Ainesseyspiegel - My Side Of Freedom

To All Writers of Everything Ever

I need to rant about this:

Also known as the best writing program ever! It’s a full-screen writing program!

So you open it up, and it looks like this:

You’re thinking, “Ok, so what? It’s a screen with a picture. Whoopdie do.” But it get’s better! It’s customizable!

See that “appearance”? Click it.

You can also use custom fonts that you have installed!

See that “music”? Click it.

If you drag your own music into the folder, like so:

You get this!:

But wait! It gets better!

See “typing sounds”? You can change those too!

Perhaps the best is - YOU CAN USE ANY PICTURE FOR THE BACKGROUND. It will automatically fade it for you!

Seriously, guys, this tool is wonderful. You can use it for:

Research papers

Novel writing

Play writing

Short stories

Homework assignments

Ranting about your friends when they piss you off

Writing your shopping list

It auto-saves. It exports to .rtf. Hotkeys from Word for italicize, underlining, and bold work. You can print RIGHT FROM THERE.

And the seriously best thing ever?

It fits on a flash drive. The entire thing with added music is maybe 131MBs.

The bestest thing ever.

It’s free.

Careful What You Say, You May Just Mean It

I wonder if there isn’t a reason why writers are so careful with their words outside of their stories. Is it because we know how easy it is to destroy with a few simple letters? I know some of us have constructed orders and decrees that make a lovable person die. I know some of us have constructed passages telling of a once beautiful land’s demise. We’re written hurtful truths to make little ones cry, harsh lies that drive the doubtful mad, and we’ve spun words to sentences that decide fates of entire worlds within seconds. We require precision, we strive to learn the exact art of it, so when it comes down to an important moment, we’ve all learned how to write the things that can sting the most because it is what we live off of.

So I wonder, if all this may just be true, if that’s why we know to pick and choose our verbal battles. We know, maybe better than anyone, what damage just one word can do. And yes, sometimes we can’t avoid it, sometimes pain needs to be spoken, but maybe, just maybe, those of us who have written those same pains know how to soften the blow just a bit. And maybe, again, just maybe, it has become an unconscious but very important nature in some of us. 

ft. pompous soggy leaves (earl grey)

Forging Friendships

Creating believable relationships between two characters is not just important for romance. If you want people to believe that your characters are best friends, you have to work just as hard at it. There must be good reasons why they’re so close and why they’re working together toward a common goal. In real life, there’s usually some sort of event that bonds two people together and makes them closer than they were before. I met my best friend when we were forced to play kick ball during middle school gym and we were both TERRIBLE AT IT. It might seem like a simple event, but considering our ages, it was the most pressing issue during that time. The point is, there should be some sort of bonding event or a reason why two people are friends. Make a point to explain some of it and not just say, “they’ve been friends forever”

Here are some more general tips when describing friendships:

-If your characters have been thrust into some terrible situation together, be sure to explain why they’ve bonded more than other characters. Maybe they both fight well together or understand each other in a way no one else does. There has to be that moment when they both realize they can benefit or enjoy each other company more than any one else.

-The two best friends share some common ground. Is there an event from their pasts that allows them to bond easier than others? Maybe they both share a traumatic childhood OR it could be just as simple as them both sucking at Math. This is something you can play with.

-When the friendship has already been established, make sure you explain what they normally do with their time together. Do they have rituals that only they do together? What are their favorite activities? How do they interact with their other friends? These actions dictate why they’re still friends and how they’ve been friends for so long, so they’re just as important.

Obviously, there’s a lot of depth to friendship and it shouldn’t be taken lightly. Building these relationships are important, not only for understanding the characters you’ve created, but exposing the personality and motivations of the protagonist. Make each character and relationship count.

-Kris Noel

My book: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15764908-lionhead

My page: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6447379.Kris_Noel

“Well I didn’t see that coming.”

— Me writing a story written by me. (via kalipeda)

#413

Does your ship have a typical morning routine?

Writing Characters with Enhanced Senses

Characters with extraordinary senses come up a lot. Maybe your character is of supernatural or alien origin, or maybe they were just born with a genetic quirk. Maybe they have a sensory disorder that only makes their hearing seem extraordinary. There are lots of reasons why a character might have extraordinary senses and a lot of different ways those senses might be put to use, but here are some of the drawbacks you might consider when writing a character who has a super sniffer, excellent eyesight, or high-quality hearing!

Sight: If your character has super sight, chances are that they can see farther and more clearly than anybody else, which is pretty cool except that the human eye can still only really focus on one thing at a time…so your character might want to be careful not to get distracted when they’re, say, crossing the street. If they’re watching a burglary occur a thousand yards away, they might not notice the car that just whipped around the corner behind them. Other super-drawbacks might include heightened sensitivity to light, color, or movement - and you have to remember that nobody can see three-hundred-sixty degrees at all times, so your character is probably going to have a blind spot (unless they’re an owl). Also, they may frequently look like they’re staring off into space when they’re really just watching something very intently.

Hearing: Have you ever been standing in a crowd of people who are all talking at the same time? Now imagine if you had super hearing! It can be hard to pick out individual pieces of information or even follow a single conversation when you can hear everyone in a six-block radius…and it’s not just conversations. You can also hear every car, every pet moving around, every jingle of a key, the air moving through the vents, and so on and so forth. This is another one of those abilities that may make it look like your character is just really easily distracted - it’s not that they don’t want to pay attention to their friends, it’s just that they’re playing “name that tune” with a radio four blocks to the southeast!

Smell: Think about your shower routine, whatever it might be. How many scented products do you layer on your skin? Soap, shampoo, conditioner, lotion, deoderant, maybe perfume or cologne, shaving cream or aftershave - the list goes on and on. If you had a super nose, you might be able to smell every single layer a person was wearing, and that kind of assault on the nose could be eye-wateringly overwhelming. Consider your reaction to someone wearing strong perfume! There are a lot of other types of smells in the world too, from cut grass and shoe polish to rotting garbage…and a lot of bodily functions have smells too: passing gas, excrement, or urine, menstruation, or sweating, for example. Your character might even be able to smell disease. This type of character might have to wear a mask or a scarf over their face to dull their super-sense, which might give them an odd appearance, but just imagine how much weirder it would look to be standing on a street corner sniffing at the air when all anyone else can smell is car fumes.

Taste: What’s the strongest flavor you’ve ever tasted? Maybe it was something fishy, or spicy, or sour. Everyone’s answer is bound to be different, but imagine if every single thing you ever ate or drank tasted that strong. Eventually you might get kind of tired of it and start preparing food that is more bland, right? Alternately, imagine if nothing ever just tasted like itself to you: you’re eating a french fry, but instead of tasting “french fry” you’re tasting potato, salt, oil, the metal of the fryer, the latex in the gloves used to scoop them into the paper tray, the paper tray itself…that would be pretty overwhelming! The major drawback to super taste is that your character might have trouble eating out or eating in front of other people. When you taste a lemon, your face puckers up…just think of how much more sour it would taste with a super tongue!

Touch: Did you know that every day you suffer a million tiny hurts and your brain just ignores them so that you can keep on functioning normally? If you had an enhanced nervous system, that might not be the case. Think about the number of tiny things we ignore every day: actions like walking, scratching, accidentally biting your tongue, or blinking could hurt pretty bad if you were super sensitive to touch! People with super touch might have a hard time getting comfortable all the time, and they might have to deal with not liking the feeling of clothes, being annoyed with air moving over their skin, or being extra-sensitive to physical contact. If a hug felt to me like someone was trying to break my ribs, I’d avoid them too!

So what are some things to keep in mind when writing about characters with extraordinary senses, other than drawbacks? Here are some things to consider:

Set limits. Your character shouldn’t be able to see past the curve of the earth - that’s just silly! Likewise, if they can hear something happening through the entire planet, you may want to rethink. Consider things like range and clarity when you’re setting limits on super senses: how far away can they see things and how clearly can they see them, for example. When it comes to touch, this is a little more tricky, and you might want to think more about the direct effects of pressure on the character: how much pressure does it take before it hurts?

Enhanced senses require enhanced brainpower. I don’t mean that they raise your character’s IQ level, but consider how much effort it takes to sort through and process sensory information. If your character’s brain can’t handle it, they might be in a constant state of sensory overload.

Speaking of sensory overload, that might happen to your character sometimes anyway! Everyone faces extreme situations in their lives where their brains just can’t keep up with the workload, and the threshold for that point is probably lower for people with super senses. If you’ve got a character with super hearing and four people are trying to talk to them at once, they might experience sensory overload and have to go recover for a while, so do your research into sensory overload and what to do to help them.

Finally, their super sense is going to impact how they experience and relate to other people. Maybe your character doesn’t remember a person’s name or face but they’ll never forget her voice. Maybe they just can’t even be in the house with Great-Aunt Helen because she always wears the same musty old perfume and it gives your character a headache. Maybe your character appears to be constantly zoning out when really they’re just looking closely at peoples’ jewelry. How your character perceives others, and how others view your character, is going to be impacted by their ability - count on it.

If you’re writing about a character with super senses, I hope that this has been helpful and maybe even inspiring to you, and I’d love to hear your thoughts too! Thanks for reading, and good luck!

-Kyo

Character Questions #013: What If #001

What would your character do if:

They saw someone being chased by a group of people?

They woke up in a strange bedroom with no recollection of getting there?

They heard a gunshot?

Someone walked in on them getting changed?

They met someone who claimed to be from the future?

They found an abandoned baby animal?

They were asked to look after someone else’s child for a day?

They had to buy a gift for a close friend?

They were sold a faulty product?

They found out they’ve been robbed?

They met their double?

Someone asked them to play Spin the Bottle?

Their significant other suddenly left them?

They accidentally hurt someone?

They missed their stop (on a bus/train/etc.)?