z

Young Writers Society


Journal Making Challenge



User avatar
806 Reviews

Supporter


Gender: Female
Points: 1883
Reviews: 806
Mon Sep 22, 2014 12:42 am
View Likes
Aley says...



Image

Welcome everyone to a new event here on YWS! Over the next several weeks we will be creating journals together in order to better prepare ourselves for writing a novel. These journals will be hosted here on YWS as threads in the Writing Corner area.

You are invited to participate in challenges for the next several weeks to help fill out a pre-writing journal. These journals will be perused by fellow writers and occasionally the challenges will involve other people's journals, so keep an eye on your friends! The challenges will be the primary way to participate.

All participation in this event is your choice. You do not have to participate in everything, and you do not have to avoid participating because you missed the last event. If you see a workshop or a challenge you want to do, do it! Everyone pre-writes in their own way and we encourage these differences, so do what feels best to you.

Through the week new challenges will be posted. The challenges will be mixed in subject matter even though any particular week will have a focus of something such as making up your world, or making up your characters. Challenges will all be posted in this thread and indexed at the front. To complete a challenge, post your response in your journal created in the Writing Corner.

To start your journal we suggest you start with an brief introduction, summary, or blurb of your idea for the story so you remember what your inspiration is, and then post as often as you like to develop the ideas. These journals are not just exclusively for challenges either, put anything that helps in them.

This event will run until October 25th with several challenges per week. Any workshops being hosted will also be announced in this thread with dates and times.

Please subscribe to this thread for updates!

If you know someone that you want to invite to join this event, feel free to use the advertisement below to send them an invitation.
Spoiler! :
Image


Code: Select all
[center][url=https://www.youngwriterssociety.com/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=101761][img]https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-zKL1sNcvdpA/VByv-Y5IqGI/AAAAAAAAC5Q/egwX9Z7HaP8/w447-h673-no/Journal%2Bcopy.jpg[/img][/url][/center]


This project was written, edited, and created by many YWS members including:


If you like the end results, please give them a thank you.

  





User avatar
806 Reviews

Supporter


Gender: Female
Points: 1883
Reviews: 806
Mon Sep 22, 2014 12:45 am
View Likes
Aley says...



Index


1. Invitation Post
2. Index
3. Tools*
4. Optional Challenges 1-3
_____ I - Draw Your Plot
_____ II - Character Profiles
_____ III - Use your Resources
5. Thanks for Joining Message and Notes about the Event
6. Plotting*
7. Characters*
8. Style*
9. WorldBuilding - Society*
10. WorldBuilding - Setting*
11. Optional Challenges 4-6
_____ IV - Points A and B
_____ V - Mind Mapping
_____ VI - Law of the Lands
12. Optional Challenges 7-9
_____ VII - Make A Map
_____ VIII - World Order
_____ IX - Plot Holes
13. Optional Challenges 10-13
_____ X - I Knew, I Know, I Will Know
_____ XI - Create a Creature
_____ XII - All Hail!
_____ XIII - Meet the Neighbors: Character Challenge
14. Optional Challenges 14-17
_____ XIV - Free Writing Plots
_____ XV - Meet the Neighbors: Exploring Challenge
_____ XVI - Relationships
_____ XVII - Level of Omniscience
15. Optional Challenges 18-24
_____ XVIII - Short Story Challenge
_____ XIX - Identify and Discuss
_____ XX - Revise
_____ XXI - Dress Up
_____ XXII - Personalize Me
_____ XXIII - Remake
_____ XXIV - The Snowflake Method

Here are links to the journals involved in the original event in alphabetical order by subject title

Aley's Prewriting Journal
Ancient's Prewriting Journal
Aria's Little Notebook of What's Yet to Be
The Black Journal
Bluesy's prewriting journal
Biscuits' Writing Journal
Deanie's Prewriting Journal
Duncan's pre-writing journal
Flite's pre-flight preparations
Hayl's Journal of Book Pre-Writerly Things
Traunt's Pre-Writing Journaliddlydiddly
Knight Onyx's Pre-Writing Journal
The Lost Journal of Lostiness
Megs' Pre-writing Adventure
Noelle's Prewriting Journal
A Piece of Toast's Pre-Writing Journal
Pompadour's Pre-writing Jungle
R4's Pre Writing Journal
Raven Luna's Pre Writing Journal
Rurouni's Prewriting Journal
Scarlett's Prewriting Journal
The Silver Journal
The Timmy's Pre-writing Journal
The Wolf's Prewriting Journal
Wolfare's Journal of Prewriting



*You do not have to read all the information do the challenges provided, though if you have questions about something, it may be answered in the information.

Index
  





User avatar
806 Reviews

Supporter


Gender: Female
Points: 1883
Reviews: 806
Mon Sep 22, 2014 12:49 am
View Likes
Aley says...



Tools Of Prewriting



Below are listed some of the methods that people use to help themselves pre-write stories including different organizational tools, and places online that provide free services mostly over the internet such as making maps, generating plots, names, societies, and other such things, or lists of prompts and questions that can help develop worlds.

At any time you can use these things to help fill out your journal without doing a challenge associated with them. They are here to provide you with resources as you get started.


The Snowflake Method
The Snowflake Method is a system where you start with a short idea, like write your story idea down in a sentence, then begin to expand on that idea, and make it a paragraph. In the paragraph, work out the beginning details of the plot, like the few key events that you want to have happen.

Next, expand the idea saying a page paragraph about each character including a name, character storyline, motivation, goals, conflicts, epiphanies, and then a paragraph similar to the story paragraph that has the character storyline summary. Do this for each character in the novel so that you have many well-rounded characters. It's alright to go back and revise the first paragraph summarizing your story if you need to.

Now go back and for each sentence that you had in your original story paragraph, expand to it's own paragraph. That means you should have about three paragraphs that describe a major conflict, one that describes the story's summary, and then one that is the ending. This is roughly a plot synopsis.
Now expand on your characters through longer character descriptions. These can be considered character synopsis because they say everything that happens in the plot from the character's perspective.

Expanding again means going back to those paragraphs you wrote on each plot disaster in the synopsis, and making them each into a page. This should start fixing things down and making them into concrete deeper thoughts.

Go through and detail everything you could ever want to know about your characters expanding on the character synopsis.

Make a spreadsheet detailing the 4 major things in your book, the three conflicts, and the ending. You're going for the major scenes. Have columns for point of view, what happens, and other things you might find useful later like how many pages you expect. Having this is so that it is easy to reorder things if you need to and you can see the story at a glance.

If you want to, you can go back to word and write this out with any things that you want to have, like dialogue you want in the scenes, or things like that. Detail these scenes as much as you want, or as little as you want because the next step is probably what you've been waiting for.

MAKE A DRAFT!

Flow-charts
When pre-writing try using flow charts where you map out the story through small blurbs that are then connected. You can do things like create a flow chart that has a section for plot with a square blob, and then dotted blobs could be back story or side plots. You can do entire sections of the flow chart just to map out relationships between friends and peers in classes, or show who has known who in the past. These things can be useful to hold onto as you start to plan and work on the story, but it is your personal choice if it works for you.

Post-it notes Note cards
Like the Snowflake Method and the Flow charts, Post it notes, note cards, and other physical papers can be used to help draft things and collect information. For instance, you can use colored note cards to indicate different things like character information vs. society information. You can have another color for writing out your plot through scenes, and another for writing plot points instead of the scenes. All of these things are great because you can organize and feel the physical writing on the cards to help create a memory of them and develop the ideas through adding new cards or replacing cards with more detailed cards or sticky notes.

Map Drawing
You can do this on the computer with a map maker linked above, or you can physically draw this out in a journal, on computer paper, or elsewhere. Some of the ways that you can make maps is to cut and paste construction paper so you can physically make it a circle to see what the "edges" would look like together. You can then scan this and print copies to do different maps such as road maps, city maps, geography maps, historical maps, and maps of logistics of your story.

Character Profiles
Whether you do a profile with Name, Age, Biography... or a profile where you go in depth with pictures, details of their favorite clothes, and hobbies, making a profile for each character you want to be round is a great way to glance back at who is who and know things you might forget otherwise like eye color, hair color, or what they're wearing at any given time in the novel. Creating the profile can be something on word, something your print or write by hand, or something you put on note cards, sticky notes, or in a flow chart.

Doodles
Drawing things out can be anything from maps of rooms, to what characters look like when they're sitting, standing, or running. You can also draw things like what they're seeing, wearing, or how people are situated in a room. These can be as detailed or simple as you feel up to and can compliment things like writing scenes for a plot, or just basic city construction. You can also doodle things like fantasy or blueprints. Don't be afraid to pick up a sketchbook or some computer paper and a folder for just one story.

Free Writing / Word Wars
Using word wars and free writing can mean just sitting down and brainstorming ideas, focus on what you want a scene to look like, or actually putting pen to paper to write out the story. In the pre-writing step, this is mostly used to brainstorm things that might happen instead of what you expect to happen in the plot, or to get more of the plot out. For instance, start a free writing activity where you just focus on one scene, from one character's point of view and then free write just what you think their thoughts will be. You might come up with some new ideas on how to resolve the issue that you hadn't thought of before.

Generators
http://chaoticshiny.com/
http://mistresschibi.com/generators.html
http://www.rangen.co.uk/
http://www.namepistol.com/
http://www.behindthename.com/
http://fantasynamegenerators.com/
http://donjon.bin.sh/fantasy/world/
http://www.rpgobjects.com/tiamat/index.php
http://writers-den.pantomimepony.co.uk/
http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/a ... ke-method/
http://www.seventhsanctum.com/

Map Makers
http://davesmapper.com/
https://www.google.com/maps/@-10.149225 ... 9712961,2z
http://donjon.bin.sh/fantasy/world/
http://pyromancers.com/dungeon-painter-online/
http://www.stonesword.com/worldmaker.php
http://www.rpgobjects.com/tiamat/index.php
http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~am ... /demo.html

Flow Chart Makers
https://www.gliffy.com/go/html5/launch? ... 00200c9a66
https://www.draw.io/

Questions and Prompts
http://nanowrimo.org/forums/character-c ... ads/125155
http://www.writingclasses.com/Informati ... PageID/106
http://www.sfwa.org/2009/08/fantasy-wor ... questions/
http://pcwrede.com/fantasy-worldbuildin ... -features/

  





User avatar
806 Reviews

Supporter


Gender: Female
Points: 1883
Reviews: 806
Mon Sep 22, 2014 1:01 am
View Likes
Aley says...



Image


As we roll into our first week, please note that it is not necessary to read everything in order to participate in those challenges. That being said, here are a few challenges that you can try to get your journal started.

Challenges do not have to be done in any sort of order, nor do they have to be done completely.

Challenge The First
Draw your Plot
Each plot has it's rises in tension, and it's falls. Consider your plot and how it waxes and wains with the tension of your story. Is it constantly getting more tense? Is it sometimes neutral? Where are these points in your story? Try to associate each chapter with an up or down movement of a line, then do this challenge.

Challenge: Make a graph for all positive points.
Label the X axis [horizontal line at the bottom] chapters, and the Y axis [vertical line on the left] Stress. The graph should look like this, but labeled accordingly.
Mark your first chapter and consider the stress level you want to start at, draw a point. Now continue to do this with each chapter you have planned, leaving space between to change things as you write if you wish.
Label each point with the event of the chapter. Take a picture/save a picture, and upload it to your journal.

Challenge The Second
Character Profiles
As stories need characters, creating a profile of their looks, attitude, history, and other information can be very valuable to start with. Even if you don't fill out the character profiles all the way, having it written down somewhere that lets you avoid searching a 50,000 word document, is helpful.

Challenge: Fill out as much of the character profile as you can for as many characters as you have.

Spoiler! :
Name: Include full name and nicknames.
Age: Consider the age range you want in the story.
Sex: This is the biologically accepted and marked sex on the birth certificate, consider if there will be more than two in your society.
Eye Color: Think about the range of colors you want as acceptable.
Hair Color: Do they dye their hair?
Skin Color: Do they tan easy in the summer and blanch easy in winter? Are they always the same skin color?
Height: Are they above, below, or at average height? How tall exactly?
Weight: There are certain weights that go with certain classifications such as overweight, underweight, or average for humans, where does your character fall?
Memorable Features: What, in your society, would stand out?
Race: Are they human?
Ethnicity: What do they identify as their heritage's background and belief systems?
Faults: Consider realistic faults that may deal with personality problems, physical problems, or mental problems which may or may not be resolved through the story.
Talents: Think about things which make the character stand out or things they've developed as a skill.
Hobbies: What areas of knowledge does your character revel in? Are they really keen on collecting coins? Do they weave or spin? Where is their brain when it isn't on work?
Family: What family relations are around? What is the relationship like?
Source of Income: Do they have a job? Are they supported by parents or family?
Status in Society: Where would the character fall on a hierarchical scale of peasants to royalty?
Patience Breaking Point: How much does it take to really make your character get angry at someone, and for how long will they remain angry?
Childhood: What was their childhood like? How does that shape their beliefs today?
Biography: Because we've already done childhood, consider more recent history, such as what they've been doing for income, how they came about that line of work, who their friends are, what they do for fun, and what they do to fulfill social needs.


Code: Select all
[b]Name:[/b]
[b]Age:[/b]
[b]Sex:[/b]
[b]Eye Color:[/b]
[b]Hair Color:[/b]
[b]Skin Color:[/b]
[b]Height:[/b]
[b]Weight:[/b]
[b]Memorable Features:[/b]
[b]Race:[/b]
[b]Ethnicity:[/b]
[b]Faults:[/b]
[b]Talents:[/b]
[b]Family:[/b]
[b]Childhood:[/b]
[b]Source of Income:[/b]
[b]Hobbies:[/b]
[b]Patience Breaking Point:[/b]
[b]Status in Society:[/b]
[b]Biography:[/b]


Challenge The Third
Use Your Resources
This is all about using those links given here. Explore the different random generators, questionnaires, and other things that might have caught your interest.

Challenge: Write a response about your thoughts after exploring the different sources provided. This could be anything from things you're thinking about using to help move along the development of your story, to things you found which you'll be using in different stories, or even ideas you've gotten from things you've generated.

  





User avatar
806 Reviews

Supporter


Gender: Female
Points: 1883
Reviews: 806
Thu Sep 25, 2014 5:28 pm
View Likes
Aley says...



Welcome everyone who has joined! I'm really glad to see how many people have started to participate. I'm going to tag you guys just so you know this is updated this one time just to remind you to Subscribe because I will not be tagging you each and every time.

As some of you have seen, and some of you haven't, the resources got a little bigger as the week went on, and I will continue to add to it if you show me something that should be on the list.

The key addition is the link to the Writing Tutorial Resources Index!

This next set of posts is going to be getting all the information out there about some of the things we think is important when thinking about pre-writing It's not the be all end all, and it's not even really that detailed. It's just to get you skimming and thinking about all the different avenues of world creation.

After I post these things, I'll get some new challenges up. You can go through the index to find what you want to find, like if you're doing a challenge that's focusing on character, maybe you want to skim some character articles in the Writing Tutorial Resources or if you want to just get a rough idea of thoughts, you can skim the passage through our index here.

You will get a much more comprehensive view of what information you're seeking through an article in the resource section, than the measly paragraph we put together, so we strongly encourage you to go to the resources section and look through the indexes to find what you want to read about. If it's not there, we have a paragraph, and you can ask me, or another mod, if you have questions.

If you're not sure who to ask, here is a link to the list of mods HERE so you can see who is in what section and determine the best person out of us all to answer your question.

Now, your tags.

Spoiler! :
@TimmyJake @Ducan @ MarbleToast @Rurouni @Wolfare1 @Noelle @ancientforever @RavenMoonStone @megsug @lostthought @AriaAdams @r4p17 @BiscuitBatchAvoy @ScarlettFire @Avalon @Blues @WritingWolf

That should be everyone. Please remember to subscribe.


  





User avatar
806 Reviews

Supporter


Gender: Female
Points: 1883
Reviews: 806
Thu Sep 25, 2014 5:37 pm
View Likes
Aley says...



Image


Plotting

While all stories don't need to be plotted, it can be very useful to plot before you write so that you know where you're going, what needs to happen, and a general gist of where you're starting and ending. Most of us have heard about plot as a mountain you climb up with each consecutive chapter until you get over the precipice, which would be the climax, and then you fall like a rock, which is winding up the book and tying loose ends. If you read books, you'll see this sometimes, especially in modern fiction, but it isn't the only format. You can have any plot shape you want including a long droning basically normal life, until all a sudden all the little things that happened in the novel accumulate to one disastrous day that results in something horrible or amazing. These things can be identified and planned during the plotting stage.

Choosing Your Start Point
Choosing the start point can also be difficult. It’s hard to determine how far back you need to go to get the story rolling. Having all the history of your characters makes that even harder because people in themselves are interesting. The easiest way to do this is to figure out where the action starts after you've picked a climax or a theme to write about. There has to be something that triggers the forming of the burning question which the reader will be trying to answer all through the novel. A discovery, a realization, or an embarking on an adventure. Either way, something is going to happen where the character’s life is going to be changed. Some people choose to begin their novel right on that point, and others decide to start a few days before that, to get some of the lifestyle in. Either way, the start point needs to be close or around this moment, because otherwise any information gets boring and is unnecessary! Start right before the action starts! Right before the character’s journey really begins.

Getting Beginnings Right
How do I start?
How to start your story!
Presenting your Presentation: Titling your Title!
Presenting... Your Story

Choosing Your Climax
The climax should be picked through your theme. What is the main thing that you want to say with this piece of writing? Do you want to make a comment about the value of friendship? Maybe you want to say not to discount the little guy? Choosing a theme to your story can help decide what is going to be the best thing to show that theme, and thus, make your climax. For instance, a climax for a story about friendship could be when they're about to kill themselves, and their friend calls up to check on them because they were feeling down. A story about overcoming your problems could be them calling the friend instead, or calling a hotline. Depending on what you want to say, or what growth you want your character to have, you can pretty easily identify the climax that would best suit your situation.

Adding Dimensions (3) -- A Fantabulous Climax

Building Conflict Along the Way
The best thing about building a climax is doing it slowly. Instead of jumping into physical confrontation, consider smaller confrontations like arguments, mental struggles, and unresolved emotional baggage that you can show, and poke through the plot of the story. Use the conflicts you heard about in school to develop the major conflicts in the story. These include man vs man, man vs self, man vs nature, man vs machine, man vs the unknown, and maybe some others. Man vs man is the most obvious in conflicts, but it can be hard to work up without eventually having people come to blows. Try expounding on the conflict in the story through using the other versions of conflict to frustrated and agitate your characters when you want them to. Also consider that as you write this, your readers may become just as frustrated as your character, if you convey the feelings well, so give them a break too! Sometimes making conflicts creep back up again and again can be just as effective as building one after another. This technique can also keep the character motivated to do something other than curl up in a ball and cry themselves to sleep.

Atmosphere In and Out
Breathing emotion into scenes
Show and Tell
Conflicting Conflicts
5 Steps to Create Tension and Suspense in Fiction Narratives

Choosing Your End Point
Choosing the end point of your story is going to be one of the most important things you’re going to do. Why’s that? Because the end point is the grand finale which will either leave the reader satisfied, begging for more, or disappointed that it didn’t all come together. Which means it should happen directly after your climax, and should come naturally because there has been such a long journey to come this far. One thing you can start in pre-writing is to make sure that all the burning questions are answered! Consider what questions you think your readers will have and plan to include hints and answers along the way. This also means the main plot problem should be solved, even if you have other questions open (for sequels, cliffhangers!). In pre-writing, you can make sure the end was hard to achieve by looking over the plot you're writing. If it was easy to achieve you need to go back and make it harder for the characters. By the time we hit the ending we need to be able to see all they’ve struggled through to reach it. Also, touch down with the main character and emotions. Making the end point emotional, and making sure we see the main character in it always helps. The ending point is where the characters get their rest after all the turmoil you put them through, the solution to the greatest problem has been found, and it’s time for the reader to finally close the book, leaving with satisfaction.

Chapter endings
On "Happy Endings"
Cliffhangers

Overcoming Plot Hurdles
One of the easiest way to tell what things are going to write you into a proverbial corner is to bounce your idea off someone else and let them ask questions. You can also ask yourself questions like, why not just do x, or how are they going to y, but because you're the one who made it originally, usually it works better with a second look. This could also mean going back to an idea cold, but waiting for something to get cold can take too long to actually make an affective tool for pre-writing. That being said, try to take a new perspective on the situations and really think about it. Consider it from the enemy's point of view. If they really want to kill the guy, then why not just blow him up in the street? Consider atypical situations that would come from someone not socially acclimated. If you don't have a villain to consider, then perhaps look at the other side of the conflict, or what type of conflict you really want in the story. Maybe consider the situation through a mother's eyes, or a government.

Outlines Are Like Prescription Glasses
Suddenly a big dragon flew out and killed everyone...
Adding Dimensions (3) -- A Fantabulous Climax

Choosing What To Plot
Every writer has different preferences when it comes to plotting, and that's okay! If you work better not knowing your exact end point when you start writing, then by all means skip that step. If you need a detailed outline of every conflict along the way, grab a pen and start planning. It's also perfectly okay to get halfway through your story and discover that something you plotted out in pre-writing just doesn't make sense anymore. This isn't a binding contract, and plotting is not a requirement. However, taking some time to sketch out your ideas for a story is a great way to generate more ideas, develop plot arcs or scenes you already have in mind, and visualize a rough path of where your story is going to go. There's no right or wrong answer for what/how much to plot before you start writing, just do what feels right for you as a writer, and for your story.

And Now We Plot Against Plotting
Keeping Things Unpredictable: The Do's
Conflicting Conflicts
Plotting With Excel
Boring is Good
Pacing, and why it is important
Summary vs. Scene

  





User avatar
806 Reviews

Supporter


Gender: Female
Points: 1883
Reviews: 806
Thu Sep 25, 2014 5:40 pm
View Likes
Aley says...



Image


Characters

When it comes to pre-writing you really need to explore your characters, figure out their relationships and motives. The protagonist and antagonist need the attention first, but the secondary, and minor characters need just as much attention. They are the characters that move the plot forward, egging on either the protagonist or the antagonist. Think of your secondary characters. How many will there be? A few, a lot? Who will they support, the protagonist or antagonist? Or maybe both. These are the beginning questions that you have to ask yourself. Once you've figured out the logistics, such as number of characters and which side they're on, start thinking about which characters are more inclined to helping along the protagonist and antagonist. How do they know each other? Are they together 'til death? How far will they go to help the main character achieve their agenda? A good way to keep all of this information together is to make a list of characters and jot down ideas of who they are as a person and their relationships with the other characters. It doesn't need to be anything intricate, just some information to keep you on track while writing; enough that you will understand why your characters do what they do.

5 Tips for Realistic Characters


Good, Bad, Other Characters
Personality is not a buffet where you pick a trait and your character only has those traits. Instead, it is more like making lemonade, you start with water, and add in the mix, or the lemon juice and sugar. Through all of our personality traits, there is a certain intensity of those traits in individuals that makes them seem more of "something" than someone else. For instance, having a character who is honorable doesn't mean that they will only do honorable things. That same character can be dishonorable in the right situation. To understand these situations, and better understand the personality of your character, consider their personality like a sound board. You might think that your character is introverted, but how introverted are they? Do they still like to go out and be with close friends sometimes? Do they come off sociopaths? Can they speak to strangers? These different questions can help develop your understanding of what limits your character has, and how those limits apply to day to day life. Through the story, consider creating plots that test those limits and push your character into situations that expose their other sides, or cause them to struggle internally. This can be especially easy to do with characters who are considered bad, as they can have warped perceptions, strong personal codes, and emotional responses that are challenged by the protagonist in order to "win the fight." The more romanticist your style, the less rounded your characters need to be, so keep that in mind too while you're considering your style of writing.

Biography
Creating a history for your character requires intense knowledge about what can and cannot happen in your society, but sometimes, if you start with a character history, you can discover things that you need or want in your society in reverse. The biography's function is not just to put a history behind the eyes of your character, but also to give you a chance to understand their motivations. If you can discover your character's motivations, their personal beliefs, and their emotional scope, then you can write a fuller character. Even if the character is only in the story for a few minutes, it is good to have a basic understanding of motivations, beliefs, and emotions for that character to create a more realistic world.

Character Traits
When making a character, consider their weaknesses and strengths. Sometimes these things are as simple as "they don't completely understand abstract thought easily" or something more complicated like "they have to go to the bathroom every hour." These things can bring humor, reality, and personality to your characters in a way unique to them. They can also expose motivations through things they feel they are bad at, or good at, and thus may like, or dislike doing. For instance, the person who had to go to the bathroom every hour wouldn't want to take long trips in cars, not without knowing there are a bunch of restrooms on the way. Consider writing unique traits into your main characters and your secondary characters to develop the story into a reality.

An Inordinately Long Article On Writing Sexual Orientation
Character Flaws
Writing a Character From a People Group Not Your Own
Five Tips For Fantastic Characters

Character Biology
When entering into a new reality, or an old reality, we have to understand the biology of the characters we are creating. If you're writing a story set in our world, consider the reality of having to walk, run, or jog like your characters do in the book. Think about how long it takes to say something, and how much breath they have, but also consider things like food intake, stress, illness, and bodily functions. These basic understandings can come with research about water deprivation, physical, mental, or emotional stress, and distinct characteristics of the individual, such as sun burns, soar feet, eye problems, and so on. In a universe created, we have to consider making these things for the individual body, and understand it well enough to explain it in a believable way. If we have new beings, we must understand the functionality of their differences to remain consistent. We also have to make sure it's believable by determining the limits of any given character. These will play strongly into the strengths and weaknesses of the characters we create.

Tropes
In terms of literature, a trope is a convention that recurs in a certain genre or across the literary world. It’s something we’ve come to recognize from any number of stories. For example, a sci-fi novel might feature a mad scientist, a fantasy might revolve around a hero’s journey, or your main character might receive direction from a wise old man. Sounds like a cliche, doesn’t it? While tropes can become cliched if characters or situations fit too neatly into their specific tropic categories, they can also be used to an advantage if you give familiar character types a twist. For example, Pearly Soames of Winter’s Tale, by Mark Helprin, is your standard, run-of-the-mill ruthless criminal—except for a bizarre obsession with colors. His men can be in the middle of a high-speed chase with the coppers, yet he’ll pause to examine and appreciate a fresh coat of green paint on a door frame and let the painters know he’ll be back in a day or two to see how it looks when dry. Oddball twists on familiar tropes like this make for memorable characters.

Hero Clichés to Avoid
Good and Bad
Villain Clichés to Avoid

Voice of the Main Character
The main character’s voice is the most important voice in your story. This is because the story is usually—though not always—told from the main character’s viewpoint. Even in third person narration, this character’s personality and attitudes will color the word choice for the story. If the voice of the main character is underdeveloped, narration and dialogue can come across as generic, bland, or wooden. How can you avoid this? Practice writing monologues from your main character’s first-person viewpoint, regardless of what viewpoint you use in the story. In this exercise, don’t restrict your character to talking about the events of the story. Instead, write freely about a memory from the character’s childhood or an interaction with a person in the service industry—anything that can bring out the originality of your character’s voice. To make sure this originality has transferred from your free-write to your dialogue, take all the dialogue from a scene and copy it onto a blank page without any tags, names, or actions. Can you still tell who is saying each line? Can your readers? If so, good! You have a diverse cast of characters who stand out from each other. If not, your character’s voice may be too similar to the other voices in the story.

Character, Action, Idea
Character Interaction

Secondary Characters/Character Interactions within the Story
While getting the voice and quirks of your main character just right is important, the supporting cast characters is just as important. As John Donne said, “No man is an island,” and this is just as true of fictional people as it is of real ones. Consider all the people in your life, secondary characters appearing in a story about you. What are their roles? Look deeper than basic roles like “mother” and “friend” and figure out how they impact your life. Do they offer support or teach you? Are they good role models or poor ones? Do they excite your admiration, contempt, or a competitive edge? Secondary characters in your story will act similarly on your main character, thus deepening our sense of their character—and the main character's personality—and providing us with entertaining interactions as dissimilar characters are thrown together to deal with a single situation.

Well-written secondary characters often become reader favorites. For example, you probably know more Harry Potter fans who claim Luna, Hermione, Sirius, or Snape as their favorite characters than fans whose favorite is Harry himself. Much of the strength of these secondary characters is in their visible personalities and interactions with the main character of the series, but a large part of the reason they work so well is that they are complete people with their own back stories, even if we ordinarily see only one side of them. While it’s alright for secondary characters to be in the story for comic relief or extra tension, make sure you think of them as full people with their own lives rather than plot devices. The difference will come out in your writing.

Creating the Perfect Secondary Character

Character Pets and Animals
Character development can be deepened through the simple act of giving your character a pet to interact with. Your character’s attitude toward animals can tell readers a lot about her, but animals’ attitudes toward her can tell us a lot as well. If a dog flees at the sound of her voice, it says something very different than if the dog’s tail starts wagging the moment it catches a whiff of her. This does not mean that every hero in your story should have animal friends to come do their housework, nor that every villain should send the birds and beasts running. Experiment with character-animal interactions, but don't forget that animals can be characters in their own right as well. Use them for comic relief, to frighten or comfort other characters, or to further plot points. For an example, look back at the Harry Potter series and consider the roles of Hedwig, Errol, Pigwidgeon, and Crookshanks. Each animal has its own traits and function in the story.

Basic Debating: Establishing Credibility
Guide to Geography and Ecology in Fantasy (Updated)
Writing Horses Well
Wolves in Writing

  





User avatar
806 Reviews

Supporter


Gender: Female
Points: 1883
Reviews: 806
Thu Sep 25, 2014 5:41 pm
View Likes
Aley says...



Image


Style

Sometimes deciding the style of a novel is the easiest thing to do. We get certain ways we write, certain voices we are used to, and we tend to stick with them. For instance, I like to write in third person, limited/omniscient, past tense. Because that is where I'm comfortable, that's where I tend to stay, but that's still pre-planned even if I know what I'm planning on doing before I know what my book will be about. The thing is, we also need to be aware and alerted to if there could be a better style, tense, person, or form that would work for the story better, and this section will outline the pre-writing thoughts we should be having about just that.

Finding Your Writing Niche
Your Style

Tense
Tense is what we consider when we ask if we have already done something and are telling a story, if we are doing something, and watching it happen, or we're seeing something that will happen later. For the most part, we only have to decide if we want it to be past or present tense. While switching from past to present sounds like a good idea for a mid-book climax, it has to be done carefully and have it explained how the character was explaining the story. It is possible. With just one tense, it usually is an invisible tool in the story that no one ever sees, but if you're writing an action story, having the active present tense might be better than an adventure story where you want to cover huge areas of ground in a short time.

Changing Tense
The key thing to writing in a certain tense is more than just the affect, but consistency. If you can only consistently write in present tense while you're tired, use present tense. If you can only consistently write in past tense, then pick past tense. Changing your usual tense takes time and alertness which won't happen consistently in a long novel, so try with short stories for a few months first.

Person
Another consideration when you start a story is the voice of the story, or the innate style of the story that you want to portray. This style could come across in word choice (such as many multi-syllable words, and using words of the story naturally even though they are new words), choice of beginnings and endings for chapters (maybe every chapter is a cliff-hanger, or the middle of some minor action), the voice of the narrator (maybe they are sardonic with the characters' actions), and even how you visually mark things on the page (how often italics, bold, underlines, and type-face things are used, and if paragraphs are similar lengths, or a variety of lengths). While you might not consider it before you start writing, it can make a difference to expose social cues and history of who the narrator follows. For instance, you could change the language, and voice depending on who a third person omniscient narrator is following. It may be important to know dialect differences between characters already to show who is speaking when without speech tags, so consider incorporating this into the narration.

Point(s) of View and Narrative Distance
Before the story starts, to stay within the realm of consistent, you must consider point of view, and how omniscient or limited you want to make your narrator. While it is not a switch between limited and omniscient, it is good to understand the rules of your level. For instance, you might have a narrator who can only hear the thoughts of three individuals, and they are just suggested through the sentences, or you might have the literal italicized thoughts of one individual and no suggestion of thoughts form the others. Consider if you want to use tags like "she said nervously." for what characters because this does show a degree of emotion from the characters compared to "she said trembling." which just shows the nervousness instead of telling us what she was feeling. Know who you want to follow, and how you want to transition between following one person to another if you switch. These things will help make the writing faster when you get stuck and allow you either a lot of space, or conformity to a uniform which a reader will appreciate.

Adding Dimensions (1) -- First Person Narration
Point of View Within Third Person
The Seven Deadly Sins of Island Hopping
3rd Person Writing

Form
When pre-writing, take a few minutes to think about what sort of structure you want the overall novel to have. Do you want it to be broken up into long chapters that represent each section of the person's life with mini-chapters? Do you want it to just be chapters of 5,000 words? How much action or plot do you want to put into one chapter? After you've taken your plot, consider what plot points can go together, or what has to be separate because of a time skip or space needed to rest and recover from reading something like a fight scene. These things will help with the pacing of the novel and keep a consistency between the chapters and plot.


  





User avatar
806 Reviews

Supporter


Gender: Female
Points: 1883
Reviews: 806
Thu Sep 25, 2014 5:42 pm
View Likes
Aley says...



Image


Worldbuilding - Society

Building your world is important to creating a realistic feeling story, and one way that you can build an aspect of your world is to create a unique vision of the society that you detail out. If you're writing about a society that is in our world, or creating one of your own, consider these aspects of the individual level of society, and the business, government level of society so that you can see the world as a complete society. Although you might not include any of this in your writing, it is still a good thing to know so as you write, it slips into the writing without having to force the information, or info-dump.

Jobs/Industries and who runs them
Industry is reliant upon setting. Obviously a desert town won't have fishing jobs. The writer has to determine what education characters need for what kind of job and what is available in the area. They also have to determine how the industry affects the area and vice verse. Any boom in jobs or production leads to a rush of people which often leads to ghettos and crime as well as a mingling of different cultures. Areas that are mainly based in trade are also very diverse while areas like fishing towns are probably more isolated. While pre-writing consider what sort of economics you want in your story, and how it will affect what people do and do not have. Consider national wealth through the types of industries they profit in and their strength among world powers. Fuel is the most sought after resource in our world, what about your world? Now, no matter what the industry is, there will be jobs for all kinds of people from no education to as much education as there is available. Keep in mind that ports are very important for countries and trading, so there will be diversity and heavy populations in these areas. Keep in mind that soil near rivers is the most fertile. Rivers are also lanes of travel, so there will be cities along them. Mountains will having mining and forests timber.

Clothing
Clothing is an often overlooked aspect of world building, even though it conveys a lot of important information about characters and the world they live in. Studying the history and cultural importance of clothing is a good way to enrich your own writing. Consider what taboos or wealth statuses your characters could be seeing or wearing in your story, as well as how much of the naming systems you want to take from our world, or create in your own.

Social Organization and Stratification
This touches on several parts of a society. Government is a large one, but also religion, gender roles, and other aspects. When pre-writing, consider how many races your world has and if these races are equal or if the religion of your area prefers a certain type of person over another. You'll also have to decide whether your society is patriarchal, matriarchal, or both. How close is your area to equality? What groups are fighting for equality? What role does the government play in enforcing equality or inequality? How much of a role does a character's socioeconomic class play in their equality and how hard is it for a character to improve their lifestyle? All of these questions are important for deciding how your society is organized. Keep in mind that certain groups of people will play certain roles in the society. Individuals favored in a society will have the best jobs, often in leadership. Individuals not favored will be more likely to have jobs dealing with menial labor. Majorities will normally be in control and favored, if this isn't true for some reason, there must be a reason why. In fact, there should be a reason (logical or not) for any inequality whether that reason be in religious rhetoric, history, or tradition.

High Context and Low Context
High and low context societies refers to the general belief in paper, or verbal agreements. The difference between the two cultures is mostly centered around how they treat one another. In a high context society, they rely heavily on what you say as what you mean, and building verbal trust between two individuals. Breaking this trust is a serious offense and apologies can be long, drawn out, arduous things. In a low context society people are more likely to believe the actions, such as signing documents, than words. There is more value on facts and correctness than elaborate language and promises. Choosing whether your society is low or high context can be important to determine reposes to violations, how they speak to one another, how much they rely on body language as opposed to verbal language, and how heavily the punishments should be for things like breaking contracts, being late, or breaking laws. You can also make a mix of these two and decide what parts of society are high context, and what parts are low context. As examples, look at Japan, China, and Korea or other Asian, South American, and Middle Eastern countries for High Context. Low context is shown in the United States, and Europe.

Wars or History
History is a huge aspect of character relations. The actions of an ethnicity decades ago will impact how they are viewed in the time you're writing about. With history and wars, the writer has to be concerned with two things: consistency and logic. No country randomly changes their behavior. If they're an isolationist country, they will continue to isolate themselves unless there's an event that has a policy changing impact. This can be an attack or some talented diplomacy. Alliances are a big deal. No country breaks an alliance without considering consequences, and alliances can pull countries into a war. Make sure that a war taking place seems reasonable. A small country isn't going to attack a huge one without strong alliances, and allies aren't going to turn on each other without good reason. Remember that even after a war is over, tensions will still exist. You'll need to decide how that affects your society. Consider how peace was brought about. Did a country win the war or was an agreement reached? Be sure to include the popular opinion in what your countries' governments choose to do. Everyone won't agree, especially when it comes to something as world changing as war. What kind of people don't agree with war? What kind of peoples support it?

Government/Politics
The easiest thing to do to define a government is to first figure out who rules a country. Is it one person or many? Do they share their power with other less powerful entities? The second is to decide how this person or people got their power. Is it inherited? Earned through some traditional process? Do the people nominate someone? The questions get a little harder after that. Now you need to know who controls the ruler(s). Is there a group that keeps them from completely taking over? Is there one person that has special influence? A note to keep in mind is that the people always have some power, no matter the government. The government is trying to keep the people happy or at least keep the people thinking their happy. An unhappy population is not a way for rulers to stay in power. Rulers that don't care about their citizens are usually insane or the unhappy people are a conquered people.

The other large aspect is how do people speak their opinions in your society. Can anyone offer input? How many different groups are there expressing opinions? How heated do political debates? How are political disagreements solved?

The people of a country are also very important to a government. How much power does the government have over the people? How much respect does the people give their government?

Religion
Religion can be tricky. A writer needs to identify how many gods are in the religion. How a god or gods are worshiped is an important factor as well. This will determine what kind of people are faithful to the religion. Religion has a great affect on how people perceive each other. Does the religion encourage giving to the poor? Does the religion create some sort of inequality? What kind of people are in charge of worship services or places of worship? Can it only be men or women? Religion also affects clothing in an area. Does rhetoric call for modesty? What do the religious officials wear? Finally, in most religions, the people practicing it are working towards something. Whether that is a peaceful afterlife, world domination, or both. You as the writer have to make it clear why they believe what the believe.

Effects on society
Once you have the religion figured out, you need to decide how it'll fit into the society you've created. Will it be an integral part of the characters' lives or will it just be an after thought? Some characters may want to base their actions on religion while others could care less. This will help you with your character development as well. Once you understand how your characters react to this, you can expand it tot he involve the entire society. Is there an overall view that these people have on religion affecting their lives?

Creation Story
Your creation story will most likely remain in a pre-writing notebook somewhere, or a notebook of any kind, really. Unless of course it is important to the plot of the novel. Chances are you're not going to find a use for it in the plot of your novel. However, it's something that you must consider exploring before you start writing. Especially in cases of fantasy novels, the creation story will help you, and ultimately your readers, understand the world that they've been thrown into. If the religion you have decided on is one that is made up, the creation story will be important to figure out how the god/gods came into existence as well as how the world came about.

Taboos/Punishments
Basically, what kind of rules and laws does your society implement. No society can survive without laws and punishment for breaking those laws. Making a list of the rules in your society will really help you for when you start writing. There should be a specific list of these rules and punishments for breaking these rules. Every rule has a different weight to it. As an example, in our society we would not put a person who was drunk driving on the electric chair. We also would not give a murderer 1 to 2 years in prison. Each rule has its own punishment. It is you job to figure this out during pre-writing as it will be harder to keep track of punishments and such as you are wrapped up in your writing.

Public Relations
Your characters are going to end up interacting with people of a different culture. How will they react around these other people? Will there be easy times or hatred? This is something that needs to really be hashed out. Knowing all of this before you start writing will help you continue on writing smoothly. When your reach a point where a character is forced to interact with someone of a different culture, you will be able to write the interaction smoothly.

Personal Agency
This is where you figure out just what your character can and can't do. Think about your character. What do you imagine them accomplishing in your novel? Once you figure that out, you can start thinking about how they will be able to do that. This fits in well with figuring out the plot as well. However, this fits more into the category of everyone else's reaction to your character. Just how much will your character be able to get away with? It's also important to consider how your character will be able to change the word they live in or change the people around them. Do people always listen to them, like they're a born leader? Or do they have to work harder and longer to gain people's trust? There's always going to be limits to your characters' personality and character. No one is perfect; not even characters.

  





User avatar
806 Reviews

Supporter


Gender: Female
Points: 1883
Reviews: 806
Thu Sep 25, 2014 5:46 pm
View Likes
Aley says...



Image


Worldbuilding - Setting

Just like the society that lives in the world, we have to also make the world. Sometimes this is an easy thing of googling and getting to know the areas that you've already been familiar with on a name level. Other times, it can mean creating a whole new universe for your society to be a part of, which can be a massive operation. The biggest thing about building the setting, is to know the rules that govern your land. If you have magic, you, as the writer, have to know what can and cannot happen and why. Create an explanation for things even if it doesn't make sense with science, or it's not going to be included in the story, as the characters will have that be a part of their mystery. If you're doing a realistic story, then you have to know the laws of their physical needs, how long it takes to get places, and other concrete details that will help you move around a universe that is real instead of feeling like they're drifting on a black sheet.

Maps
The best way to map an area depends on what type of area your story is in. If you're doing a fantasy or other-worldly setting, then it can be somewhere random on our earth, that's already a city or place, transplanted into your realm, or a drawing all your own. While Google is great for getting city layouts, creating one yourself can be the better option. The best method is either to draw and save an outline of it on the computer, and then make copies of that outline to do different maps, or to scan a drawn and inked outline and then print multiple copies to make many different types of maps. Usually multiple maps will be made for different scales, such as one of an important city to the book, one of the region they travel through, and one of the world in general.

Creating maps
Maps in pre-writing stages vary dramatically in type, size, and description and style. They range from maps of local areas, water ways, logistics, topography, city, population, buildings, floor plans, and movement. While maps may not be necessary for all stories, even in a school drama, it can be useful to determine where things are placed, how long it takes to get somewhere, and who might paths with each other while moving about the area of your world.

Ground Construction
Geography, the study of land shapes, and geology, the study of how it got that way, are important when considering the maps you make. For instance, having a basic understanding of geology will provide useful ideas about how the lands came to have volcanoes, when an island can become a chain, how cold a region might get, and where deserts might be placed while having a basic geographical understanding of your world could give you logistic times for how long it takes to cross the country, what time of day it would be on the other side of the world, if your world is round, how much area is land or water and where the boundaries of countries, governments, cities, or towns might be.

Making Cities
City mapping can be a unique feat alone. While mapping a city can be as easy as copying a city from Google, most of the time you need to determine several things including regions of the city which will be sectioned away for different ethnic groups, where residences will be, where businesses will be, how people will get from point A to point B most frequently, and most importantly, how long will it take to do that length of a trip. Some of these things need to be affected by time of day because of traffic, and populous congestion, while others can be as simple as drawing a couple circles on a printed map. The best way to go about drawing your own city will be to consider how the city came to be, for instance, is it near a major industry, a major water way, or a major crossroads? These things can determine the terrain that the city is on such as if the city is always slopes, and thus make each city unique from the last.

Distance
Size of cities, worlds, and countries can be hard to determine without first deciding how much walking you want your individuals to do, and what areas they're going to cover. While you might need a bit of the plot for this, it is the first step to 'zooming in' on the important maps you'll need. If you don't want them to be traveling a thousand miles to get to their friend's house, then you can place their friend's house and their house on a map and have a size for one or two miles. You can then zoom out and draw the city, then the country, then the world. You can also go backwards and draw the world, then determine you only want them within a month's travel of their destination, so you draw a continent or a land mass that only takes a month to travel across, then place cities at relative intervals to their journey where they would need food or supplies in your story.

Time
While not all planets must be round, or include a starry sky, it is important to determine what sort of time your map will be at and if they are on a 24 hour cycle or if they've split time up into different numbers, or just day and night. Usually half the planet will be dark while half the planet is light due to the orbit around a single sun, however, your geology might be different, so determining these factors can be very important to how, when, why, and what your characters do for sleep/wake cycles.

Ethnicity
Ethnicity can play an important part within your writing. That can come in the form of which country they are from, which would define their culture. It would affect the way they look, think and act. Their history and background could affect the story; what is their place within society, maybe there is racism. Put yourself in the POV of your character and analyze as much as you can to bring it to life. World building and especially characters are among the most important aspects of writing, so when creating your characters, get them right. Though a lot of these things the reader won’t even see or pick up on. It might not matter so much to them, but it should to you.

Ethnic enclaves
Ethnic enclaves are areas within a city or a community where certain ethnic groups have flourished and grown a strong cultural society. Examples for such enclaves would be ‘Chinatown.' As expected, these areas have their own culture and even economy which thrives in a very small community within a larger one. When considering your own think about identifying what makes each enclave unique, or why they formed. Creating these alcoves of society can begin to flesh out the unique, but it has to seem like the existence of these places is natural and has always been there, unless they're just starting, that's when you’re on track to creating something great and realistic.

Rules of the World
No matter the kind of story, whether it's fantasy or the realest of real fiction, every world has rules. These can be as simple as the laws of physics and the legal systems of real life governments, or as complex as entirely invented systems of magic. Each story is going to be different so it's important to consider the needs of your world and your story, and then stay consistent all the way through the story with the rules you've chosen.

Magic/Technology Rules
These rules are most relevant to fantasy and science fiction genre works, but can be important to consider for any world with a significant technological presence. When it comes to both magic and technology, these forces require limits and laws. Unlimited magic and technologies that don't follow logic are unrealistic and make a story harder for a reader to believe. When it comes to magic, consider who is able or allowed to use magic in your world, what magic is capable of doing, what consequences there are for using "illegal" magic, and what toll magic use takes on the user. With technology consider what is realistic and logical, what technology is capable of (and where the limits are), and what restrictions might be placed on it by law and government. And as always, once you settle on a set of rules and limits for your magic or technology systems, stick to those rules and don't break them.

Political Rules
Rules of politics, or the laws of a world's government(s) are often the rules we think about the least when we're writing. Considering these rules, though, can open up your story in ways you might not expect. Think about how the government of your world affects the lives of your characters; does it restrict things they can do on a daily basis? If your world has multiple countries and/or governing entities, think about the ways those political forces have interacted. Have there been wars? Do countries get along, or are they enemies? How does trade work? This information might only come into the story proper as a slight mention here or there, but understanding these rules can better help you craft a realistic story world.

Cultural Rules
These rules are the most flexible and dynamic of the world building rules you'll want to consider for your story. What's most important to remember is that culture exists on all levels of society, from the cultural traditions of an entire ethnic group down to the cultural norms of a small town, or even the members of a smaller group like a school or a business. These rules might dictate what's acceptable and what will get you shunned from the group. When building a culture and it's rules, consider things like environment, what the people living in this cultural group do for a living, how they interact with other cultural groups, what celebrations or holidays dictate their schedule, and how they live (housing, city layout, etc) within the environment their placed in.

Tying It All Together
While all of these rules will have some sort of impact on your world, it's important to consider which ones are going to be most relevant to the story you're writing. These are the rules that should be most explored and developed in the pre-writing stage. And keep these rules in mind when developing characters and exploring their motives, because the world a character has grown up in is going to massively impact the way they are. Knowing these rules might also help guide your plot once you figure out what can and can't realistically happen according to the rules of the world you've created.

Plants and Animals
Plants and animals are important in any world building exercise. They help shape the idea of what the world is like: if there are lots of man-eating plants, the world will come off as deadly, etc. If you're writing a story that takes place in the future, don’t forget that many plants and animal species have probably gone extinct. Consider the durability of any animals or plants you create and what conditions they might live in. The number one rule to follow when creating your own plants and animals is that form follows function. You don’t find frogs in the desert, nor do you find polar bears in hot climates. When you’re creating animals, think about what sort of environment they live in and what traits they would have adapted by living there. Look to animals that live on earth for ideas. Do research if necessary. Also know there are maximum capacities for everything: nature is carefully balanced. There cannot be more predators in an area than there are prey to feed them. This goes for everything. Energy always starts from the sun (or whatever star your world revolves around). Very few things thrive underground because there simply isn’t enough energy to grow things. With enough sun (although too much can be harmful), plants can grow. With enough plants, herbivores and insects can grow, etc.

Dialects
Sometimes telling character A from character B in dialogue comes from subtle shifts in how a person speaks. Other times it can give us clues about social status, region of ethnicity, immigration, and age. These factors all play some part in how we talk the way we do. Showing this in stories requires some key knowledge about dialects through the entire story. Mostly, know that dialects change. The way we say what we say changes depending on our audience, so feel free to change the word choice of your characters when they're in different situations. The way we pronounce words does not change as much, but depending on how you represent speech, this might not even appear in the book at all aside from tags like "they said with a long 'a' sound." Mostly, you can have other characters notice the difference when they're not from the same dialect, and either change the way they speak to reciprocate, or comment on the accent.

Language
In a story with more than one language, fictional or real, there is always a debate about putting in translations, or just saying that the language is different. The answer to this depends on the affect you want to have with the second language, the narrator, and the character's knowledge. Consider if you want them to know all, some, or few of the languages spoken around them in terms of discovering plot, characteristics of the characters speaking in those languages, and ease of writing. No matter if you include what is said or not, I strongly recommend, if you create your own language, to consider some of the common things in all languages, classes of words, tenses, and punctuation. Also write yourself a translation even if you don't include it in the story so you don't forget the other side of the story.

Names
Names can be an important indicator of nationality in stories. If you take a name generator, or a name finder, you can determine if a section or group of people will all have Russian, Celtic, Hindu, or even Ancient names. These styles are one way to distinguish between sections of the world and different cultures involved. You can also take names from places like the end of movies you really liked, famous people in history, or make them up yourself! These choices allow you to choose not only a tradition for how your characters are named, but what those names could be. Take ancient names for instance, before sir names were around. Names were often something simple followed by what you do, like Joe the Baker, which became Joe Baker, or Sammy the Shoemaker, which became Samuel Shoemaker. A name doesn't just have to be two names, a first, and a last. It can also distinguish things like address, generations, gender, or status in society. Adding these things into the story can create an easy way to slip in the aspects of society that might not otherwise be noticed.

  





User avatar
806 Reviews

Supporter


Gender: Female
Points: 1883
Reviews: 806
Thu Sep 25, 2014 6:14 pm
View Likes
Aley says...



Image


Please note that it is not necessary to read everything in order to participate in those challenges. That being said, these challenges are focused on Plot, Character, and Society Building.

Challenges do not have to be done in any sort of order, nor do they have to be done completely. Do what you want to of any challenge and adapt it to fit your needs.


Challenge The Fourth
Points A and B
When we start out a story, sometimes we don't know where we're going, or where we're coming from. We just have an inkling of an idea of the direction we want to head. Because of this, sometimes we never define our start or our end until we actually put pen to paper, or fingers to keys. This can make actually getting anything out, tricky, especially when you're staring at a white page, or a glowing screen.

Challenge Using what you know about what you want to write, create a start point, and an end point. These two places could be identified from information you've already created about the lives of your characters, or formulated from the message you want to spread. You could even just say There and There, and then clarify what that means for this novel.

Some of the ways you could go about this would be flow-charting the knowledge you have, free writing, or just guess and check by drawing multiple plots with different start and end points and seeing which one comes closest to your goal.

Challenge The Fifth
Mind Mapping
Mind mapping is a method which can be used to help branch out vague ideas. It can also be used to expand on the personalities and back-stories of characters. This type of method is especially beneficial to visual minds and artists as well. An example of a mind map can be found here.

Challenge: Make a mind map with the word 'characters' at the center. Have three main branches: Master characters: two or three characters who will be the main characters in your novel. Major characters: side characters who are important, not the focus and yet contribute to the plot. Minor characters: multiple characters who are mentioned and are there to build up the society, such as parents or friends. The minor character group will shift depending on the focus of the novel (Example: mother will be master character in a story about abuse, but a minor character in a chick-lit novel.) Add in details of appearance, personality and back-story. If you made it online, upload the image as an entry. If it was hand drawn, take a photo and upload it as an entry.

Challenge The Sixth
Law of the Lands
Each society has a list of laws and regulations people have to abide to. As well as these, there are often unspoken rules people generally know and stick to. Think about how your rules and regulations will be in your society. Will they be similar to those we have here on Earth? Will some of ours not apply? In a fantasy novel, there may be rules concerning dragons or other creatures. In a story about things here, consider what rules will be important to your story, such as drinking age, or prohibited substances. There are also social rules like how to be polite, who you have to respect, and those types of unspoken laws.

Challenge: Make a list of laws the people in your society must keep, and also note the punishment for not abiding to these laws. Then, create a rulebook of unspoken rules most people tend to follow. Upload both lists as a journal entry.

If you need to, you can use this template to help guide your laws.

Type of Order: Law/Rule/Guideline/Practice/Formality
Some of the differences include that laws would be written down so everyone was clear about the exact language of the order. Rules often are the same through many places, like "Respect Your Elders" but the wording can change and they're easier to break. Guidelines are things like "The Pirate Code" if you follow Pirates of the Caribbean logic. Formalities are things that society does but they never say that they do it or explain why. They're just, traditional things that you HAVE to do or you'll be seen as doing something taboo. These could be things like No Body Mutilation [tattoos, scars, etc.], or "Blue Eyes are Bad" which can have just about anything attached as a reason.
Language of the Order: This is the actual way someone would explain the law to someone. If it's an unspoken law, this might be a bit harder to write, so you might end up with longer sections. An example of this would be something like "Discrimination against people for their sex, skin color, age, weight, religion, orientation, and handicaps are chargeable by law for suffrage."
Punishment: This is what happens if someone does something outside of the "normal procedure" which we will be calling "Orders" or "Laws" or "Rules" or "Guidelines"
Origin: This is just a bit of background information so that you can remember what in your society created this law. For instance, if it's a LAW that you
Level: Unspoken/Spoken/Written This is just if it is a bias/belief/rule that people recognize or if they do it unconsciously, or if they have recognized it so much, they wrote it down.

Code: Select all
[b]Type of Order:[/b]
[b]Language of the Order:[/b]
[b]Punishment:[/b]
[b]Origin:[/b]
[b]Level:[/b]


  





User avatar
806 Reviews

Supporter


Gender: Female
Points: 1883
Reviews: 806
Tue Sep 30, 2014 7:39 pm
View Likes
Aley says...



Image


Please note that it is not necessary to read everything in order to participate in these challenges. That being said, here is a small splatter of useful resources already available to you on YWS thanks to our wonderful Resources section, all hail resources, Live Long, Live Lavishly, Live Lively. For more resources, check out the indexes. Writing Tutorials Article Index

Writing Tips
All YWSers Should KISS in Moderation
To Start Over or Not to Start Over?
Writing Chapter Summaries

Realism
Basic Debating: Establishing Credibility
Fantasy Map-Making Tutorial. (To be updated and improved)
Guide to Geography and Ecology in Fantasy (Updated)
Political intrigue tips

Plot
Adding Dimensions (3) -- A Fantabulous Climax
Outlines Are Like Prescription Glasses
Plotting With Excel
Keeping Things Unpredictable: The Do's
Keeping Things Unpredictable: The Don'ts
Motivational Plotting
Keeping the Same Events From Being Boring
Summary vs. Scene

Articles about Prewriting
All Important Groundwork
Before You Begin <the stuff you didn't want to know>
Five Tips For Before You Write
Strengths and Weaknesses
Building A Story
Building a Fantastic Story
A Clueless Writer's Guide to Writing Romance
Writing about Societies


Challenges do not have to be done in any sort of order, nor do they have to be done completely. Do what you want to of any challenge and adapt it to fit your needs. The titles and numbering is just to quickly keep track of what you have and haven't done, and to talk about them.


Challenge The Seventh
Make A Map
Every world has a map. To get started with your world building experience, consider the large scope of your world as a map like our globe has a map. If you don't have a circular world, then consider just the largest body of area that your citizens will be covering, from edge to edge. Try to go above and beyond that point, what, as the author, do you know makes the world, a world? Is it a position in the universe? a continent? an island? Now draw it!
Challenge:
Make an outline map of the world either drawing it on blank paper, or on the computer.
Scan, photograph, or trace your map and consider where your equator will be, where will get the most sun, the least sun, and where the happy mediums will be.
Draw indications of these things on one copy of the map. Include average hot and cold season temperatures for each climate zone.
Also indicate time to travel at the bottom of the map. How long would it take the average person to travel an inch on your map?


Challenge The Eighth
World Order
In every world, including ours, there are those countries which have better industries for food, fuel, water, tourism, and technology. Knowing what countries do what might not seem important, especially if you've barely made the societies in those countries, but the two things are interconnected. Those places that do more things in the food industry may value hard manual labor because of it. All you need to start is a general idea of the resources each place has.
Challenge: Make a list of all the major countries you've created in your story regardless of if your character will go there or not. Under each country, fill out the following information.

Spoiler! :
Resources: This will be for things that they have access to in mass. For instance Iran has oil, and China has a huge labor force.
Language: If you haven't named languages yet, just use Language A (e.g. English), or if it is a derivative of a language Language A2 (e.g. American English).
Government: Democratic [Voted Into Office], Republic [Birthed into Office], Military Rule [Raised into Office], etc.
Religion: If you don't have named religions yet, just use Religion A (Christianity), or if it is a derivative of a religion, Religion A2 (Catholic).
Imports: These are things the country needs because they cannot produce it cheaply enough themselves, if at all. If you want to get really fancy, make a note of who they import it from the most.
Exports: Things the country has a surplus of that they export to other countries. If you want to get really fancy, make a note of who they export it to the most.


Code: Select all
[b]Resources:[/b]
[b]Language:[/b]
[b]Government:[/b]
[b]Religion:[/b]
[b]Imports:[/b]
[b]Exports:[/b]


Challenge The Ninth
Plot Holes
Like it sounds, this challenge is to identify plot holes through using questions and hoping you discover something new about your story along the way.
Challenge: Answer the following questions in a Journal Entry.

Spoiler! :
1: What is the quickest way to get from your starting point, to your ending point regardless of what you want to have happen, your characters, or your plot?
2: What is normal life like for your character?
3: When is normal life disrupted and how?
4: What causes the story to go back to normalcy?
5: How would a different character solve the problem given to the main character?
6: What are the tools at your character's disposal to discover information?
7: What are the tools for your character to end conflict?
8: How would the plot change if your main character wasn't in the story?
9: Is the plot driven by the character, or outside events in the story?
10: Looking at your story from the perspective of someone who believes that all people are good in some way, what rationality would you have for your plot points?
11: Now, looking at your story from the perspective of someone who believes that all people are in essence greedy and bound to do bad things, what rationality would you have for your plot points?
12: What is the main conflict in your story, Man vs. Man, Man vs. Self, Man vs. Machine, Man vs. Society, Man vs. Nature...?
13: What is the main point you want to say through the story?
14: If you had to write the story in 1,000 words, what would the plot be?
15: If you had to convey the story in a five minute speech, what would you focus on?
16: Do you need all of your plot points to further the plot, or are some of them just for spectacle?
17: Can your story start farther in without interrupting the plot or losing key details about any specific events?
18: How would you summarize each of your chapters in 50 words or less?
19: Where does your character, and your reader, get a break?
20: What is the time period of the story?
21: What would the story look like if you wrote it from the point of view of your least-favorite character?
22: If your last challenge came first, how would the rest of the story go?
23: What would happen if your conflicts all happened at the same time?
24: What sort of devices will you write into the story to get your characters out of situations where there is no solution, and how can they be used earlier to avoid getting into those situations?
25: How do you justify the change, or lack of change, of your character at the end of the novel?


Code: Select all
[b]1:[/b]  What is the quickest way to get from your starting point, to your  ending point regardless of what you want to have happen, your  characters, or your plot?
[b]2:[/b] What is normal life like for your character?
[b]3:[/b] When is normal life disrupted and how?
[b]4:[/b] What causes the story to go back to normalcy?
[b]5:[/b] How would a different character solve the problem given to the main character?
[b]6:[/b] What are the tools at your character's disposal to discover information?
[b]7:[/b] What are the tools for your character to end conflict?
[b]8:[/b] How would the plot change if your main character wasn't in the story?
[b]9:[/b] Is the plot driven by the character, or outside events in the story?
[b]10:[/b]  Looking at your story from the perspective of someone who believes that  all people are good in some way, what rationality would you have for  your plot points?
[b]11:[/b]  Now, looking at your story from the perspective of someone who believes  that all people are in essence greedy and bound to do bad things, what  rationality would you have for your plot points?
[b]12:[/b]  What is the main conflict in your story, Man vs. Man, Man vs. Self, Man  vs. Machine, Man vs. Society, Man vs. Nature...?
[b]13:[/b] What is the main point you want to say through the story?
[b]14:[/b] If you had to write the story in 1,000 words, what would the plot be?
[b]15:[/b] If you had to convey the story in a five minute speech, what would you focus on?
[b]16:[/b] Do you need all of your plot points to further the plot, or are some of them just for spectacle?
[b]17:[/b] Can your story start farther in without interrupting the plot or losing key details about any specific events?
[b]18:[/b] How would you summarize each of your chapters in 50 words or less?
[b]19:[/b] Where does your character, and your reader, get a break?
[b]20:[/b] What is the time period of the story?
[b]21:[/b] What would the story look like if you wrote it from the point of view of your least-favorite character?
[b]22:[/b] If your last challenge came first, how would the rest of the story go?
[b]23:[/b] What would happen if your conflicts all happened at the same time?
[b]24:[/b]  What sort of devices will you write into the story to get your  characters out of situations where there is no solution, and how can  they be used earlier to avoid getting into those situations?
[b]25:[/b] How do you justify the change, or lack of change, of your character at the end of the novel?



  





User avatar
806 Reviews

Supporter


Gender: Female
Points: 1883
Reviews: 806
Sun Oct 05, 2014 4:44 am
View Likes
Aley says...



Image


Please note that it is not necessary to read everything in order to participate in these challenges. That being said, you will be a lot more informed if you skim over the sections about creatures, point of view, and religion. Here are some other sources to help you get a good understanding of what these challenges are trying to help you accomplish.

Writing Tutorials Article Index

Challenges do not have to be done in any sort of order, nor do they have to be done completely. Do what you want to of any challenge and adapt it to fit your needs. The titles and numbering is just to quickly keep track of what you have and haven't done, and to talk about them.

Challenge The Tenth
I Know, I Knew, I Will Know
Making sure you're staying in the same tense can be super important when it comes to editing out past, present, or future tenses from a story where you only want one. To get ahead of the curve, try practicing maintaining and identifying the different tenses.

Challenge: Write a 500 word short short story in past, and present tense.
Make sure they are two unique stories. Then free write just in past or present tense for ten to twenty minutes without changing unless necessary (such as talking about the past in present tense). Did you slip from one to the other in your writing? Read back through it after a day and check for mistakes by searching for things like "said" instead of "says." Which tense did you do better with? Consider the prose and cons of using that tense as your story tense. Post the results as your journal entry.

Challenge The Eleventh
Create a Creature
As we fill out our story with societies, rules, rituals, and other such things, we cannot ignore that which keeps the ecosystem going despite the technological evolutions or simplicities. If you're writing a realistic story, do the following with a per-existing animal through research. If you're making a story, follow the instructions.

Challenge: To fill out more about the flora and fauna, we'll be making animals and plants. Consider five plants that people will come in contact with on a day to day basis. These could be 5 types of trees, grass, vines, or things they eat such as fruits and vegetables. Write down the common name for these five plants. Now fill out characteristics about the plant such as how it looks, where it is found, how it aids the environment, what it takes from the environment, what eats it, and what it absolutely needs to survive.

Then add in anything you want which might be unusual but relevant to the story, such as if the plant absorbs radioactivity and mutates easily, or if it naturally repels a certain type of bug.
Now do the same thing with five major animals, excluding pets. Also add detailed descriptions of reproductive cycles, habitats, defenses, things poisons to them, sleep-wake cycles, and whether they're considered a pest by society.

Include at least two apex predators. Repeat this as many times as you'd like with as many sorts of creatures you wish to populate the world with. Later you may wish to include pets and pet care, and how the pets became domesticated, as well as animals that are cattle for produce such as cows, chickens, sheep, horses, lama, and rabbits.

For your journal entry write a paragraph about the animals on the hunt or being hunted, and include the plants as scenery, cover, or hiding places.

Challenge The Twelfth
All Hail!
As religion is a big part of how we began to understand the world, and how we begin to have a common cause and a cornerstone to some societies, thinking about the religion of your area, and the clashing religions is very important. If you're writing a book with an Earth based religion, such as a realistic fiction, take some time to uncover what social rituals and taboos are made by religion, what religions are in the area you're writing about, and how they will or will not affect your plot. If you're not writing an Earth based book, create, or discover the religions you wish to use.

Challenge: Write a fairy tale short story that reflects the religious beliefs of your culture which would have been told to your main character as a child if given that lifestyle.
If you want to go above and beyond, write out the creation story of your society and how that affects their word choice, such as when and how they would use words such as "create" or "evolve."

Challenge The Thirteenth
Meet the Neighbors: Character Challenge
Reading about other people's characters can make you see things you never do for your own characters. For instance, if you see a character you would never create, you might consider why you wouldn't create them, and perhaps, create one with similar characteristics for your own book or story. Because of this, it is important to read and watch what other people do to make characters.

Challenge: Take some time and look at other characters that people have created. When you find a character you're curious about, try to adopt that character's voice and personality in a bit of a short dialogue between one of your characters, and the character you're interested in. These other characters should be from other journals, so when you find one, be sure to tag the other person when you post the dialogue between the characters.



  





User avatar
806 Reviews

Supporter


Gender: Female
Points: 1883
Reviews: 806
Wed Oct 15, 2014 12:20 am
View Likes
Aley says...



Image


Please note that it is not necessary to read everything in order to participate in these challenges. That being said, you will be a lot more informed if you skim over the sections about style, character, and plot. Here are some other sources to help you get a good understanding of what these challenges are trying to help you accomplish.

Writing Tutorials Article Index

Challenges do not have to be done in any sort of order, nor do they have to be done completely. Do what you want to of any challenge and adapt it to fit your needs. The titles and numbering is just to quickly keep track of what you have and haven't done, and to talk about them.

Challenge The Fourteenth
Free Writing Plots
Free writing is a method used to get ideas that seem difficult to grasp and write down onto the paper. Writing continuously without regarding punctuation, grammar or spelling can help bring the key ideas like character profiles, plot and setting briefly down without going into too much detail. The main advantage of this method in pre-writing is to help begin the plan.

Challenge: Free write for fifteen minutes about the plot of your story, and how the characters will be involved in the storyline. Make sure you are only taking down the key elements that are essential to your novel at first. Once those are completed, go into more depth. Post what you've written as the entry.

Challenge The Fifteenth
Meet The Neighbors: Exploring Challenge
This challenge is a little bit more specialized than the others. Instead of focusing on your own story, take a break and let your ideas soak in as you compare it with other people's ideas and developments! The goal of this challenge is to give you time while still writing.

Challenge: Read another person's journal entries and ask questions, write comments, or discuss it with them. As you read through what they've made, note mentally what developments have happened as their journal progressed and what you like more as time moved on. Tag the person in your journal entry so they know you read their stuff and get the comments and questions.

Challenge The Sixteenth
Relationships
As we grow and learn, we do a lot of our development through the understandings we have of other people and the major relationships in our lives. While not always the case, most of the time characters will learn more about trust when they have been betrayed, and more about betrayal when they learn, again, to trust.

Challenge: Write a short story about your character being betrayed for the first time in their lives. This could be the first time they realize their parents are mortal, after their first relationship, or when their best friend finally stopped caring about them. If the character has never been betrayed, write about what defenses they keep up to avoid the pain of betrayal, and why they're like this in a first person day-in-the-life story.

Post your story as your journal entry.

Challenge The Seventeenth
Level of Omniscience
In every story, whether it is first, third, or second person, there is a level of how much knowledge we have as readers vs how much the author knows. In practically every case, the level of what the author knows is more than what the reader will know by the end. In a first person situation, this could mean an unreliable narrator. In a third person situation, this could be a lack of written thoughts. In a second person situation, where you have a group, such as a town narrating, it could be disjointed voices.

Challenge: Make a copy of your plot and put each point into sticky notes, separate word documents, or some other device. For each section, determine who will be in the plot point, and how much they will know about the reality of the events. Jot down notes in each area about how you could summarize this plot point in a different plot point if necessary, or if you need to see the event.

Using different colors, mark out people who do not appear in all plot points you need to see.

Then mark in a new color what people are in all the plot points you had originally.
Next, choose a third color, and indicate which people have the best advantage of knowledge for most plot points.

From this list, consider what character's thoughts you will give in the novel through narration, who you will avoid to avoid giving away too much information. Also consider who would share vital information to the main characters if necessary.

For the journal entry, post a paragraph about which characters you will avoid, which will be mouth pieces, and which you will use as omniscient voices.



  





User avatar
806 Reviews

Supporter


Gender: Female
Points: 1883
Reviews: 806
Sun Oct 26, 2014 5:40 am
View Likes
Aley says...



Image


Today's the last day of this being updated! Welcome to the last challenges!
Whether you're still planning on the same novel, a different novel, or you're just here for the fun, here's the final group of challenges that will be posted. There are a lot of prompt challenges floating around, so don't forget to check those out too.

Writing Prompts

Challenge The Eighteenth
Short Story Challenge
Sometimes the best way to get the voice, character motivations, limits, and thoughts of the character is just to jump in the middle. In this challenge, the goal is to get you writing a short story about the character in the way that your story would be written. It doesn't have to be your main character.

Challenge Prompt: the One Thing that the character loves above all else is threatened. How do they react?

Challenge The Ninteenth
Identify and Discuss
As writers, we may be attempting to maintain a quality of literature that exceeds that of a simple one-dimensional story. As we write, there is a reason we are writing the plot as we do, be it to make character A fall for character B within our limit and make that heart flutter, or to make a comment on how futile it is to resist your parents. These themes are supported through our plot.

Challenge: Identify a "theme" in your novel and talk about why it is what you want to do or say with the reader. Even if you did not have a theme in mind when you began to put together the parts, consider what someone could get from reading your novel, even if it is just "an escape" and talk about why you want to give them this, and how you'll go about it.

Challenge The Twentieth
Revise
Not every plot is perfect the first time through. This challenge is for you to revise the plot. Some of the ways you could do this would be to look for cliches, things that are predictable, things that could happen a lot faster, or adding in a subplot that continues to criss-cross with the main character's plot.

Challenge: Revise your plot! Look over everything that you have done, and consider what plot changes you want to make. When your plot is the best way to go about what you want to do, add notes about what scenes, foreshadowing, and devices you'll use in your plot. Post this revised and detailed version as your entry.

Post your story as your journal entry.

Challenge The Twenty First
Dress Up
People take a lot of care in clothes, and appearance. Take a brief skim of this article Things to Consider about Clothing and consider what clothes will mean to your society. Think about what latest trends challenge the old folks, and how old styles might be coming in our out of fashion.

Challenge: Draw or make the clothes your character would wear. You can either go get some thread, fabric, and needles and make mini clothes that your characters would wear, or you can draw them out.

Not good at drawing? Not a problem. If you can't draw and photograph, or make your clothes, find pictures of the outfits online.

Use explanations below the pictures in your journal entry to indicate any changes between the outfit, and your picture. Do this for as many outfits as you'd like the characters to wear, or have.

Challenge The Twenty Second
Personalize Me
As each city has a certain flavor, so does each ethnic group. With such a broad description of where and who you come from, there's a lot that goes into creating a mindset behind generations of beliefs and core attitudes.

Challenge: Take a copy of your world map and mark out areas of ethnically diverse subsets. Consider natural boundaries that might divide developing populations such as large rivers, lakes, mountains, bays, oceans, and rifts as places that may cause such a divide. Mark out what the general characteristics of those secluded sections are, such as any unique languages, religions, high or low context societies, stratification differences, naming changes, or idioms of the culture. Post up the map as your journal entry.

Challenge The Twenty Third
Remake
Starting a story we never quite know how characters will end up, but what if we could? What if, after synthesizing all the information we have about the characters we've made at the start, and all the new events in their life, we could predict, or attempt to predict, what they'd be like at the end?

Challenge Create a second profile writing out the changes of your character. If your character isn't changing much, consider making drastic changes, how that could come about, and why, and also consider why you would or wouldn't want that as your plot.

Challenge The Twenty Fourth
The Snowflake Method
The Snowflake Method is a system to expand from a beginning point and work farther into the story over time expanding both your original idea, and the characters that are involved with that idea.

Challenge: Using the idea of the snowflake method, write a sentence about your story's society.

Expand that sentence into three major points of your society, and a different summary of how these points interact.

Then take all of your sentences, and expand each one into a paragraph.
Post all the steps along the way in your journal.

  








If all pulled in one direction, the world would keel over.
— Yiddish proverb