I think the best piece of character design advice I ever received was actually from a band leadership camp I attended in june of 2017.
the speaker there gave lots of advice for leaders—obviously, it was a leadership camp—but his saying about personality flaws struck me as useful for writers too.
he said to us all “your curses are your blessings and your blessings are your curses” and went on to explain how because he was such a great speaker, it made him a terrible listener. he could give speeches for hours on end and inspire thousands of people, but as soon as someone wanted to talk to him one on one or vent to him, he struggled with it.
he had us write down our greatest weakness and relate it to our biggest strength (mine being that I am far too emotional, but I’m gentle with others because I can understand their emotions), and the whole time people are sharing theirs, my mind was running wild with all my characters and their flaws.
previously, I had added flaws as an after thought, as in “this character seems too perfect. how can I make them not-like-that?” but that’s not how people or personalities work. for every human alive, their flaws and their strengths are directly related to each other. you can’t have one without the other.
is your character strong-willed? that can easily turn into stubbornness. is your character compassionate? maybe they give too many chances. are they loyal? then they’ll destroy the world for the people they love.
it works the other way around too: maybe your villain only hates the protagonist’s people because they love their own and just have a twisted sense of how to protect them. maybe your antagonist is arrogant, but they’ll be confident in everything they do.
tl;dr “your curses are your blessings, and your blessings are your curses” there is no such thing as a character flaw, just a strength that has been stretched too far.
This is such a fabulous flip side of what I’ve always known about villians. That their biggest weakness is that they always assume their own motivations are the motives of others.
I got pretty fed up with looking for words to replace said because they weren’t sorted in a way I could easily use/find them for the right time. So I did some myself.
THAT FIRST SITE IS EVERY WRITER’S DREAM DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY TIMES I’VE TRIED WRITING SOMETHING AND THOUGHT GOD DAMN IS THERE A SPECIFIC WORD FOR WHAT I’M USING TWO SENTENCES TO DESCRIBE AND JUST GETTING A BUNCH OF SHIT GOOGLE RESULTS
I just wanna let y’all know that you do fanfic tropes all of the time, we just don’t describe them like beginning writers do. You:
Push your shoes off with your toes or with the tip of your shoe, most likely. Props for drama if you yank your converse or your vans or your boots off like a soldier in a scyfi drama, but otherwise, you’re “toeing your shoes off”
Humans are much better at dissecting scents than we give ourselves credit for. If you sit there long enough, you could dissect how your friend smells. I smell like “old, beat up cars, the sour citrus he isn’t supposed to have, and something musty and natural and unique to him that clings to all of his clothes.” In order that’s old flannel, three day old hair mousse, and fish tank water. Smells like cigarettes and oils cling to your clothes, stuff like fishtanks and the food in your kitchen seeps into your belongings. Don’t feel bad about describing scents, people carry our houses with us everywhere.
Have you ever pet someone else’s hair? That’s “carding your fingers through.” That’s it. It’s the same thing.
Ever walked around barefoot? Its three am and you’re trying to make Dark Lunch? You’ve padded around. You signal to other people nonverbally whether its coughing or sighing that you’re there so that you don’t scare them.
Smirking is a thing most of us do with our face. Grinning, looking cheeky, and raising our eyebrows are also all things your face does. Sorry
You might not get this if you’re a straight girl whose never had sex, but sometimes that little strip of skin between ya shirt and ya hips? The mouth can go there. That’s an intimate place to touch and its a vulnerable place to be exposed. Overused maybe, but a valid way to show a shift in the situation.
We all sigh!! Are some of y’all really saying that sighing isn’t a thing you do ten thousand times a week?? You don’t sigh when someone says something stupid as shit?? You don’t sigh when you gotta get up??
SAID IS A VALID WORD
Everything on your face casts shadows, I’m sorry you have weak eyelashes, or that somehow your brows are flat with your eyeballs
People laugh silently! I’m sorry you’ve never laughed that hard!! People giggle! People snort! People double over and move and flail! Have you ever fucking laughed?
For that matter how do y’all not blush and can you teach me
I’d also like to say sorry if: your heart has never skipped a beat reading something terrible, or when you saw someone you liked even platonically, or if you’ve never been so surprised all you could do was blink, that you never looked at someone like you loved them, and that you somehow never fucking show any emotion in your voice or your posture at all
Tl;Dr: Some of y’all are dragging people for shit you don’t know how to describe and damn if you ain’t still reading things and then telling beginning writers that they’re describing impossible things and writing weirdly when y’all don’t even write shit, its obnoxious as hell. To y’all that do write and are aggressively against this post, I bet you sure as hell use EPITHETS INAPPROPRIATELY ANYWAY, DON’T YA?
As someone who read voraciously for decades before discovering fanfic in my 30s, I can tell you something else this post doesn’t address:
THESE ARE NOT FANFICTION-CENTRIC. THIS STUFF IS HOW WRITING IS WRITTEN IN ALL FICTION.
Do an
outline, whatever way works best.
Get yourself out of the word soup and know where the story is headed.
Conflicts
and obstacles. Hurt the protagonist, put things in their way, this keeps
the story interesting. An easy journey makes the story boring and boring is
hard to write.
Change
the POV. Sometimes all it takes to untangle a knotted story is to look at
it through different eyes, be it through the sidekick, the antagonist, a minor
character, whatever.
Know the
characters. You can’t write a story if the characters are strangers to you.
Know their likes, dislikes, fears, and most importantly, their motivation. This makes the path clearer.
Fill in
holes. Writing doesn’t have to be linear; you can always go back and fill in plotholes,
and add content and context.
Have
flashbacks, hallucinations, dream sequences or foreshadowing events. These
stir the story up, deviations from the expected course add a feeling of urgency
and uncertainty to the narrative.
Introduce
a new mystery. If there’s something that just doesn’t add up, a big question mark, the story becomes more
compelling. Beware: this can also cause you to sink further into the mire.
Take
something from your protagonist. A weapon, asset, ally or loved one. Force
him to operate without it, it can reinvigorate a stale story.
Twists
and betrayal. Maybe someone isn’t who they say they are or the protagonist
is betrayed by someone he thought he could trust. This can shake the story up
and get it rolling again.
Secrets. If
someone has a deep, dark secret that they’re forced to lie about, it’s a good
way to stir up some fresh conflict. New lies to cover up the old ones, the
secret being revealed, and all the resulting chaos.
Kill
someone. Make a character death that is productive to the plot, but not “just because”. If done well, it affects
all the characters, stirs up the story and gets it moving.
Ill-advised
character actions. Tension is created when a character we love does
something we hate. Identify the thing the readers don’t want to happen, then
engineer it so it happens worse than they imagined.
Create cliff-hangers. Keep the readers’ attention by putting the characters into new problems and
make them wait for you to write your way out of it. This challenge can really
bring out your creativity.
Raise the
stakes. Make the consequences of failure worse, make the journey harder.
Suddenly the protagonist’s goal is more than he expected, or he has to make an
important choice.
Make the
hero active. You can’t always wait for external influences on the
characters, sometimes you have to make the hero take actions himself. Not
necessarily to be successful, but active
and complicit in the narrative.
Different
threat levels. Make the conflicts on a physical level (“I’m about to be
killed by a demon”), an emotional level (“But that demon was my true love”) and
a philosophical level (“If I’m forced to kill my true love before they kill me,
how can love ever succeed in the face of evil?”).
Figure
out an ending. If you know where the story is going to end, it helps get
the ball rolling towards that end, even if it’s not the same ending that you
actually end up writing.
What if?
What if the hero kills the antagonist now, gets captured, or goes insane? When
you write down different questions like these, the answer to how to continue the
story will present itself.
Start
fresh or skip ahead. Delete the last five thousand words and try again. It’s
terrifying at first, but frees you up for a fresh start to find a proper path. Or
you can skip the part that’s putting you on edge – forget about that fidgety
crap, you can do it later – and write the next scene. Whatever was in-between
will come with time.
*Blinks* I-I’m not the only one to call writer’s block needing to un-stick the story?
I compiled some prompt lists I found to form a list of 76 kiss prompts. Send in a number and a character and one of us shall write a one shot based on it.
“Good morning” kiss
Kiss on the forehead
Drunk/sloppy kiss
Awkward kiss
Angry kiss
“I’m sorry” kiss
“I’ve missed you” kiss
Seductive kiss
“War’s End” kiss
“Goodbye” kiss
“I almost lost you” kiss
Kiss on the nose
Kiss on the ear
Kiss on the neck
Kiss on the back
New Year’s kiss
Needing to kiss to hide from bad guys
“I do” kiss
Shy kiss
Surprised kiss
Kiss on a dare
Sad kiss
Exhausted parents kiss
Kiss of life
Kiss inspired by a song
Jealous kiss
Giggly kiss
First kiss
Last kiss
Kiss under a full moon
Kiss at dusk
Kiss at dawn
Kiss in a dream
Returned from the dead kiss
Themed kisses
“We can never be together” kiss
It’s-the-end-of-the-world kiss
Awkward teenage crush kiss
Spin the bottle kiss
Hiding/hoping not to be caught kiss
Forbidden kiss
Sated kiss
Soft kiss
Tender kiss
Passionate kiss
Long kiss
Quick kiss
Morning kiss
Before Bed kiss
In Secret kiss
Public kiss
Accidentally Witnessed kiss
Against a wall kiss
Against a Locker kiss
True Love kiss
Caught off-guard kiss
Breaking The Kiss To Say Something, Staying So
Close That You’re Murmuring Into Each Other’s Mouths
Moving Around While Kissing, Stumbling Over Things,
Pushing Each Other Back Against The Wall/Onto The Bed
Kissing So Desperately That Their Whole Body Curves
Into The Other Person’s
Throwing Their Arms Around The Other Person,
Holding Them Close While They Kiss
Hands On The Other Person’s Back, Fingertips
Pressing Under Their Top, Drawing Gentle Circles Against That Small Strip Of
Bare Skin That Make Them Break The Kiss With A Gasp
Lazy Morning Kisses Before They’ve Even Opened
Their Eyes, Still Mumbling Half-Incoherently, Not Wanting To Wake Up
Routine Kisses Where The Other Person Presents
Their Cheek/Forehead For The Hello/Goodbye Kiss Without Even Looking Up From
What They’re Doing
Being Unable To Open Their Eyes For A Few Moments
Afterward
One Small Kiss, Pulling Away For An Instant, Then
Devouring Each Other
Staring At The Other’s Lips, Trying Not To Kiss
Them, Before Giving In
When One Stops The Kiss To Whisper “I’m Sorry, Are
You Sure You-” And They Answer By Kissing Them More
A Hoarse Whisper “Kiss Me”
Following The Kiss With A Series Of Kisses Down The
Neck
Starting With A Kiss Meant To Be Gentle, Ending Up
In Passion
A Gentle “I Love You” Whispered After A Soft Kiss,
Followed Immediately By A Stronger Kiss
When One Person’s Face Is Scrunched Up, And The
Other One Kisses Their Lips/Nose/Forehead
Height Difference Kisses Where One Person Has To
Bend Do Wn And The Other Is On Their Tippy Toes
Kisses Where One Person Is Sitting In The Other’s
Lap
Kisses Meant To Distract The Other Person From
Whatever They Were Intently Doing
Plume de Lynx 