Day 5: What Is The World Building Detail That I Really Like In My Current Wip? Asks @the-wip-project

lol!

The lOO’s new love triangle (｡♥‿♥｡)

Writing vs Storytelling Skills: Improving Writing

Though “writing skill” is often used to refer to all aspects of story crafting, it best refers to the actual writing and technical skills that create the written word of a novel. Addressed in the previous post: Writing vs Storytelling Skills (link embedded), now I’m here to tell you how to work on that specific writing skill.

1. Study up on Literary Techniques: English class isn’t just for assigned reading and essays if you’re serious about bettering your writing. While essay writing and creative writing are different, the literary techniques and how they’re used and applied is good knowledge to have. Especially because a lot of them overlap with tropes and tie into storytelling!

2. Read a variety of books. Various authors, various genres, the more you expand your examples the better. Variation of reading means you’ll be exposed to more ideas, more ways of thought, more writing styles, more everything that you can draw ideas from and help develop your own skill. Even take up books you may not like. Give them a chance, and if the writing isn’t working for you then keep tabs on why.

3. Critique the writing of others. What did you like? What didn’t you like? How does the writing style affect how the book reads? When you critique others, you identify what makes and doesn’t make “good writing”. While a writer can only critique at a close level to their skill, the more they critique, the higher skill climbs, and the better they get. To become a better writer, you should get used to tearing other’s, and your own, work apart. It can help to keep a journal or some kind of record of critiques because as you gain more skill you may change your mind on some points. 

4. Tighten up your grammar. It’s fine to make mistakes, especially in a first draft, but if you have consistent grammar errors then it’s time to tackle the issue. Grammar isn’t optional; it exists to help with clarity of communication and a clearer writer is a better writer. It’s true that creative writing allows for the use of semantic grammar or a more fluid approach to sentence structure, but there’s a difference between using purposefully altered grammar for a reason versus just not knowing how to write properly. 

5. Try writing exercises. Many of these exist, from things like The Sprint (link embedded), which can help train you get work done, or The POV Swap (link embedded), which works on distinguishing character voice and perspective. Not all exercises are for everyone because there’s a variation to writing styles, but it never hurts to put in some effort to step outside our comfort zone to see if it could work. Further the benefits of writing exercises by developing a routine of regular use.

6. Read your work out loud. The mind has a tendency to put a haze of glory over some things and one way to help look at your writing realistically is to read it out loud to yourself. Reading out loud helps catch errors, some even grammatical, measure flow, evaluate pacing– it’s an amazing technique that gives the writer a better idea of what they’ve really put down. When reading, don’t be afraid to get into it and put emotion into your voice as long as it’s coming from the flow of the writing itself and isn’t forced.

All that said, there’s no such thing as a “perfect writer”. Brushing up on writing skills isn’t about being perfect, it’s about getting better relative to where you were before (and potentially helping close the gap between writing and storytelling skills).

Keep trying, keep practicing– keep writing.

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“Caroline Ouellette and Julie Chu, who were on-ice rivals for years and former captains of the Canadian and U.S. women's hockey teams, celebrated the birth of their first child last week.”

Inspired by comments I received from my writing group, I decided to tweak my plot. But ... looking at my plot spreadsheet and at my many notes I felt overwhelmed. Solution (for today,at least) I created a mind map for my story. In the map, major the two nodes are: reality, in universe (e.g. what is allowed to happen in the story’s world). These have sub nodes of locations, technology, big events and characters. I’m hopeful this will help me make decisions about my wip’s plot.

Thank you @the-wip-project for this challenge!

Hello! I was rewatching season 3 because ... clexa and realized this. Clarke’s room in the tower is directly under the throne room. Which means that in Season 3 Episode 3, Clarke may have witnessed the Azgeda Ambassador fall past her window after Lexa pushed him off the tower. After Clarke and Lexa’s confrontation, Clarke returns to her room’s window. If we assume Lexa went directly up to her throne room after said confrontation, then Clarke seeing a falling body is a distinct possibility. Who knows, she may even have heard the confrontation in the throne room!

Here is a shot of Lexa standing on the balcony outside of the throne room at the end of Season 3 Episode 2. Note the shape of the balcony and the statues that “hold it up”.

Episode 3 starts with a scan up Polis Tower to Clarke’s bedroom. Just before it closes in on Clarke in the window, we see the top of the tower, including the Throne Room and balcony.

The camera closes in on our fearless Wanheda brooding while looking at the view. Note the statues on either side of the window.

How I wish they had filmed Clarke’s Reaction! 

fluff fic rec

long fics

• the business of caring: a public service announcement: the campus police would like to politely remind all students, well-wishers, and supporters of the university during this time of serial vandalism that painting on buildings without permission is still illegal. this has not changed no matter how ‘cool’ you think it is. vandalism has never been nor will it ever be ‘radical’, ‘sick’, or any version thereof. -supervisor lexa woods

• stronger than we know: Clarke and Lexa meet for the first time on a blind date set up by their friends. They meet for the second time when Clarke takes her son to his first day of school only to find out that Lexa is his teacher. After some awkwardness they agree to just be friends but somehow it’s too much and not enough all at once.

Keep reading

Sigh. Gen X erasure, again. That’s fine. Not.

Ummm, is it just me  but ...

Be warned: Slight spoilers if you haven’t watched S04E12 “The Chosen” yet

... I was surprised that Clarke didn’t say goodbye to Niylah in this episode. Worse, Clarke left Niylah in a room of scarred skaikru. Clarke didn’t even ask Abby to make sure that Niylah was in the lottery - like Emori asked to be. Wow! Clarke, what the hell. I know that people die after sleeping with you but don’t assume that is always the case. Yes, I know that Niylah is not Clarke’s soulmate but at least a, “thanks for the snuggles and being supportive even after I stole the bunker” from Clarke before she headed off in a hazmat suit, would have been nice. Just sayin’

Using the appropriate vocabulary in your novel

It is very important that the language in your novel reflects the time and place in which the story is set.

For example, my story is set in Italy. My characters would never “ride shotgun”, a term coined in US in the early 1900s referring to riding alongside the driver with a shotgun to gun bandits. 

Do your research! A free tool that I found to be very useful is Ngram Viewer. 

You can type any word and see when it started appearing in books. For example…one of my characters was going to say “gazillion” (I write YA) in 1994. Was “gazillion” used back then?

And the answer is…YES! It started trending in 1988 and was quite popular in 1994.

Enjoy ^_^