Mmm, you’d be surprised, Anon-san. ^_^;;;;; I don’t tend to give people nicknames, but once I develop a way to address them, it’s super hard for me to switch out, and as far as I can tell, people generally act like this. Once you get used to calling someone something, it takes a lot of work and conscious effort to change. Instead, what’s likely to change is the way the name is said.
What I say is not the be-all and end-all, because I am not natively Japanese and this is not my culture; no matter how much I ask and observe native Japanese, there is always going to be a gaijin filter that colors everything I see. Additionally, even between two Japanese people, opinions on these matters will differ. In the end, the default way of treating this is always to err on the side of politeness unless you are daring and don’t mind the risk of offending the other, or the other side asks you to switch forms of address. That said, here’s a VERY long answer under the cut!
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
In the West, plot is commonly thought to revolve around conflict: a confrontation between two or more elements, in which one ultimately dominates the other. The standard three- and five-act plot structures–which permeate Western media–have conflict written into their very foundations. A “problem” appears near the end of the first act; and, in the second act, the conflict generated by this problem takes center stage. Conflict is used to create reader involvement even by many post-modern writers, whose work otherwise defies traditional structure.
The necessity of conflict is preached as a kind of dogma by contemporary writers’ workshops and Internet “guides” to writing. A plot without conflict is considered dull; some even go so far as to call it impossible. This has influenced not only fiction, but writing in general–arguably even philosophy. Yet, is there any truth to this belief? Does plot necessarily hinge on conflict? No. Such claims are a product of the West’s insularity. For countless centuries, Chinese and Japanese writers have used a plot structure that does not have conflict “built in”, so to speak. Rather, it relies on exposition and contrast to generate interest. This structure is known as kishōtenketsu.
When I send out my chapter to be read over by my beta readers, I always include a set of questions typed out at the bottom, grouped into different categories such as: plot, pacing, character, setting, etc.
You might want to tailor the questions depending on the genre or which chapter it is. For example, if it’s the first chapter you’ll want to ask them about how well your story managed to hook them, or if they managed to easily get an idea of the world you’ve introduced them to. If it’s the climax you might want to ask if the action scenes are fluid, and if the plot twist/s were predictable or surprising.
Here’s some example questions that you could use:
Opening Chapter:
What is your first impression of the main character? Do you find them likable? Annoying? Boring?
After reading it for the first time, what is your first impression? Was it cohesive and compelling? Boring and confusing?
Did the first sentence/paragraph/page efficiently grab your attention and hook you in?
If you were to read this chapter in a bookstore/library would you be convinced to buy it? Or would you need to read further before deciding? Why or why not?
Did you get oriented fairly quickly at the beginning as to whose story it is, what’s going on, and where and when it’s taking place? If not, what were you confused about at the beginning?
Does the first chapter establish the main character efficiently? Do they feel believable?
Characters:
Could you clearly imagine what the characters looked like? If not, who?
Who was your favourite character and why? Has your favourite character changed? (if this hasn’t changed feel free to skip this question)
Are there any characters that you do not like? Why do you not like them? (Boring, annoying, problematic, etc.)
Was there ever a moment when you found yourself annoyed or frustrated by a character?
Could you relate to the main character? Did you empathise with their motivation or find yourself indifferent?
Were the characters goals/motivations clear and understandable?
Did you get confused about who’s who? Are there too many characters to keep track of? Are any of the names or characters too similar?
Do the characters feel three-dimensional or like cardboard cutouts?
How familiar have you become with the main characters? Without cheating could you name the four main characters? Can you remember their appearance? Can you remember their goal or motivation?
Dialogue:
Did the dialogue seem natural to you?
Was there ever a moment where you didn’t know who was talking?
Setting/world-building:
Were you able to visualize where and when the story is taking place?
Is the setting realistic and believable?
How well do you remember the setting? Without cheating, can you name four important settings?
Genre:
Did anything about the story seem cliche or tired to you? How so?
Did anything you read (character, setting, etc.) remind you of any others works? (Books, movies, etc.)
Plot/pacing/scenes:
Do you feel there were any unnecessary scenes/moments that deserved to be deleted or cut back?
Do the scenes flow naturally and comprehensively at an appropriate pace? Did you ever feel like they were jumping around the place?
Was there ever a moment where you attention started to lag, or the chapter begun to drag? Particular paragraph numbers would be very helpful.
Did you ever come across a sentence that took you out of the moment, or you had to reread to understand fully?
Was the writing style fluid and easy to read? Stilted? Purple prose-y? Awkward?
Did you notice any discrepancies or inconsistencies in facts, places, character details, plot, etc.?
Additional questions:
What three things did you like? What three things did you not like?
Can you try predicting any upcoming plot twists or outcomes?
Was there ever a moment when your suspension of disbelief was tested?
Is there anything you’d personally change about the story?
Was the twist expected or surprising? Do you feel that the foreshadowing was almost nonexistent, or heavy handed?
Feel free to tailor these to your needs or ignore some of them if you don’t think they’re useful. Basically, your questions are about finding out the information about how others perceive your own writing and how you can improve your story.
i’m starting to hate the frequency of pinterest as a google result more than i hate pinterest itself. listen, google, googly-mate, pinterest isn’t a fuckign source. I want the sites those pictures came from because those are the ones with information such as dates, which is the entire point of the thing I am googling.
Damn right. How the hell am I supposed to find tutorials on how to do wire work or bead weaving when the first howevermany pages of Google results are some idiot’s cluster of Pinterest collections of those tutorials?
SOMEONE ELSE HATES PINTEREST AS MUCH AS I DO
not only does it fuck with sourcing images, but you can’t even SEE the images unless you have a ~pinterest account~ which I have zero interest in acquiring; it does this so completely adorable coy little thing where it shows you half the page and then when you scroll down it goes *complicated tiresome flower emoji face* JOIN PINTEREST 2 SEE MORE! *complicated tiresome flower emoji face* and my systolic reading spikes.
and google lists individual pinterest pages as separate results, so if a picture is popular, there can be HUNDREDS of pinterest listings before you find anything you could possibly trace back to a source.
listen, all my art bros who are mad about people not sourcing art, i dig that, i agree that sourcing is important, but maybe stop saying reverse image search is easy or ‘30 seconds’ or whatever. sometimes it’s just straight up impossible because fucking pinterest ruins everything.
SUPER EASY WAY TO AVOID PINTEREST: type your query and then -pinterest
7 of the first 12 results are from pinterest
zero items from pinterest not a single one I’m free
If y’all use a decent box mix and use melted butter instead of vegetable oil, an extra egg, and milk instead of water, no one can tell the difference. I sure as hell can’t.
Also, if you add a little almond extract to vanilla cake, or a little coffee to chocolate cake, it sends it through the roof.
This concludes me attempting to be helpful.
yo I can vouch for this I’ve done this for the last few cakes I’ve made and holy crap it makes suuuuch a difference the cake is still fluffy, but it also seems more dense, and it doesn’t dry out like at all you can leave it uncovered on the counter all day after being cut into, and it won’t get all crusty and dry this is an amazing way to take your cakes to the next level
OK Highway Patrol Captain George Brown says the best “tip” for women to not get raped by a cop is to “follow the law in the first place so you don’t get pulled over.” http://youtu.be/BO8g8akPWcY (Last third of the video).
Three serial rapists in 3 weeks arrested in Oklahoma, all cops.
Pro tip: if you’re signaled to pull over (whether you’re male or female) and you’re in a place that has no witnesses, turn your hazard lights on to acknowledge the officer’s siren, and drive to the nearest gas station or populated area. This is accepted protocol by every agency. You are not obligated pull over until you can do so safely. This includes personal safety. Understand your rights, brothers and sisters. There are disgusting examples of authority in this world.
HAZARD LIGHTS ARE NOT AN ACCEPTABLE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT. IT IS NOT ACCEPTED PROTOCOL BY EVERY AGENCY. DO NOT JUST CONTINUE DRIVING WITH YOUR HAZARD LIGHTS IN CASE THE COP MIGHT THINK IT’S A LOW-SPEED CHASE.
I know that sounds dumb, but hear me out. My mother is a dispatcher for the local police station. I asked her about how to pull over for a cop and even brought up the use of hazard lights, and she told me that it is not always accepted. This is what she told me you can do in order to feel safe when pulling over:
Call the police. No, really. Call and tell the dispatcher where you are and that there is a cop behind you demanding you pull over. The dispatcher can and will stay on the line with you while they look up the area you’re in to see if it’s one of their station’s cops. Then, once the cop comes to your window, you can crack it open (it only has to be an inch!) while still on the phone with the dispatcher. This is definitely, 100% accepted protocol.
The dispatcher will verify that it is their own, real cop, and they will gladly stay on the line with you throughout your interaction with the officer. And God forbid this ever happens to any of you, but if something were to happen to you during this time, you’ve already contacted 911 and given your location to the dispatcher.
Please keep this in mind if you are ever requested to pull over and do not feel safe. The dispatcher will understand. Do not, however, continue to drive, because there might be the off-chance an officer will think you’re flat-out refusing to pull over (a well-lit, populated area might be a ways away).
Stay safe.
Signal boost.
Because I personally know some creepy ass mother fuckers who became cops because they’re demented psychopaths and they get off on having control over people.
In light of current bullshit, this might be a good idea for a LOT of people, not just women. Marginalized minorities of all stripes, take note. I hate taking up an emergency dispatcher’s resources, but i also hate seeing yet another fucked up news story about police harming citizens.
There’s no one way to start writing a book. For some people, it’s enough to just jump in and start writing to see where the story takes them. If you’re not too keen on that idea, then here is oneprocess (as in, not theonlyprocess) that might help you move beyond your concept.
Concept ≠ Plot
Many writers mistake concept for plot, but they’re actually two very different things. A world where everyone grows up with superpowers is a concept; the plot is what you decide to write about within that concept – the specific characters and what happens to those characters; who your antagonist is and what conflict arises when that antagonist goes after what they want. All of these things contribute to your plot.
So first, define what it is you actually have at this particular point. Do you just have a concept? If so, you’ll need to take the necessary steps to develop that concept into a plot.
Concept >>> Plot
If you’ve decided that all you really have is a concept, then how do you take it and turn it into a plot? You brainstorm. All brainstorming really amounts to is expanding your ideas. All you’re doing is asking questions about the concept and delving deep into the answers.
The most simplistic way to start this process, especially if you’re struggling, is to ask one of two questions (or both, if applicable). These two questions: What could go wrong? What could go right?
Going back to my example about a world where everyone grows up with superpowers. If I were to ask the question “what could go wrong,” I’d end up with a whole list of possibilities.
The powers suddenly disappear
People start abusing their powers
Someone figures out how to steal powers
A hierarchy of strong vs. weak powers develops, creating superiority/inferiority dynamics
Someone is born without a superpower
There are many more possibilities I didn’t even think of here, but any one (or more) of these could become a plot. Choose one that sounds interesting, and then ask yourself “and then what?”
Say I choose: Someone figures out how to steal powers. Then what does that person do? Do they recruit people to do the dirty work for them? Do they work alone? Do they hoard these powers and barter them for other goods? Do they attempt to enslave people? Do they attempt to take control of institutions? What do they do?
Your goal is to take your ideas and turn them into actions taken by characters. People doing things. And each piece you add will usually lead into another. If you went with the idea that this character is stealing powers and essentially selling them for other goods, you’d have to ask yourself follow-up questions. First, who are they selling to? Why would anyone buy a new superpower if they already have one? What uses would they have for additional ones? What is the key demographic that this person is trying to reach? Secondly, what are they selling them in exchange for? Money? Favors? Souls? What is this character getting in return?
Now that you’ve examined potential actions that the character takes, you’ve also exposed potential new characters.
People they’re stealing from
People they’re bargaining with
People that try to police these crimes
People that try to copy this character’s process
At the beginning of this section, I talked about using “what could go right” as another optional jumping off point. This is a good path to follow if your concept is already really negative. For a concept where someone is killing people for some pointed reason, you might ask “what could go right” and explore ideas where the killer is caught and brought to justice.
The point of all this is to think about change as a means of taking your idea from concept to plot. A concept is static – it doesn’t move, evolve, or change. By developing a plot, you’re forcing the concept to be challenged in some way. If you think about it that way, you’ll be able to formulate conflicts, and the people that orchestrate and fight against those conflicts.
On that note, I think we’re ready to move onto the third piece of my graphic above.
Plot = Character Actions and Consequences
At this point, you have sketches for characters. You’ve got this nameless, faceless person that is stealing the powers, and all these other nameless, faceless people that I listed above. In essence, we have character concepts. And just like we turned our initial concept into a plot, we have to turn these character concepts into actual characters.
The basics are the easiest way to start. You figure out their name, their gender identity, their age, their appearance, some brief backstory and personality traits. I personally prefer the simplest questionnaire that I put together back in the early days because it hits on the poignant pieces of a character without overwhelming you with 100s of questions.
Now that you’ve given your character concepts names and faces and potential behaviors, you start to consider how one character’s view of the world inspires them to take certain actions, and you then think about how those actions affect your entire story.
We already kind of talked about the motives of the power thief in our example, but definitely delve deep here. On the surface, this character seems bad – stealing from people and then selling what they steal. But depending on what it is they’re getting in return, could we not argue that this character is a supernatural Robin Hood? Maybe instead of selling, they’re giving, and maybe the characters they’re stealing powers from are people that abuse and misuse their powers. Character motives can take a plot and turn it on its head, forcing you to reconceptualize everything. And that’s okay! That’s part of the process.
But separate from that idea, if we have a character concept of someone whose powers were stolen, and after developing their basic backstory, we discover that person’s name is Rose, and she has an especially close relationship with her brother. So when her powers are stolen, how does this affect her life? Was she using her powers to keep her brother alive and protected? What she using them to keep a roof over their heads? Was she using them as part of her job, as a means of providing? What happens to her life when her powers are stolen? And what will Rose do about it? Whatever Rose does will impact the story. If she does nothing to get her powers back, how does she solve her problems and does that make for a good story? If she does decide to act, then you’ve moved onto a new plot point to dive deeper into.
My point is, character concepts come from plots, but characters themselves often create plot, as their decisions and mistakes and successes create new outcomes. So if I could modify my original flow chart:
Before you develop something, you conceptualize it. You have a concept, then you make it a plot. You have concepts for characters, then you make them characters. And those characters end up driving your plot, to the point that this happens:
Plot inspires character. Character inspires plot. And it just keeps going around and around and around. Breaking it down into these pieces helps organize the process, but developing a story is rarely this neat and tidy. You’ll get ideas that don’t make sense, ideas that aren’t cohesive, characters you don’t need, characters that piss you off, problems you can’t solve, or plot points you’ve committed to that you no longer like…it will be messy. But it’s your mess, and the more you work on developing your own process, the more it’ll make sense to you. And it’ll become easier to know how to go about fixing it when something’s not right.
Have fun with this process! It’s supposed to be fun. When the pieces start to become clearer, you’re able to put them together in a rough outline. And once you have a rough outline, you can start writing, and really see it take shape.
just moving along like everyone else 