7 Tips for Introducing Your Characters by DesdemonaDeBlake, literature
Literature
7 Tips for Introducing Your Characters
7 Tips for Introducing Your Characters Anybody Can Write a Novel Chapter 5 “Choosing and Designing Characters” – Section 3 “Introductions” With Links to Supplementary Material When a reader first picks up a book, they create an instant connection with the author of the story—formed through a required level of trust just so that the two of you can immerse yourselves in the world you have created. The writer and the reader are, at that point, friends or pleasant acquaintances; and at that moment of relationship and immersion into the realm of story, the characters become just as real as the reader/writer relationship. The writer, in this ...
27 YouTube Channels to Help Improve Your Writing by DesdemonaDeBlake, literature
Literature
27 YouTube Channels to Help Improve Your Writing
27 YouTube Channels to Help Improve Your Writing Anybody Can Write a Novel 2.0 Chapter 11 “Resources” – Section 1 “Youtube Channels” One of the things that inspired me to begin writing these writing tutorials was that, about a year and a half ago, I came to a frustrating point in my writing where I knew enough about the craft to no longer be a novice but not enough to make my novel publishable. In particular, I wanted to find a Youtube channel that I could listen to while I was cooking or working, so that my skills as a writer could increase. Since then I have found (through research, friends, and even you awesome peeps) a list of vi...
CSS Tricks: Deviations in Journals by pica-ae, literature
Literature
CSS Tricks: Deviations in Journals
As promised in my previous tutorial CSS Tricks: Journal break-down comes the follow up tutorial about styling deviations in journals.You'll see what classes deviations are built from and how to "hack" them in order to style them entirely to your preference. I will cover regular image thumbs, literature and other text deviation thumbs and embedded deviations. Deviation Thumbs Aaah, the traditional way of featuring art in your journal.Generally, all thumbs consist of an image file, a link and one or more containers around both image and link. This tutorial will explain how those are built up exactly, and also explain the elements text thum...
5 Tips for Establishing Character Voices by DesdemonaDeBlake, literature
Literature
5 Tips for Establishing Character Voices
5 Tips for Establishing Character Voices Anybody Can Write a Novel Chapter 7 “From Story to Art” – Section 9 “Speech and Voice” With Links to Supplementary Material After you finish your first draft in all of its rough, unpolished, corny, sappy, unorganized glory, you will likely note something rather disturbing about your characters. They all sound the same. And, upon further analysis, you may even discover that they all sound like you. Fear not! This is to be expected, and but another factor to be adjusted and improved in the many drafts to come. Tip 1: Annotate how each character's speech pattern differs from your own. When a child ...
7 Tips For Writing Action Scenes by DesdemonaDeBlake, literature
Literature
7 Tips For Writing Action Scenes
7 Tips For Writing Action Scenes Anybody Can Write a Novel Chapter 7 “From Story to Art” – Section 7 “Action Scenes” With Links to Supplementary Material Action scenes in a novel are a difficult tool to master, but well worth the time and effort to create dramatic an memorable scenes that will engage and entertain your readers. To pull them off effectively, you must be able to keep a quick yet varied pace, keep a tight focus, reflect your story, and make it all quick and crisp. Today, I'm going to give you a starting-point for honing your skills in this method of storytelling. Tip 1: Create a visible plane of space to work within. Blak...
8 Tips for Describing a Story Setting by DesdemonaDeBlake, literature
Literature
8 Tips for Describing a Story Setting
8 Tips for Describing a Story Setting Anybody Can Write a Novel Chapter 3 “World Building” – Section 3“Describing Settings” With Links to Supplementary Material Another tricky skill to master in writing is setting description. Setting description is often the first thing that a reader encounters in a story, making it an essential skill to perfect if you want to hook your readers. To make matters more complicated, it is often difficult to calculate the right amount of description in settings—too much or too little can either leave the reader bored, overwhelmed, or confused. Today, I'm going to talk about how to create engaging and approp...
10 Tips for Writing Fantasy by DesdemonaDeBlake, literature
Literature
10 Tips for Writing Fantasy
PLEASE NOTE THAT WHILE THIS PAGE WILL REMAIN ACTIVE FOR PURPOSES OF EDUCATION AND RECORDS, IT IS OUTDATED. CLICK HERE TO ACCESS THE NEWEST VERSION. 10 Tips for Writing Fantasy Anybody Can Write a Novel Chapter 1 “Genres” – Section 2 “Fantasy” With Links to Supplementary Material As you might have noticed from the Outline , my section on Story Genres is rather bare. And so during the following few weeks, I will be remedying that—starting with fantasy. I have written quite a bit of fantasy—especially mixed within other genres. But more than that, I have read both excellent and profoundly horrible examples of fantasy. Today, I'm going...
Writer's Tip: Writing Effective Sentences by DarlingMionette, literature
Literature
Writer's Tip: Writing Effective Sentences
Sentences—if the plot is the backbone of a story, then sentences are the muscles and tendons keeping it glued together. Unfortunately, writing solid sentences isn’t easy for everyone. As Human beings, we don’t speak the same way we write. Unless you do a lot of writing, you may have trouble putting together even the simplest of sentences. The last time you took a good look at a sentence and broke it down into its individual parts was probably around 3rd grade. Don’t worry—I’m here to help. There’s More Than One Type of Sentence There are (roughly) four different types of sentences, and we’re going to get into each of the different types (w...
What Type of Writer Are You? by DesdemonaDeBlake, literature
Literature
What Type of Writer Are You?
What Type of Writer Are You? Anybody Can Write a Novel Chapter 9 “Types of Writers” – Section 1 “Self-identification” With Links to Supplementary Material While there are still a few topics in the genre section that I need more time to think about and research, I feel the need to take a break from it and move on to another section of major importance—Types of Writers. There are many types of writers—each separated by their motivation for writing. It is important to know what writing groups you fall into, so that you know your strengths, weaknesses, and can devise strategies so that your motivation can meet with your medium in order to c...
8 Tips for Writing Dialogue for your Characters by DesdemonaDeBlake, literature
Literature
8 Tips for Writing Dialogue for your Characters
8 Tips for Writing Dialogue for your Characters Anybody Can Write a Novel Chapter 5 “Choosing and Designing Characters” – Section 4 “Dialogue” With Links to Supplementary Material Dialogue is a tricky topic, and for two key reasons. The first is that creating realistic dialogue is a difficult skill to master—even in day-to-day life—without speech coming out plastic, pointless, or otherwise unconvincing. The second problem is that the proper dialogue for your story is deeply rooted within the other elements—the characters, the setting, the genre, etc... Because of this, writing dialogue that is custom fitted to your story, requires adjus...
7 Steps to Creating a Great Protagonist by DesdemonaDeBlake, literature
Literature
7 Steps to Creating a Great Protagonist
PLEASE NOTE THAT WHILE THIS PAGE WILL REMAIN ACTIVE FOR PURPOSES OF EDUCATION AND RECORDS, IT IS OUTDATED. CLICK HERE TO ACCESS THE NEWEST VERSION.7 Steps to Creating a Great Protagonist Anybody Can Write a Novel Chapter 3 “Characters” – Section 3 “The Protagonist” With Links to Supplementary Material So I've talked about a couple types of protagonists, and how to create them: Heroes and Antiheroes . As well as what types of Character to Use or to Avoid . But not every Protagonist will be a hero or antihero. Today, I'm going to discuss what universal attributes make a great protagonist, that will drive your story forward. Remem...
