@staring-at-the-wilderness / staring-at-the-wilderness.tumblr.com
Tell me, does your heart stop at the party when my name drops Like you're stood at the platform when the trains cross? Are you hurting, yeah you must be Or is it just me? Tongue-tied, screaming on the inside When I say that we broke up and they ask why Are you crying in the shower like a freak? Or is it just me?
It's about you and the sun A morning run The story of my maker What I have and what I ache for
eVERY TIME-
idk if anyone will find this useful, but this is how i go about planning my stories. i mostly write fantasy, so that’s what this is most applicable to. but it could work with other genres too.
so there’s three major components to a story: the characters, the plot, and the world. creating them individually is the easy part, but they all connect and affect each other in different ways. (like you can’t have a character who loves peaches and eats them every day if they live a peasant in a region that doesn’t grow peaches, for example.)
so i created a cheat sheet to help connect all three components together.
1) the world creates the characters.
this is related to the peach example above. the characters should be a direct result of the environment they grew up in and the environment they currently live in.
2) the characters are limited by the world.
also related to the peaches. characters can’t do anything outside of what the rules of their surroundings and universe allow, such as eating peaches when they’re not available. this also applies for magic users. they can’t have unlimited magic, so keep in mind what you want out of both the characters and the world when creating magic systems.
3) the characters carry the plot.
we’ve all heard it before: “bad characters can’t carry a good plot. good characters can carry a bad plot.” but we all like a good plot anyway. try to make sure you’re not giving your characters too heavy or too light of a plot to carry.
4) the plot pushes the characters.
if nothing in the plot happens, your characters will remain static forever. if you struggle with plots, try starting with what character development you want to happen, then go from there.
5) the plot depends on the world.
you can’t overthrow the evil government if there isn’t one. think of what your world needs most and what your plot is centered around, and fit those two together.
6) the world is changed by the plot.
even if your plot is centered around something most of your world would call “insignificant”, the world will still experience some change from the plot. either the evil government will be gone, or maybe that one teacher is now way more careful about keeping an eye on the test key. either way, the world will be different from now on.
final note: usually people will be able to write one or two of the components with ease, but don’t know where to go from there. i personally can’t write plots, but thinking this way has really helped me actually make a story out of the world and characters because i looked at what i needed from what i had. i really hope this can help you too! happy writing!
tl;dr this is a cheat sheet to help anyone who struggles with writing one or two of what i consider the three major components to a story.
↳ a wip by @holotones
“Sasha - Sasha wait -” Pavel grabbed his sleeve, his grip shaky on his gun and his brown eyes huge. “H-how do you know it’s us? How do you know that we’re the right people to-to save this country? I mean…I mean…” He worried at his lip. “We’ve done things. You’ve done things.”
The smile Sasha flashed him was savage. “You know what they say, Pavel - you can’t raise hell with saints.”
CATEGORY: YA/NA
GENRE: DARK FANTASY, POLITICAL INTRIGUE, MYTHOLOGY
POV: 3RD PERSON
STATUS: PLANNING
SYNOPSIS //
Don’t go into the woods at night.
Don’t go into the woods at night.
Don’t go into the woods at night.
It’s the lesson that’s been drilled into 19 year old Sasha’s head since he could speak. The woods contain monsters, ghosts, and creatures that would absolutely love to chew on the bones of boys.
But he has no choice. The cow’s gone missing, and if they don’t find her quick, Sasha, his parents, and his younger siblings - all six of them - will starve. So with his coat on, club in hand(but what can a piece of wood do against creatures of the night?), and boots laced up tight, he ventures into the forest, where he finds -
MAGIC
MONSTERS
SOMETHING THAT WILL CHANGE BOTH HIM AND THE ENTIRE COUNTRY OF MARISKAYA FOREVER
- more than he bargained for.
ask to be added to the taglist! [ tagging a few people who i think may be interested: @emdrabbles @whorizcn @liarede @vandorens @sword-of-stars ]
Please please please add me to the taglist!
There’s a person who keeps telling me that writing a book is simple—”anyone with imagination and a spellcheck could do it”—and that I’m just needlessly complicating things for myself with all my character arcs and plot points and working on a third (hopefully final) draft of the same novel when I could have written a dozen of books in this time.
This person has never written a book, although they’ve been planning to do so for at least 12 years. Today I asked them why.
The answer? “I haven’t had a perfect story yet. I have started books sometimes, but then I ran into problems with what happens next and I felt like if I wanted the story to make sense I had to backtrack and change things, which is boring and just means it’s not my story. When I finally find the story, I’ll write a book quickly.”
...
This is almost comedic, really.
Credit: @juliehangart
not even a girl, just really loved this
My two favorites things in the world cozy cats and fall vibes
A line in my head I woke up with out of nowhere
Is it me being depressed and making my character depressed, or is it my character depressed and making me depressed?
Just a couple of days until NaNoWriMo, and I still don’t feel like I have a good enough grasp on one of my three leading characters. Will I magically hear his voice clearly and properly on the 1st, or will 1/3 of the novel be hell to write? I guess soon I’ll know.
*cue dramatic music*
Y’know, NaNoWriMo isn’t actually about getting 50,000 words in 30 days
Yeah, that’s the Goal – but it’s not what it’s about
NaNoWriMo is about sitting down, starting a project, and learning to manage that project and keep going even when it gets hard
it’s about building skills and forming habits and developing discipline and learning more about yourself as a creator so you can get a sense for what writing methods do/don’t work for you
its about trying things – about making discoveries and making mistakes, and about making progress without getting mired in the minutia so you end the month with more words than you had when you started
It’s framed like a contest ‘cause goals and prizes make things fun, but you’re only really playing against yourself
50,000 words is only a target to shoot for ‘cause without a target it’s pretty hard to practice your aim
It is, and I cannot stress this seriously enough, also about making the people in your life respect your writing time.
It’s also about finding a community.
Writing is a lonely business. Ninety percent of your time is spent in front of your computer or at your notebook, dragging words out of your head and forcing them onto paper. If you don’t have people in your life who are encouraging and supportive and understanding, it’s ten times harder.
NaNoWriMo gives you access to a worldwide community of writers just like you.
Engaging with the NaNoWriMo community is how I met some of my closest friends and critique partners. It’s how I joined fandom. It’s one of the reasons I volunteer for NaNoWriMo every year now: because I want to give other people the encouragement to follow their dreams to write a novel.
Maybe it gets published. Maybe it doesn’t. But for many of the people I’ve seen, publication isn’t necessarily the end goal. It’s about finally starting the project that you always said you would, and finding a group of like-minded people who are in the same boat.
Writing a novel will never be easy. But when you have a community with you, it sure as hell helps.
Normally, I can easily picture my stories as movies or TV shows in my head. But the more I think about the novel I'm currently outlining for NaNoWriMo, the more I realize that, for some unknown reason, I mostly picture it as an anime.
I... don't even watch anime. 🤔
After spending almost a year writing in the same fantasy universe (quick progress report: first draft of the ‘main’ novel - complete; second draft of the same novel - close to half-done; first drafts of 3 side-story novellas - complete; first draft of 5 more side-story novellas - in varying stages of started; first draft of a prequel novel - almost 40K into it) it’s time to do something new for NaNo. So I picked the most light-hearted of my plot bunnies, the one most unlikely to spawn another huge series or whatever it is The Choosing One has turned into. It’s just an M/M/M romance story about royalty and arranged marriages that starts as a love triangle and turns into a poly relationship.
The fact that I already have 26K of worldbuilding notes written definitely doesn’t mean I’m looking at another epic saga. I’m very, very certain of it. I’m just a very thorough romance writer.
A THOROUGH ROMANCE WRITER, I’M TELLING YOU, DON’T BREAK MY BUBBLE. :D
