Ok Sorry You Probably Have Already Answered This A Bunch But Do You Have A Masterlist Of Questions Broken

Ok sorry you probably have already answered this a bunch but do you have a masterlist of questions broken up by topic?

I don’t. It's a good idea but I need to rethink what topics I tag before I create something like that and that's gonna take some work.

In the meantime, I've got a masterlist of questions in chronological order on google docs.

I've also stuck a list of tags I use under the cut. Lots of questions are tagged with multiple topics so it doesn't really work as a masterlist but at least you can sort by topics.

architecture

astronomy

attitudes

belief systems

celebrations

children

death

demographics

disability

economics

education

family

fashion

fauna

flora

food and drink

gender and sexuality

government

history

hygiene

important figures

just for funsies

landforms

language

law and crime

leisure

magic

marriage

medicine

meta qs

meteorology

miscellaneous

mythology

nature

occupations

race

relationships

religion

resources

rites of passage

ritual

social hierarchy

symbols

technology

the arts

topography

travel

weapons and warfare

things to think about for characters

do they have allergies?

what foods will they not touch?

what kinds of music do they like?

how are they around new people?

do they speak in an accent?

have they tried learning a new language?

how many languages do they know?

what is a song that will always make them cry?

how do they cry? heaving? silently? sobbing?

how do they dress? for practicality or fashion?

what is the first thing they notice about a stranger?

what is their humour like?

do they have scars? what caused them?

do they wear jewelry?

are they a frivolous spender or a miser?

do they prefer luxury or practicality?

who would they quote?

what could make them change their mind?

who is the first person they'd call?

how are they around animals? do they have pets?

what is their favourite childhood food?

what is something they've never told anyone?

childhood friends?

what are habits they've picked up from other people?

what are their guilty pleasures?

what is something they're staunchly against?

do they speak a certain way? do they use contractions? popular turns of phrase?

can they fall in love? what does it look like? does it differ between people -- friends vs family?

what would they rather die than do?

what is their biggest mistake? one that they look out to never do again.

Distinguishing Between Character Perspectives

                I’m sure many of you are already working on projects that have multiple characters that hold perspective (as in, we follow the story from their eyes), or you will someday. Whether you do it chapter by chapter or just intentionally head-hop, distinguishing between perspectives of characters is important both for clarity to the readers (we want to be able to hop into any part of the story and know who we’re with) as well as for conveying character!

                We do this through building the narrator with the character’s voice.

                Whether you’re writing first person, third person omniscient or limited, or even second person, your narrator is going to have a voice. This voice is the voice of the character you are following.

                Narrator voice works almost the exact same as how you would write your character voice. Your narrator is going to tell the story matching the attitude and background of their character. Background will influence the kind of words they use, the way they see the world, and how they would comment on it. In an easy example, if your character doesn’t swear—their narrator definitely wouldn’t, unless the character swears inside their own thoughts but not out loud.

                Attitude is telling personality through voice. Take for example, your character has just walked into the bar:

                “The bar was filled to the brim with sweaty drunks falling over each other, barely cognizant of the drinks they were spilling--much less so the people around them.”

                Versus

                “Upbeat dance music filled the bar. A crowd had formed in the middle of the floor, people cheering and dancing together like the rest of the world hardly mattered.”

                Same situation, far different attitude.

                Your narrator for different characters will use their tone, their word choices, and convey a specific and unique outlook on the world. All of this conveys their character in an intimate way (the narrator is almost like their inner-thoughts or literally seeing through their eyes) and will make reading works with multiple perspectives far more interesting!

                (However, this also applies even if there’s only one perspective!)

                What are some unique choices you made for your narrator/characters’ voices?

How to easily improve the flow of your writing

When writing a story, your prose can often feel jumbled.

Muddled.

Disconnected.

Like it just doesn’t flow.

And for a long time, I never knew a clear, tangible tactic for fixing that problem, except by feel or by trial and error. Then I learned a simple, but effective trick for improving flow:

Use the last few words of one sentence to set up the information that’s about to appear at the beginning of the next one.

Here’s what I mean:

Think of it like crossing a stream, hopping from rock to rock — each rock acts as both a landing spot and a launching point. Writing and revising your sentences to serve a similar purpose can go a long way in improving the flow of your prose.

Let’s start by taking a look at a paragraph (prepared by yours truly) that doesn’t do this, resulting in a somewhat bumpy flow:

Vincent Van Gogh’s “The Starry Night” had always inexplicably drawn Henry in. The painting was framed as a poster on his wall, and he often stared into its dizzying swirls of blue and yellow, and its fiery cypress tree — marveling at the chaos that entrenched the village scene. Henry had always hoped that Vincent was able to find some peace in expelling this vision from his mind and onto the canvas.

Feels a bit disconnected, doesn’t it? It’s still readable, but there isn’t much of a continuity of ideas bridging the sentences — no connective tissue to smooth out your journey through the prose. 

Now let’s look at the same paragraph again, but with some simple rearranging done to ensure that the information that ends each sentence also kicks off the next one (I put these hand-offs in bold):

Henry had always felt inexplicably drawn to Vincent Van Gogh’s “The Starry Night.” The painting was framed as a poster on his wall, and he often stared into its dizzying swirls of blue and yellow, and its fiery cypress tree — marveling at the chaos that entrenched the village scene. With such a vision expelled from the mind and onto the canvas, Henry had always hoped that Vincent was able to find some peace.

Now that reads a little better, doesn’t it? You’ll notice I didn’t even change up my word choice. Sometimes you’ll have to swap out words or change the order of your sentences, but even just rearranging information can often add a lot connectivity.

This obviously won’t be possible in every sentence and paragraph, but it’s a great rule of thumb when you want to smooth out your prose. I hope this proves as helpful to you all as it has been for me!

Good luck, and good writing, everybody.

— — —

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Pro Tip: One Simple Trick To Making Your Characters Likeable and Relatable

Want a super easy, never-fail trick to making a character instantly 100% more interesting? 

Make them a paradox. 

 There is a reason why certain character tropes are so common: 

The scoundrel with a heart of gold 

The assassin with a moral code 

The badass “normal” in a super-powered world 

The cute and childish psychopathic killer 

The gruff warrior who’s a softie inside

But you’re not limited to well-trodden tropes, and in fact it’s even better to make your own surprising combinations (because these archetypes are now so expected that they need to be subverted to remain effective). 

When you give a character a strong central trait or motif, and then give them a strong secondary characteristic that runs directly counter to that concept, you generate internal conflict, which is automatically interesting. More than that, you make the character more relatable. 

The thing is that every single person on this earth feels like they’re special. All of us are privy every day to our own messy dynamic traits. We can put the people around us comfortably into various boxes, but we always feel like we are too complicated to really fit any single description. 

So when you give someone a character who is clearly complex in the same way? A person whose identity works at cross-purposes? Someone who doesn’t fit neatly into the box their archetype is assigned? We will find them instantly more likeable and interesting. Give it a try!

Writing Tip: Don’t Be Afraid of Mixing Dialogue and Action

So I’ve been reading a lot of amateur writing lately, and I’ve noticed what seems to be a common problem: dialogue. 

Tell me if this looks familiar. You start writing a conversation, only to look down and realize it reads like: 

“I’m talking now,” he said. 

“Yes, I noticed,” she said. 

“I have nothing much to add to this conversation,” the third person said. 

And it grates on your ears. So much ‘said.’ It looks awful! It sounds repetitive. So, naturally, you try to shake it up a bit: 

“Is this any better?” He inquired. 

“I’m not sure,” she mused. 

“I definitely think so!” that other guy roared. 

This is not an improvement. This is worse. 

Now your dialogue is just as disjointed as it was before, but you have the added problem of a bunch of distracting dialogue verbs that can have an unintentionally comedic effect. 

So here’s how you avoid it: You mix up the dialogue with description. 

“Isn’t this better?” he asked, leaning forward in his seat. “Don’t you feel like we’re more grounded in reality?” 

She nodded, looking down at her freshly manicured nails. “I don’t feel like a talking head anymore.” 

“Right!” that annoying third guy added. “And now you can get some characterization crammed into the dialogue!” 

The rules of dialogue punctuation are as follows: 

Each speaker gets his/her own paragraph - when the speaker changes, you start a new paragraph. 

Within the speaker’s own paragraph, you can include action, interior thoughts, description, etc. 

You can interrupt dialogue in the middle to put in a “said” tag, and then write more dialogue from that same speaker. 

You can put the “said” tag at the beginning or end of the sentence. 

Once you’ve established which characters are talking, you don’t need a “said” tag every time they speak. 

ETA: use a comma instead of a period at the end of a sentence of dialogue, and keep the ‘said’ tag in lower caps. If you end on a ? or !, the ‘said’ tag is still in lower case. (thanks, commenters who pointed this out!) 

Some more examples: 

“If you’re writing an incomplete thought,” he said, “you put a comma, then the quote mark, then the dialogue tag.” 

“If the sentence ends, you put in a period.” She pointed at the previous sentence. “See? Complete sentences.” 

“You can also replace the dialogue tag with action.” Extra guy yawned. “When you do, you use a period instead of a comma.”

So what do you do with this newfound power? I’m glad you asked. 

You can provide description of the character and their surroundings in order to orient them in time and space while talking. 

You can reveal characterization through body language and other nonverbal cues that will add more dimension to your dialogue. 

You can add interior thoughts for your POV character between lines of dialogue - especially helpful when they’re not saying quite what they mean. 

You can control pacing. Lines of dialogue interrupted by descriptions convey a slower-paced conversation. Lines delivered with just a “said” tag, or with no dialogue tag at all, convey a more rapid-fire conversation. 

For example: 

“We’ve been talking about dialogue for a while,” he said, shifting in his seat as though uncomfortable with sitting still. 

“We sure have,” she agreed. She rose from her chair, stretching. “Shall we go, then?” 

“I think we should.” 

“Great. Let’s get out of here.” 

By controlling the pacing, you can establish mood and help guide your reader along to understanding what it is that you’re doing. 

I hope this helps you write better dialogue! If you have questions, don’t hesitate to drop me an ask :)

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