Why You Should Keep Writing Your Story

why you should keep writing your story

because it’s a puzzle no one else will ever arrange the same way as you.

because there are ideas that simply won’t come to you until you write down the wrong words.

because all the bad scenes are the bones of the wonderful scenes.

because someone will love it: someone will read it once, and twice, and thrice; someone will ramble to you about the complexity of it; someone will doodle your characters out of love; someone will find it in exactly what they were looking for with or without knowing it.

because they have things to say, your characters. they’ve told you all those secrets and they have more to tell you, if you will listen.

because you love it even when you don’t; even when it drives you mad or when it accidentally turns into apathy; even when you think you’re doing it all wrong; you love it, and it loves you back.

because you can get a treasure even from things that go wrong; because if a story crumbles down you can build a shinier one on the same spot; because you won’t know where it will take you until it takes you there.

New writerblr looking for writerblrs to follow and interact with

You can call me Rose or Quinn, whichever you prefer.

I've been working on a poem a day as an alternative to NaNoWriMo, and you may see some of them posted here. I've posted my first poem, Cyanide, and I hope you enjoy it.

Otherwise, I write fiction, mostly in the fantasy/sci-fi genres. I have a WIP called Get the Girl starring two girls who love each other very much and would do anything to protect each other from the situations I put them into.

When I'm not reblogging like mad from my main to fill the blog up with resources, you can find me on Discord a lot. Just ask for my info there.

45 story settings ideas for writers

• abandoned places:

a factory.

an amusement park at night.

a temple in the foothills of a dormant volcano.

a forgotten attic.

• situations:

how violence or terrorism starts in a place.

the peak of an active volcano.

the preparation or the start of a war.

during the construction of man-made wonders like the great wall of china, taj mahal or the great pyramids of giza.

• city/world:

a cyberpunk city.

a place without colours.

a hidden city underneath a major metropolis.

where nobody can lie.

where music is the main form of communication.

where dreams and nightmares become reality.

where ageing is a choice.

a city which floats in the sky.

• inside everyday things:

a video game.

a painting.

a snow globe.

• public places:

famous galleries.

an amusement park (at night)

a grand library.

an extravagant circus.

a bustling airport.

a theatre.

a concert hall.

a stadium

an aquarium.

a tattoo parlor.

a coffee shop or a café.

• vehicles:

a ship (pirate, cruise, etc)

a space station.

a deep-sea submarine.

a train travelling through time.

a limousine carring a public figure travelling through the town.

• miscellaneous:

a victorian school.

the sea bed.

a military base in a war zone.

the middle of a desert.

a lighthouse.

the catacombs beneath paris.

a nomadic caravan across the desert.

in a silent monastery.

a dungeon.

a tunnel system.

A research tip from a friendly neighborhood librarian! 

I want to introduce you to the wonderful world of subject librarians and Libguides. 

I’m sure it’s common knowledge that scholars and writers have academic specialties. The same is true for subject librarians! Most libraries use a tool called Libguides to amass and describe resources on a given topic, course, work, person, etc. (I use them for everything. All hail Libguides.) These resources can include: print and ebooks, databases, journals, full-text collections, films/video, leading scholars, data visualizations, recommended search terms, archival collections, digital collections, reliable web resources, oral histories, and professional organizations. 

So, consider that somewhere out there in the world, there may be a librarian with a subject specialty on the topic you’re writing on, and this librarian may have made a libguide for it. 

Are you writing about vampires? 

Duquesne University has a guide on Dracula

University of Northern Iowa: Monsters and Religion

Fontbonne University has a particularly good one on Monsters, Ghosts, and Mysteries

Washington University in St. Louis: a course guide on Monsters and Strangeness 

How about poverty? 

Michigan State: Poverty and Inequality with great recommended terms and links to datasets 

Notre Dame: a multimedia guide on Poverty Studies.

Do you need particular details about how medicine or hygiene was practiced in early 20th century America?

UNC Chapel Hill: Food and Nutrition through the 20th Century (with a whole section on race, gender, and class)

Brown University: Primary Sources for History of Health in the Americas

Duke University: Ad*Access, a digital collection of advertisements from the early 20th century, with a section on beauty and hygiene  

You can learn about Japanese Imperial maps, the American West, controlled vocabularies, Crimes against art and art forgeries, anti-Catholicism, East European and Eurasian vernacular languages, geology, vaudeville, home improvement and repairs, big data, death and dying, and conspiracy theories.

Because you’re searching library collections, you won’t have access to all the content in the guides, and there will probably be some link rot (dead links), but you can still request resources through your own library with interlibrary loan, or even request that your library purchase the resources! Even without the possibility of full-text access, libguides can give you the words, works, people, sites, and collections to improve your research.

Search [your topic] + libguide and see what you get!

writing prompts to get to know your characters better

• individual characters

write a description of them from the pov of their best friend.

write a description of them from the pov of a person who absolutely hates them.

write their earliest or favourite memory.

write their death scene even if you are not planning on killing them.

if your character had a yt channel, write the script of their most watched video.

• one on one friendships

first meeting is overdone. write their first fight instead.

write a series of text conversations between the two.

one character has been detained / arrested, and the other one is trying to get them out.

how would they behave at an elementary school sleepover?

they've been working on a joint bucket list since they became close. write the bucket list.

• friend groups

a group picture goes horribly wrong. write the scene.

find some 'most likely to' questions. use them within the group.

one of them goes out of town, and the rest of the group has to watch their house/plants/pets/kid while they're away.

one friend works at a restaurant. the other friends decide to eat there. describe how they get the friend fired in one night.

• romantic relationships

write their breakup scene. doesn't matter if they break up in the book or not.

someone kills one of them. describe the other one's reaction.

write the stupidest argument they've ever had.

they return to the place where they first met/kissed. somehow, the place has been changed, and not for the better.

write a proposal scene.

All girls really want in life is a beautifully ornate crystal dagger