i just found this website that can randomly generate a continent for you!! this is great for fantasy writers
plus, you can look at it in 3d!
theres a lot of viewing options and other things! theres an option on-site to take a screenshot, so you don’t have to have a program for that!
Platonic m/f relationships need to be portrayed more in media. People (and especially children!!) need to see that there can be such a thing as men and women being friends without it having to end with them falling in love and getting married - stop that icky “when Harry met Sally trope” according to which men and women can’t possibly be friends because romance will always happen. It’s heteronormative af and gross. I’m talking about this as a lesbian who had to deal with compulsory heterosexuality most of their life: stop pushing romance in m/f relationships that are strictly platonic/not hinting any sort of romance. Please.
From How I Became a Famous Novelist by Steve Hely
JFC.
ETCH THIS INTO MY HEADSTONE.
And as a lovely incentive to productivity: He was actually, wonder of wonders, being PAID while still halfway through writing the books.
So, pretty frequently writers screw up when they write about injuries. People are clonked over the head, pass out for hours, and wake up with just a headache… Eragon breaks his wrist and it’s just fine within days… Wounds heal with nary a scar, ever…
I’m aiming to fix that.
Here are over 100 links covering just about every facet of traumatic injuries (physical, psychological, long-term), focusing mainly on burns, concussions, fractures, and lacerations. Now you can beat up your characters properly!
General resources
PubMed: The source for biomedical literature
Diagrams: Veins (towards heart), arteries (away from heart) bones, nervous system, brain
Burns
General overview: Includes degrees
Burn severity: Including how to estimate body area affected
Incisions and Lacerations
Essentials of skin laceration repair (including stitching techniques)
When to stitch (Journal article—Doctors apparently usually go by experience on this)
More about when to stitch (Simple guide for moms)
Incision vs. laceration: Most of the time (including in medical literature) they’re used synonymously, but eh.
Types of lacerations: Page has links to some particularly graphic images—beware!
Puncture wounds: Including a bit about what sort of wounds are most likely to become infected
Wound assessment: A huge amount of information, including what the color of the flesh indicates, different kinds of things that ooze from a wound, and so much more.
Home treatment of gunshot wound, also basics More about gunshot wounds, including medical procedures
Tourniquet use: Controversy around it, latest research
Location pain chart: Originally intended for tattoo pain, but pretty accurate for cuts
General note: Deeper=more serious. Elevate wounded limb so that gravity draws blood towards heart. Scalp wounds also bleed a lot but tend to be superficial. If it’s dirty, risk infection. If it hits the digestive system and you don’t die immediately, infection’ll probably kill you. Don’t forget the possibility of tetanus! If a wound is positioned such that movement would cause the wound to gape open (i.e. horizontally across the knee) it’s harder to keep it closed and may take longer for it to heal.
Broken bones
Setting a broken bone when no doctor is available
General notes: If it’s a compound fracture (bone poking through) good luck fixing it on your own. If the bone is in multiple pieces, surgery is necessary to fix it—probably can’t reduce (“set”) it from the outside. Older people heal more slowly. It’s possible for bones to “heal” crooked and cause long-term problems and joint pain. Consider damage to nearby nerves, muscle, and blood vessels.
Concussions
Mild Brain Injuries: The next step up from most severe type of concussion, Grade 3
Second impact syndrome: When a second blow delivered before recovering from the initial concussion has catastrophic effects. Apparently rare.
Symptoms: Scroll about halfway down the page for the most severe symptoms
General notes: If you pass out, even for a few seconds, it’s serious. If you have multiple concussions over a lifetime, they will be progressively more serious. Symptoms can linger for a long time.
Character reaction:
Shock (general)
Treatment (drugs)
Treatment (herbs)
Miscellany
Snake bites: No, you don’t suck the venom out or apply tourniquettes
When frostbite sets in: A handy chart for how long your characters have outside at various temperatures and wind speeds before they get frostbitten
First aid myths: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Includes the ones about buttering burns and putting snow on frostbite.
Poisons: Why inducing vomiting is a bad idea
Dislocations: Symptoms 1, 2; treatment. General notes: Repeated dislocations of same joint may lead to permanent tissue damage and may cause or be symptomatic of weakened ligaments. Docs recommend against trying to reduce (put back) dislocated joint on your own, though information about how to do it is easily found online.
Current CPR practices: We don’t do mouth-to-mouth anymore.
The DSM IV, for all your mental illness needs.
Electrical shock
Human response to electrical shock: Includes handy-dandy voltage chart
Acquired savant syndrome: Brain injuries (including a lightning strike) triggering development of amazing artistic and other abilities
Please don’t repost! You can find the original document (also created by me) here.
Not technically about Steve, but you know.
this is a fabulous resource for all those who write whumpy fanfiction! (is there another kind??)
perhaps helpful to some in the writing world
Reblogging partially for me, but mostly for Blue.
Oh, Shae you know my tendencies so well…
I’m a very lazy person. I know my characters well, but every time I try to fill out a proper character sheet, I either get distracted or simply never finish them.
SO!
I made this! A silly, simple character sheet in which you only have to check boxes to get to know your dear puppet character. Use to your heart’s content, and if you’re going to repost, please credit! Enjoy~
From the makers of the no-effort character checklist, I bring to you… The no-effort complete character sheet for lazy writers like you and me™!
Because the extra effort I put in staying up until 3 am to do put this together can save us all a lot of effort filling out longer character sheets ^^
You’re supposed to print it out and fold it in half to make a little booklet but you can save ink and do it on your computer :P
fic writers i promise you–on my life–that readers remember that finn’s skin is dark brown.
i promise that if you use a descriptor besides “the darker skinned man” in relation to all the characters around him, people will know who he is in your sentence.
e.g. the sun’s golden rays made his dark amber skin glow as it slid lower in the sky.
e.g. the harsh white light surrounding his body roughened the soft lines of his face and made his skin appear greyish as though he were a wraith.
e.g. the only imperfection marring his skin was the raised brown scar that slashed jaggedly across his back. (finn’s skin’s rich with melanin, so even if his fresh scar’s initially raw and pink, eventually it’ll heal to a brown shade–either slightly lighter, same tone, or slightly darker)
i promise that you can describe him as you do rey or poe and your readers won’t forget that it’s finn you’re talking about.
i promise you, you can describe poe without making him sound like a white dude.
n.k. jemisin’s a master at writing her characters, who are predominantly people of colour. for this reason, she usually describes them in relation to each other and doesn’t rely on their skin tones. she explicitly describes her white characters’ skin tones to flip the dominant perspective that assumes white as default. here are some of her tips:
describing characters of color pt. 2 (some of her rowling thoughts are ehhh, because rowling does otherise her characters of colour, but this is an old post)
other resources:
writing with color: poc and food comparisons (john boyega can call himself chocolate and black people might describe him as such, but you probably shouldn’t)
words to describe hair (i’ve read a couple fics where y’all are clueless about finn’s hair)
thank you so much for this post. it is so important and so helpful.
Sit down everybody, this is gonna be a doozy.
I just got an anon in my inbox asking me to make a guide for writing deaf characters, and I thought it was an awesome idea! The only guides I’ve ever seen have been written by hearing bloggers, and while they’re all mostly accurate and respectful, it’s always bothered me that I’ve never seen one by an actual deaf person. So as a Real Life Certified Deaf Kid, I’m going to put one together myself!
There is a lot more to being deaf than a lot of people realize.
When I was nine, possibly ten, an author came to our school to talk about writing. His name was Hugh Scott, and I doubt he’s known outside of Scotland. And even then I haven’t seen him on many shelves in recent years in Scotland either. But he wrote wonderfully creepy children’s stories, where the supernatural was scary, but it was the mundane that was truly terrifying. At least to little ten year old me. It was Scooby Doo meets Paranormal Activity with a bonny braw Scottish-ness to it that I’d never experienced before.
I remember him as a gangling man with a wiry beard that made him look older than he probably was, and he carried a leather bag filled with paper. He had a pen too that was shaped like a carrot, and he used it to scribble down notes between answering our (frankly disinterested) questions. We had no idea who he was you see, no one had made an effort to introduce us to his books. We were simply told one morning, ‘class 1b, there is an author here to talk to you about writing’, and this you see was our introduction to creative writing. We’d surpassed finger painting and macaroni collages. It was time to attempt Words That Were Untrue.
You could tell from the look on Mrs M’s face she thought it was a waste of time. I remember her sitting off to one side marking papers while this tall man sat down on our ridiculously short chairs, and tried to talk to us about what it meant to tell a story. She wasn’t big on telling stories, Mrs M. She was also one of the teachers who used to take my books away from me because they were “too complicated” for me, despite the fact that I was reading them with both interest and ease. When dad found out he hit the roof. It’s the one and only time he ever showed up to the school when it wasn’t parents night or the school play. After that she just left me alone, but she made it clear to my parents that she resented the fact that a ten year old used words like ‘ubiquitous’ in their essays. Presumably because she had to look it up.
Anyway, Mr Scott, was doing his best to talk to us while Mrs M made scoffing noises from her corner every so often, and you could just tell he was deflating faster than a bouncy castle at a knife sharpening party, so when he asked if any of us had any further questions and no one put their hand up I felt awful. I knew this was not only insulting but also humiliating, even if we were only little children. So I did the only thing I could think of, put my hand up and said “Why do you write?”
I’d always read about characters blinking owlishly, but I’d never actually seen it before. But that’s what he did, peering down at me from behind his wire rim spectacles and dragging tired fingers through his curly beard. I don’t think he expected anyone to ask why he wrote stories. What he wrote about, and where he got his ideas from maybe, and certainly why he wrote about ghosts and other creepy things, but probably not why do you write. And I think he thought perhaps he could have got away with “because it’s fun, and learning is fun, right kids?!”, but part of me will always remember the way the world shifted ever so slightly as it does when something important is about to happen, and this tall streak of a man looked down at me, narrowed his eyes in an assessing manner and said, “Because people told me not to, and words are important.”
I nodded, very seriously in the way children do, and knew this to be a truth. In my limited experience at that point, I knew certain people (with a sidelong glance to Mrs M who was in turn looking at me as though she’d just known it’d be me that type of question) didn’t like fiction. At least certain types of fiction. I knew for instance that Mrs M liked to read Pride and Prejudice on her lunch break but only because it was sensible fiction, about people that could conceivably be real. The idea that one could not relate to a character simply because they had pointy ears or a jet pack had never occurred to me, and the fact that it’s now twenty years later and people are still arguing about the validity of genre fiction is beyond me, but right there in that little moment, I knew something important had just transpired, with my teacher glaring at me, and this man who told stories to live beginning to smile. After that the audience turned into a two person conversation, with gradually more and more of my classmates joining in because suddenly it was fun. Mrs M was pissed and this bedraggled looking man who might have been Santa after some serious dieting, was starting to enjoy himself. As it turned out we had all of his books in our tiny corner library, and in the words of my friend Andrew “hey there’s a giant spider fighting a ghost on this cover! neat!” and the presentation devolved into chaos as we all began reading different books at once and asking questions about each one. “Does she live?”— “What about the talking trees” —“is the ghost evil?” —“can I go to the bathroom, Miss?” —“Wow neat, more spiders!”
After that we were supposed to sit down, quietly (glare glare) and write a short story to show what we had learned from listening to Mr Scott. I wont pretend I wrote anything remotely good, I was ten and all I could come up with was a story about a magic carrot that made you see words in the dark, but Mr Scott seemed to like it. In fact he seemed to like all of them, probably because they were done with such vibrant enthusiasm in defiance of the people who didn’t want us to.
The following year, when I’d moved into Mrs H’s class—the kind of woman that didn’t take away books from children who loved to read and let them write nonsense in the back of their journals provided they got all their work done—a letter arrived to the school, carefully wedged between several copies of a book which was unheard of at the time, by a new author known as J.K. Rowling. Mrs H remarked that it was strange that an author would send copies of books that weren’t even his to a school, but I knew why he’d done it. I knew before Mrs H even read the letter.
Because words are important. Words are magical. They’re powerful. And that power ought to be shared. There’s no petty rivalry between story tellers, although there’s plenty who try to insinuate it. There’s plenty who try to say some words are more valuable than others, that somehow their meaning is more important because of when it was written and by whom. Those are the same people who laud Shakespeare from the heavens but refuse to acknowledge that the quote “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them“ is a dick joke.
And although Mr Scott seems to have faded from public literary consumption, I still think about him. I think about his stories, I think about how he recommended another author and sent copies of her books because he knew our school was a puritan shithole that fought against the Wrong Type of Wordes and would never buy them into the library otherwise. But mostly I think about how he looked at a ten year old like an equal and told her words and important, and people will try to keep you from writing them—so write them anyway.
small writing tip that helps me sometimes: in the early stages of your story, write like you’re a reader guessing what is going to happen. it helps you feel out if your ideas make sense
For Kurt Vonnegut’s birthday, his 8 timeless tips on how to write a great story.
When I was a kid, learning how to paint, my mum (an accomplished artist) offered me two pieces of advice;
when I got older, we talked about this more– we went into chiaroscuro and using the strongest parts of your piece. We learned to use those things I’d been warned against in a constructive way– to know when to use black or when to keep the prettiest piece of the picture.
Anyway.
Let’s talk about character death.
soulmate au where they hate each other and when they find out they’re soulmates they’re like “where’s the fuckin’ gift receipt because I want to return this defective piece of trash”
that’s it that’s the au
Okay so if you’re anything like me you see those lists of au ideas floating around and you like them but when it comes time to write something and you need an idea you have no idea what you tagged them as or if they’re buried somewhere in your likes so….have a list of some of the ones I’ve come across! (updated with more lists on june 12th, 2015)
themed:
random:
lists of one:
bonus: au prompt generator (well rp generator but works for aus)
okay that’s all i’ve got for now. feel free to add on any that you know of :)
(also i update this fairly regularly so check back on the original post occasionally if you want more)
Gay cinema is the absolute worst. I want gay fantasy and gay sci-fi. Is it too much to ask for guys slaying dragons and also each other’s butts?! What about space lesbians?! Transgender badass hackers taking down corrupt corporate-nations in a cyberpunk world?!
like we get one genre: ife is hard when youre gay and everyone is mean to you and one of the love interests dies at the end
writers of the world: please stop using epithets in your writing, trust me “the blonde army doctor”, “the curly haired detective”, “the blue-eyed man” etc. do not sound as good in writing as they may sound in your head
instead, use the characters’ names, they’re there for a reason and it’ll make your writing much more crisp, tight, to the point, and still entertaining
Names, along with common words like “said” and “asked”, become invisible. The more invisible your words, the deeper your reader will fall into your writing, to the point where the reader will forget that there are words at all and just become part of the story.
When your words aren’t invisible, there’s the unfortunate potential that people will turn them into a drinking game instead of reading the story.
Just about the only time that epithets work instead of using a name is when the POV character doesn’t know the other character, and so the physical description is pretty much all the POV character has to go on. You don’t think of people you know as “the tall man” or “the blonde woman”. Your POV character shouldn’t, either.
Yo I actually wanted to make this post a while back and I think a lot of this stems from when you have two characters who use the same pronouns interacting (which happens in fanfic). There’s this fear that the reader will confuse who the characters are referring to, so that’s why epithets are used. Instead of using epithets, use syntax, which is word order, and carry your subject through multiple sentences and actions. So, Imma teach you how to do this under the cut. (It’s a bit of a grammar lesson tbh)
