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Loki's Library for Fanfiction

@lokis-library-for-fanfiction

The official Tumblr for the Loki's Library Discord Server.
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Posting again. My sideblog for bookstore porn, reviews of weird, dark, or just peculiar books, and other things related to my career.

Let me know if you want to be tagged on the reviews.

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5 FACTS ABOUT MY CURRENT WIP: KEEP YOUR SECRETS Last week I gave you five facts about my other current WIP called Project: Diagnosis (found here) and this week I thought I would do the same for my other one, which is Keep Your Secrets. I do love sharing these facts with you all and filling you in on what's going on with my characters and writing journey. So Keep Your Secrets is a YA paranormal/mystery, Sara is fifteen and was considered a gulfer until recently because she hadn't developed her psychic ability until then. In this world, you normally develop at eleven and then go off to do your specialised schooling depending on your ability. While starting at a new boarding school, she struggles to make friends, and ends up finding herself able to do things other psychics can't do. She gets pulled into the mystery of who's stalking one of the more popular girls and all that goes along with it. FACT #1: SARA IS DISABLED I have been writing more disabled characters lately and Sara is no different. As well as being psychic, she also has the kind of lung condition that I myself have. She's prone to wheezing, struggles with stairs, and finds herself struggling to keep up when it comes to the physical parts of her schooling. I wanted to write another character like this because too often my condition is unknown and I know that at fifteen I'd have loved to have seen a character like myself on the page. FACT #2: SARA IS DUAL ABILITY There are four known psychic abilities: telepathy, telekinesis, influencer, and pryokinesis. Usually it's genetic and so you'll pick up one, or sometimes both, of your parents ability. Sara is a gulfer, i.e someone who didn't present with any abilities, until the day she ended up with two, both telepathy and telekinesis. She really struggles with the idea of finally making her parents proud after so long as being seen as someone who wouldn't amount to anything in the psychic world. FACT #3: HER SCHOOL IS BOTH PSYCHIC AND REGULAR Gatherweed is mostly a psychic school, but it also allows for some regular students to board and attend alongside the psychics. Because being a psychic is such a high-class ability, these regular students are usually from well-off families and are looking to cement themselves with connections for their future. Sara was always due to go to Gatherweed at eleven but when she didn't present, she went to a normal school until the day she did. She's starting off in the tail end of the school year and she has a ton to catch up on in regards to psychic ability. FACT #4: SARA IS UNUSUALLY TALENTED Sara has picked up how to control her telekinesis and telepathy really really fast, to the point where she realises that she's more adept at what she can do than some of the people in her year who have been getting their lessons from age eleven. She can use her telekinesis to move massive objects, easily pick up on thoughts and also do something she's not really sure anyone else can do. It's not all good though, because it seems to bring about the wrong kind of attention. FACT #5: THERE'S DANGER, INTRIGUE AND THE UNKNOWN This story is paranormal/mystery so I would be remiss if I didn't hint at the mystery element. Sara doesn't make friends quickly, and when it becomes apparent that the one girl she kinda liked is in danger, Sara is quick to jump to her rescue, only there's more secrets to uncover, and there's a lot of things that the psychic youth haven't been told about the other races that live alongside them. Sara finds herself in the middle of all of it, and she might not be able to extract herself without massive harm coming to her. So there we go, those are my five facts about my current WIP. I am just over the sixty percent mark with this book and I am loving where it's going, loving revealing piece by piece of the mystery element and also some of the world building that goes with it. Sara has been a fun character to write and to get to know, and I'm looking forward to writing the next two books in what might be a

trilogy. Any questions? Lemme know in the comments below!

Follow Joey here on her blog, or on Facebook or Tumblr to be kept up to date with the latest news regarding Joey and her books

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What is Passive Voice Misuse? (Examples and Fixes) - by Sarah Rexford…

What is Passive Voice Misuse? (Examples and Fixes) – by Sarah Rexford…

on The Book Designer: It’s unlikely the classics we grew up studying in school would sell well today. And it’s unlikely the books that hit bestseller lists would have sold a hundred years ago. Why? Because writing evolves and is an ever-changing process. What sold hundreds of years ago doesn’t connect with today’s readers. In a fast-paced world of 45-minute television episodes and gripping…

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Anonymous asked:

Hi! I am writing a story with two twists. The problem is I can't seem to write the story without revealing the twists. As in it feels obvious to me that the readers will easily guess them. And if they do, then it's pointless to lead up to it right? There's no longer any surprise / shock effect? Or should I reveal one of them and keep the other one hidden?

Plot Twist Too Easily Guessed

A good plot twist is one that, by nature, is so unexpected that the writer has to find ways to drop hints to make it less out of the blue. When something is so obvious that you're instead looking for ways to hide it, it's probably not actually a plot twist.

So, that's where you should start... look at these two plot elements and ask yourself why you think they're plot twists if they're so obvious they're hard to keep secret. Is it possible these aren't actually "twists" but just regular plot elements?

If you genuinely feel that they can be plot twists, you have to look at the ways in which you're revealing your hand and find ways not to do that. Again, you do want to drop occasional, subtle hints--ultimately, not anything obvious enough to clue the reader in, but things they'll remember and look back on after the reveal to realize the clues were there all along.

I hope that helps!

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Hey! Your blog is super helpful, and I was wondering if you could give advice on creating a complete plot for novelettes/novellas. I write a lot of short storys and want to write something longer and more complete, but the plot always seems to fall through or lose purpose

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Plotting a Novelette/Novella

Unlike most short stories, novelettes/novellas tell a complete story that follows the same structure as a novel. The key with writing a novelette or novella is to simplify what that story entails.

Here are things novels have that you're generally going to avoid in novelettes/novellas, though there are always exceptions:

1) Multiple POV Characters - In novelettes and novellas, you don't really have time to develop multiple POV characters, so instead you're usually going to focus on a single POV.

2) Ensemble Casts - With the limited time afforded by novelettes and novellas, it's best to focus on a few characters rather than a big ensemble of characters.

3) Major World Building - Even in a novelette or novella, it's important to give the reader a sense of the story's setting, but you just don't have time to do a deep-dive into nitty gritty world details and back story. Stick with what's absolutely important to the understanding of the story.

4) Fewer Scene "Sets" - Much as with TV, movies, and theater, we can think of the setting of each scene as a "set." For example, if your story follows the romantic adventures of a high-schooler, your story's "sets" might include their bedroom, their kitchen, the bus, the lockers, different classrooms, the running track, and various places around town. In a novelette or novella, you want to limit the number of "sets" you use as much as possible. The more sets you include, the more time you have to spend describing them.

5) Subplots - Novels can have several subplots that tackle different conflicts and different elements of the plot, working together to move the story forward. In novelettes and novellas, there's not enough time to tackle subplots. If you have any at all, they should be simple and few.

You can learn more about structuring a story via the posts on my Plot & Story Structure master list.

Good luck with your novelette/novella!

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The Butterfly Effect: Pitfalls of Converting Your Fanfiction into an Original Work

The disclaimer I’m going to put at the beginning of this post is I know fanfiction vs original fiction is a touchy subject.
Fanfiction exists, I’ve written fanfiction, I’m not making any value judgements on fanfiction as a hobby, a passion, or a craft learning tool. If you like writing fanfiction and aren’t interested in converting your works into original fiction for publication, this post isn’t for you. If you’re the sort of person who feels threatened or delegitimized by discussions about the benefits and weaknesses of fanfiction as a tool for learning craft, this post isn’t the place to throw your tantrum. Got it? Good. Let’s move on.

One of the lies you’ll hear when you’re thinking about transitioning any fanfiction work you’ve written into an original work such as a short story or novel you can send on submission is that there’s no difference between fanfiction and an original work and that the conversion is easy.

It isn’t. 

They’ll list off all the authors who have admitted to writing fanfiction or converted their works from fanfic into “real” fic like Cassandra Clare’s Mortal Instruments vis-à-vis Harry Potter, E.L. James’s Fifty Shades of Grey  vis-à-vis Twilight, even trying to nail JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings vis-à-vis the entire tradition of European folklore with extra special helpings of Beowulf, Norse, and Celtic myth. These arguments equate inspiration and adaptation to fanfiction without any contextual nuance. “Everything is really just fanfiction anyway,” they say. Which? No.

It’s important to understand that these arguments are defensive by nature and exist more to reassure the person making the argument than to convince anyone else. It’s an argument meant for the echo chamber and the ears of those who already agree, a defensive knee-jerk reaction, and an expression of insecurity. This can be confusing if you’re genuinely trying to make a conversion because the defensive discourse surrounding the “legitimacy” of fanfiction will ultimately point you in the wrong direction. 

There are very important differences between fanfiction and an original work that have nothing to do with your writing’s quality or your skills as a writer. The relevant pitfalls are structure and, most importantly, context. 

Fanfiction is in the name, the work is designed to exist supplementally to the work it’s based on and cannot stand on its own without its point of origin. The entire genre is referential by nature, you’re not just using another creator’s work as inspiration for your own work, you’re writing stories in that creator’s world. It’s more akin to tracing than fanart, which is where fanfiction acts as an excellent learning tool. You can learn a lot about drawing and drawing well from tracing. You can learn a lot about writing and writing well from fanfiction, whether you’re working within the provided template, practicing other styles outside your own, or taking the work apart and restructuring it in new and different ways to fit your imagination. Fanfiction’s problem when transitioning to an original work is in its contextual reliance on another narrative. You’re using a complete creation as your launch pad, there are going to be problems baked into the very bones of your narrative you may not even be aware of; even in a completely different story which only uses the characters of the original work like your Coffee Shop AU.

At the end of the day, fanfiction is all about playing in someone else’s sandbox and, no matter how cool the castle is, everything you’ve built is full of their sand.

The professional form of fanfiction is tie-in fiction. With tie-in fiction, the work is written with the expectation you’re already aware of the property the story is based on and its world, meaning you know many of the rules, foibles, characterization, and world building coming in. This means, none of it needs to be explained to your reader. You can skip it. This is a serious problem if you’re trying to convert a fanfic into an original work. A lot of the steps you could skip as a fanfic writer cannot be skipped with original fiction because an original work lacks the benefit of prior understanding. As I said, the issue for an original work conversion is in the bones of your fanfiction rather than the surface read. This has nothing to do with a writer’s skill, but rather their intention when they originally started writing and all the aspects of a work they accidentally brought with them when they copied.

If you go back and review each of the examples I listed, you’ll find those works can all stand on their own merits. However you may feel about the authors or the quality of the work itself, none of them require prior knowledge from having read the original source material to understand the story, the characters, and their world. You don’t need to have read Beowulf to understand The Lord of the Rings. You don’t need a Cambridge scholar’s understanding of European myth in general to enjoy The Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit, though it may enhance your experience and the same is true for The Lord of the Rings vis-à-vis the entire fantasy genre. You don’t need to know Robert Jordan was deconstructing The Lord of the Rings and the Chosen One trope to enjoy The Wheel of Time, just like you don’t need to have read Pride and Prejudice to enjoy Bridget Jones’s Diary. That’s the difference between inspiration and fanfiction. One is a complete work capable of standing on its own merits outside of required prior knowledge and the other is inherently tied to the prior work in the very fundamentals of the text.

The necessity of context is why you can’t just palette swap the surface of your fanfiction and call it ready for publication. We need to go deeper. When drafting and rewriting, the butterfly effect is real. When you change one thing, whether it’s events in a single scene or a single decision, much less an entire character, you alter your narrative’s internal logic. Internal logic is what your plot runs on. It’s the basis on which all your characters are making their decisions (Why you? Why now?) to propel your narrative forward. In a palette swap of a fanfiction for an original work, you no longer have the characters you were previously using for your plot. Their world is different and, as a result, they are different people. Your reader no longer has the benefit of prior knowledge regarding the character’s history, their characterization, and no expectation for how they’re supposed to behave. The butterfly effect kicks in.

Let me give you an example, you’ve written a piece of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine fanfiction with Julian Bashere in the starring role. He’s trapped on a prison planet controlled by The Dominion with Miles and Kira (and Ducat.) The scientists in charge of the prison planet want his help unlocking the secrets of an ancient alien technology that’s been lost to the ages. Julian is torn between his love of science and his hatred for the enemy, all the while his friends are secretly plotting an escape behind his back.

Okay, we’ve decided to make our changes. We now have Not-Julian in an industrialized fantasy setting trapped on a fantasy prison island reminiscent of Australia and Alcatraz. No one has ever escaped from it. He’s a freedom fighter captured by the ruling regime after they conquered his homeland, and we know he committed some sort of horrible crime but the details are kept secret. He’s in love with Not-Miles, and Not-Kira is a complete stranger. The scientists in charge of the facility want his help unlocking the secrets of an ancient fantasy technology that belonged to a long dead race of a previous era. He’s no longer torn about helping them and is focused only on his own survival. All the while, his lover is being blackmailed by a complete stranger and secretly plotting an escape behind his back.

Have you noticed the problems with the narrative’s internal logic yet? Why do the scientists need Not-Julian, who is just a freedom fighter?

The problem for this setup is that Julian Bashere is not just a Starfleet doctor. He is a minor celebrity within his field and considered one of the greatest scientific minds of his generation, meaning it makes perfect sense within the narrative for even highly advanced alien races to turn to him or blackmail him for help. If you take that prior knowledge away without adding any additional justification that supports his level of involvement within the plot (like not just being a brilliant and famous scientist, but also being a specialist) and let it run… it no longer makes sense, especially the degree of access to sensitive information Not-Julian gets within the narrative as a result. In fact, the decision to keep this the same makes your narrative worse. Now you no longer have a narrative running on internal logic, you have external logic. External logic is when the justification and reasoning for a character to know what they know comes from outside the story. The narrative’s justification for Not-Julian’s position is now “because he’s our POV and main character.” That’s bad writing.

This is the butterfly effect. You wrote your story for one set of characters as the driving force of the action and now those characters are different people. They live in a different world, have different stimuli, different needs, and potentially completely different backgrounds. It’s the same as when you do an adaptation but change important key details at the beginning and keep the same end result. You weaken your narrative because the chain of events which justified that ending is now broken. How does your story as written make sense? It doesn’t. Unless, you start from the very beginning and do all the important detail work in the building blocks to reorient the character and their world into a new, harmonized existence.

This is where an old axiom becomes very important:

Bad writers copy.

Good writers steal.

A lot of fanfic writers hear the first section “bad writers copy” and immediately think it pertains to them, and it doesn’t. (However, if “bad writers copy” did just make you feel defensive then your brain’s gone and told on you. Congrats. You’re copying.) 

The difference between JRR Tolkien and fanfic is that JRR Tolkien stole. He stole flagrantly, he stole shamelessly, and he made all of it his own within the context of his narrative, his characterization, and his worldbuilding.

If you want to convert a work, you need to steal. You need to take someone else’s property and make it wholly your own. There are lots of ways you can achieve this, one of the easiest is actually going harder toward the original property rather than running from it. You don’t need to change everything if the world your characters exist in remains mostly the same. In the case of Star Trek, there’s an entire genre influenced by its existence.

Okay, let’s go back to Not-Julian. How could you restructure the scenario to keep your narrative’s goals mostly in line with your original fanfiction? Let’s see.

After a failed rebellion against the Federation of Planets, freedom fighter Jackson Ran is sentenced to the prison moon of Azkabar; a place from which no one has ever escaped. Together with his lover, Mac, and their CO, Kendra, he’s destined to spend the rest of his life mining duranium for the enemy. However, Doctor Jaybrin of the Federation soon arrives to make Jackson an offer.
Once Jackson was a star scientist studying the technology of the lost alien race. Jaybrin needs Jackon’s help unlocking a key genome keeping the Federation from accessing their surviving weapons technology. In return for Jackson’s help, Jaybrin will use his influence to provide Mac safer work, better meals, and living quarters. With Mac’s health taking a turn for the worse, Jackson can’t refuse.
As Jackson grows closer with Jaybrin, Mac and Kendra plot their escape from Azkabar. A plan Mac knows he must keep from Jackson now that the love of his life has become the enemy.

Reminder, this was our fanfiction:

Julian Bashere’s trapped on a prison planet controlled by The Dominion with Miles and Kira (and Ducat.) The scientists in charge of the prison planet want his help unlocking the secrets of an ancient alien technology that’s been lost to the ages. Julian is torn between his love of science and his hatred for the enemy, all the while his friends are secretly plotting an escape behind his back.

The narrative of the new original work remains very similar to the DS9 fanfiction, however, many of the key details which allowed the narrative to function remain the same. The themes and goals of the work are the same, and it doesn’t scream Star Trek. You’ve just got a sci-fi novel.

One of the downsides of fanfiction is that it can lead to authors feeling illegitimate, even delegitimized, like their work isn’t as valid because they’re using another person’s creativity as a launchpad. This sense of illegitimacy overwhelms the author’s original goals and can lead to them running from their story, trying to make it as different as possible to cover up it’s fanfiction origins. That’s the one direction you shouldn’t take.

It’s important to remember we’re all influenced and all inspired by the media in our lives. We can even begin to feel reliant on others for our creativity. Remember that the goal of converting your work from fanfiction to original fiction is for your work to stand on its own without being reliant on contextual knowledge or outside structural support. It doesn’t have to be good. (It could be.) It doesn’t have to be successful. (It could be.) It just needs a self-contained existence. You don’t need to be ashamed of your novel’s origins. Recognize that while your story needs to change, it doesn’t need to change drastically. If you read the works I mentioned and the original fanfiction back to back, you may notice that on a surface read they do feel remarkably like a palate swap. Yet each one is capable of standing on its own merits. Why? 

These works didn’t stray that far from their authors’ original intentions. They were given the grounding in worldbuilding and characterization to allow a reader with no prior knowledge or fandom background to jump straight in.

A self-contained existence is the real dividing line between fanfiction and original fiction.

-Michi

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Let’s play a game! How would you describe something vs how would your character describe it?

This can be a fun way to get to know your character(s) more! Depending on their thoughts, feelings, self-esteem, etc, they may view themselves differently to how you see them. For each of the following sets of questions, answer both of them and see how they compare or differ!

How would you describe your character’s physical appearance? How would your character describe their own physical appearance?

How would you describe your character’s personality? How would your character describe their own personality?

How would you describe your character’s fashion sense? How would your character describe their own fashion sense?

How would you describe your character’s flaws? How would your character describe their own flaws?

How would you describe your character’s sense of humor? How would your character describe their own sense of humor?

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rysaarcher

How to Write Fashion - Guest Post by Victoria Smith

How to Write Fashion – Guest Post by Victoria Smith

Last week I talked about how to develop purposeful fantasy fashions. This week Victoria Smith is going to take over and talk about some of the more practical elements of using the fashion you’ve developed. Enjoy! Worldbuilding is hard. Being a fantasy writer—a novice one, mind you—I should know. While I’d like to think I have a natural talent for certain aspects of writing, I am by no means an…

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Story Not Behaving? Try Going Deeper into Structure - by Jami Gold…

Story Not Behaving? Try Going Deeper into Structure – by Jami Gold…

on Writers Helping Writers: With all the writing advice out there, we know that some “writing rules” we hear are more like guidelines. However, story structure is important not just for our writing but also for our readers—creating their overall sense of our story—so we should consider the risks before ignoring structure-specific guidelines. In fact, if our story isn’t working well, we might be…

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A couple of things I experience being bilingual (for your writing)

Writing a bilingual character is probably very difficult for someone who isn’t bilingual. So, here’s a quick post on a couple of things I do and experience as someone who is bilingual. 

For context my first language is English, but I’ve lived in Spain for over 15 years now and my partner who I live with only speaks Spanish, so I do speak more Spanish on the average day than English. 

1.-I forget words, all the time, in both languages. Sometimes my brain is only going to give me one version of that word and that may not be the language I’m aiming for. Depending on the word or circumstance though, I’ll often just throw it into the conversation and hope for the best. This works a lot because usually if my brain doesn’t supply the word, it’s actually because they’re very similar. Examples of words I may forget (supposedly/supuestamente, acusation/acusación, salary/salario…) a sentence I often say to my roommate is, “I don’t know the word in Spanish but I’m just a couple of letters or a syllable away.” 

2.-Expressions are my worst nightmare. Seriously, the amount of times I forget which expressions exist in which language and just say them anyway is concerning. In the best of cases, this ends up with people simply not understanding. But in the worst of cases, you get the fact that the Spanish expression for being put under anaesthetic is “le van a dormir” literally translates to “they’re putting him to sleep”, so when I told my mom my cat had a urinary infection had to stay at the vet because they were putting him to sleep… well, she interpreted something slightly different (for anybody who English isn’t their first language, being put to sleep is an expression that means to put down, like… medically induced death). 

3.-Despite the fact that I am bilingual enough to realice five episodes in I forgot to change my streaming to English, I can’t do two languages at the same time. By which I mean, if I have a show on in the background in English, I can still write, in English. But if I an hear the TV in Spanish, then I can only write in Spanish. I don’t know why this happens, but it does. Also if I’m witting in English and someone starts speaking to me in Spanish, I have to ask them to start over. 

4.-Translating. So, I’ve heard people complain about the whole “oh I struggle to switch sometimes” when referencing bilinguals in writing. But I genuinely experience something similar while translating, so I most often translate for my boyfriend when my family speaks to him in English, and then I translate what my boyfriend says in Spanish back to them. Yep, that’s how translating works, the problem is, if say my boyfriend knows how to say something in English, he then does that, and I’ll automatically translate what he said in English to Spanish for my English family. 

Hey, you give me one thing, I give you back the other. It’s not my job to pay attention to what goes in and out. 

5.-Sometimes cultural difference and language differences are blurry lines. For example, in English if someone were to offer me something, say a sandwich, and I didn’t want it, I’d say, “no thank you,” and when the same thing happens in Spanish I say, “no gracias.” However, most Spanish would just say “no”, and I have had people say to me, “you don’t say gracias when it’s a no, only when it’s a yes…” 

This is also is really weird because whenever I take my boyfriend out for dinner with my family and they offer him something he just replies no and it kind of sounds rude even though we all know it’s just the difference in culture. So, it’s a fun thing you can keep in mind when writing a character’s dialogue. 

As usual,  check out my socials and book here.

Any other bilingual experiences? 

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How do you write angst correctly wheather it hit deep or just emotional, without making it boring?

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Writing Deep-Hitting Angst

If something is boring, it's not angst anyway. However, if you want your story's angst to pack an emotional punch, there are three things you should do:

1) Develop the Characters and Relationships - You can't write angst with an emotional punch if the reader doesn't care about the characters who are experiencing the angst. So, take the time to develop the characters, flesh out their internal conflicts, and illustrate who they care about and why.

2) Build Up the External Conflicts - Angst is anxiety, apprehension, or insecurity in response to conflict, so it's essential that you establish and build up the conflicts your character is experiencing angst about. You need your reader to understand what the conflict is, why it presents a conflict to the character/s, and why it affects them the way that it does.

3) Use Description to Your Advantage - Part of what gives angst an emotional punch for the reader is that it affects them viscerally... they can almost feel the turmoil the character is going through. You achieve that for making it real for the reader by giving them emotional and sensory details they can relate to. If you can get a copy of The Emotion Thesaurus, do it. This handy reference will help you illustrate both the internal and external cues of various emotions. Also, remember to use sensory details to make things feel more real. In an angsty moment, what does your character see? Hear? Smell? Taste? Touch? Feel?

Good luck with your story!

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Anonymous asked:

hiii is there more to ethical dilemmas than steal to feed family or kill one to save many, and how can i incorporate them in my stories? i guess i don’t have a really good definition of what it is

Including an Ethical Dilemma in Story

An ethical dilemma is a situation in which "a difficult choice has to be made between two courses of action, either of which entails transgressing a moral principle."

Stealing is wrong, but so is starving to death because socioeconomic disparity prevents you from feeding yourself. Killing someone is wrong, but letting lots of people die to save one person is also wrong. These are ethical dilemmas.

Are there more ethical dilemmas than just those two examples? Of course! You can probably think of some on your own, but if not, a Google search should provide you with lots of possibilities.

As for how to incorporate them into your story, it depends on what the ethical dilemma needs to accomplish. Is this an inciting incident of sorts? Like Jean Valjean stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sister's children? Is it a device there to put your character through a tough decision? Is it the basis of the plot, like the issue at the heart of a legal drama? Once you know the purpose the ethical dilemma has to serve, you can start to figure out which kind will work best in your story. Once you've done a search for other kinds of ethical dilemmas, you can look for one that would make sense in your story based on the purpose you need it for, then tweak the details to fit your story.

I hope that helps!

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jestbee

Here’s a writing tip: 

Write the ending first. 

Seriously, go with me on this one. Write an ending, something big and climactic where the characters say all this really emotionally charged stuff like “I can’t believe you’re doing this after everything we’ve been through” even if you don’t know what they’ve been through. 

Eventually, one of them will say “I trusted you to be there for me when my uncle was killed by that travelling circus” and suddenly, you’ve got a plot point. 

Now you can go back and figure out how the hell someone is killed by a travelling circus. While you’re doing that you’ll have to come up with how someone got involved with the circus in the first place and now you’ve got your inciting incident. 

It’s almost a full plot at this point. 

Even if you never use the first conversation you wrote - because let’s face it, characters have a habit of changing their minds about what exactly happens when you’re halfway through writing something - at least it was a way for you to write your way in. 

Leave yourself breadcrumbs, even if you don’t know where they lead to, or you only know there they lead to. You might find something interesting along the way.

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