he is come

timeladylunalovegood: 102 Resources for Fiction Writers ruthlesscalculus: Are you still stuck for...

Wed, 29 Aug 2012 10:51:43 -0400

102 Resources for Fiction Writers

ruthlesscalculus:

Are you still stuck for ideas for National Novel Writing Month? Or are you working on a novel at a more leisurely pace? Here are 102 resources on Character, Point of View, Dialogue, Plot, Conflict, Structure, Outlining, Setting, and World Building, plus some links to generate Ideas and Inspiration.

CHARACTER, POINT OF VIEW, DIALOGUE

10 Days of Character Building

Name Generators

Name Playground

The Universal Mary Sue Litmus Test

Priming the idea pump (A character checklist shamlessly lifted from acting)

How to Create a Character

Seven Common Character Types

Handling a Cast of Thousands – Part I: Getting to Know Your Characters

It’s Not What They Say …

Establishing the Right Point of View: How to Avoid “Stepping Out of Character”

How to Start Writing in the Third Person

Web Resources for Developing Characters

What are the Sixteen Master Archetypes?

Character: A compilation of guidance from classical and contemporary experts on creating great dramatic characters

Building Fictional Characters

Fiction Writer’s Character Chart

Character Building Workshop

Tips for Characterization

Fiction Writer’s Character Chart

Villains are People, Too, But …

Top 10 Tips for Writing Dialogue

Speaking of Dialogue

Dialogue Tips

Advantages, Disadvantages and Skills (character traits)

How to Write a Character Bible

Character Development Exercises

All Your Characters Sounds the Same — And They’re Not a Hivemind!

Medieval Names Archive

Sympathy Without Saintliness

Writing the Other: Bridging Cultural Difference for Successful Fiction

Family Echo (family tree website)

Interviewing Characters: Follow the Energy

100 Character Development Questions for Writers

Behind the Name

Lineage Chart Layout Generator

PLOT, CONFLICT, STRUCTURE, OUTLINE

How to Write a Novel: The Snowflake Method

Effectively Outlining Your Plot

Conflict and Character within Story Structure

Outlining Your Plot

Ideas, Plots & Using the Premise Sheets

How to Write a Novel

Creating Conflict and Sustaining Suspense

Plunge Right In … Into Your Story, That Is!

Fiction Writing Tips: Story Grid

Tips for Creating a Compelling Plot

Writer’s “Cheat Sheets”

The Thirty-six (plus one) Dramatic Situations

The Evil Overlord Devises a Plot: Excerpt from Stupid Plotting Tricks

Conflict Test

What is Conflict?

Monomyth

The Hero’s Journey: Summary of the Steps

Outline Your Novel in Thirty Minutes

Plotting Without Fears

Novel Outlining 101

Writing the Perfect Scene

Fight Scenes 101

Basic Plots in Literature

One-Page Plotting

The Great Swampy Middle

SETTING, WORLD BUILDING

Magical World Builder’s Guide

I Love the End of the World

World Building 101

The Art of Description: Eight Tips to Help You Bring Your Settings to Life

Creating the Perfect Setting – Part I

Creating a Believable World

An Impatient Writer’s Approach to Worldbuilding

Fantasy Worldbuilding Questions

Setting

Character and Setting Interactions

Creating Fantasy and Science Fiction Worlds

Creating Fantasy Worlds

Questions About Worldbuilding

Maps Workshop — Developing the Fictional World Through Mapping

World Builder Projects

IDEAS, INSPIRATION

Quick Story Idea Generator

Solve Your Problems Simply by Saying Them Out Loud

Busting Your Writing Rut

Writing Inspiration, or Sex on a Bicycle

Creative Acceleration: 11 Tips to Engineer a Productive Flow

The Seven Major Beginner Mistakes

Complete Your First Book with these 9 Simple Writing Habits

Free Association, Active Imagination, Twilight Imaging

Random Book Title Generator

Finishing Your Novel

Story Starters and Idea Generators

REVISION

How to Rewrite

One-Pass Manuscript Revision: From First Draft to Last in One Cycle

Editing Recipe

Cliche Finder

Revising Your Novel: Read What You’ve Written

Writing 101: So You Want to Write a Novel Part 3: Revising a Novel

TOOLS and SOFTWARE

My Writing Nook (online text editor; free)

Bubbl.us (online mind map application; free)

Freemind (mind map application; free; Windows, Mac, Linux, portable)

XMind (mind map application; free; Windows, Mac, Linux, portable)

Liquid Story Binder (novel organization and writing software; free trial, $45.95; Windows, portable)

Scrivener (novel organization and writing software; free trial, $39.95; Mac)

SuperNotecard (novel organization and writing software; free trial, $29; Windows, Mac, Linux, portable)

yWriter (novel organization and writing software; free; Windows, Linux, portable)

JDarkRoom (minimalist text editor; free; Windows, Mac, Linux, portable)

AutoRealm (map creation software; free; Windows, Linux with Wine)

For my fellow writers:

Tue, 28 Aug 2012 02:53:15 -0400

sheg0:

yeahwriters - lots of prompts, images, quotes and motivation

writeworld - prompts, quotes, references, tips

fuckyeahcharacterdevelopment - character, plot development and vocabulary tips

writingprompts - amazing and original picture prompts

dictionaryofobscuresorrows - words you might not know and their meaning

wordjournal - more words

shannahmcgill - writing tips

archetypesandallusions - creative writing tips

kingdomjournalist - writing tips (not only how to write but also how to prepare emotionally)

livewritedream - bit of everything (prompts, tips)

mooderino - concise and to the point questions that help you build characters and stories

thewritershelpers - quotes, advice, book/author recommendations

writingquotes - what the url suggests

get-scribbling - prompts

writing-problems - to know you are not alone in your struggles

5. haze. (unfinished, unorganized mess)

Sun, 26 Aug 2012 16:38:00 -0400

The skies are growing darker, day by day - the aliens trickle in, unwarranted, unnecessary. People living underneath the atmosphere’s careful hand, of course, have yet to notice - they are not the most attentive of races in the galaxy, and this will be their downfall. The creatures, these aliens so to speak, are insinuating themselves into the Earth’s ecosystem slowly but surely, the only way they know how: by attaching to a signal, following it until they know they can be safe, and crouching deep under the moss and grass and filth of humanity’s leftovers and chaos in wait of their Messiah to come forth and rescue them. They avoid water to the best of their ability, and their first plan when the planet is theirs is to get rid of the substance altogether, as it burns at their exoskeletons, makes tears in their wings that hiss as the fleshy flaps dissolve.

Every so often, in the midst of one of their hummingbird flights, one of the creatures intending to take the planet brushes past one of them, grazing a young girl’s elbow, wings whispering in an ancient man’s ear, making him believe he’s insane, that his wife could not have ascended years ago as she just spoke to him. In this gravitic pressure, they must make themselves smaller until they can alter the way in which the planet works, making them the size of what humanity might consider to be a large insect.

The smallest among them, their progenitors, old and withered and barely clinging to their own versions of life, find humans wrapped in heated embraces, slip inside, in case their Messiah has passed and they need another. These are precautions taken with the best of intentions, even as they are climbing into the wombs of complete strangers. All of them have the potential; it is merely that The One was their first successful attempt at infiltration. In the past their children have burst forth from the soft humans in a mass of guts and blood, shattered their bones, destroyed them entirely. Such is a result of their need to expand over time, let their innards breathe - they break their hosts more often than not. Only their oldest now are capable, a result of years of testing and attempts that failed and could not be explained, and the Messiah is the oldest of them all.

They are waiting for him, turning the blue of the sky to a dark navy before its time when the sun goes down. The light filters between clusters of them, streaming down to touch the Earth with trembling, frightened fingers and bless its people, keep them calm, assure them they are safe.

Light could not be more wrong.

8. companion. (unfinished)

Sun, 26 Aug 2012 15:46:07 -0400

Joanie plagues him in the morning as he’s filling his innards with smoke and glass. She and the image of his eyes disappearing before him, reflected in the storefront window - they’re haunting, something he can’t get out of his mind, something that stays with him even as he’s walking the many blocks to check on his mother, pick up his vehicle. His mind doesn’t even feel like his own, thoughts a stagnant standstill stream and breeding mosquitos of self-loathing, mouth a fogged-up mess tasting of dental decay and depression. He wants to kiss her, wants to punch her in her ugly face, wants to take her to an abandoned house and set her up for the rest of her life with stolen money and a promise that he’ll return. He’d never come back, of course, just leave her be in the hopes that she’d start a new life and pretend he had never happened. Maybe she’d get married, have kids, name one of them after him.

Except she doesn’t even know his name. Which is odd; usually it’s the only thing he’ll tell people, but it doesn’t seem to matter in the context of her sunny nature, the spot she leaves on his consciousness, distinctly devoid of darkness. No, instead she knows more about him than even his mother does these days.

With that idea in mind, he decides that he needs to be rid of her in whatever way possible. So he plans out his visit to her for what he presumes will be the last time. The only other thing he needs to do is find that stolen money for her.

4.1. snowflake.

Sat, 25 Aug 2012 01:06:37 -0400

Her man hits her for the first time that night, leaves raccoon marks around her eyes, and all of she can think of is the guy she’s been spending her nights wishing for.

He’s such a snowflake. Such a dear. Paid for her meal, didn’t want to have sex, didn’t even make her talk to him, just let her go.

She hates snow and has despised the cold since the day she was born. But now, as she leans her forehead against a cold pane of glass, bag of frozen peas bought on the way to the hotel room she’s sharing with some other bastard pressed to her near-shattered eye socket, she watches the snow fall silently, peacefully. And she’s thinking of him once more.

4. snowflake.

Sat, 25 Aug 2012 00:24:00 -0400

He goes after her the next night, finds out her name is Joanie - or at least, it is on the streets. Even this little bit of information passes from between her quivering lips with a hint of fear, so strong that it cracks her voice and makes her sound near tears. He wants to take her by the hand, but doesn’t, instead offers to pay her for a tour of the streets - for the purposes of his exercise, he is new in town, despite the fact that he’s probably lived here longer than she’s even been alive.

How old are you? he wants to know, one inquisitive brow cocked to his hairline, which he jams his fingers into anxiously, getting stuck in the sleep-stuck mass of tangles. She darts away from the question, deciding that their tour will start immediately, half up-front as is the common practice. The only thing she asks him is whether or not she can stop into a convenience store, as she’s starving today. He wonders briefly whether or not his stolen cash had gone to some sort of drug addiction he can’t see, but propositions her one better. If I like what I see, not only will I give you the other half, I’ll take you someplace nice to eat.

It’s snowing; she doesn’t have the time or presence of body to argue his proposal, agreeing for the sake of keeping moving. Her lips purse funnily, and his brows are off doing their own thing, his libido even more independent. She isn’t pretty, not by any means - he finds that girls of her profession typically aren’t, and such is the reason for their career choices - but the gap between her front teeth is endearing, making her tiny features widen before his eyes. Her hair is matted from ages of keeping away from showers and established homes, and it sticks to her forehead as the snow begins to fall.

He’s so self-conscious, it makes him sick. He’d promise but he wouldn’t know to whom it might be made.

This sets him off to a rap song he used to know; he hums bars under his breath, still in the dim street light. He sighs heavily, lets her lead him through the streets, crinkling stolen money in his palm as it juts from his jacket pocket.

Her version of important landmarks include thrift stores, places that used to be fronts for meth labs, the invariable Denny’s and its unchanging green-and-yellow beacon high in the sky. It’s basically the worst tour he’s ever taken, including the time he went to Italy just after high school and didn’t speak Italian well enough to understand anything that was going on. But she’s charming even with her ugly face, she likes things, which is far more than he can say for himself.

He catches a glimpse of himself in passing a particularly clean-looking storefront window, stares into the blank hollows where his eyes would be normally, rolls his eyes at his own vanity and judgmental business. How could he possibly insult her when he looks half a mess himself?

He’s so fucking self-conscious. Hyperaware. This doesn’t make him special, like the snowflakes that continually web themselves to Joanie’s dirty black hair. He catches himself staring at them, wanting to brush them away so that the metaphor doesn’t plague him all night.

Someplace nice ends up being Denny’s after all, because she doesn’t have the right clothes and he doesn’t have the right reservations and they’re just a pair of misfits all around. Despite his obvious unhappiness with his life, she chatters away, telling stories of the places they’ve seen tonight between mouthfuls of sausage and grated potato. And she’s the snowflake, Joanie is, he realizes while he’s sipping on orange juice and contemplating just how miserable he can get in one night. She’s the snowflake, special and optimistic and beautiful in her own right.

And he fucking hates her for it.

When she’s eaten three entire plates she asks if he wants to fuck, since that’s part of the deal and all. He shakes his head, exhausted by their walking, by the fact that she flutters so delicately around him, barely disturbing his existence and making it a thousand times more radical than even he could have imagined, and mainly by watching her eat as much as she has so quickly.

Goodnight, Joanie. And he’s climbing out of the booth before he knows what he’s doing, carrying himself wearily to a building that isn’t his, reeks of death and desperation and last night’s premature ejaculations.

Wait.

He stops.

I…I don’t know if I’m going to see you again.

He ponders this a long moment. You will. He leaves a few extra crisp bills on the table, in case she decides she’s still hungry, and walks out into the night.

genimhaled: using the prompts below, write a drabble (or...

Fri, 24 Aug 2012 22:21:31 -0400

genimhaled:

using the prompts below, write a drabble (or whatever) a day for the next 30 days. find someone willing to hit you if you miss a day. look back at the end and go ‘oh! i’m a writer!’.

beginning. accusation. restless. snowflake. haze. flame. formal. companion. move. silver. prepared. knowledge. denial. wind. order. thanks. look. summer. transformation. tremble. sunset. mad. thousand. outside. winter. diamond. letters. promise. simple. future.

3.2 restless

Wed, 25 Jul 2012 14:04:00 -0400

she has not had a night like this in quite a long time - sixty whole dollars all to herself, and only a blowjob and a nice long conversation on how pretty the old fuck would look in heels and fishnets. nevermind how she has to get it, though, considering that she’s pretty much the only one on this street - her man has made sure of that, a prophylactic measure taken when she can’t take care of herself.

sixty entire dollars. that’s enough for a long night in a lonely hotel room, one she actually doesn’t have to share with anyone else. she hasn’t taken a real bath in she doesn’t know how long, and all her hopes are for soap that will make bubbles, those tiny bottles that could fill an entire tub with foam. in fact, nothing delights her more. with this much money she might even be able to afford one tiny bottle from the minibar.

the motel is one that reeks of her profession, and she sees a couple of business acquaintances, avoids their critical eyes as she checks in. the hotel clerk knows her as well, is surprised that she doesn’t have some old man in tow, leering over thick-lensed glasses and drooling from the very corner of his mouth. so she flashes a smile and shakes her head and as soon as that key is pressed into her palm she all but sprints into her own, dying to be comfortable, to be alone.

she doesn’t sleep when she gets in the room, but rather lays on the bed and enjoys the sensation of having something at her back that isn’t a brick wall that bites at her skin. she watches television, ignores the roaches that crawl out from under the nightstand when she accidentally nudges into it while getting up to use the bathroom. when she does finally get that bath she can’t take any satisfaction in it as she’s overwhelmed by a need to explore every aspect of this room.

as the steam drains away from the mirror’s reflective surface she studies her face in the mirror - the pockmarks that are a souvenir from a bad PCP vacation, the freckles that fill in the gaps between, the too-full lips that have gotten her accused of surgery before, the hollow pits where her eyes once were, the length of her neck and how it seems to stab into the curved line of her jaw unapologetically, a pole vaulter’s attempt at creating a human being.

wait, what? she blinks; her eyes are, in fact, still there, despite the fact that she’s swearing up and down she only saw sockets a moment before.

she’s far too introspective, so she leaves the towel on the floor and dresses in dirty clothes and goes back to her bed.

next door she hears moans, singular in voice. she hasn’t touched herself since she was young and she’s not about to start now, but there’s this paranoid fear deep in her chest that tells her that were her presence announced, she would have company for the evening.

she doesn’t sleep all night, only turns up the volume on her TV when the sex noises from next door get louder. nothing drowns them out.

in the morning, the maid that comes in knows her by first name. embarrassed, she takes another shower - precaution over practicality - and is back to the street, praying that she’ll have another night like this soon.

3.1 restless

Wed, 25 Jul 2012 12:33:30 -0400

they awaken from their place in the center of their planet, the only habitable place left for them to go, and they search for him. they fly forth from their catacombs, clustered together for safety and self-preservation, for the idea that someone will save from their own core. he that has come, he that is the first of their kind in this biosphere, he that is their hope and most like has no idea.

the first thing they hear when they reach close enough to our planet is a joke, something that they do not have the character to take in jest. they do not laugh, nor cry, nor mourn having to leave their own planet in favor of colonization.

they are a sentient race, omnipresent in their own world and perhaps in ours - we have no way of knowing. at their crown lay tentacles, curled into horn-like shapes in a weak interpretation of earth’s all-too-silly rams, meant to take in information that their eyes cannot. beneath that is their head, a large fly trap with hairy teeth, and below that at their throat lay their eyes, large and black and seemingly depthless. their necks go on forever, stopping only when they break into the wings - batlike in nature, with thick veins and arteries that give them texture and the appearance of a need for what we know to be blood - that carry them around in the continuous caverns in which they live. they have no hands; the receptors on their head do everything for them, and they seem to have the ability to stretch out, to straighten in case they are necessary.

they do not need our oxygen. they do not need our brains, nor our information. they only need our planet; they will shape it to their own needs.

in this way, they have waited for what we know to be centuries.

they could have continued on for much longer than our race will be alive.

3. restless

Mon, 23 Jul 2012 18:37:00 -0400

in the day he sleeps, unwilling to take part in that horrifyingly bright overhead hang they call a sun. there has always been something about the presence of ultraviolet rays that has made him ill at ease, weary to the core. after just moments of basking in its light he feels the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, the ones his mother put there once upon a time, deepen considerably. so he sleeps during the daytime, knowing full well that his processing power is better harnessed when the moon is up.

his mother never wanted him.

his phone doesn’t ring, reminding him that he should go check on her.

in the night, however, he prowls the streets, wary of every person that passes him sidewalkways, unwilling to catch their eyes in his own. he is not horrible, he merely wishes to keep to himself. peoples’ faces lit by passing neon and the flashing lights of all the clubs he’s ever attended.

he goes to his favorite, eats a steak, gets a dance, ignores everyone else. an older woman tries to buy him a drink, so he leaves before he can get back into the private room tonight. he can’t stand the thought of sitting still for long enough to fuck. not that he could get harder than he does when he thinks of the body in the basement and how it’s going to stink eventually and no one will ever know who’s responsible.

another club, another steak, another dance and he’s off again, the overwhelming stenches of sweat and shame clouding his judgment. there’s a pretty one standing beneath a streetlamp and it’s begun to snow. if only she weren’t busy trying to peddle her wares she wouldn’t have to freeze her tits off in this weather. he offers her a jacket, and she smiles, unguarded and unaware.

come back to my place, i’ll feed you. and she looks like she hasn’t eaten in at least three days, not a result of poverty but rather personal choice. he doesn’t judge her, just nods when she speaks - something she does at length and without consideration to the wants and needs of others. when she isn’t paying attention he takes her bony fingers between his own, kisses each jabbing knuckle.

when he feeds her a can of chicken noodle soup, she blows his fucking brains out. and just like that he’s singular again, a cell, maybe two, a throat scraping waiting to happen. eventually he will be little more than just that, as her memories will no longer be relevant to any human experience. the worms eat into her brain, but there’s no way she knows that so he lets her go back to her streetlight state of being under the premise that they’ll do this again.

for the record, this house is not his; neither is the money that he presses into her palm as he’s kissing the shell of her ear. he has never been inside this building in his life, though he has spent at least as much time admiring it as he did her before choosing her.

the sun has risen outside the window and he needs to shower, can feel her random DNA all over his limbs, which are something like human but seem to be less when he ducks into the light of morning. perhaps tonight he will shed her away before finding her the second time or, better yet, finding another younger and prettier friend for a playdate.

his mother will ask if he slept. he will lie through his teeth and tell her he has, make no mention of the perfectly nice girl he paid for, all the while ignoring the bags underneath his eyes and the way his every body part aches for respite.

2. accusation

Mon, 23 Jul 2012 18:07:00 -0400

you must be on drugs.

he shrugs off her words because they mean absolutely nothing to him. there goes the wish again, the sole desire to erase himself from existence for a period of time so as to reassert the worthiness of himself in the existential sense. he has never wanted to be breathing less than he does right now.

he has never hated anyone more than he hates her, something he comes to realize every time he so much as glances over her. the way she quakes in his presence, the way her double chin jiggles under the incessant movement of her mouth despite having nothing of value to say. her finger jabs towards him, aimed straight at his heart; he is genuinely afraid for a moment that she is going to pop the muscle from between his ribs, something that doesn’t seem unattainable given how sharp her claws have become in the recent weeks. her hair - blond, same as him, but many shades brighter and a source of envy for many of her friends; he has often fantasized about letting this secret of hers out to them - frames her face in a way that only makes it appear to be rounder than it actually is. she hasn’t washed in a few days, and she’s obviously been lying about not drinking with her customers because she reeks of gin, the acridity of which stings at his nasal passages and makes him all the more angry for being here to have the argument. when she moves it’s with her entire body, which shakes and shivers without reason, without question.

the only thing that keeps her from getting up, crossing the room and strangling him with her pudgy hands is the wheelchair, with all its safety straps.

if only he were slightly smarter, he would figure out a way to deconstruct her.

i’m not on drugs.

if his hands worked in such a manner he would pull her apart with them, the way she does with a big juicy piece of fried chicken when the realization that her life has passed her by hits one more time. molecule by molecule, dot by tiny dot he debunks her excessively passionate phrasing of the state of his sobriety.

if you’re not on drugs, you wouldn’t be doing something stupid like - she gives pause for her slowly-draining tub of rocky road, calculating every sin he’s committed in the past twenty-two years - like, you know…

he has never wanted to converse with her less.

i’m not on drugs. i don’t live with you, either, so even if i were it wouldn’t matter to you. he looks away, hiding the grin that’s pulling at the corners of his mouth. she has a dribble of molten marshmallow running from her lips, and it reminds him strangely of his own conception, which he had not been around to witness.

it does matter to me, she insists, all but choking on a chocolate chunk. the coughing is a source of hope for him, the happiest he’s been since his birth if he puts his mind to it. if you’re coming over here stoned or something you’ll fuck up my oxygen treatments. he does not say what comes to mind, which is that he has been hoping since he moved out that he wouldn’t have to make the effort. instead he straps the mask to her face and bids her good morning, as he has classes to attend.

she might be screaming when he locks the door behind him. he does not know, nor has he cared for years when it comes to her constant need to be shrill.

1. beginning

Mon, 23 Jul 2012 17:41:38 -0400

in the start he wasn’t even a cell, a horrifyingly uncomfortable speckle on the iris of his mother’s eye. not even one singular cell, anything physical or even entirely mental - an idea, a name, a passing fancy that wouldn’t last one week to the next. his mother had always been the flighty type who wouldn’t settle to one path or the other until she was sure she could explore all the other ways in which the road traveled. which was fine, was excellent, because he’d never been so certain of anything as he had been that he didn’t want to be her child.

in the start he was a sperm, an egg, a worm to a bird or even less than that, something intangibly small and unbearably difficult to achieve. it took him three years to show even the barest hint of wanting to be, and this would inevitably shape him as a person more than any outside influence could have possibly tried to do. he was a song in the background, a flicker of wind that sent a candle’s flame going mad with its dancing and neverending struggle to stay alive.

in the start he was a tangle of limbs, a mesh of mouths, a collection of spit and semen and sweat that pooled into his parents’ consciousnesses and would never drip away, would never dry out or evaporate despite the passage of time. he had never been more like himself as he was when he and all his potential genetic matter was dripping from between his mother’s thighs as she screamed at his father. he was once a cell. singular. alone. unwarranted and without apology.

in the start is where he would like to be now - so that he might keep himself in such a manner.