Be Warned, I Now Have A Powerful Tool For Translating That Even Translates My Subordinate Clauses Over

Never mow the same grass twice — How to improve faster as a writer

One of the most important writing lessons I ever learned came, surprisingly, from my college trumpet instructor.

“Michael,” he’d say with a heavy sigh, pulling off his glasses and rubbing the lenses with the bottom of his shirt. “You know I hate to mow the same grass twice.”

It was a phrase he used a lot, in band and private lessons, whenever someone made a mistake he’d already told them to correct. Because in his mind, once he’d identified a mistake in your performance, you needed to do everything you could to keep it from happening again, for two reasons.

First, because as he said, he doesn’t like to mow the same grass twice. And second (and more importantly), because if you let yourself repeat a mistake, that mistake will start to become a habit.

A bad habit.

And the more you let yourself repeat that habit, the more deeply ingrained it becomes, making it increasingly difficult to fix and slowing your progress as a musician (or artist, or writer). So his suggestion was this: Identify what needs to change, and firmly commit to fixing it now.

Confession Time

So. I was a very average trumpet player. My instructor and I had a great rapport, but he had to tell me to mow the same grass twice, three times, and more often than he ever would have liked, because I just wasn’t focused or passionate enough about trumpet to fully commit to his advice.

But I was focused and passionate enough about fiction to commit to his advice when it came to writing. So I applied his mindset in my creative writing workshops, particularly when I started my MFA.

And I tell you what, everybody. It worked wonders — helping me improve enough in that first year alone to win our MFA program’s top fiction prize and to earn a teaching assistantship.

3 Steps to Quickly Improve Your Writing

With my trumpet instructor’s advice in mind, I put a 3-step process on loop throughout my time in the MFA:

Share a short story with your fellow writers. (A workshop is great, but online writing friends work too.)

Sift through everyone’s feedback to find one high-priority “bad habit” in your writing that they seem to be honing in on.

When you sit down to write your next story, commit to breaking that habit at any cost, even if it means making other mistakes because of it. (New mistakes are better than old mistakes.)

This is How it Went for Me

The first short story I shared in my MFA workshop had a clear issue: the narrator was passive and underdeveloped. One of my classmates called him a “window character,” someone through whom we could observe the other, more interesting characters who actually drove the plot. The rest of the workshop agreed, and looking back at some of my past stories, I realized that passive narrators had become a deeply ingrained habit of mine.

So the next time I wrote a story, I strictly committed myself to writing a more active narrator.

The Result?

A moderately active narrator. Not perfect, but better than I’d done in a long time. It was progress — me chipping away at the bad habit.

The next story I wrote showed much more progress. It had a highly active narrator, and so did the story after that. And that’s when a new, better habit formed: writing active narrators without even thinking about it. And that let me shift my focus to improve upon something else (such as making all my narrator’s actions stem from their core emotional struggle). And something new again after that (using more figurative language, loosening up my writing voice, etc.).

And that’s how you can improve, too. The goal, again, is to use peer feedback to identify habits in your writing you don’t like, and then to mentally commit to replacing them with habits you want, one by one.

It’s a slightly different way to approach feedback. We tend to primarily use feedback as a way to help us improve an individual story — but it’s also a fantastic opportunity to improve your future first drafts.

You’ll be surprised how quickly your writing improves when you do this.

The key, though, is to commit to tackling just one major habit at a time. Why? Because writing is hard, friends, and fiction is a complex tapestry of various techniques, all coming together at once. That means your attention is always inevitably split while writing, so if you try to fix multiple habits at once, you’ll likely spread your attention too thin to succeed.

So identify a single change you want to see in you writing. Make it happen the next time you write a story, no matter what. Then, before you sit down again to write the next story, find something new you want to change or improve.

You’ll love what happens to your writing when you commit to never mowing the same grass twice.

And when you do, far away, in a brightly-lit college band room in Minnesota, my old instructor will raise a hand to conduct a trumpet ensemble, pause — and smile.

— — —

For writing advice and tips on crafting theme, meaning, and character-driven plots, check out the rest of my blog.

And if you’re feeling discouraged, remember this: Every story has something wonderful inside it, including your own.

How to Write Non-binary Characters: Part II

Visit PART ONE: the basics first!

PART TWO: the nitty gritty.

Non-binary in relation to Presentation.

What are we talking about here when we say presentation?

Presentation in relation to gender is how a person chooses to look, dress, and act in relation to their culture’s gender norms. A person who wears dresses and makeup, speaks in a higher pitch, and daintily crosses their ankles is presenting in a feminine manner in most Western cultures because these are traits labeled as feminine in these particular cultures.

As mentioned in part I, non-binary people may choose to present themselves in many different ways.

Androgynous. The androgynous presentation (i.e. a presentation that is between masculine and feminine, presenting with traits ascribed to both) is commonly associated with non-binary people. Some non-binary people present as androgynous because it feels most natural to them, while others present as androgynous because it helps to inform the rest of the world of their gender.

Masculine or Feminine. Many non-binary people present as masculine or feminine despite being non-binary. They may present this way because they enjoy it and it feels natural, or because they grew up presenting that way and don’t have the time or means or desire to adjust, or because their best efforts would not allow them to present as androgynous without extreme measures they don’t feel the desire to undergo. But whatever the case, non-binary people who present as masculine or feminine are just as non-binary as those who present as androgynous!

A mix of presentations. Some non-binary people will mix up their presentation, either based on their mood, or on how they feel about their gender at that moment, or to keep their presentation similar around a specific group of people (such as work vs friends). This can mean presenting as masculine sometimes and feminine other times, or as androgynous sometimes and masculine or feminine others, or a mix of all three. This switch may happen in relatively even amounts, or the person may wish to usually present one way and on rare occasions another, or anything in between.

A word on gender dysphoria: non-binary people may or may not experience gender dysphoria (i.e. a feeling of unease or distress because their body does not match their gender identity). For non-binary people, this generally takes the form of wanting to be more androgynous. Whether or not a non-binary person experiences any dysphoria does not make them “more” or “less” non-binary. It is not in any way a qualification of non-binary-ness.

A word on gender nonconformity: Just because someone is gender nonconforming does not necissarily mean they are non-binary. Many binary queer people choose to present in ways that don’t conform to gender norms, and they have every right to do so. Sometimes gender nonconforming people are trying to decide whether they are truly binary or not. Whether they decide that they are binary, or non-binary, or trans, or make no decision at all, this is a perfectly respectable way to explore one’s gender.   

Non-binary in relation to Pronouns.

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Resources For Creating Characters

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Character Building Chart

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Basic Character Premise Generator

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Hello, Writeblr!

I’m new and very socially awkward but I made this blog to collect character/story inspiration and writing advice, and I’d love to make some connections with fellow writers and hear about the cool stories you’re all working on. Maybe even share some writing positivity and snippets of my own work.

A litte bit about me: I’m Laura, I’m from Wales, I’m fast becoming a ‘tumblr old’ (if I’m not there already), and I’ve been writing since I was about twelve or so. Up until now though I’ve mostly concentrated on play-by-post roleplay on various message boards. I’ve never actually written anything particularly lengthy and I’d like to branch out a little bit and try my hand at plotting out a whole story.

I love to read fantasy, magical realism, historical fiction, children’s literature, and anything based on folklore, myths or fairy tales. Those are the kind of genres I’m primarily interested in trying to write too. Outside of reading and writing I’m primarily a history nerd, a (partial) dog-owner, a student, and a folk music junkie.

I’ve only got the one WIP at the moment, a Harry Potter fanfic featuring an older Charlie Weasley as he tries to unravel a mystery at a dragon sanctuary in Wales. I’m more of pantser than a planner so it’s all still very vague at the moment but I’m hoping it’ll have a little bit of adventure, some original-ish worldbuilding, and a lot of cool dragons. Everyone loves dragons, right? A lot of OCs will be involved too so I ever get close to finishing it I might try to turn it into an original NaNoWriMo project or something. (Hey, if Stephenie Meyer and E.L. James can do it… )

Anyway, if you think our interests might overlap in any way please do like or reblog this and I’ll most likely follow you (as @lothlaurien, since this is a sideblog).

“The bigger the issue, the smaller you write. Remember that. You don’t write about the horrors of war. No. You write about a kid’s burnt socks lying on the road. You pick the smallest manageable part of the big thing, and you work off the resonance.”

— Richard Price (via promptly-written)

weird thing about writing is that like, even if no one decides to rep me and I don't get published and don't become a bestseller, if not one of those things happen, I've still got the book. I still have the story. It's a thing that you don't have to commit your entire life to but that you never have to give up if you don't want to.

it's just ingrained in my head that I will never stop writing, regardless of whether I'm empirically successful or not, cuz it's not about the success. It's always been about the stories.

VERY BASIC WRITING PLANNER

This is the template I start off with whenever I have a new idea.

Overall

Themes :

Aesthetics :

Protagonists :

Antagonists :

Premise :

Subplots :

Characters

Name :

Age :

Sexuality :

Race/Ethnicity :

Role :

Position :

Goal :

Motivation :

Greatest Fear :

Secret :

Physical Description :

Recognizable Physical Traits :

Important backstory (if any) :

Biggest flaws :

Important Relationships : (Love, sibling, mentor, enemies, close friends)

Plotting

Everything has a beginning, middle and end. Therefore, I divide my whole book into three acts, three acts into three blocks, and three blocks into three chapters. They can all vary of course- but having 27 points really helps. This method is not my own- I used Katytastic’s. Click here to learn more.

Basically everything has these three points-

Set up

Conflict

Resolution

World

Races :

Creatures :

Religions :

Magic System :

Technology :

( This is very basic but a good place to start imho)

This also follows something Brandon Sanderson said: a story is the intersection of characters, plot and world tied together by conflict.

I really hope this helped you! Reblog if it did :)

writeblr introduction!

about me

li/lou whatever nickname is fine

i’m also @studylikeathena (i follow from there)

about my writing

i’ve previously written a novel. i will not be posting about it here

what i will be posting is my current wip novel, wintersong

i like first person and unreliable narrators and summer nostalgia

i used to write it’s always sunny in philadelphia fanfiction and if you’ve read it i’m sorry

what i’ll post

excerpts from wintersong

inspiration pictures/text for the novel

please rb if you’re a writeblr! i really want to get involved in the community :)

The Strength of a Symmetrical Plot

One of my favorite studies of Harry Potter is that of the ring composition found both in the individual novels and overall composition. That very composition is what makes Harry Potter such a satisfying story. It’s a large part of the reason Harry Potter is destined to become a classic. 

And it’s an integral part of the series many people are completely unaware of. 

So what is ring composition? 

It’s a well-worn, beautiful, and (frankly) very satisfying way of structuring a story. John Granger, known online as The Hogwarts Professor, has written extensively on it.

Ring Composition is also known as “chiastic structure.” Basically, it’s when writing is structured symmetrically, mirroring itself: ABBA or ABCBA. 

Poems can be structured this way. Sentences can be structured this way. (Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.) Stories of any length and of any form can be structured this way.

In a novel, the basic structure depends on three key scenes: the catalyst, the crux, and the closing. 

The catalyst sets the story into the motion. 

The crux is the moment when everything changes. (It is not the climax). 

The closing, is both the result of the crux and a return to the catalyst. 

In Harry Potter, you might recognise this structure: 

Voldemort casts a killing curse on Harry and doesn’t die. 

Voldemort attempts to come back to power

Voldemort comes back to power.

Harry learns what it will take to remove Voldemort from power.

Voldemort casts a killing curse on Harry and dies.

But all stories should have this structure. A book’s ending should always reference its beginning. It should always be the result of some major turning point along the way. Otherwise, it simply wouldn’t be a very good story.

What’s most satisfying about chiastic structure is not the basic ABA structure, but the mirroring that happens in between these three major story points. 

To illustrate what a more complicated ABCDEFGFEDCBA structure looks like, (but not as complicated as Harry Potter’s, which you can see here and here) Susan Raab has put together a fantastic visual of ring composition in Beauty and the Beast (1991), a movie which most agree is almost perfectly structured. 

source: x

What’s so wonderful about ring composition in this story is that it so clearly illustrates how that one crucial decision of Beast changes everything in the world of the story. Everything from the first half of the story comes back in the second half, effected by Beast’s decision. This gives every plot point more weight because it ties them all to the larger story arc. What’s more, because it’s so self-referential, everything feels tidy and complete. Because everything has some level of importance, the world feels more fully realized and fleshed out. No small detail is left unexplored.    

How great would Beauty and the Beast be if Gaston hadn’t proposed to Belle in the opening, but was introduced later on as a hunter who simply wanted to kill a big monster? Or if, after the magnificent opening song, the townspeople had nothing to do with the rest of the movie? Or if Maurice’s invention had never been mentioned again after he left the castle? 

Humans are nostalgic beings. We love returning to old things. We don’t want the things we love to be forgotten. 

This is true of readers, too. 

We love seeing story elements return to us. We love to know that no matter how the story is progressing, those events that occurred as we were falling in love with it are still as important to the story itself as they are to us. There is something inside us all that delights in seeing Harry leave Privet Dr. the same way he got there–in the sidecar of Hagrid’s motorbike. There’s a power to it that would make any other exit from Privet Dr. lesser. 

On a less poetic note, readers don’t like to feel as though they’ve wasted their time reading about something, investing in something, that doesn’t feel very important to the story. If Gaston proposed to Belle in Act 1 and did nothing in Act 3, readers might ask “Why was he even in the movie then? Why couldn’t we have spent more time talking about x instead?” Many people do ask similar questions of plot points and characters that are important in one half of a movie or book, but don’t feature in the rest of it. 

Now, ring composition is odiously difficult to write, but even if you can’t make your story a perfect mirror of itself, don’t let story elements leave quietly. Let things echo where you can–small moments, big moments, decisions, characters, places, jokes. 

It’s the simplest way of building a story structure that will satisfy its readers.

If there’s no place for something to echo, if an element drops out of the story half-way through, or appears in the last act, and you simply can’t see any other way around it, you may want to ask yourself if it’s truly important enough to earn its place in your story. 

Further reading:

If you’d like to learn more about ring theory, I’d recommend listening to the Mugglenet Academia episode on it: x

You can also read more about symmetry in HP here: x

And more about ring structure in Lolita and Star Wars here: x and x

And about why story endings and beginnings should be linked here: x

Thanks to @inkingfireplace for tagging me!

1.     Name: Anthea

2.     Nickname: Ann

3.     Star Sign: scorpio

4.     Prefered pronouns: she/her

5.     Sexuality: lesbian

6.     Favourite Color: blue

7.     Time Right Now:  14:59

8.     Average Hours of Sleep: seven hours

9.     Lucky Number(s): nine

10.  Last Thing I Googled: corona universities

11.  Number of Blankets: one

12.  Favourite Fictional Character: Luna Lovegood

13.  What are you wearing: green jeans and a grey sweater

14.  Favorite Book: Aristotle and Dante discover the secrets of the universe by Benjamin Alire Saénz

15.  Favorite Musician(s): Coldplay, Muse, Racoon, U2

16.  Dream Job: astrophysicist or writer

17.  Number of Followers: 33

18.  When Did You Create Your Blog: a few months ago

19.  What Do You Mostly Post: things about my wips or about writing in general

20.  What Made You Decide to Get a Tumblr: I thought it would be fun

21.  When Did Your Blog Reach Its Peak: not yet I guess

22.  Do You Get Asks on a Daily Basis: no

23.  Why Did You Choose Your URL: I wanted a username related to writing and this one wasn’t taken yet.

Tagging: @dowings, @myhusbandsasemni, @poeticparchment, @inklingsoflaura, @epicpoetry