Lizibella Larmadia - Character Introduction

WIP: Daughter of Fairies and Humans

Pronouns: She/her

Sexual orientation: questioning, but she’ll discover that she’s greyromantic and polyamorous.

13 - Birthday: August 29th

Species: Human

Smol Lizzi is Lilian’s younger sister, and she will accompany her in the search of her father. Lizzi loves writing, birds, and she usually draws in her notebook between the pages of her diary. I should also mention that she’s mute and usually communicates using sign language!

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“Lizzi! Don’t run so fast! ”I yelled. I heard the crunch of a nearby branch and went in that direction, but there was no one there. I kept running in the direction my sister had disappeared, but couldn’t reach her. After a few minutes running, I heard something. A man’s voice. "Be still, you little rascal!” I didn’t recognize the voice, but I assumed they had my sister. I started to worry, and I noticed how a cold sweat ran down my back.”

If you’d like to be on the taglist of my WIP please let me know!

Taglist: @uccelletto-di-kokuyo @the-writister @blue–mouse @unfocused-ink @storyteller-kaelo @smokedcapybara

Tips for people who like to write by hand

So you’re an old timey writer who enjoys the feeling of paper as you breathe life into a story? Or, like me, you can’t use your phone at school and just wants to get some writing done while math class bores the others? 

Well, me too and I’ve come to your aid! I’ve done some pretty stupid things that costed me hours and hours of searching for lost scenes and struggling to find ideas I knew I’d written down so you don’t have to! 

Find the right notebook for you

By experience, notebooks take a long time to be filled. In good nanowrimo times, I take from 6 to 8 months to finish one. So you’ll be stuck with this guy for a long time. Make sure to pick one that you like and is right for your needs. I, for example, prefer spiral notebooks. You can rip out pages if you need to (if you mess it up, if someone asks you for one, if you just need a page to write down a grocery list or something, etc) and you can put a pen on the spiral. I also like having a pocket to put pieces of ideas I have. 

Some spooky stories about having the wrong notebook: 

Number your pages

I know, it sounds like a lot of work. But you can get a notebook with pages already numbered, number it yourself or do it like I do and number it every 10 pages (just because it’s easier). If you don’t feel like doing all of this repetitive work,  date your writing. It’s cool to see how much you progressed, how long you have been writing this project, when you had this idea, etc. One thing doesn’t have to exclude the other, but both methods serve the same purpose. 

And this purpose is to help you get an idea of how much you write (and feel good about your progress) and to help you organize yourself on all you’ve been writing. Which takes us to the next tip. 

Make the first page an index

Not only it will take the pressure off the first page, it will also help you so you don’t keep losing the awesome stuff you’re writing and forgetting it exists. Everytime you start a new scene or change projects, go to the index and write down the page or the date you started this new section. Since I number every ten pages, I find the first page with a number on it and start counting forward or back to the new page. But you can do it in any way that suits you. 

Make a random idea page 

It doesn’t have to be the second page (it usually isn’t for me), but it’s good to have one. Sometimes, in the middle of writing, you have that great idea for something you need to change on what you’ve already got, or you got a completely new insight. It’s good to have your idea page somewhere close you can just flip to, write it down and get right back to writing. And don’t go easy on that page! Write it diagonally, vertically, draw on it, anything. It’s just there to take out those ideas so you can take a look at it another time and not mess the flow you’re in right now. 

Keep your enemies close. And your pen even closer!

You know your favorite bic friend? It has a secret weapon just for you to use. That little flap of the cap? Use it to keep your pen always close. I normally put it on the spiral of my notebook. But if you have a brochure, you can put it on the cover. Sometimes it damages it a bit, but it’s a good trade for having it always ready for action. If you use moleskine, I saw that they normally have designated pen places. If they don’t, I have a tip for it just under this one! 

Take your time to find which kind of pen is your weapon of choice. Personally, I think nothing beats a black ballpoint pen. I know some people like fineliners for writing, but they make the other side of the paper all gross looking and I like to keep it clean. Plus, I write really small and fineliners often bleed in my handwriting. I took my time searching for my favorite brand and I settled on Molin ballpoint pens. 

I would recommend buying your favorite pens in bulk. Nothing is worse than pen hunting around when you have an urgent idea. I bought 50 pens for super cheap and I stack them EVERYWHERE. In all my bags, in my sketchbooks, in my bullet journal, in my writing notebook, in my drawers, anywhere I think it will be easy to find one when I need it ( also giving some to my friends who keep stealing my pens).

Crafting the perfect notebook

You don’t have to be a crafter to modify your notebook to better suit you! Find a ribbon anywhere in the house. Cut it to be a little longer than the book. Tape that bad boy to the inside of the back cover and everytime you stop writing, put that ribbon on the page you stopped. This helps you not to get lost in your previous writing and get right back to business when you resume.

Also, if you really like that moleskine vibe but don’t have the cash, just get a regular clothing elastic, make cut it just the size of the notebook and glue both ends to the inner part of the back cover. There you go! Now you can close it (and keep it closed).  

If you like post-its, you can take half of the block (or however many sheets you cant put in there and still close the notebook comfortably) and glue it to the inside part of the cover of your notebook so it will always be conveniently available for you.

If your notebook doesn’t have a place to put your pen on and you really don’t want to mess up the cover, you  take a small elastic (smaller than the pen) and tape (or preferably glue it) it to the back part of the notebook with both ends inside. There! Ready for the trip! Speaking of which…

Always carry your notebook with you

You never know when inspiration is going to strike. In class. At the bank. In a mall. Whenever you have a little time, you can write something. Or just take a look at what you’ve done and feel good about it. 

Not in the mood for writing? Edit. Reread what you’ve done and start finding what you want to change once you type it in.  When doing this, don’t be scared to cross out entire sentences and rewriting them on top. If it starts getting too messy, go to a blank page and rewrite the scene and you think it should have been done the first time. It seems counter-intuitive in a copy+paste kind of age, but I assure you it is worth it.

Typing your work

This is one of the biggest reasons I love writing in pen and paper. When you type, your first round of editing is done! 

Don’t zone out when typing. As I said, typing is your first round of editing. It is important to keep aware of all of the things you might have done wrong when writing. Some people say writing it on paper and then typing it is a waste of time. I say it saves time and lives. 

Keep it loose!

Just because you are writing in an actual physical book, it doesn’t mean you are writing a actual physical book. This is still your notebook and these are still your notes. So don’t be afraid to get messy. Write things out of order (seriously, it’s okay to not go chronological. i know it’s hard). Outline. Sketch. Tip-ex the whole thing. Get post-its on it. Take notes. Make genealogical trees. Draw maps. 

If you’re feeling down or uninspired, try very basic writing exercises: write what you see, what you feel, something to try and make you laugh or something to make someone cry. It’s your place to express yourself. And once you got those creative juices flowing, happy writing :)

I hope you enjoyed my tips and please, feel free to reblog this with your own tips and tricks. I’d love to hear them! And follow me for some more writing content! 

happy lesbian visibility day (april 26th) to all lesbians, especially to those who are marginalised and don't feel included in the community. you deserve to feel love and respect. you are enough.

Your Characters Have to Exist Outside of Your Story

So, I have writing advice.

Your characters have to exist outside of your story. A lot of writers write about their characters so that they only exist within the story. When planning a character, give them a life outside of the actual story. 

Ask yourself: where did they grow up? what’s a niche hobby they have? did they ever move states or countries? when is their birthday? have they ever had any trauma? etc. The more information about their childhood, the better.

Then ask yourself: how did this affect them? 

Think, your characters have to be believable. When I’m reading, I need to see that your characters act like humans, and humans have little traits caused by childhood events. Everything that’s ever happened to your characters should appear in the character someway. E.g. they love illuminations because they grew up in New Orleans. 

Of course, you’ll never use all the information in your story but the reader will see that the character is psychologically consistent. 

Always, ALWAYS, base your story around your characters. Do not base your characters around your story. 

As your characters become more detailed, parts of your story should change to match the character. For example, say you have a character named Claire. Claire is shy, and mute for the most part. In your story planning, you had the idea of Claire talking a guy out of suicide. But, Claire is mute for the most part so a nervous hold of the hands would do better. It’d be in character and more wholesome. 

Sometimes you may need to change major aspects of your story to match the characters but that’s okay, your story is just growing. 

Introducing: Skye Adair

Drawn and brought to life by the amazing @kai-is-writing

You should check out they’re Twitter here!

Overall a great experience working with Kai, very professional and kept me updated throughout.

Thank you!

I feel the need to preface this by saying I am 100% *not* asking for money

-Oh also I will be breaking up the size of the text in this post because I personally have a hard time reading blocks of text where the font size/type is all the same, sorry if this bothers anyone-

Please Do Not spend money to fund ao3, I’m not going to share my personal opinion about their website but I need to say that there are thousands of people who need money way more than ao3 and if you have money to donate please donate to them

There are people who are on disablity which in a quite a few cases is not enough to cover people’s full expenses and *especially* not any surprise expenses that pop up, there are people who have medical bills they cannot pay off, there are people who are transgender who cannot afford gender affirming therapy or transition, there are people who have gone through trauma who cannot afford therapy, there are people who need medical treatment for serious problems, there are people trying to escape from abusive situations. Donate to any of them or the thousands of other people who need money for various reasons. Even if it’s $1 or $5 or whatever. It is still one step closer to however much money they need

I have schizoaffective disorder and am on state medical and likely soon to be on disability, I have also grown up in poverty so I completely understand how difficult it is to struggle with money and can say that people who are in poverty or who struggle with disability or who are trying to escape abuse and feel comfortable accepting money from strangers it is almost always appreciated much more than this website with appreciate your donations.

Also I would like to clarify that you do not have to not spend money on something just because there’s a better cause, even within the arts you could spend money on a art commission or give money to an individual artist you like, which can include writers.

Ao3 DOES NOT pay writers

Ao3 DOES NOT pay writers

You ARE NOT supporting artists if you give ao3 money

I will try to reblog this again with links to causes that may be more worth while than donating to ao3 (I will try to verify the money will go to the cause it’s promised to go to)

if you’re really concerned about it, you could go through your own writing and note the frequency with which you are using the terms to describe black characters v using equivalent to describe white characters, and compare that to the frequency with which these characters appear. Not as a “gotcha” to post and prove you’re not being racist if these instances prove to be equal, but for your own personal benefit. If there’s, say, 10 mentions of the white character and 5 terms drawing attention to their whiteness, but 10 mentions of a black character and 8 mentions of equivalent terms, that’s a sign of something to work on. But if that ratio is 5/10 to 5/10, or close enough, it’s likely fine.

People do both tend to ‘other’ people of color when writing without realizing it because it’s normalized. Even people of color do it sometimes for this reason. But, because of this normalization, people can also hyper-fixate on ‘racist’ terms while not noticing the equivalent terms being used for white characters. If the person feels they’re seeing an excessive amount of it only targeted at black characters, it could be that you’re subconsciously doing it, or it could be that they are only noticing those instances because they’re hyper-aware of it.  Determining which of these is true can help you figure out if it’s something you actually need to work on, or if it’s the commenter’s own bias picking up on something that’s not really there.

charleyparkhurst said:

To me though the asker says the commenter said “every single time” which implies to me that this asker reminds the reader a character is Black whenever they can rather than saying it once or a few times and being done with it. If you’ve already established that a character is Black, to me you don’t still need to be bringing up their skin color every time they’re described doing something or every time another character thinks about them.

That being said, I think almost the inverse might be true if purple prose is involved; not naming names, but I’ve read some published novels where the author was clearly sooo comfortable waxing poetic about the beautiful white characters, constantly describing how her white gold hair was like salt, in the sunlight or how he ran his sun-tanned hand over her pale skin or how his eyes were blue as glass or her eyes were blue as the sea and stuff like that, but I literally counted how many times she admitted that her character of Mexican descent was brown, and it was once. The context? Passing reference to “her brown shoulder”.

Oh, I hate that. That’s why I support lofty, hyped-up descriptions of People of Color, besides just being a fan of poetic writing, within reason. If your white girl has hair like silk and starlight, your brown girl better have brown eyes like a coppery sunrise. I will accept nothing less! 

-Colette

Whgskl. Okay.

PSA to all you fantasy writers because I have just had a truly frustrating twenty minutes talking to someone about this: it’s okay to put mobility aids in your novel and have them just be ordinary.

Like. Super okay.

I don’t give a shit if it’s high fantasy, low fantasy or somewhere between the lovechild of Tolkein meets My Immortal. It’s okay to use mobility devices in your narrative. It’s okay to use the word “wheelchair”. You don’t have to remake the fucking wheel. It’s already been done for you.

And no, it doesn’t detract from the “realism” of your fictional universe in which you get to set the standard for realism. Please don’t try to use that as a reason for not using these things.

There is no reason to lock the disabled people in your narrative into towers because “that’s the way it was”, least of all in your novel about dragons and mermaids and other made up creatures. There is no historical realism here. You are in charge. You get to decide what that means.

Also:

“Depiction of Chinese philosopher Confucius in a wheelchair, dating to ca. 1680. The artist may have been thinking of methods of transport common in his own day.”

“But Joy, how do I describe this contraption in a fantasy setting that wont make it seem out of place?”

“It was a chair on wheels, which Prince FancyPants McElferson propelled forwards using his arms to direct the motion of the chair.”

“It was a chair on wheels, which Prince EvenFancierPants McElferson used to get about, pushed along by one of his companions or one of his many attending servants.”

“But it’s a high realm magical fantas—”

“It was a floating chair, the hum of magical energy keeping it off the ground casting a faint glow against the cobblestones as {CHARACTER} guided it round with expert ease, gliding back and forth.”

“But it’s a stempunk nov—”

“Unlike other wheelchairs he’d seen before, this one appeared to be self propelling, powered by the gasket of steam at the back, and directed by the use of a rudder like toggle in the front.”

Give. Disabled. Characters. In. Fantasy. Novels. Mobility. Aids.

If you can spend 60 pages telling me the history of your world in innate detail down to the formation of how magical rocks were formed, you can god damn write three lines in passing about a wheelchair.

Signed, your editor who doesn’t have time for this ableist fantasy realm shit.

Ramadan Mubarak to my Muslim followers!

Dumbass me forgot thanks to all the worldbuilding the actual question oops 💫🍊

Okay what makes them special:

Oooomg they are so cool!!! Love the drawings! And everything else they are amazing!!

Bro don't hide that in the tags!! (And GOSH I must admit the colouration was completely on accident and when I realized I was like hmmm....)

It's canon now, Male Iris Peadragons are bi and love the fact that they're wearing their pride flags together with their pretty colours!! (Also I'm thinking VERY much about just changing the colouration of the females to just.... match a pride flag too LMAO any suggestions which one)

I've been looking at pride flags, and the most similar ones to their actual coloration are the pan and the polysexual so maybe one of those?

I don't know I'd love them either way!!

Dumbass me forgot thanks to all the worldbuilding the actual question oops 💫🍊

Okay what makes them special:

Oooomg they are so cool!!! Love the drawings! And everything else they are amazing!!

Meet one of my newest OCs: Tibbs the cat!!

He is a character from my new WIP "The Ghost Princess", and he's the cat of one of the mains. I should also mention that this WIP is a comic, and I'll be making a proper introduction next week!

So this chunky kitty here is quite grumpy, and he likes stealing food when no one's looking!! If you want to know more about him, let me know!

Also, if you'd like to be added or removed from the taglist of my art, please let me know!

Taglist: @storyteller-kaelo

And I know @the-writister was wondering about my new child!

Meet one of my newest OCs: Tibbs the cat!!

He is a character from my new WIP "The Ghost Princess", and he's the cat of one of the mains. I should also mention that this WIP is a comic, and I'll be making a proper introduction next week!

So this chunky kitty here is quite grumpy, and he likes stealing food when no one's looking!! If you want to know more about him, let me know!

Also, if you'd like to be added or removed from the taglist of my art, please let me know!

Taglist: @storyteller-kaelo

And I know @the-writister was wondering about my new child!

Story idea when you try to actually write it:

Story idea when you first rewrite it:

Getting closer to what you saw in your head, eh? Keep at it!

Your story when somebody else sees it:

hhhhhHHHHHHH

(⚪д⚪)

This is a lovely post. It goes to show that when we percieve our own work, most of us have some type of insecurities about our own talents. 

Also possibly relevant is that probably when Van Gogh finished Starry Night, he jumped up and down in frustration for a while because it didn’t look as good as it had in his head.

Tolkien used to complain that he could never write anything as well as he could imagine it.  So you know, ‘good enough’ is definitely a thing.

For maximum accuracy, the last image should be a completely different (but equally gorgeous) painting.

Camp Nano Report

Holy shit y’all 🎉🎉🎉

Words Written: 50710/50000 (~101%)

Average Words Written: 2535

Reflection: !!!!! Not only did I finish early - I finished on 4/20, y’all!! My Colorado spirit has prevailed!!! akljkhsfasj okay, that’s my only four-twenty joke, I swear. But seriously! I’ve not only finished camp nano, I have o f f i c i a l l y finished act two of gifted! 27 total chapters, 235 pages - you really don’t wanna know how many words (I’m gonna have to do so much editing ;-;). This is amazing - not to get all sappy, but there was honestly a time when I didn’t think I would get this far. So I’m basically the human equivalent of !!!!! right now. Anyways, to celebrate and to make up for the utter angst of the past few updates, have some soft Sofia/Vera to soothe the soul.

EXCERPT:

Taglist (hmu if you wanna be added, removed, etc.): @dustylovelyrun, @magicalwriting, @aziz-writes, @literary-lavender, @ocmaker, @kai-is-writing, @cilly-the-writer, @andiwriteunderthemoon, @aelenko, @cianawrites

asgfbsgfj i love this!! and congrats on reaching your goal!!!

#this is a brilliant post that sets up an answer the anon’s question#which is that separating art from the artist isn’t about ignoring who the author was#but rather ignoring what the author tells you their work means#rowling will never say her work contains the things rightful pointed out here#but she doesn’t get to make that call#we all have eyes and can look for ourselves#and who she is is part of what we must look at (via @ratherembarrassing)