Don't ever make another writer's journey harder than it has to be.
pick a word that describes your character. For example: He’s compassionate. Then find another word that can also describe your character, but make it a polar opposite—terrorist... Giving a character a dual nature creates an instability, a lack of balance, that probably can’t stay forever.
Cultural appropriation takes place when a privileged group takes elements of an oppressed culture and uses them as it sees fit, without regard to their importance in the oppressed culture, often deforming them beyond recognition or distorting reality to the point of making the appropriated cultural practice take the place of the authentic one.
Your inciting incident... might have as few as one scene or as many as twenty—little snippets where your character discovers that he has a problem and that the problem... is life-altering
Any... fiction writer, in attempting to present a fleshed out world, will probably several times need to reference something outside the actual story, some past kingdom or mythical animal, some hobby of the lower classes, some religious detail, or a line about, “That time when grandmother got into a drinking contest with a Giant Stoat…” ... making the world a bit more solid.
Each person that you meet has something of an emotional tone about them. Some people are stern most of the time, while others might be thoughtful, pleasant, or excited.http://www.davidfarland.com/writing_tips/?a=271
Try to leave out the part{s} that readers tend to skip.
How far will that character go to fulfil their desires? Will he sacrifice the life of a member of his family to stay alive? Will she sacrifice her own life to kill him?
We know that if you experience the same thing over and over again, you get diminishing results. We have to constantly switch things up. That could be with story, characters, environment, or it could be with this "set-piece moment"
There are many different reasons for a good battle scene. Am I trying to give a proper end to a beloved character? Am I trying to resolve the grudge, or to determine who, in the end, is better? Am I using a fight to leave a cliff-hanger...? Am I writing a personal fight between two enemies, or a grand-scale battle which can determine the fate of a city? Or am I simply trying to wake up the readers after a long pause in the action? I do that. I admit it openly. There are times when I just want a reader to get his or her pulse pounding.http://blog.shelfari.com/my_weblog/2011/08/ra-salvatore-on-how-to-write-a-damn-good-fight-scene.html
Keep in mind that the injuries sustained during a fight will linger... Even if a person is never touched, and inflicts all the damage, there can be an emotional toll that character will walk away with
Try imagining the book that would light your heart and mind on fire if you came across it in a bookstore—the one that would quicken your pulse and keep you up all night reading. What would it be? Details, details: when, where, what, who? Think it up, imagine it fully, then bring it forth. That’s the book you should be writing.
if you are writing a novel and creating your own world... consider whether to include your own legendary beasts and monsters, things that aren’t real but which some of your characters could conceivably believe in. ... A culture’s myths and legends... [can] serve... to warn the reader that they would encounter many a strange thinghttp://www.davidfarland.com/writing_tips/?a=254
imagine watching your scene, but in a foreign language with the subtitles turned off. What does the talking feel like? What’s the emotion behind the words? Who’s in control?
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Let’s say Bob needs to tell Mary that her dog has been eaten by a python. As the writer, you need to decide not only what facts Bob knows, but how he’s anticipating Mary will react to the news. This will determine not only how he starts the conversation (“Say, you were talking about how you wanted to get a new dog, right?”) but every subsequent decision along the way.
PIRATING DIGITAL PROPERTY IS... taking something that someone has put effort into, in the hopes of making a living, and giving them nothing in return.
to sift through an array of possible motivations... The way to do that is not to ask, “What would make one man kill another?” Unless you’re a telepath... Better to ask, “What would make me kill someone?”
at some point in anything you practice, you stop learning new things--until you start teaching what you already know to others.
if your characters are doing things, even small things, those things will {often} change your characters.
Brick walls are not there to keep us out. Brick walls are there to show how badly we want something.
Nothing worth doing is easy... Writing is a LOT of work. Breaking into the industry is a torment worthy of the fifth or sixth circle of Hell. Face that. Expect it. Deal with it... It's difficult from the get go
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The true reward of breaking into the industry against all the odds isn't money. It isn't fame. It it isn't respect.
It's you.
It's confidence. It's satisfaction. It's well-deserved pride. Suddenly, the other challenges in your life are going to dwindle as well, because you know you'll be able to handle them.
in moments of action, when people are breaking down doors or ducking a bullet, they aren't feeling any deep complex emotions... In the moment {of preparation or aftermath}... there are deep complex emotions at play... {it} shows so much more than just a battle...it shows character and relationships.http://sevencamels.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/picking-right-moment-to-illustrate.html
A powerful story motif occurs when the anti-hero, because of the unfolding events, is forced to join the community.
Audiences don’t love set-pieces. They love characters who do amazing things during set-pieces.
often you find your voice when you look to what was the most difficult part of your life.
instead of (or in addition to) killing yourselves trying to concoct a great first line... how about giving some thought to what your opening scene looks like? It takes a lot of the pressure off that first page anxiety — because you're focused on conveying a powerful image that will intrigue and entice the reader into the book.
What do we see? How does it make us feel? How might it even be a miniature code of what the whole story is about?
One of my favorite opening images/sequences is the credits scene of The Shining. I don’t think there’s a creepier opening to be found anywhere in film. It’s all aerial camerawork of those vast, foreboding mountains as that tiny little car drives up, up, up toward what turns out to be the Overlook Hotel. It’s vertiginous, it’s ominous, it emphasizes the utter isolation of the hotel and the circumstances, and somehow, through the music and the visuals and the constant movement, Kubrick establishes a sense of huge, vast, and malevolent natural forces.
The opening image will sometimes —often — set up a location that will return in the final battle scene or in the resolution scene of the story — only at the end there will be a big visual contrast to show how much the hero/ine has changed.
I am a sneaky writer. I like to think of writing less as something that should be done (and done with a capital “W”) and more as something sort of naughty that I absolutely should not be doing because there are other capital letter (and lame) things to do like Cleaning.
In my story, I want to highlight how exceptional a particular relationship is, so I’m making sure to include horrible relationships in my plot as well.
Added link to the great articles webpage.
One technique that I find helpful is at the end of each story, I go through in editing and make a “dialog pass.” If I have a character, Bron, I will search for instances of “Bron said” so that I can pinpoint his scenes and make sure that his dialog sounds like it is coming from him.
"WRITE ONLY WHAT WE CAN SEE."
...IF YOU'RE WRITING "HE GREW UP IN A SMALL TOWN BACK..." IN YOUR ACTION LINES YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG... ANY GOOD DIRECTOR WILL SIT DOWN AND LOOK AT A PARAGRAPH THAT HAS NOTHING BUT CHARACTER HISTORY AND SAY "HOW THE FUCK CAN I SHOW THAT?"
MERYL STREEP'S CHARACTER IS ON A PLANE AND SHE'S ABOUT TO BE HANDED FOOD. SHE GOES TO GRAB HER WALLET TO PAY, BUT ATTENDANT INFORMS HER THEY'RE FREE. THE MEANING IS CLEAR: SHE'S NEVER BEEN ON A PLANE BEFORE...
IF YOU WRITE SOMETHING WE CAN'T SEE, IS NOT JUST MERE FAUX PAS, NOT JUST A COMPLETELY WASTED OPPORTUNITY, BUT A WRITING HABIT THAT WILL ACTIVELY MAKE THE MOVIE WORSE. YOU'RE PUTTING AN IDEA INTO THE FILMMAKERS HEAD THAT WILL MAKE TOTAL SENSE FOR YOUR STORY, HELP THEM GET IT, BUT IT WON'T HELP THE AUDIENCE GET IT.
