how they called it. When it comes to a noodle incident (a noodle incident being a past event that is frequently brought up, but not properly explained. ie, ‘Budapest’ in Avengers) the first rule is that is that you never explain the noodle incident. Instead,you let the readers draw their own conclusions or make their own theories, as they will almost invariably be disappointed with your answer. Decide which is better or more suited to your story.

IN SUMMARY,

some tips for you include:

  • Reveal backstory in digestible lil bites
  • Reveal those bites when they come up naturally
  • Select which details are relevant to the story at hand, and which are irrelevant 
  • Try to ‘show not tell’ some parts of your character’s history

That’s it, hope it helps!
-Evvy

Visualizing a Space

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fictionwritingtips:

I always have difficulty visualizing how a room is set up or I just don’t put that much attention into it. I quickly realized how wrong this was because you want your readers to see a space, especially if it’s an important area. If you ignore how it’s set up, you’ll only confuse and frustrate your readers. They want to visualize the spaces you create, so you need to make a conscious effort to plan your locations.

Having weak locations might seem like the least of your worries when it comes to writing, but it’s all part of being a descriptive writer. Describing a house or building might be moments you want to rush, but you need to give them care and attention.  Using this description—brown, single family, two-story home—is not exciting. It’s not even really worth reading, to be honest. We need to experience the house with all of our senses. What does the house smell like? Like fresh cotton? Or musty? Obviously, these two smells are very different and will lead to a different understanding of the house.  Is it dark inside? Does natural light stream in through the clean glass windows? These descriptions are off the top of my head, but you need to take the time to think about how you want your locations to be perceived and what you’re trying to say.

Everything in your story should matter.

So, how could you improve how you build your locations? Keeping those visualizations in your head works for some people, but you can get creative. If you’re a competent artist (which I am not), you can do some sketches and refer back to them. However, for detailed space building, I recommend this site—Room Sketcher.

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Room Sketcher allows you to easily build rooms and the program is free. If you’re looking for help, I think this is a great idea. Otherwise, find a good way to plan your spaces and keep them fresh in your mind. Take the extra step.

So You Want To Write A Book..

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thewritersarchive:

And remember: Google is your best friend.