I don't know what I want and that's okay.
20-year-old adventurer, writer, biologist, hopeful-actress, photographer, boxer, human/animal rights activist.
INFJ, heteroflexible, water-bearer.
I really love Lord of the Rings.
{ Doctor Who. Harry Potter.
Lord of the Rings.
Merlin. Travel.
Men. Mythology.
Sex. Self. }
Follow me into the woods.
[ background from ~eyestrain]
Some craziness has gone down but it’s my new year now and I’m ready to face it.
I have a shit ton of more time for writing, which is always good! No work tonight, either, but I don’t have much gas in my car…so I’m going to get all comfortable and write and not go out tonight.
Baby Emrys is doing fine, by the way. He’s a wet pooper fo sho.
Swear to god I’m not pregnant mom I was just looking up pregnancy charts BECAUSE CHARACTERS
Oh god I want to show you what I’m writing Nicole but it’s too much to reveal right now. Too many horrible, angsty things, and the plot hasn’t gotten there yet, and I’m not sure if it will, so I’ll have to file this away until later. BUT I AM THINKING OF YOU OH YES.
So I will just let this giraffe show you what I mean. I’m in the ‘Depression’ stage at the moment. ‘Anger’ was when I was writing this before my midterm, when I didn’t have the time to write, but I did it anyway!
THESE ARE NOT OUR FACES.
This is not what we look like.
You think Gene Wolfe looks like his photograph in this book? Or Jane Yolen? Or Peter Straub? Or Diana Wynne Jones? Not so. They are wearing play-faces to fool you. But the play-faces come off when the writing begins.
Frozen in black and silver for you now, these are simply masks. We who lie for a living are wearing our liar-faces, false-faces made to deceive the unwary. We must be - for, if you believe these photographs, we look just like everyone else.
Protective coloration, that’s all it is.
Read the books: sometimes you can catch sight of us in there. We look like gods and fools and bards and queens, singing worlds into existence, conjuring something from nothing, juggling words into all the patterns of night.
Read the books. That’s when you see us properly: naked priestesses and priests of forgotten religions, our skins glistening with scented oils, scarlet blood dripping down from our hands, bright birds flying out from our open mouths. Perfect, we are, and beautiful in the fire’s golden light…
There was a story I was told as a child, about a little girl who peeked in through a writer’s window one night, and saw him writing. He had taken his false-face off to write and had hung it behind the door, for he wrote with his real face on. And she saw him; and he saw her. And, from that day to this, nobody has ever seen the little girl again.
Since then, writers have looked like other people even when they write (though sometimes their lips move, and sometimes they stare into space longer, and more intently, than anything that isn’t a cat); but their words describe their real faces: the ones they wear underneath. This is why people who encounter writers of fantasy are rarely satisfied by the wholly inferior person that they meet.
“I thought you’d be taller, or older, or younger, or prettier, or wiser,” they tell us, in words or wordlessly.
“This is not what I look like,” I tell them. “This is not my face.”
Essay by Neil Gaiman from The Faces of Fantasy; as it appears on Here In My Head, Tori Amos’ website.
Absolutely brilliant. Gave me goosebumps.
Rebloggable version, as requested by davrosbro. :)
Oooh! Yes! I love kisses. Kisses are where it all starts ;).
Okay, first, remember that a kiss is much, much more than just lips. It is lips, but also tongues, teeth, eyes, faces, hands, noses, bodies, heartbeats, breath, voice- and most importantly, a kiss is emotions. A kiss without emotion is just wet mushy lips stuck together. Ew. Gross. The most important part of a kiss isn’t the how, but the who- because of the emotions between the two people.
102 Resources for Fiction Writers
Are you still stuck for ideas for National Novel Writing Month? Or are you working on a novel at a more leisurely pace? Here are 102 resources on Character, Point of View, Dialogue, Plot, Conflict, Structure, Outlining, Setting, and World Building, plus some links to generate Ideas and Inspiration.
CHARACTER, POINT OF VIEW, DIALOGUE
The Universal Mary Sue Litmus Test
Priming the idea pump (A character checklist shamlessly lifted from acting)
Handling a Cast of Thousands – Part I: Getting to Know Your Characters
Establishing the Right Point of View: How to Avoid “Stepping Out of Character”
How to Start Writing in the Third Person
Web Resources for Developing Characters
What are the Sixteen Master Archetypes?
Fiction Writer’s Character Chart
Fiction Writer’s Character Chart
Villains are People, Too, But …
Top 10 Tips for Writing Dialogue
Advantages, Disadvantages and Skills (character traits)
How to Write a Character Bible
Character Development Exercises
All Your Characters Sounds the Same — And They’re Not a Hivemind!
Writing the Other: Bridging Cultural Difference for Successful Fiction
Family Echo (family tree website)
Interviewing Characters: Follow the Energy
100 Character Development Questions for Writers
Lineage Chart Layout Generator
PLOT, CONFLICT, STRUCTURE, OUTLINE
How to Write a Novel: The Snowflake Method
Effectively Outlining Your Plot
Conflict and Character within Story Structure
Ideas, Plots & Using the Premise Sheets
Creating Conflict and Sustaining Suspense
Plunge Right In … Into Your Story, That Is!
Fiction Writing Tips: Story Grid
Tips for Creating a Compelling Plot
The Thirty-six (plus one) Dramatic Situations
The Evil Overlord Devises a Plot: Excerpt from Stupid Plotting Tricks
The Hero’s Journey: Summary of the Steps
Outline Your Novel in Thirty Minutes
SETTING, WORLD BUILDING
The Art of Description: Eight Tips to Help You Bring Your Settings to Life
Creating the Perfect Setting – Part I
An Impatient Writer’s Approach to Worldbuilding
Fantasy Worldbuilding Questions
Character and Setting Interactions
Creating Fantasy and Science Fiction Worlds
Maps Workshop — Developing the Fictional World Through Mapping
IDEAS, INSPIRATION
Solve Your Problems Simply by Saying Them Out Loud
Writing Inspiration, or Sex on a Bicycle
Creative Acceleration: 11 Tips to Engineer a Productive Flow
The Seven Major Beginner Mistakes
Complete Your First Book with these 9 Simple Writing Habits
Free Association, Active Imagination, Twilight Imaging
Story Starters and Idea Generators
REVISION
One-Pass Manuscript Revision: From First Draft to Last in One Cycle
Revising Your Novel: Read What You’ve Written
Writing 101: So You Want to Write a Novel Part 3: Revising a Novel
TOOLS and SOFTWARE
My Writing Nook (online text editor; free)
Bubbl.us (online mind map application; free)
Freemind (mind map application; free; Windows, Mac, Linux, portable)
XMind (mind map application; free; Windows, Mac, Linux, portable)
Liquid Story Binder (novel organization and writing software; free trial, $45.95; Windows, portable)
Scrivener (novel organization and writing software; free trial, $39.95; Mac)
SuperNotecard (novel organization and writing software; free trial, $29; Windows, Mac, Linux, portable)
yWriter (novel organization and writing software; free; Windows, Linux, portable)
JDarkRoom (minimalist text editor; free; Windows, Mac, Linux, portable)
AutoRealm (map creation software; free; Windows, Linux with Wine)
And another one, put up for any of my followers who want it.
I’d in theory like to pay more attention to doing writing in a more serious way. I’m not sure what it is that I’m hung up on.
SWEET TALOS
I JUST GOT SO EXCITED
