Every Writing Advice Thing Ever: Dont Get Bogged Down In Details On Your First Draft. Just Write!

Every writing advice thing ever: Don’t get bogged down in details on your first draft. Just write! ☺️

Me: How I begin this scene hinges on whether cheese sandwiches were served with mayo in the 50’s.

Not every writer wants to post their work online, however there are positives to doing so. If you seek feedback and advice from readers and writers, you might consider posting a draft or two. Even a few chapters or a poem can be uploaded online to get a little audience feedback.

Here are writing sites I’ve explored along with brief reviews of my experience in using them:

Fictionpress & Fanfiction.net Neither site allows you to remove reviews, delete your account, or budges an inch about harassment reports. This attracts many trolls, spammers, and critics who feel you’re entitled to their extremely negative opinions of your work. I don’t want young or amateur writers going through that, and the rest of us don’t deserve harassment either. There are wonderful readers and writers on both sites, but overall it’s an unsafe environment I can no longer recommend (further info).

A decent alternative to FF.net is Fictionpad. It’s a smaller site with fewer fandoms, but it’s easier to use and the admins were nice when I last tried it.

Archive Of Our Own (AO3) | Fanfiction only** | No covers — Invite only, but getting in isn’t hard. High viewership, well organized, and ad-free. Some written feedback, especially if you ask for some, but the “kudos” button is open to the public so anyone can leave their mark of approval. You can also set individual stories to “users only” along with other useful privacy options.

Crossover friendly, so you can finally post that multi-fandom fic and tag each property for search. Ships, subject material, and trigger warnings are also taggable for search (or to weed out in the case of tws). Lets you group individual stories into a series, and has various features for sharing/gifting your work with others. Overall the best place for fanfiction, hands down. — Adult Material Allowed

Major Demographics: Female, All ages.

Popular Genres: smut, epic dramas, fluff/angst, whump

Wattpad | Original & fan fiction | Covers Req. — Wattpad has been steadily improving its features and policies in the five years I’ve been using it. Here, some writers receive tons of feedback and appreciation, but most receive very little. A few authors have gotten published thanks to this site, others have followers in the hundreds of thousands, and still others become site administrators to support the bustling community.

They’ve recently rebranded, and have also introduced a feature to earn writers money. It is currently in beta and being tested with select authors only.

Unlike other sites, this one has very clear international groups and a high ethnic diversity among its writers. There’s an emphasis on supporting foreign authors and their stories in any language. Contests are set up by the site, but also smaller niche ones can be run by individual users.

It’s very fun to use and if the site chooses to feature one of your works you can get a lot of traffic. For the most part however, you have to practice marketing yourself, and/or develop a group of writer friends and read/promote each other’s work. — Adult Material allowed, but along strict guidelines (lots of kids use this site!).

Major Demographics: Female, Teens.

Popular Genres: romance, young adult, supernatural, celeb fic, fantasy

Royal Road | Original & fan fiction | Covers Opt. — This was suggested in the replies, so I did some research. Haven’t used it myself, looks nice, but here are the main points interested writers should know: 

Site does not claim ownership of your work, copyright stays with you.

Popular stories receive much feedback and viewership in the millions.

You cannot remove reviews on your own stories, and you must submit a ticket to remove your story or delete your account.

From their FAQ: “All new submissions are manually checked for appropriate tagging and plagiarism, so expect it to take 12-24 hrs for a submission to be approved.” Also, stories with low-quality spelling and grammar will be removed by moderators.

Keeping a steady update schedule of “polished” drafts seems to be mandatory, and reviewers sound entitled.

One-shots seem to be out of the question, this is a site for novels.

Premium and free options exist for both readers and writers.

Site is affilated with Amazon, has been running for six years, and is based in Israel.

Fantasy, supernatural, epic dramas.

Adult Material Allowed

Smashbook, Livejournal, Inkspired, and Booknet are sites I am aware of, but have too little knowledge of to review. Likewise Wordpress, Blogger, or right here on Tumblr you can regularly post stories or novels and receive feedback. However, for those sites you do have to figure out a blogging system for yourself.

While researching good sites for this post, I found this user’s comments insightful. She suggested Writer’s Digest and Absolute Write as good places to seek professional feedback on your work. They don’t appear to be sites where you post work, but rather they provide tips and resources to help improve your work.

There are dozens of other places online where you can post your original fiction, non-fiction, and fan fiction. Things to keep in mind when site shopping:

READ THEIR SUBMISSION POLICIES & GUIDELINES FIRST

Search for reviews of the site by individuals who’ve actually used the site and are not affilated with the site.

See what the site’s policy is on deleting works & accounts. You don’t want to get your name and work trapped on a site with a bad reputation.

If “popular” stories have very little feedback on them, this means the majority of stories on that site get none.

If most users haven’t updated in months/years, this means the site is practically dead and may soon shut down. RED FLAG: the site does not date anything.

If the “feedback” on users’ pages and stories are “Like my work!” or “Read for read?” and other self-promotional messages, don’t sign up.

If a site looks cool to you but you’re still unsure, make an account with a junk email and post something you don’t care too much about just to test the waters. Good/bad doesn’t matter much right now, what’s important is figuring out how traffic works and what readers there are interested in. 

Sites to AVOID due to spam, scams, and shifty behavior:

Inkitt—spam/shifty; claims it’s the #1 site for online publishing, but this is misleading. Their idea of getting users is to send copy/paste “invitations” to pre-existing online accounts (often dead accounts), and lie about how good one’s writing is even though they’ve never read it. Signing up with them also gets you endless emails about their pathetic contests.

Dreame/Ficfun—spam/scam; similar deceptive invitation tactic, except they are relentless (they’ve “invited” me five six TEN times on two different sites). Their gimmick is to offer you pennies for 5yr rights to your work (and their site is trashy with very little reader feedback). Both are owned by their Singaporean parent company Stary PTE Ltd. (who personally sent me my 5th “invite”).

+ If you have a question, please review my Ask Policy before sending in your ask. Thank you!

+ If you benefit from my updates and replies, please consider sending a little thank you and Buy Me A Coffee! 

+ HEY, Writers! other social media: Wattpad - AO3 - Pinterest - Goodreads

—

*Based on what I see as receiving the most traffic and feedback on each site. These are not accurate statistics, merely observations.

** “Is AO3 really just for fanfic?” (tl;dr—YES)

WriterofthePrompts Ultimate Ask Masterlist 2 (Updated 05/20)

Wow, first of all I just want to say THANK YOU SO MUCH for all the support on the First Ask Masterlist! Obviously I had to make a second one with all the asks I’ve answered since then so here you go. You can also check out my list of Random Writing Tips. As last time, some of these posts have notes from lovely people who have added onto my answers with their advice and you can also help out fellow writers by adding your tips or ideas to the posts in the replies or by reblogging. Hope you enjoy! 😊

Writing Tips

Can’t think of what to write for a scene? Cut it.

The “organized chaos” form of outlining

Resources for writing a story synopsis

Can a comedy also have a good message?

Writing a fantasy fit for most ages (also under Fantasy)

When you’ve got an idea but don’t know how to expand it

Building on your story yourself  

Will posting writing online hurt publishing chances?

Using a prompt for a series

Ways to give information to a character

How to give the same information to multiple characters at different times

Dialogue tips

Coming up with a title (expanded)

Making the real villain a plot twist 

GRAMMAR CHEAT SHEET

Some resources for creating a language

How to decide if you want a good or sad ending (Also, how not to screw up an ending) (Also, why the GoT ending makes me sad)

How to skip over the passage fo time in writing (Part 1)

How to use scene breaks for the passage of time, change in location etc. (Part 2)

Story Structure Tips

Travelling scenes: when to skip and how to make them impactful

Writing a sloooow carriage ride without being boring 

Moving back and forth in time in the story

difference between inciting incident and plot point 1

Blending backstory with present to further the plot

Writing scenes with a lot of characters

Writing a story as a journal or video log style

Third or first person?

Limited third person vs first person

Writing a long series

Connecting your ideas

When to introduce major and minor conflicts

How to develop your own style of writing

When to describe a character

Motivation and Positivity

Worrying about “originality” with your writing

Staying focused on writing

Sticking to one idea before moving on to the next?

Turning off the editor voice

starting to write and keeping motivation

quick tip on writing down inspiration in the moment

How do you know you are cut out to be a writer?

When you feel your plot isn’t exciting enough

When you think your idea is stupid (it’s not)

On covid-19 and whether I think it’s “bad” to take inspiration from it

When you think you’re writing has lost feeling

Character Development

Writing unnecessary scenes with your characters just for fun

Tips for writing a fully-fledged peppy girl

Teen raised by twenty-year-old family member

Mentor/Mentee relationship

Describing nature the way a nature-lover would

Showing a dead family member’s impact on the MC

Writing about a character losing loved one

Ways to show a character’s disgust 

Why a “good” character would switch to the bad side

Why the “White Saviour” thing is a cliche and sucks

Villains who do things like “killing the dog”

Good and bad reasons to kill off a character

Character exercise when you lose their voice

Resources for learning more for a Jewish character (in the notes)

A reason a character might feel cliche

Representations of Gluttony and Laziness as humans

More on twins and siblings

How a tough character might react to something shocking/upsetting

Writing Types of Characters

Writing a good guy MC who turns out to be the villain

Bad guy turning good and making them sympathetic

Dr. Doof: how to write a great villain

Coming up with villains

Coming up with villains 2

Writing a scheming character

A character raised by a computer

Bilingual character tip

Interracial couples

Some negative traits for someone in a zombie apocalypse

Flaws for a Gary Stu type 

a character trying to learn the language on a new world (also under World Building)

Good guy vs bad guy stories aren’t a cliche

Writing a CIA/FBI/Military character (also under Thriller)

writing a drunk character with some heartfelt moments and humour

Why NOT having diversity in your story cast is odd

A character with diabetes

Fictional races where one is “superior” to the other

Writing a serial killer as your main character (also under Thriller/Crime)

Writing a good Strong Female Character™️ 

Writing about a mob character (also under Thriller)

Writing a female astronomer in ancient Greece (Also under Historical)

Shy characters don’t have to be passive

Shyness and confidence aren’t mutually exclusive

World Building

Creating a creation myth

The creation of gods based on people’s beliefs

History research post (also under Historical)

Making an acronym from an organization

Naming world building aspects

strange weather ideas

ideas for ridiculous rules to join an excuse club

Why someone would put on a massive tournament

a character trying to learn the language on a new world (also under Types of Characters)

Making a magical setting exciting (also under fantasy/paranormal)

When you have too much information for an expansive world

Weaving a complex magic system into your story (also under fantasy/paranormal)

Using words referring to our world in a fictional world

Fantasy/Paranormal

Why gods would abandon their world

Aphrodite, Hephaestus and Ares: the original love triangle

basing gods on multiple gods

Why someone would control dreams

Dark fantasy with a dream shop

Conflicts for someone with the power to share dreams with others *

Ways to break a curse

Reasons why someone would need to break their curse now

Coming up with a good curse for your character

Ways to break the curse to get the Prince out of the tower

When the princess rescues the prince

Prince/ss of one kingdom raised by another king

why a princess would run away

Prompts for a King or Queen getting assassinated *

Why a villain would overthrow a royal family *

Reasons two Kings would marry each other *

which fairytales deserve retellings

Fairy tale prompts

Using fairytale characters in retellings

Stories written from the POV of fairytale villains

Writing a fantasy fit for most ages (also under Writing Tips)

Friendship between a dragon and a human

Vampire and human couple meeting

Angel and ex-demon hanging out together

demons that feed on love and joy?

mythical kids meeting humans

Sword fight resources (also under Historical)

Using an axe as a weapon

Haunted house story from ghost’s perspective

A family moves in to a house that is alive 

Does the afterlife have to include religious aspects?

Writing the grief of a girl finding her friend as a ghost

Witch sisters with unequal powers 

Reasons a village would be afraid of a kind wizard

How a wizard’s guardian might tell them they are a wizard

Making a magical setting exciting (also under world building) 

Weaving a complex magic system into your story (also under world building) 

Things a magic council would use money for 

Ideas for magical powers

Ideas for ancient magical powers

Prompts about cities that are always in night 

Prompts about a changeling

Reasons a magical world would need a saviour 

mirroring strengths and weaknesses for magic manipulation

How an immortal could die under mysterious circumstances

How to get regular folk involved in a magical world

“Underused" fantasy settings

Funny dialogue making fun of fantasy cliches

Prompts about a hidden/occult society

Autumn prompts about fae

Manatees being confused for mermaids

Fantasy modes of communication

Sci Fi

Futuristic space pirates

How to tell who is the clone and who is the original

Artifacts curious aliens would steal from Earth

Weird things that would wipe out a part of the population

How a person could go back in time

Question prompts for a virtual afterlife

How a half-human character might realize their alien half

“Non cliche” ideas for an apocalypse story

Time travel prompts for the current era

Historical

Writing about the Tudor court

History research post (also under World Building)

Sword fight resources

Using an axe as a weapon

Quick reasons why genocide doesn’t just happen overnight

Writing a female astronomer in ancient Greece (also under Types of Characters)

Dragons in Ancient Egypt?

Writing about WOC in the 1950’s

Aftermaths of a civil war

Thriller/Crime (aka I-swear-I’m-not-a-criminal-just-a-writer asks):

writing assassins

Sassy Assassins 3!

How an assassin with special abilities would discover these abilities

Clues that would make a character suspect another for murder

Writing a CIA/FBI/Military character (also under Types of Characters)

Serial/mass murder…causes?

tests to get into secret organization

Writing a serial killer as your main character (also under Writing Types of Characters)

Tips for writing a consistent murder mystery

Murder mystery party prompts (humorous)

How to come up with subplots for a mystery

Writing about a mob character (also under Writing Types of Character)

Why a step father might be a suspect in a teen’s disappearance

Prompts of killer kids terrorizing their babysitter

Prompts about a college kid being stalked on campus

The Masked Sinner prompts

Prompts about a crime scheme in 1950’s

Superheroes and Super Villains

Sidekick wanting to be a superhero

Super villain cause ideas

Sidekick and villain falling in love (also under Romance)

Superhero story originality

How a super villain can get notoriety

Woman unknowingly falls in love a super villain

World building ideas for superhero stories

Effects of the power of intangibility

Alter ego prompts

Romance

How a princess and a pirate fall in love

two exes who end up working together

How two random kids could meet at school

Sidekick and villain falling in love (also under Superheroes)

Cliches in romance scene?

Original ways that a couple could break up

How to introduce a living girl and ghost love interests

Conflicts in relationship between chef and their pupil

Miscellaneous

Prompts about being abandoned

Character who has never danced in pressured into it

The best ask ever

MC and sister get kicked out of clan. What next? 

Reasons characters would hate another (a concubine)

A disturbing cultish 1950’s-esque town

Some links to help find Beta readers

Why a principal would hate a student

Why a character would forgive their ex

Prompts about anomalies

Reasons a parent would be controlling

You bored, or feeling artsy but don’t have any inspiration...? *updated!*

Do you need to distract yourself? Or are you simply bored? Here are some great websites to make the time pass.

create pixel art

Awesome photo editor and art program, all free…!

Totally free transparent textures

make a cute chibi

draw some cool generative art

be a graffiti creator

create a picassohead (you don’t need to be a picasso to do so)

paint online

another awsome site to create pixel art on

and another one

create your own mandala

or color one

create an avatar

or you can try creating your own superhero

here you can interact with organisms in different environments to see how to music changes

here’s a website that translates the time into hexidecimal colours,

Here is a website where you can travel along a 3D line into the infinite unkown

here is a website where you can listen to rain with or without music

Need a model in a certain pose for drawing? here

Want to build your own planet

here is a website where you can create your own galaxies

make your own pattern (very useful if you need a new background)

create next hit comic

make a city which looks like something from 90′s games

draw a mandala like design

jig saw puzzles

more jig saw puzzles to solve

create a stunning HTML5 animation - no coding!

make a movie

create and dress up dolls

play a piano

you can also play a guitar

create sounds

another sound creator

create a logo

design your dream home

sketch rooms

explore fashion trends and create your own sets

build a website

try this app for building a website

Or maybe start learning how to code!

design your own t-shirt or a beanie or sweatpants and order them

design your own phone case

pretend to be a graphic designer with this cool online tool

Make your own Glitch art

Here’s another glitch art maker

And another!

Holy hell, here’s a third!

make an image look like it was created by a commodore 64

freaking cool text generator!

Easy to use word processor

Make up really cool patterns or run your photos through it :)

Write an essay on anything with no hassle

Wanna see how something you write would look like if it was on JacksFilms YGS((Your Grammar Sucks videos on YouTube))?

Make pictures out of text

ASCII word generator

Need an idea for some fanart-here :D

Still haven’t found something that would float your boat? Try these:

watch a documentary

learn to code

do something yourself

workout with the help of this great youtube channels

learn things

play pokemon or zelda or other awesome old school games

waste your time on miniclip

play games at additing games

or try games at agame

calm your thoughts

the quiet place

it will be okay

vent or listen to someone

pour out your soul

explore the sky

look at art from around the world

virtually visit museum of iraq

explore world with arounder

create a music playlist

list through rare books

scroll useful science website

create sand art

brain games

try out tastekid and discover new favorite band or movie or book

interactive 3D anatomy

random street view

post a secret

create a family tree

find our what’s the difference between x and y

help scientists and become volunteer researcher

create your own font

read a classic short story

In the mood to read, but not sure exactly what book to go for?

scribble on maps

listen to letters

play with acrobots

listen to podcasts

make a bucket list

Ever want to see the most truly useless websites in creation?

Prank a friend with this blue screen of death!

Zone out watching the colors drip down

Maybe none of these peeked your interest-maybe you’ve been wanting to create an o.c, but never really knew how to start-or you just enjoy making O.C’s….

This masterlist is to help you in making your own OCs….it can also apply to developing RP characters i suppose! (´ヮ`)!

How to Write Better OCs:

basic tips on how to make your oc even better

tragic backstory? learn how to write one/make yours great

writing specific characters

a wordier, great guide on how to develop your character

kick out those vague descriptions and make them AWESOME

Character Development:

how to actually make an OC

Q&A (to develop characters)

more Q&As

giving your character a backstory

how to write an attractive character

Need an Appearance idea?

Humanoid generator? check

Here’s another one

and maybe if you didn’t like those this’ll work

Need Monsterpeople?

Well, then here ya’ go

Maybe you need Cats?

Diversity

adding more racial diversity

avoiding tokenism, AKA, how to add diversity to your cast not just because you “need” it

writing sexuality and gender expression (doesnt include non binary, if you have a good ref to that, please add on!)

masterpost on writing more diversity into your story

cultures of the world

guides to drawing different ethnicities (not just a great art reference, but also really helpful in appearance descriptions!)

Mary Sue/Gary Stu

Test to see if your character is a Sue

Explains subdivisions of Sues/Stus

Powerful Characters Don’t Have to Be Sues

Villains

villain generator

need an evil sounding name for your evil character? bam

villain archetypes

what’s your villain’s motive for being a villain?

Relationships

character perceptions (What your character thinks of themselves and what others think of them)

how to write strong relationships between two characters

8 ways to write better characters and develop their relationships with others

OCxLove Interest Handbook

develop your couple with good ol’ Q&A!

how to write realistic relationships

how to write relatives for your characters (this is more OC related to a canon character, but will help in writing family members in general)

ARCHETYPES

12 common archetypes

8 archetypes for male/female characters

female archetypes (goes pretty indepth from two main categories)

a list of archetypes

NAMES

how to name your character

random name generator

most common surnames

surnames by ethnicity

APPEARANCE

tips for better design

basic appearance generator

pinterest board for character design (includes NSFW and images of skeletons/exposed muscle (?) so tread carefully!)

clothing ref masterpost

Clothing generator

Another clothing generator

More clothing generator

Aaaand even more

Steam punk clothing

Char Style preference

Dress Generator

DETAILS

give your character better powers

a list of professions

proactive vs reactive characters

positive and negative traits

interest generator

skills generator

motivation generator

123 ideas for character flaws

list of phobias

Oh shit someone died

Backgrounds and stuff? yep

Quirks

Personality. you need that shit

Need something fandom related?

City generator hell yeah

location? got ya

World-building?

make your own god damn laws

Landscape.

Need Item names?

Fantasy/sci-fi/etc. medicine names

Stuff to make things more interesting.Weapons, clothes, treasures… whatever your characters need.

Item & Artifact Generators

Other stuffs!

Genre, Plot, & Story Prompt Generators

How did your characters meet?

Fanfic plots. you bet your ass.

The narrative of ‘this person was disabled but their disability was cured as part of their story’ is ableist

Dark past ideas

A dark past can be really intresting in books .here are some ideas:

Mysterious Orphanage Escapee: A character who grew up in a sinister orphanage and narrowly escaped its dark secrets.

Traumatic War Survivor: A soldier who witnessed unspeakable horrors on the battlefield, leaving deep emotional scars.

Secret Criminal Past: A reformed criminal who once led a life of violence, but is now trying to make amends.

Kidnapped as a Child: A character who was abducted at a young age and endured years of captivity before escaping.

Tragic Family Betrayal: A character who was betrayed by a close family member, leading to a life filled with distrust and pain.

Cult Escapee: Someone who managed to break free from a dangerous cult, but is haunted by their past involvement.

Haunted by a Violent Crime: A person who accidentally caused harm to someone in their past and has been tormented by guilt ever since.

Dark Addiction: A character who battled a severe addiction that nearly destroyed their life before seeking recovery.

Betrayed by a Friend: A friend who turned out to be a traitor, leading to significant emotional trauma.

Abandoned in Isolation: Someone who was left alone and abandoned in a desolate place, struggling to survive.

Witness to a Murder: A character who saw a murder as a child and was forever scarred by the experience.

Childhood Experimentation: A person who was subjected to unethical scientific experiments in their youth, leaving lasting physical and emotional scars.

Kidnapped and Forced into Crime: A character who was abducted and forced to commit criminal acts against their will.

Betrayed by a Mentor: Someone who was betrayed by a trusted mentor, leading to a deep sense of betrayal and loss.

Survived Natural Disaster: A survivor of a catastrophic natural disaster who lost everything they held dear.

Abusive Relationship Escapee: A person who managed to escape an abusive relationship, but continues to struggle with the trauma.

Witness to a Dark Ritual: A character who stumbled upon a sinister occult ritual in their past, leaving them haunted by the experience.

Family Curse: A character burdened by a dark family curse that has brought suffering to generations.

Identity Theft and Framing: A person who had their identity stolen and was wrongfully accused of crimes they didn't commit.