Saved Writing Help
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lokisherlockdtheimpalaindatardis:
I remember one time while at the store, the cashier lady said hello and I replied with good thanks.
I just found this again and oh my god it’s still embarrassing. Fuck.
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Guest Article from Elizabeth: Switching Up a Too-Perfect Character
nothingcanbegained asked: I have a character I roleplay, but I feel lately like every time I roleplay him, that I find that he’s just too… perfect? I mean he’s gentle mannered, polite, shy, honest, helpful, eager to please without being overbearing, easily embarrassed, and quite honestly, I’m finding him boring. How do I make a character more exciting without changing who he is? Should I try and add personality faults that can be directly related to his traits?
As writers, it’s easy to let our characters fall into the dreaded Mary Sue trope. But you’ve already realized the problem with too-perfect characters: they’re boring. They offer little conflict, they’re unrealistic, and they tend to drive everyone a little crazy.
Faults and vices are one of the easiest ways to add depth to your character. They make your character seem more like a person, rather than the stock character or flat character we see lining the edges of fiction stories. Here are some steps you can take to round out your character:
- Look at other characters that fit your description: Peter Pettigrew from Harry Potter, Mary Bennet from Pride & Prejudice, Iris from The Holiday, C3PO from Star Wars, etc.. What makes these characters well-rounded? What makes them interesting? Look at the way their faults build on their more positive attributes.
- Like you already suggested, pick a couple flaws that fit in with his established character. Based on your description, try something like self-doubt, inability to trust, or jealousy. Put him into a situation where the flaw comes into play. Maybe he overhears someone talking about him, or he is faced with a task that’s too much for him to handle. Play with it, and see where he takes you. Regardless of the positive traits he has, test drive your character making the wrong decision—a decision outside of his normal response or even outside of his moral code—in order to create more conflict for him and broaden his development..
- Take one of his attributes and make it “too much.” If he’s honest, does that mean that he’ll always speak his mind to the point that he offends others? Does he say exactly what others don’t want to hear? Take “gentle mannered, polite, and shy” and turn it into ”easily manipulated.” ”Easily embarrassed” could become “ashamed.” There is always a negative slant on a positive characteristic. The possibilities are endless.
- What is he passionate about? Give him something to fight for—maybe it’s a romantic interest, a place, an ideal, or even an opinion. What happens when that thing is threatened?
- Because you’re part of an RP, you have a unique advantage. Talk to your RP partner/group. Have them challenge you by putting your character into situations that are uncomfortable for him. Have them ask tough questions. How does he react to confrontation?
- Characters, like people, should change and grow. There’s no reason why he has to stay the way he is now.
Here are some other resources you can check out:
- Write World: Choosing Virtues and Vices for Your Character
- Write World: Layering Virtues and Vices
- TVTropes: Character Flaw Index
- TVTropes: Avoid Writing A Mary Sue
- WritePop: Character Flaws
- Superhero Nation: How to Make a Boring Character Interesting
- Clay Held: The Trick to Writing Compelling Characters (and How to Avoid Boring Ones)
Good luck!
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Bloodstain Pattern Analysis (BPA) - Resource for Crime Writers
well you never know when this might come in handy.
I feel like this would be useful to some of you.
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Tips on - Describing Hairstyles
Writing about hair and hairstyles is something that always seemed more difficult to me than other kinds of physical description for a character. And there will always be a point, as a writer where you’ll have to describe what your character’s hair look like, no matter if it’s always like this or for a special occasion. So, I collected some links I thought could be useful on the matter, whether about the writing part in itself or more an ‘inspiration part’
WRITING
- List of colors, hair types and hairstyles
- List of words to use in a character’s description (three parts about hair, but a lot of other things)
- 200 words to describe hair
- How to describe hair
- Words used to describe the state of people’s hair
- How to describe your haircut
- Hair color sharts
IN HISTORY- 1920’s hairstyles (women)
- Roman Hairstyles
- The history of hair colors
- History of Hair
- Hairstyles History
INSPIRATION AND IDEAS- Ponytails (with small descriptions for each)
- Wavy hairstyles (with descriptions as well)
- ‘Simple’ hairstyles (with descriptions)
- Hairstyles pictures
- Hairstyle gallery (contains some DIY with descriptions in the right categories)
- Braids (three words description/names)
- Hairstyle general tag
- Wedding Hairstyles
- Men Hairstyles
- Hairstyles Gallery (some descriptions, well organized)
- Hairstyle describe personality
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vendetta-of-my-heart-and-mind:
Stages of Deterioration in the Human Body
The Moment Of Death:
1. The heart stops.
2. The skin gets tight and ashen in color.
3. All the muscles relax.
4. The bladder and bowels empty. (not always)
5. The body temperature begins to drop 2-2 1/2 degrees Fahrenheit per hour for the first 12 hours, then 1 1/2-2 degrees Fahrenheit per hour until the body temp has reached the environmental temp.
After 30 minutes:
6. The skin gets purple and waxy.
7. The lips, fingernails, and toenails fade to a pale color.
8. Blood pools at the bottom of the body. (or lowest gravitational point)
9. The hands and feet turn blue.
10. The eyes sink into the skull.
After 4 hours:
11. Rigor mortis has set in.
12. The purpling of the skin and the pooling of the blood continue.
13. Rigor continues to tighten muscles for another 24 hours or so and is most appreciable in the muscles of the face and hands.
After 12 hours:
14. The body is in full rigor mortis.
Livor mortis or pooling of the blood has fixed.
After 24 hours:
15. The body is now the temperature of the surrounding environment.
16. In males, the semen dies.
17. The head and neck are now a greenish-blue color.
18. The greenish-blue color spreads to the rest of the body. (most appreciable in the stomach region)
19. There is a pervasive smell of rotting meat.
After 3 days:
20. The gas in the body tissues forms large blisters on the skin. (blebs)
21. The whole body begins to bloat and swell grotesquely.
22. Fluids leak from the mouth, nose, vagina, and rectum. (decompositional fluid purging)
After 3 weeks:
23. The skin, hair, and nails are so loose they can easily be pulled off the corpse. (sloughing)
24. The skin bursts open on many places on the body. (skin blebs)
25. Decomposition will continue until the body is nothing but skelital remains, a process that can take a month or so in hot climates, and two months or more in cold climates.This is actually pretty interesting.
Important for writers…helps avoid either walking in and knowing someone died moments ago “from the smell” (unless that smell is piss and shit), or finding someone dead for a week that “looks like they’re sleeping.”
Reblogging for reference.
This is the single creepiest website ever and i love all of you
Found this really interesting.
I added a couple of notes to this and here’s a few more:
If a body is in a wet climate for a long period of time it can get moldy, or if submerged in water will display adipocere which is the hardening of body fat due to putrefaction (it is waxy); in dry climates the body can naturally mummify as well.
When the body purges decomp fluid it can look like there was a more traumatic event than there really was. Someone can die naturally in their chair and a couple of weeks later it could look like the person had their throat slit because of all of the fluid that has drained from the orifices.
Livor mortis or the settling of blood is a fixed event. Livor is only effected by gravity and if the body is moved prior to fixation (around 8 hours) then the livor mortis will reflect that, also prior to fixation the area affected by livor mortis can be impressed, if it blanches then livor hasn’t fixed and it helps with a TOD.
Rigor mortis doesn’t last forever, but can if the body is embalmed. It will last in most climates for about 24 hours, then will start to dissipate, the areas of the body with smaller muscles will have rigor for a longer period of time.
Something I learned from Detective Conan:
If someone dies in the midst of vigorous exercise, rigor mortis sets in much more quickly! It takes a few minutes for it to begin, which can throw off the estimated time of death :)
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Antagonist v. Villain
what’s the difference between a villain and an antagonist?
AnonymousFrom our friend Dictionary.com:
Villain:
- a cruelly malicious person who is involved in or devoted towickedness or crime; scoundrel.
- a character in a play, novel, or the like, who constitutes animportant evil agency in the plot.
Antagonist:
- a person who is opposed to, struggles against, or competeswith another; opponent; adversary.
- the adversary of the hero or protagonist of a drama or otherliterary work: Iago is the antagonist of Othello.
So a villain is an antagonist but an antagonist isn’t always a villain. For example, in Paradise Lost, Satan is the protagonist of the book, when at the time of its publishing, I’m pretty sure the interpretation of Satan had switched from trickster agent of God to straight villain. ’Antagonist’ and ’Protagonist’ changes based on whose story is being told, while ‘villain’ is a moral judgement. Additionally, if we’re talking about the three Western sources of conflict within a story (self, man, nature), the antagonist of the story in addition to being a person could be fate, or a blizzard, or even the protagonist himself.
Hope that explains it!
-Evvy
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Blubbering: Unattractive, loud crying. Characterized by mutters, truncated, erratic breathing, clinched facial expressions and hunched posture.
Hyperventilate-Crying: Forceful crying causing heavy breathing, resulting in the inability to speak or produce sounds even resembling words.
Scream-Crying: Violent crying accompanied with bouts of yelling or sometimes shrieking. May also include slapping, punching or other physical expressions of distress.
Silent Tears: Soft, inaudible crying that does not draw attention; May manifest only in a single tear rolling down one’s cheek.
Sobbing: Heavy crying with a large volume tears flowing steadily; Generally audible but not inappropriately loud.
Sniveling: Audible, but soft crying, also prone to muttering and erratic breathing; May also show signs of drool or mucus.
Weeping: A gentler version of sobbing; Involves soft, steady stream of tears with some times lightly audible signs of distress.
Whimpering: Soft crying usually including few or no tears at all; Often incorporates muttering and/or high-pitched sighs.(via no-body-will-break-you)
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Writing Tips #48: Fifteen Stock Characters — and How to Restock Them
Ever since Ferdy read a draft of my manuscript and said that my heroine was just like every Urban Fantasy character, I have been thinking about characters. I came across this and had to share.
Does the cast of characters in your novel or short story fall under some of these categories? Take care that your characters don’t fall into the cliché trap: If you find that they resemble one of the stereotypes below, reconsider your characterization or at least provide the dramatis persona with a distinguishing personality characteristic that’s a twist on the same old, same old.
1. Antihero: This character, a protagonist (typically seen in detective and adventure genres) whose personality flaws distinguish him or her from a standard hero, is inherently much more interesting than the upstanding counterpart. The key characteristic is usually misanthropy, but that’s not enough to round a character out. An antihero must have a solid foundation on which to stand.
2. Absent-minded professor: Perhaps Professor Fumblebuttons is just pretending to be a shock-haired scientist who can’t remember where he put his glasses (“Um, the glasses you’re wearing?”). What’s his motive for his deception?
3. Boy/girl next door: Is John or Mary really what he or she seems? What dark secret does that wholesome countenance conceal? This character easily pales in comparison with a complicated villain or sidekick, so make an extra effort to invest your protagonist with personality — or relegate the squeaky-clean persona to a secondary role.
(via savedwritingadvice)
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Writers, when penning scenes in which two or more characters are of the same gender, often encounter the problem of how to distinguish one person from the other. If everyone is a “she” or a “he,” how is the audience to know which character is doing or saying what and when?
As I’ve often noticed in slash fanfic, writers have the tendency to twist their prose into knots, trying to accomplish this in a “creative” fashion. If I had a nickel for every time Tony Stark was referred to as “the billionaire,” or “the resident genius” in fanfic, I’d be sipping Mai Tais off the coast of Florida instead of running this blog. “But Dr. E,” you might say, “if I don’t use descriptors, how will my readers ever understand who’s doing what in my story?”
Well, here are a few tips that may help you:
(via savedwritingadvice)
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5 Ways You’re Accidentally Making Everyone Hate Your Character
