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Creativichee

@creativichee / creativichee.tumblr.com

Creative narrative resources || Please, do not follow if underage
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i actually kinda enjoy love triangles? they do get done poorly so i get why people tend to hate them because sometimes they exist ONLY as a cheap tactic for relationship tension, but even so I don't really mind that.

some reasons people don't generally like love triangles

Type 1 love triangle: A likes or is liked by both B and C.

  • Usually, there's one obvious winner. And it's usually the first character A interacts with. (So for examples sake, B is the main love interest, C is the secondary love interest) This part is actually ok, but readers will sometimes check out of any A&C scenes because they can tell their love wont go anywhere.
  • It can be frustrating when the secondary love interest (C) is more likable than the main one. Sometimes C is so good that it makes B look bad lol.
  • If C is LESS likable, they're just an annoyance for the audience, made doubly annoying by A's affection towards them.
  • When C only exists to add a speedbump to A&B's relationship, it's very obvious and might not be very enjoyable to read.

Type 2 love triangle: X likes Y, Y likes Z, Z likes X.

  • It's generally a more interesting format than type 1, but the cyclical nature of it can annoy fans that want progress in a specific relationship
  • This type is common in episodic content that has to maintain some kind of status quo. If the triangle is a core part of the status quo it usually isn't altered permanently or until the end is in sight. Can get repetitive.

Before I get into the part where I talk about cool things about love triangle, I do wanna say that if your characters are nicely fleshed out, even the most basic love triangle is still completely FINE. you don't need to go subverting things if you're happy with what you're doing and mindful of the above pitfalls.

anyway,

Things Love Triangles sometimes do that I like

(it's mostly type 1 triangles)

  • One of the triangle points is secretly a villain, or becomes a villain. I think a famous example of this is in Frozen but lol it's a bit poorly done . As long as the villain isn't SUDDENLY a villain, it's great. I would also tread carefully with rejection being a major motivation for turning to villainy. It can be a valid and even interesting motivation but I've seen some Yikes executions of it.
  • The first character that A has chemistry with is NOT the final love interest. Maybe I like this because it's justice for all the good secondary love interests that have died lol. No but really, putting the main character in a brief relationship with the secondary love interest before they get with the main one offers a lot of opportunities. The main character gets a chance to learn more about romance and about their own feelings.
  • i don't think I've ever seen a piece of media taking a love triangle and developing it into a polyamorous situation but I want it
  • Here's one I'm actually writing right now: Characters B and C eventually fall for each other rather than character A.
  • Basically as long as the secondary love interest is more than that, it does so much to improve the situation. Even if it's just that they're a fun character even outside of their relationship to the main character. Giving them some plot significance helps tho.
#mod talks#just thinkin bout love triangles!#romance#love triangles
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A writing thing im struggling with is when I see a cool visual media narrative THING and it inspires me, but boy is it hard to take the use the tools of visual media and translate them to written word.

In visual media you can use a ton of subtle things to suggest things to the audience. Like if i want to foreshadow that a villain character will make a face turn, theres visual symbolism i can load into that character. I can dress them in the same colors protagonists wear, as a basic example. Yes, i can still do this in written word, but - the nature of writing is that if you went through the bother of describing something it probably has importance, and as soon as I point out this visual foreshadowing cue, it is no longer a subtle thing but now a big obvious thing. Another example- in visual media, a glance between characters can say a lot without explicitly stating anything. Accomplishing that in writing is a little tougher because you, the narrator, have to state SOMETHING to render that glance in the reader’s head. Another example- In a visual medium, if a character is fidgeting the viewer can interpret that as just a miniscule part of the rest of the scene, but if in a written piece you write that the character is fidgeting, now its being focused on, even if only for the one sentence.

I don’t think its an extremely difficult feat because surely other writers are accomplishing subtlety like this, perhaps its more of a personal writing weakness. Probably I’m just overthinking it lol.

Oh and the other visual media thing I like is the framing of a scene and I cant think of any significant ways to translate compositional theory to a written scene, other than general set design.

Anyway i’ll challenge myself to find ways of translating “impossible” visual media conventions into text and hey why dont you try it too.

#mod talks
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Sending me asks vs chat

I’m open to using the new chat feature if you want to use it! Chat is best used for:

-Sending in single entries for generator outcomes -Asking me something you don’t really want published -Reporting generator/blog bugs -Showing posts I ought to reblog here -Showing off weird/fun results you got from a generator Asks are better for -Multiple entries for generator outcomes -Questions for advice (so I can publish them for others to use)

#mod talks
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I don’t have enough original content for it now but someday I’d like to start a patreon to support me in writing articles about, well, writing for one thing, narrative structures, symbolism, specific topics that are useful to genre works, that kinda thing. And more generators if I could just learn some better coding techniques. 

I’d really love to just write and research articles about stuff that would be helpful for writers (and make more generators too, I guess) but I can’t justify spending as much time as I’d like to on it when I have my fiction writing I should be doing instead. 

Like I have a setting in my fiction world, it’s a windy country so there’s tons of windmills, yeah? So while I was researching windmills I kind wanted to write out all of my findings in a way that appealed and aided other writers and world builders. I think that’d be a dang cool article to read and it could be helpful towards someone else’s worldbuilding endeavors, or at least give someone some ideas. But, again, couldn’t justify the time it’d take and I just get the details I need for my story and be done with it.

Basically I would totally love to write research or literary papers like I did in school but with an actual intended audience that isn’t the teacher grading it. 

#mod talks
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heshineslikegold asked:

Hi! Just thought I'd say your blog has really helped me with my creative writing, I was wondering if you have any tips or resources for writing in the Romantic Era? The time around authors like Keats, Wordsworth, Austen and those styles of novels and poems? Thank you!

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Sadly I know next to nothing about specific eras and have done little study on specific writers, my educational focus and experience is mostly in the area of general narrative structuring, worldbuilding, and character development. 

I’m also not very interested in that area so it’s not on my radar exactly.

BUT, I’ve been meaning to make a post or a page of other writing blogs to follow, so that will be up shortly and you should rifle through those blogs to see if you can find anything helpful. Remember you can search any blog even if they don’t have a search bar by using username.tumblr.com/search/KEYWORD

Those blog recommendations will be on THIS PAGE (at the time of posting it won’t exist yet so check back in a bit if it goes to nothing)

Sorry I couldn’t be of help on that topic but I’m glad you’ve found the blog useful otherwise :>

#mod talks#heshineslikegold
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alexxkun asked:

can there be more romantic or 18+ rpg genorators in the "screnio genorator"?

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I’d rather keep sexual stuff out of it and I like the current balance of romantic vs non-romantic outcomes. Though a generator specifically for shipping isn’t out of the question... hmm.

Maybe I’ll ask some Imagine Your OTP blogs if they’d want some of their posts in a generator. 

#mod talks#catsonpoptarts
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RPGENS > CREATIVICHEE

Some of the links to my generators may stop working for a little bit. I’m about to start setting up redirects so hopefully they should work again shortly.

Edit: I think all the redirects are in place, please let me know if any other links are broken.

#mod talks
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While I’m talking a lot, lemme say this.

If I ever say or reblog anything that sounds totally factually wrong, let me know. Providing sources would help but aren’t required, and if they aren’t provided I’ll research the topic on my own, to the best of my abilities.

With regard to my opinions or topics that don’t necessarily have hard facts: I am a white American and while I try very hard to be mindful, I’m very likely to be incorrect or misguided when it comes to topics about other races, cultures, ethnicities, etc. Please do not be afraid to correct me or point it out if I say something wrong about these groups I am not part of, I will apologize and amend the offending post. 

I will not cater to the feelings of fellow white people who can’t examine their own privileges and behaviors, however.

#mod talks#about the mod#sorta
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Anonymous asked:

In Christianity, you know that book that was written down by people in Africa, Jesus is basically good because he's got a bright white glow about him and Judas is evil because he sneaks in shadows to commit crimes. They're the same race, and I don't think those people would have thought of people's skin tones when they were writing it (especially since the slightly paler Egyptians feature prominently as being evil) you're forcing racism where none actually is.

[Before I get started, context for readers just stumbling upon this. This ask comes in response to posts about both racial coding and racial implications of Black and White symbolism]

-In Christianity, you know that book  X

The name of the book you are looking for, I assume, is the bible.

-written down by people in Africa X

This is so laughably vague and also totally ignores the fact that, now and in the era the Bible was written, Africa is made up of several different cultures, countries, and people. 

Ah yes. The entirely unified culture of The People In Africa. There’s nothing racist about generalizing an entire continent of people or conflating them as one cultural entity.

Also:

(Source)

- Jesus is basically good because he’s got a bright white glow about him X

I challenge you to find any bible passages that explicitly state he glows white. Because out of any passages describing gleaming, glowing, shining, illuminating, etc, not a one describes the color. While light is tied to white and other lighter colors, this does not mean the symbolism is totally interchangeable. 

-Judas is evil because he sneaks in shadows to commit crimes ✓

Judas carries out his betrayal in the dark of night. I’d still argue that like glowing and white, darkness and night are more the focus rather than the color black itself, and we’re talking about Black and White symbolism, right?But dude, there’s so many instances of black being tied to sin and sickness and stuff in the bible and you go for the flimsiest example? You might have had a more compelling argument if you, I dunno, looked through a bible first.

-They’re the same race  ✓

True as far as I can tell

- I don’t think those people would have thought of people’s skin tones. X

-(especially since the slightly paler Egyptians feature prominently as being evil) X

 So which is it, did they not care about race, or were all the light skinned Egyptians bad guys? If they didn’t care why would they write about about the skin tones at all? Who are these light skinned Egyptian bible figures you are talking about? Because looking through the entire biblical cast is significantly more of a time investment than the other points I’ve researched and if you can’t be bothered to name your examples that support your argument, why should I bother.

-you’re forcing racism where none actually is  X

If you only read one of these responses, of these make it this one, alright? Because you’re making a stink over a point I didn’t even make. No where did I or the post I linked say “Usage of White and Black Symbolism is always inherently racist.” The point was that it is often used in racist ways, often used BY racists to reinforce stereotypes. Without taking a critical eye to these uses, you risk (often unintentionally) regurgitating those views. But maybe you would have figured that out if you hadn’t made a knee-jerk conclusion of #not racist and read the whole post I linked to. You’re so worried about what people are crying racist that you can’t take a damn minute to consider the points brought up.

2 / 6 correct 33% see me after class.

Now that I’ve established you have no damn clue what you’re griping about, here’s another thing: The Bible is not the sole foundation of Western Culture. It’s a significant influence, yes, and Christianity- religion in general, really - does play a big role on Light and Dark symbolism, often in the literal sense of illumination vs lack-there-of. Do you think that just because the bible is doing symbolism acceptably that all the other uses of it by western society are also fine? What about the millenia of cultural development since the bible was written? Racism as we know it today was a totally different animal than the racism of THOUSANDS OF YEARS AGO. The influences are still present in some cases, especially when it comes to antisemitism, but don’t you dare imply that because the symbolism wasn’t racist THEN, it can’t possibly be racist TODAY.

So in short not only did you miss the point but your argument is also a disaster. Clearly you’re just making a (shitty) argument because you can’t stand the thought of analyzing works to find aspects that could be possibly harmful to oppressed groups, because you certainly weren’t making the argument for the sake of biblical or symbolic accuracy. 

Thank you and goodnight.

(To any of my followers who ARE biblical scholars, let me know if I’m off on any notes here. My knowledge is shallow but at least I made an effort to google things instead of pulling bible facts out of my ass ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

#racism#the bible#Christianity#Jesus#Judas#Anonymous#mod talks#anti-Semitism#symbolism
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Anonymous asked:

I'm worried that none of the ideas for 'original' stories I have are actually original, as I've read so many fanfictions or I talk about an idea and somebody says they've read 'indie' fics about something with the same/similar idea. I want to avoid tropes/cliches but it seems like everything I write about I end up finding out /is/ a cliche. Help?

Before I get into the meat of this, I’d like to discuss the difference between a cliche and a trope. A trope is a narrative tool such as a common plot device or character archetype that can be seen often in story telling media. A trope becomes a cliche when it is widely overused by the narrative world. 

Cliches are not themselves awful and untouchable. Terry Pratchet said, “Clichés are the hammer and screwdriver in the toolbox of communication.” There’s a lot you can do with them once you become fully aware of how they’re over- and misused. For more reading, check the Cliches page on TV tropes. (WARNING! TV TROPES IS A TIME SINK!)

On one hand, it’s good that you’re actively working to get outside the box with your writing. On the other hand, you may have heard the phrase that “Nothing is original.” 

I’m a little ambivalent towards that phrase. It’s true that after ages and ages of humans telling stories, just about anything you can think of has been done before. This does NOT mean, however, that your version of a story (or how you use a character archetype, plot trope, etc) has been done before. You’re the only one who can do your take on it.

So, I’d like to do some notes about both using cliches and other frequently used things in effective ways, as well as avoiding them if you chose to.

First, regarding use of cliches:

  • As touched on, author interpretation is key. If you hone your writing style to a razor edge, you could retell the oldest and most played out story and it would still be an enjoyable read. 
  • The problem with using cliches is that the audience can instantly see that the cliche is in progress, and in general if the audience knows exactly what is going to happen, your story loses all of its tension. A villager mentions a dragon terrorizing the shepherds? You can bet the protagonist is going to either fight it or tame it. There’s no tension as the protagonist travels through the fields and encounters the dragon because the reader’s thinking “Ah yes, there’s the dragon. I knew it would turn up.” But you still want to have a story about a dragon and you have to mention it earlier in the story without it seeming like the dragon came out of no where. How can you accomplish this without the audience seeing exactly where this is going? You could conceivably play on the audiences expectations. When they’re expecting a real dragon, instead it’s a pyromaniac cultist who makes frequent sheep sacrifices and wears a paper mache dragon head. You could instead make less obvious suggestions of dragon presence. Maybe the villagers think it’s rowdy bandits that are stealing sheep and torching the land because bandits are more likely in a world that may not even realize dragons exist. Genre savvy readers will still recognize what’s going on, however. Just have a solid understanding of what the audience is expecting when the cliche appears and think of ways to subvert it.
  • Tropes can be narrative shorthand. Because audiences generally have an idea of how common tropes operate, you can implement them so you don’t have to do quite so much narrative heavy lifting in some places. In short stories, you really don’t want to overburden the reader with complex world building. It isn’t necessary to have extremely in depth knowledge of the world when the reading experience is only gonna be about 30 minutes+ of their time. Using common setting tropes can give your world depth without needing to build it from the ground up. Tropes also help your reader immediately buy in to the story when you present them with familiar character archetypes or settings. Outside of short stories, this buy-in factor can help hook readers early in a longer work. I’m a lazy reader, if I encounter a book that is top heavy with complex world building, I’m not likely to power through to a point where I understand everything.  Remember you can always unravel and subvert these tropes later in the story or, in the case of character tropes, untrope them with awesome character development.
  • Some Tropes are so omnipresent that you really shouldn’t worry too much about using them because they aren’t easily avoided anyway. Did you know the plot line for the first Star Wars movie is probably one of the most common stories ever? So common that Joseph Cambell names his book on the topic, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. While the plot line is certainly not mindblowing, it’s a tried and true one. [x]

As for avoiding tropes or other things that have been done before

  • I would not be overly concerned if you can only find one or two similar works. As long as you have integrity and know you were not working derivatively, press on with your own thing. This said, some times we are subconsciously inspired by things we’ve seen. I know sometimes I’m inspired by a specific thing, forget it was something I saw and not something I came up with, and then I’m in a pickle because damn it I just regurgitated someone else’s work by accident. If you end up in that pickle too, you just might have to go back to the drawing board and redo some things, but chances are you didn’t accidentally come up with a perfect copy, so you should still be able to extract your original pieces.
  • Have friends or fellow writers read your work to see if they can identify cliches you may not have noticed or known about. 
  • TVTropes is a good resource for finding tropes and cliches, but as mentioned IT IS AN ENORMOUS TIME SINK and you’ll sacrifice hours of your life browsing tropes. If your google powers are strong you may be able to search the thing you think is a cliche, otherwise you’ll have to risk browsing specific sections like genre, characters, etc. 
  • If you find something you think is too cliched to use, decide how it needs to be modified based on the advice in the above section, or replace them with different elements.

I got a little long winded there but I hope that helps. Sorry if some sentences don’t make sense I was kinda getting muddled by the time I got to the end of this haha.

#mod talks#Anonymous#writing advice#long post#cliches#tropes#tvtropes
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I’m studying up on my symbolism dictionaries for a potential feature...

I swear half of these symbols are related to femininity 

It’s like... anything that’s mostly round can be considered feminine because female=breasts=round things

even for the flute they’re like “it’s got a phallic shape but [And here’s where I stop paraphrasing:] its tone is nevertheless related to inner, feminine intuitive feeling.”

I’m probably gonna have to do a post about near-omnipresent symbol themes just so I’m not listing femininity and a couple other common ones in every other post. 

I’ll still discuss classical uses of these symbols but I’m not really down with some of these flimsily gendered symbols. They equate gender to sex by drawing comparisons of the symbol to genitals or secondary sexual characteristics, and they also play on gender stereotypes (Symbols of strength also become masculine symbols, symbols of nurturing also become feminine symbols) which is pretty bogus when it comes to modern interpretations. But hey discussing the more questionable interpretations will help people who want to subvert them.

#gender stuff#symbolism#cissexism#Mod talks#mod thoughts#sexism
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Anonymous asked:

you should make update your mini Scenario

Last time I tried to update it I was kinda stumped on what else to add. There’s already 94 outcomes. 

I take submissions for more outcomes, if any followers have ideas for this generator send me an ask or fanmail with your ideas. If you aren’t on anonymous you’ll receive special thanks on the generator page.

#mod talks#replies#asks#Anonymous
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RPGENS -> CREATIVICHEE

As this blog has become more about creative resources for many different types of story telling media rather than just RP stuff and generators, I’ll soon be switching the blog name to RPGens to Creativichee. (Chee is a handle I use a lot)

I’m not doing it immediately because I’ll need to do some work making the rpgen URLs redirect to the new tumblr URLs, and I don’t wanna sit down and do that just yet. (Espeicially since it’s Camp Nanowrimo time)

So here’s a heads up, if my generators stop working in the near future, I’ve probably made the change and the redirects will be up shortly. 

#mod talks
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I have a few symbolism dictionaries, would you guys be interested in a weekly or bimonthly feature on symbols, discussing their meanings and uses? (For example, apples are sometimes symbolic of forbidden temptation. )

#mod talks
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Anonymous asked:

Only curious, but will you add the ability to add more characters to the miniscenario generator?

Probably not, it would probably require a lot of reworking or a whole new one with 3 slots and I’d rather work on something new the next time I decide to do some generator work.

#mod talks#asks#Anonymous
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