It’s 1 Am And I Just… Stories Really Were Made To Save Us, Huh?

the duality of man <3

character i’m writing: is smart

me: *sighs* *opens wikipedia page*

Tips For Designing a Book Cover

Credit: https://dribbble.com/stories/2021/01/26/book-cover-design-101-how-to-design-a-cover-that-sells

1. Gather book cover design inspiration

Before you start designing, you should always gather visual inspiration first to help guide your cover’s overall look and feel. Gathering different book cover ideas will help you to understand what you’re drawn to, what works, and what doesn’t, so you can narrow down what you want to accomplish with your cover design. As a good rule of thumb, aim to collect between 10 - 20 pieces of visual inspiration.

Once you’ve gathered enough ideas, you should start to notice certain patterns of visuals, themes, imagery, and layouts that you’re drawn to. Keep this in mind throughout the next steps.

2.  Outline the book’s main themes

A book cover needs to support the themes the book explores. It also needs to support the mood of the book. What is the book about? Is it a serious exploration of modern society? Is it a fun, adventurous memoir all about finding yourself? A serious book should have a relatively serious cover, while a fun beach read needs an entirely different kind of aesthetic.

Outline your book’s main themes and keep these at the front of your mind when deciding on the kind of imagery you’ll want to use on the cover.

3. Consider the genre

Different genres have different conventions when it comes to covers. Most fantasy books show protagonists with weapons or fantasy creatures. Romance books typically have the romantically involved characters on the cover. Contemporary books frequently feature cute, modern art. True crime books usually feature dark covers that hint at the crime.

To get a sense of what the genre expects, look to competing books. If they all follow a certain convention, you’ll likely want your cover to also fit that convention so that readers of that genre can immediately recognize it!

4. Use visual hierarchy

Visual hierarchy on a book cover is key. You need to make sure that the reader browsing the shelves sees the most important part of the cover first. For most books, this will be the title. But for certain bestselling authors, you might want to consider emphasizing their name so that it’s even more prominent than the title. That’s because fans of that author can immediately recognize that it’s one of their books.

In general, your hierarchy should place the title and cover graphics most prominently, followed by a subtitle (e.g. “a novel”), followed by the author’s name. There may also be endorsements or prizes to include on the cover, but those are usually placed less prominently than other elements.

5. Get rid of the clutter

Cluttered covers don’t work well when viewed at small sizes. Since a lot of book browsing happens online, covers are usually shrunk down to thumbnail size. If your book cover looks cluttered at thumbnail size, you will risk turning away potential readers.

Choose one focal element for your cover. This could be part of the image used on the cover, or it could be the title of the book. Once you know your focal point, you can design the rest of the cover to emphasize that point. Also make sure you leave plenty of white or blank space around that focal point.

6. Think in terms of thumbnails

When people are browsing Amazon or other online publishers such as Bookshop.org, they’re presented with a series of cover thumbnails. These are often pretty small—less than 200px high. That means that if your title isn’t prominent enough on the cover, it won’t be legible. It also means that if your cover has a ton of fine details that are important to its meaning, that will be lost in thumbnail size.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that you shouldn’t include those details on a cover, though. What it means is that you need to make sure that your cover still has a powerful impact at thumbnail size. Make your title legible at small sizes and ensure that the most prominent part of your graphics are recognizable (i.e., a mountain should be recognizable as a mountain, a person should be recognizable as a person, etc.).

7. Choose an appropriate font and color palette

Choosing a typeface for your book cover can be tricky. It needs to look great when viewed on the full-size cover, but it also needs to remain legible at small sizes on thumbnails.

For the most part, try to avoid any super detailed display or complex script typefaces. When searching for the perfect typeface, try it out both at large display sizes and at smaller body sizes to see if it’s still readable when displayed at 12px or 14px sizes.

Color palettes can be a book cover’s biggest asset—or biggest downfall. The right color palette draws the reader’s eye and gives them an idea of the tone and mood of the book, while the wrong colors risk confusing your audience. For example, neon colors typically indicate that a book will be fun to read and not too serious. Dark colors? This book could be serious or scary (depending on genre).

However, remember that color palettes are only one part of establishing a mood. You can, for example, create a scary mood with a pastel cover with the right visual elements (for instance, The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein by Kiersten White has a pastel pink cover).

8. Don’t overlook the spine or back cover

While a book’s front cover gets all the glory, the spine and back cover are also important design elements. Spines, especially, are important when a reader is browsing bookstore shelves, where most books are arranged on shelves with only the spine showing. 

You also need to take into account that due to the way offset printers work, your front cover, back cover, and spine may not always align perfectly. By continuing the basic background design around the entire cover, you avoid the spine or back cover looking bad due to printing errors. This ensures that your entire book cover looks professional and consistent.

Unpopular opinion: not everything that makes you uncomfortable is bad. Sometimes discomfort means your worldview is being challenged. It’s okay to sit with discomfort and think about where it’s coming from.

you're a godsend

thank you anon!

Realistic Procrastination Tips

Intro

Ah, procrastination, also known as the bane of writers everywhere. It’s the easiest trap to fall into as a writer. You don’t feel like writing, so you just...don’t. Or maybe you completely forget about it when you’re watching TV or scrolling through social media, and by the time you remember you’re like, “Eh, it’s too late to write anyway.”

Procrastination is most likely always going to be an issue for all writers in some way. However, there are ways to counteract it. Today I’ll be sharing some realistic tips for procrastination that have actually helped me!

1. Make writing a habit

When I say to make writing a habit, I don’t mean you have to write every day. You can write every other day, every two days--whatever works for your schedule. What I mean is that you have to get used to the idea of writing.

A lot of the time, we hesitate to write because we get into the mindset that writing is an arduous task. But in reality? When you just sit down and start writing, you’re more likely to continue than you are to stop. Starting is the hardest part of writing. Once you begin, you’ll find it’s much easier to keep going. Train yourself out of that “writing = hard” mindset and in the words of a certain shoe company, just do it. And if you’re having trouble disciplining yourself, have someone else to hold you accountable. It’ll make you more likely to finish your goals.

One thing I do to form a writing habit is to write in my spare time. Usually, that means I write during school, in the earliest hours of the day (when my classes are easier and I have less homework). Tip: little things accumulate. If you can spare even half an hour or so to write--or think about writing--every single day, it adds up!

2. The “Room Rule”

Okay, so I just made this up, but it still applies. Basically, it means that you should keep as many unneeded electronic devices as possible at least one room away from you--whether that means moving yourself away from your phone, or putting your phone somewhere that you can’t see it. Pretend you’re in a classroom where if the teacher catches you with your phone, it’ll immediately be confiscated and you’ll be kept after school (which honestly, is probably pretty realistic for some of my followers who are students). Seriously, though. Social media is one of the best ways to procrastinate, so the best solution is to just get it out of sight. Once you start scrolling, it takes a really long time to stop.

If you still have distractions on whatever device you write on, you can clear your distracting tabs. Alternatively, you can put them in another window out of sight or do all your research before you start writing. Another option is to use an app to restrict what sites you can access, like Forest.

3. You have time

I’ve mentioned many times already that writers often think that they don’t have time to write. Well, I've got good news for you: you definitely do still have time to write. Every word counts! Even if you don't have enough time today, you'll have more chances tomorrow.

A similar trap procrastinating writers fall into is convincing themselves that they can't make the time to write. For example, I'm a student, and for the longest time I would tell myself I had too much homework to write. But then when I finished my homework, I would have plenty of free time...which I spent on my phone. Yeah, I know. Eventually I figured out that if I was going to make any progress at all in my WIPs, I was going to have to make myself do it.

If you really want to write, you should carve out the time to write in your schedule. Don't give yourself an excuse! Obviously, this doesn't apply to people who genuinely don't have time to write--you shouldn't burn yourself out trying to juggle a busy schedule and your WIPs.

Honestly, the best way to deal with procrastination is to deal with yourself. Examining your feelings toward writing and finding time to write are steps toward figuring out your own best method of productivity. It's a very personal journey that I wish you luck on. Finally, to all of the procrastinating writers reading this post...go write! I believe in you!

this is it. this is writing

what people think is hard about writing: describing the joy, love, beauty, grief, loss and hope that form the richness of human experience

what is actually hard about writing: describing basic actions such as turning, leaning over, reclining, gesturing, saying something in a quiet voice, breathing, getting up from chairs, and walking across rooms

Skip Google for Research

As Google has worked to overtake the internet, its search algorithm has not just gotten worse.  It has been designed to prioritize advertisers and popular pages often times excluding pages and content that better matches your search terms 

As a writer in need of information for my stories, I find this unacceptable.  As a proponent of availability of information so the populace can actually educate itself, it is unforgivable.

Below is a concise list of useful research sites compiled by Edward Clark over on Facebook. I was familiar with some, but not all of these.

⁂

Google is so powerful that it “hides” other search systems from us. We just don’t know the existence of most of them. Meanwhile, there are still a huge number of excellent searchers in the world who specialize in books, science, other smart information. Keep a list of sites you never heard of.

www.refseek.com - Academic Resource Search. More than a billion sources: encyclopedia, monographies, magazines.

www.worldcat.org - a search for the contents of 20 thousand worldwide libraries. Find out where lies the nearest rare book you need.

https://link.springer.com - access to more than 10 million scientific documents: books, articles, research protocols.

www.bioline.org.br is a library of scientific bioscience journals published in developing countries.

http://repec.org - volunteers from 102 countries have collected almost 4 million publications on economics and related science.

www.science.gov is an American state search engine on 2200+ scientific sites. More than 200 million articles are indexed.

www.pdfdrive.com is the largest website for free download of books in PDF format. Claiming over 225 million names.

www.base-search.net is one of the most powerful researches on academic studies texts. More than 100 million scientific documents, 70% of them are free

Advice on Writing Banter

1. Don’t prolong the humor

As a reader, you’ve most likely seen this happen before. It happens when an author takes it upon themselves to make absolutely sure you understand that a character said something funny. This breaks the widely accepted First Commandment of Humor: if you have to explain a joke, said joke loses some of its humor. (Unless explaining the joke would make the scene funnier, etc. in which case you should keep that in! There's always more than one exception to a rule.) When this happens, the scene often slows down--way too much--and the humor quickly fades into annoyance for the reader. Yeah, the joke was fun at first, but it’s pretty much fulfilled its maximum humor.

How can you avoid this? As a reader, remember that you never want the author to patronize you. As a writer, just trust your readers. Tell a joke and just let it stand. Trust that the reader will notice. Don’t drag it out longer than necessary: that kills all the pacing and humor of the scene.

2. Diversify the delivery

Everyone has their own way of telling jokes and reacting to jokes told by others. Some people tell jokes with a deadpan, almost serious delivery. Others can barely get through a joke without laughing to the point of tears. Whatever the case may be, no two people will be the same!

Another way to write good banter is to mix up the types of humor present.  For example, if one of your characters responds to everything with a sarcastic quip, don’t make the rest of your characters aggressively caustic towards one another. 

Also, try mixing up what forms of comedy each character uses. Have a character laugh exclusively at bad puns and nothing else. Maybe another character takes themself way too seriously and refuses to find any humor in ridiculous situations. Or maybe a character can’t tell a knock-knock joke to save their life. Plus, a bonus of diversifying the comedy you use in your banter is that it’s a great way to flesh out your characters!

3. Pacing

The best way to create natural dialogue is make sure it sounds natural, and one way to check that is to look at the pacing. If the banter sounds stilted and awkward, no one is going to laugh. As you read it, listen for awkward pauses or lulls in the dialogue that might slow it down. Sometimes, you should ask yourself: do the responses sound realistic? Because let’s be honest: when you’re bantering with someone, you usually don’t have much time to think of very clever and specific comebacks on the spot. (Actually, I usually find that I come up with said comebacks hours later, when it’s way too late to use them.) I choose to only apply this rule to awkward or forced-sounding dialogue, though. As a banter lover, I never limit myself in writing banter! If I don't like how it sounds later, I can always cut it. I encourage you to do the same. If writing banter makes you happy, then write as much as you want and don't let me tell you what to do!

4. Tone

True banter should always be lighthearted or mischievous, but it should never be malicious or one-sided. There’s a thin line between bantering and bickering, in my opinion. Banter is a teasing, fun, and lighthearted argument between people. Bickering is banter but with often malicious undertones, and it may be one-sided. 

For example, Banter would not be Character A pointing out all of Character B’s flaws. Banter would be A “criticizing” B clearly as a joke, and B defending themselves good-naturedly!

It's not an "abandoned" WIP, I didn't intentionally leave it in the forest to die and forget about it, it is a lost wip who wandered into the forest despite my pleas not to. I sit at the edge of the forest every day and hear it calling for help but there is nothing I can do. It is a haunting wip