Recent Updates:

1. Returned from unannounced hiatus on 7/18/14.

HH

goddessofsax:

Here’s a handy dandy color reference chart for you artists, writers, or any one else who needs it! Inspired by this post x

clevergirlhelps:

Biology

Constructed Language (Conlang)

Culture Guides

Economy

Everyday Life

Government

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ninpen:

pseudonym — preview / code / instructions / credits

Page can be used for:

  • character
  • family
  • bias
  • just anything that deals with images

keep your names short. VEY VERY short. 

image dimensions: 170px by 170px

Read the instructions before asking any questions. If you’re still confused, please ask, but I do not help with customizations

ritasvrataski:

THEME 004 by lutherwest.tumblr.com

Pastebin (raw) | Live preview

I must be feeling incredibly creative lately because this is my second theme in the past couple of days. This was actually made throughout the course of the day, editing it here and there, asking for feedback and such. I would like to thank aquamentia for her lending me her opinion on this one and for just generally being lovely. Hope you guys like, and as always, if you have any questions, feel free to leave them in my askbox.

  • Sidebar image is resized to 230px in width, height can be whatever, but it’s recommended to have a square image.
  • Keep the description short-ish, unless you want to play with the margins of the sidebar.
  • Arrow paginations
  • No title
  • 4 links available
  • Right sidebar
  • Topbar
  • Alternate title/subtitle
  • Webkit scrollbar

Do not redistribute or steal. Edit as much as you would like, but keep the credit in tact! Reblog or like if you’re using. :)

Anonymous: What's the best way to describe a birthing scene without getting into the gorey details?

nimblesnotebook-blog:

By writing about everything but the gory parts. However, to do that, you need to know what goes on during birth. You can start by checking my pregnant characters tag on the tags page for some information. Everything starts with research.

When researching birth, look for information relating to your setting and time period. Both can have major effects on who is present, what it feels like, what equipment is available, and the general atmosphere. Read up on birth stories posted around the internet and take note of what the authors mention in those stories.

Here is what you should focus on in this scene:

  • POV Character: Whether it’s first person or third, the POV character will carry the scene and the details involved. With limited POV, you can only describe what your character is aware of. Omniscient and multiple POVs allows you to move elsewhere. Focus on what your character sees and what they are feelings, emotionally and physically. If the POV character is the one giving birth, talk about their feelings, their thoughts, how they observe the people around them, and what they feel physically. They most likely won’t be able to see what’s going on with the birth depending on the position, so you can dodge those details easily.
  • Characters Present: Write about the characters that are present, if any. Write about what they’re doing and what they’re saying. If your POV character is one of these characters, you just have to keep them away from any place that might require more specific details.
  • Atmosphere: Describe what it is like just being there. This can refer to the noise, the temperature, the general “feel” of the room, and the pacing. Does time go by slowly or quickly? Is everyone rushed but calm? Or rushed and frantic?

You also have two other options to avoid most of the birthing scene altogether:

  • Fade to Black: This is when the author ends the scene prior to a certain event. It’s often used to imply that characters are going to have sex, but you can use it for a lot of things. You can end the scene with labor or contractions or something else and pick up the next scene post birth.
  • Semi Fade to Black: You can put more emphasis on the beginnings of labor and whatnot and then use a few paragraphs to paraphrase the events of the birthing scene.

duchessofrph:

PERIOD FC'S SORTED BY TIME PERIOD

To celebrate 200 followers I decided to create a masterlist that I think will be quite helpful to a lot of peopleThis is an enormous masterlist containing more than 300 faceclaims sorted by the time period in which their movie/tv show was set in. Under the cut you will find faceclaims that range from Ancient Greek Times all the way to the 1950’s! I worked really hard on this masterlist, and I hope it benefits other people who absolutely love historical roleplaying!

Read More

#fc

uneditededit:

Character Motivation and Consistency:  

So lets take a moment to talk about character consistency.  This is something that I find a lot of people have a hard time with and a lot of it has to do with the actual development of the character in itself.  When making a character, we pick out traits and experiences that define our character.  All of these things including flaws and talents are important but something that people tend to forget with picking out a character is what their motivation is.  

Author Orson Scott Card reminds us “We never fully understand other people’s motivations in real life.  In fiction, however, we can help our readers understand our characters’ motivations with clarity, sometimes even certainty. This is one of the reasons why people read fiction—to come to some understanding of why other people act the way they do.”

Why is Knowing Motivation Important in Writing?:

This essentially, explains to us why characters act the way they do.  Choices are determined by the motivation of the character.  They are a guide in the choices they make because where they want to go or what they want determines what choices they are going to make.  Very very VERY seldom does anyone make a choice at random. By knowing your characters primary motivation, the choices that they make will remain consistent (Even if they are not the ‘right’ choices.  

Basic External and Internal Motivations:  

EXTERNAL: 
Bold-face is obverse aspect (stuff in parens = goals, effects, or other association)

  • Survival/safety; Fear of the world (food, water, escape from danger)
  • Physical comfort; gluttony (shelter, warmth, good food, health)
  • Pleasure; hedonism (sex, great food, culture, games)
  • Dominance; tyranny (power, social standing, competition, respect)
  • Acquisitiveness; greed (wealth, materialism, collecting, excellence)
  • Curiosity; voyeurism (learning, searching, investigating)
  • Mastery; perfectionism (excellence, conquest, discipline, achievement)
  • Reproduction; profligacy (children, creativity, family-building)


INTERNAL:

  • Autonomy; isolation (self-sufficiency, freedom, non-confinement)
  • Affiliation; conformity (security, cooperation, loyalty, clan)
  • Love; lust/ownership (connection, passion, sex, mirroring, approval, giving)
  • Revenge; justice (righting wrongs, recognition of grievance, vengeance)
  • Guilt; denial of guilt (responsibility, shame, punishment, redemption, forgiveness)
  • Identity; self-centeredness (self-esteem, self-knowledge, self-protection)
  • Surcease; conflict avoidance (peace, escape from anxiety, death)
  • Spirituality; fetishism (religion, transcendence, transformation)
  • Growth; decay, aging (learning, maturation, wisdom)
  • Ambition; insecurity/anxiety (fear of failure, inferiority, stress)
  • Vindication; rationalization (success, proving self, apology)

The Difference in between a Goal and Motivation:

The goal is like the flower… the motivation is the roots.

The goal is the outward manifestation of the motivation. It is concrete, measurable, and specific. 
You don’t know when you’ve fulfilled the motivation: “I want success” isn’t measurable– what’s success?  But you know when you’ve achieved a goal:  ”I want to be on the New York Times bestseller list–” That’s measurable. You’ll know when you reach it.

Just keep in mind that while the goal is the external manifestation of the motivation, the connection is not always a straight or clear one.  You can have a goal that is destructive and against your true motivation– “looking for love in all the wrong places” is an example. 
Or you can have a laudatory goal for a selfish or twisted motivation– “I want to be first in my class to show my father up!”

Motivation is the past; Goal is the future; Conflict is the present.

Distinguish between MOTIVATION and ACTION:

Remember that motivation exists to inspire the character to make choices and take actions.  If you’ve been told your protagonist is “too passive”, it’s likely what’s lacking is motivation that leads to action. 

Every action, however small, should be motivated.  If the motivation is obvious, then you might not have to show it (we assume that she’s running from that tiger for survival). 

Compare the external (obvious) motivation to the goal and/or actions.  If they don’t match, an internal motivation is probably in force. What hidden desire or fear is influencing actions? 
An alternative reason for motivation/action mismatch: You’re trying to make an original character act in stereotypical ways.

And keep this in mind: 
Heroism and villainy are in the action, not the motivation.  Heroes do heroic things, they don’t just intend to do them.  And villains do bad things even if they have the best of intentions.

Taking all of these things into account, here are three exercises that I found a while back and use to help figure out character motivations:

1. Real People as a template: 

Make a list of 5 people you know really well. Beside each, make notes about how they:

  1. react to stress
  2. experience happiness,
  3. treat other people.

After that, list what motivates each of these behaviors. Try to be as factual as possible, drawing from things you know; for things you’re unsure of, use common sense to hypothesize.

A person might make it their goal to treat others with respect because of religious beliefs, or maybe because they were disrespected in the past. Someone might react poorly to stressful situations because they have a deep-seated fear of failure, stemming from a past experience.

2. Characters from Literature:

List 5 characters from literature and what motivated their actions throughout their respective stories.

For example, Shakespeare’sHamlet. His thoughts are motivated by revenge (because his uncle secretly killed his father), along with anger, sadness and confusion (because his mother married his uncle so soon after his father’s death).

Add to this a host of other factors, and you have a well-developed character you can understand.

3. Self reflection: 

Write paragraphs to describe

  1.  your most frightening experience
  2.  your happiest experience,
  3. your most stressful experience, and how you reacted to each situation.

After, list all the factors that motivated your behavior. How is your personality shaped by your motivations?

During the story (Or role play) it is important to remember these character motivations when your character makes choices.  That is really what this is about; identifying the motivations that make your character act the way that they do.  

During the plot, motivations may change, and should actually shift for the character to develop, but never all at once and never out of the blue.  Still the back story that drives your characters motivations will always be part of them.  

For instance; I write a character whose past has made her a survivalist but over the course of a year she shifts to protection of the family that she has developed.  However this took a full year to happen and her motivation of survival was never put on the back burner.  Instead it just expanded to protection of the group and not just herself.  Her fear of lose over this new family is what really drives her.

And there you have it: Keeping your character consistent through their motivation.

How to Introduce a Setting

fictionwritingtips:

The important thing to remember is that you do not need to spend paragraphs in the beginning of your novel introducing your setting. Only give your readers what they need to know right away to understand the story, then you can gradually introduce the other aspects of…

Wordiness

writeworld:

from Practical English Handbook, Fourth Edition by Watkins, Dillingham, and Martin

Rule of Thumb: Avoid redundancy.

Omit needless words and irrelevant ideas. Conciseness increases the force of writing.

Accidents due to excessive speed often end fatally for those…

theandieblack:

cherry bomb || a fanmix for the girl going nuclear [listen]

For the summer of ‘77; for concerts, music festivals and street parties; for nicotine girls chasing bands and chasing dreams, and chasing them all down with a bottle of gin.

i. let’s dance to joy division the wombats // ii. we are young fun. ft. janelle monáe // iii. something good can work two door cinema club // iv. l.i.f.e.g.o.e.s.o.n. noah and the whale // v. dancing song little comets // vi. do you remember the first time? pulp // vii. teenage kicks the undertones // viii. dance with somebody mando diao // ix. hate to say i told you so the hives // x. dreaming of you the coral // xi. i love it icona pop ft. charli xcx // xii. under cover of darkness the strokes // xiii. are you gonna be my girl jet // xiv. naive the kooks // xv. tick tick boom the hives // xvi. common people pulp // xvii. last nite the strokes // xviii. smells like teen spirit nirvana // xix. cherry bomb the runaways // xx. love will tear us apart joy division