Dialogue Basics

The dialogue tag can go before, after, or inside the dialogue:

Enclose all* dialogue inside quotation marks.

*There are some stylistic reasons for not using quotation marks, including if you want to distinguish speach from other forms of communication like telepathy, but it should be intentional, and unless it's done well it can be super hard to read.

Only have one person speak per paragraph.

Keep a person's name with the line they're speaking.*

*This is another one of those ones where there can be stylistic reasons to break from it, but you need to be careful, because it can become very confusing.

My collection of clothing references for writing. 

@samanthafrank

Color Synonyms

White

also: pale; blanched; sallow; pallid; waxen; spectral; translucent; albino; 

Grey

also: dust; stone; pepper;  

Black

also:  coal; slate; dusky; ebon; shadow; murky; 

Tan

also: flesh; khaki; cream; tawny; 

Brown

also:  henna; russet; sepia; chestnut; cocoa; drab; bronze; 

Red

also: terracotta ; rouge; carmine;  fire-engine; ruddy

Orange

also:  pumpkin ; rust ; 

Yellow

also: sunny; amber; saffron; hay; straw; platinum; 

Green

also: viridescent; grass; jade; forest; 

Blue

also: turquoise; cyan; ultramarine; royal; aqua; aquamarine;

Purple

also: berry;  amaranthine;

Pink

also: flushed; candy; cherry blossom; petal pink ; 

—– source: http://ingridsundberg.com/

—–additional synonyms added by me

I will forever cherish this post. I’ve seen it a multiple of times; how foolish of me to not reblog this masterpiece the first time I see it UGH

The BBC is releasing over 16,000 sound effects for free download

THIS will be sooo good for my soundboard. Those online sessions are about to become even better :D

First music, then voice modifiers… Now this. Perfect.

Also, I’m pretty sure it can be used for a lot of other activities.

Yay, no more Soundbible!

The direct link: https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/photosmultimedia/soundlibrary.htm

For any content creators who’d like it!

Resources For Writing Deaf, Mute, or Blind Characters

Despite the fact that I am not deaf, mute, or blind myself, one of the most common questions I receive is how to portray characters with these disabilities in fiction.

As such, I’ve compiled the resources I’ve accumulated (from real life deaf, mute, or blind people) into a handy masterlist.

Deaf Characters:

Deaf characters masterpost

Deaf dialogue thread

Dialogue with signing characters (also applies to mute characters.)

A deaf author’s advice on deaf characters

Dialogue between deaf characters

“The Month I Suddenly Went Deaf”

What It’s Like Going Deaf In Your Thirties

9 Women Share What It Feels Like To Lose Your Hearing

What It’s Like Being a Deaf Teenager (video)

Parenting With Sign Language (video)

Deaf Teen Talks About Losing His Hearing To Meningitis (video)

Things Not To Say To A Deaf Person (video)

Deaf Kids Shining in High School (video)

I recently discovered the youtube channel of the amazing Jessica Kellgren-Fozard, a vintage-loving, lesbian, happily married queen, who talks about her deafness in many of her videos.  I can’t recommend her enough.

Mute Characters

Life as a Mute

My Silent Summer:  Life as a Mute

What It’s Like Being Mute

21 People Reveal What It’s Really Like To Be Mute

I am a 20 year old Mute, ask me anything at all!

Blind Characters:

Things Not To Say To A Blind Person (video)

What It’s Like to Go Blind (video)

The 33 Worst Mistakes Writers Make About Blind Characters.

@referenceforwriters masterpost of resources for writing/playing blind characters.

The youtube channel of the wonderful Tommy Edison, a man blind from birth with great insight into the depiction of blind people and their lives.

As does Molly Burke, “a typical sushi and makeup loving millennial girl who just so happens to be blind.”

And Alyssa Irene, who talks about her experience going blind and life as a blind person.

An Absolute Write thread on the depiction of blind characters, with lots of different viewpoints and some great tips.

And finally, this short, handy masterpost of resources for writing blind characters.

Characters Who Are Blind in One Eye

4 Ways Life Looks Shockingly Different With One Eye

Learning to Live With One Eye

Adapting to the Loss of an Eye

Adapting to Eye Loss and Monocular Vision

Monocular Depth Perception

Deaf-Blind Characters

What Is It Like To Be Deafblind?

Going Deaf and Blind in a City of Noise and Lights

Deaf and Blind by 30

Sarita is Blind, Deaf, and Employed (video)

Deaf and Blind:  Being Me (video)

Born Deaf and Blind, This Eritrean American Graduated Harvard Law School (video)

A Day of a Deaf Blind Person

Lesser Known Things About Being Deafblind

How the Deaf-Blind Communicate

Early Interactions With Children Who Are Deaf-Blind

Raising a DeafBlind Baby

If you have any more resources to add, let me know!  I’ll be adding to this post as I find more resources.

I hope this helps, and happy writing!  <3

Surnames are just as important as given names. So, I compiled a list of the websites I use to find my surnames.

For whoever needs these.

I NEED THE ITALIAN LAST NAMES SO BAD

We are like fireworks…: Surnames Master Post.

Chinese surnames

Indian surnames

Indonesian surnames

Pakistani surnames

Bengali surnames

Japanese surnames

Filipino surnames

Korean surnames

Syrian surnames

Mongolian naming and clan names

Thai surnames

Asia is not a single country.

“Asia is not a single country.”

Basic models of victorian female clothes.

I just discovered foodtimeline.org, which is exactly what it sounds like: centuries worth of information about FOOD.  If you are writing something historical and you want a starting point for figuring out what people should be eating, this might be a good place?

CHRISTMAS CAME EARLY

this is awesome but the original link just turned into a redirect loop for me, here it is again (x)

Good Types of Tropes For H/C

(feel free to add on!)

@ambigiousgelpens 👀

the politics of light and dark are everywhere in our vocabulary…psa to writers: subvert this, reveal whiteness and lightness as sometimes artificial and violent, and darkness as healing, the unknown as natural

Some ideas for bad things that are white/light:

Some ideas for good things that are black/dark:

Think to burn, to infect, to bleach vs. to enrich, to protect, to be of substance.

Also, light is blinding and it can be deceptive (the phrase ‘trick of the light’ exists for a reason) it can scorch and sear the darkness is cool, it can shade you and protect you, esp on a hot day, it’s a source of relief. the shadows can hide you from something or someone who wishes to do you harm, the dark can protect.

5 frustrating workshop rules that made me a better writer

Throughout the 15 workshops I joined in college and grad school, I encountered two types of writing rules.

First, there were the best-practice guidelines we’ve all heard, like “show don’t tell.” And then there were workshop rules, which the professor put in place not because they’re universal, but because they help you grow within the context of the workshop.

My college’s intro writing course had 5 such rules:

When I first saw the rules, I was baffled. They felt weirdly specific, and a bit unfair. But when our professor, Vinny, explained their purpose (and assured us he only wanted us to follow the rules during this intro workshop, not the others to come), I realized what I could learn from them.

1. No fantasy, supernatural, or sci-fi elements.

Writers need to be able to craft round characters, with clear arcs. While you can hone those skills writing any type of story, it can be more difficult when juggling fantastical elements, because it’s easy to get caught up in the world, or the magic, or the technology, and to make that the focus instead of the characters. So Vinny encouraged us to exclude such elements for the time being, to keep us fully focused on developing strong, dynamic characters.

2. No guns.

Weapons have a place in many stories, but when writers include a gun, they often use it to escalate the plot outside of the realm of personal experience and into what Vinny called “Hollywood experience.” He wanted us to learn how to draw from our own observations and perceptions of life, rather than the unrealistic action, violence, and drama we’d seen in movies, so he made this rule to keep us better grounded in our own experiences.

3. No characters crying.

When trying to depict sadness, writers often default to making characters cry. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with that, tears are just one way to show grief, and they aren’t always the most subtle or emotionally compelling. That’s why Vinny challenged us to find other ways to convey sadness — through little gestures, strained words, fragile interactions, and more. It was difficult, but opened us up to depicting whole new gradients of grief and pain.

4. No conflict resolution through deus ex machina.

This is the only one of the rules I’d say is generally universal. Meaning “God from the machine,” deus ex machina is a plot device where a character’s seemingly insurmountable problem is abruptly resolved by an outside force, rather than their own efforts. These endings are bad for various reasons, but Vinny discouraged them because he wanted us to understand how important it was for our characters to confront their struggle and its consequences.

5. No deaths.

Death is inherently dramatic and can be used to good effect, but many writers use death as crutch to create drama and impact. Writers should be able to craft engaging, meaningful stories, even without killing off their characters, so this rule challenged us to find other methods of giving weight to our stories (such as through internal conflict).

How these rules helped me grow as a writer

First things first, I’ll say it again: apart from #4 (deus ex machina), these rules were never meant to be universally applied. Instead, their purpose was to create temporary barriers and challenges to help us develop key skills and write in new, unfamiliar ways.

For me, the experience was invaluable. I liked the way the rules challenged and stretched my abilities, driving me to write stories I’d have never otherwise attempted. They made me more flexible as a writer, and while I don’t follow the rules anymore (I LOVE me some fantasy), I’ll always be thankful for how they shaped my writing.

My recommendation to you?

Give some of these rules a shot! Follow them temporarily while writing 2-4 stories — but remember to always keep their purpose in mind, because the rules themselves will only help if you understand what they’re trying to achieve.

Write with purpose, and you’ll always be growing.

— — —

For more tips on how to craft meaning, build character-driven plots, and grow as a writer, follow my blog.

Character Sheets and character creation →

When creating a character, there’s a lot of questions you ask yourself. Whether it’s an original character or one you’ve been playing for a long time, using a character sheet to get to know your character better can always be a nice idea. With its help, you’ll be able to think about things you didn’t necesarily thought about, and ask some important questions to yourself that might activate your character’s voice, or help you to get your muse back with them. Everyone has their favorite character sheets, some people prefer to have a lot of questions, some others like it a bit more vague, so here’s a masterlist of the character sheets I found on various websites and found quite interesting, plus some other things that could be used to help you see, for example, how other character view yours. 

With these sheets, you could also try to find your character’s Jung and Enneagram Type or use the Moral Alignment tool. All of these things can be really useful to get a better grip on a character.

Then, if you’re trying to create a character, and do not have many ideas, or get stuck, I’d suggest for you to roam around TVTropes, which gives you a lot of tropes used for character creation. Maybe you could try to mix a few of these and create an original character?

Or, if you’re a skillful writer and know how to make your character different from another, make a list of characters in fiction you happen to find interesting and why. Try to keep it short. Then, maybe, try to mix and match things from two or three characters, take a character and change their backstory, to see what would change. Play with them to inspire yourself and create something new, original and truly yours.

Oh, and here’s a little guide to Mary-Sues and OCs, just in case you want to make sure your character isn’t going to become a Mary-Sue or a Gary-Stu

And last but not least, this article about building fictional character definitely seemed interesting to me, and is full of many other links that could guide you during the creating of your character and help you file one of these sheets.

how to trick writers into giving you more fanfic to read

Works for comics and art as well.

…this has the opposite effect.

instead try; I love you *generic keysmash* h OW DA RE *lavish praise* *inside fandom joke* *quote fave part* *more generic keysmashing*

you. i like you

Also, the favorites: 1) DID I SAY YOU COULD HURT ME LIKE THIS?!?;?!; 2) DONT HURT MY BABY WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS 3) why must you hurt me this way 4) WHY IS THIS A CLIFFHANGER?! WHAT HAPPENS NEXT I NEED TO KNOW 5) This made me cry/squeal/giggle/wake the dead with my laughter 6) I almost woke my family laughing at ___ part 7) I DIDNT KNOW I NEEDED THIS AU UNTIL YOU POSTED THIS 8) this is so cute I’m dying 9) and (writer’s name) strikes again! 10) I had to reread this bc it’s so good and I love it 11) I wish I could like/heart/kudos this more than once Like, seriously guys, freak out with us and you’ll have us wrapped around your little fingers.

This is so true! A lot of the time, I get stuck in a writer’s hole. But whenever I get a comment like the above ones, it makes me want to write more!

PLEASE COMMEEEENT

AND REBLOG

All good suggestions! Another to add to the list: don’t insult as a joke.

Even if you’re only ironically saying something like “i hate you” when you in fact loved the fic… we still just read it as “i hate you”. Getting a notif of a comment always gives writers a little thrill, and then seeing something like that in the actual comment… doesn’t feel very good. Remember, the digital medium is not good for getting sarcasm across!

Apart from that, any sincere comment, no matter how brief or jumbled or nonsensical, is always going to make a writer’s day.

Thx for comments suggestions I always get stuck when I want to comment but idk what to write and i just give kudos

Honest to God, I love when people quote my fic to me or leave detailed reviews or scream wildly, but “I really enjoyed this” = A+ comment, will make my day and leave me doing a face somewhere between these three emoticons: ☺️😁😍

Of course writers enjoy detailed, thoughtful, enthusiastic feedback, but what we mostly love is knowing someone read something we wrote and was moved to leave a short comment (that wasn’t “please update” - please update is fine as part of a comment, but on its own it’s kind of dispiriting). I seriously cannot overstate how much even a short little “OMG LOVE” or “I enjoyed this!” or “This made me laugh/smile/cry!” or “This was really good/funny/hot/sad!” means. You don’t have to write Pulitzer prize winning prose to make a writer’s day. Trust me on this!

(And even a like or a kudos is so much better than nothing.)

Writing can be lonely, and fanwriters don’t have Amazon for reviews or get paid. Reviews mean the world to us.

Yes, I am going to continually reblog this. No, I’m not sorry.

For anyone reading this wondering what to do instead, might I suggest making use of what the trope site calls Narrative Profanity Filter? Don’t type the curse word at all – just inform the audience that your character said something really rude just there.

source

a kind caring character being kind and caring because they actively choose to be despite their anger and trauma will always be infinitely more compelling and relatable than them just being a pure innocent baby uwu

show compassionate, soft characters who are not “innocent”/naive but who fought bitterly to be and remain compassionate and soft