Never Let Bad Grammar Stop You From Being A Writer. There's Always Gonna Be That One Patient Reader Who'll

Never let bad grammar stop you from being a writer. There's always gonna be that one patient reader who'll sacrifice their firstborn for your book.

I have a fantasy character who has a history of being abused before the story begins, which comes up later in the story as the abusers are trying to find them, but the main point of the story is not about their past life. I don’t know how to tell the audience what happened to them before the abusers re-enter the story as they are very cagey about their past and I don’t want to use flashbacks which I think are not as relevant earlier in the story. Do you have any thoughts?

Including Character Backstory Without Flashbacks

Hi! Thanks for the ask :)

Distill The Backstory

First, I suggest that you pick out 1-3 main memories from the past you want to reveal. Character backstories can be long and complicated but if it's not relevant to the current story, it can sit at the back.

What colors/voices/words/smell/patterns do your character remember the most? What are the few things that keep coming back to them? Make it bite-size, like: the smell of fresh paint mixed with mud.

Start dropping small hints: when the character encounters a certain smell, just show how they tremble before walking on. Do this enough times, and the readers will soon catch on that there's something.

Rule of 3 (omne trium perfectum)

The rule of three is a writing principle that suggests that events or characters introduced in threes are more humorous, satisfying, or effective in execution of the story and engaging the reader.

Pick 3 details and build them into the present conflict:

-the character encounters a situation that resembles their past

-the abused character is traumatized at present due to what happened to them in the past (if you show them avoiding cinemas like hell, the readers will know that they've been abused in a cinema in the past, for example)

Drop 3 hints about how the past in BUILT INTO their present life. Given them habits that originate from their past memories. That way, the backstory lives in the present.

Mini Flashbacks

When the character recalls something or sees something that triggers their memory, mention the past briefly, in just 2-3 lines.

For example, just writing: "It was like having her arms maimed with a knife again, crying alone with the only light coming through a tiny bathroom window. No mother or father or uncle had saved her from King Darius's men then, and certainly not now." > This is enough for the reader to know the gist of what happened, and the narrative can move on describing stuff in the present.

Dialogue

If the people from their past are coming for them, you can have a scene where they mention how they enjoyed torturing your abused character, while the POV character overhears them.

Or you can have another character ask about the abused character's past. Don't make the dialogue too long, but this should give enough room to explain the jist of the backstory.

You can have the character's past abusers mentioning the past directly: "Oh, we had such fun with ropes, didn't we?"

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My head tells me to rot for love and my heart craves for freedom.

—Farrah Randolph

genuinely stunned at the fantastic choice for Percy not to pray to his absent and unknown father—like he did in the books—but to his mother.

the show is really taking us to one of riordan’s central theses straight off the bat.

parenthood isn’t about power and legacy and the recognition of shared blood.

It’s about the incredible act of showing up for your child—again and again and a-fucking-gain. That’s how you inspire respect. That’s how you become a child’s patron and beloved god.

Types Of Writer’s Block (And How To Fix Them)

1. High inspiration, low motivation. You have so many ideas to write, but you just don’t have the motivation to actually get them down, and even if you can make yourself start writing it you’ll often find yourself getting distracted or disengaged in favour of imagining everything playing out

Try just bullet pointing the ideas you have instead of writing them properly, especially if you won’t remember it afterwards if you don’t. At least you’ll have the ideas ready to use when you have the motivation later on

2. Low inspiration, high motivation. You’re all prepared, you’re so pumped to write, you open your document aaaaand… three hours later, that cursor is still blinking at the top of a blank page

RIP pantsers but this is where plotting wins out; refer back to your plans and figure out where to go from here. You can also use your bullet points from the last point if this is applicable

3. No inspiration, no motivation. You don’t have any ideas, you don’t feel like writing, all in all everything is just sucky when you think about it

Make a deal with yourself; usually when I’m feeling this way I can tell myself “Okay, just write anyway for ten minutes and after that, if you really want to stop, you can stop” and then once my ten minutes is up I’ve often found my flow. Just remember that, if you still don’t want to keep writing after your ten minutes is up, don’t keep writing anyway and break your deal - it’ll be harder to make deals with yourself in future if your brain knows you don’t honour them

4. Can’t bridge the gap. When you’re stuck on this one sentence/paragraph that you just don’t know how to progress through. Until you figure it out, productivity has slowed to a halt

Mark it up, bullet point what you want to happen here, then move on. A lot of people don’t know how to keep writing after skipping a part because they don’t know exactly what happened to lead up to this moment - but you have a general idea just like you do for everything else you’re writing, and that’s enough. Just keep it generic and know you can go back to edit later, at the same time as when you’re filling in the blank. It’ll give editing you a clear purpose, if nothing else

5. Perfectionism and self-doubt. You don’t think your writing is perfect first time, so you struggle to accept that it’s anything better than a total failure. Whether or not you’re aware of the fact that this is an unrealistic standard makes no difference

Perfection is stagnant. If you write the perfect story, which would require you to turn a good story into something objective rather than subjective, then after that you’d never write again, because nothing will ever meet that standard again. That or you would only ever write the same kind of stories over and over, never growing or developing as a writer. If you’re looking back on your writing and saying “This is so bad, I hate it”, that’s generally a good thing; it means you’ve grown and improved. Maybe your current writing isn’t bad, if just matched your skill level at the time, and since then you’re able to maintain a higher standard since you’ve learned more about your craft as time went on

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If you're an artist drawing Sleep Token, know that if you're gonna sell fanart, the label is gonna take them down, instagram posts and accounts may as well.

I personally got my prints on my Inprnt shop taken down, even with or without tags or the absence of the band's logo.

The reports started back in march, around the time when ST had switched labels to RCA, owned by Sony Music Entertainment.

Don't want to sit down and let big corporations screw over small independent artists so if you wish to do something against this please interact!

If you have experience with complaining to a label don't hesitate to comment!