I Didn't Get To Play Video Games That Much During My Youth/teen Years (family Couldn't Really Afford

I didn't get to play video games that much during my youth/teen years (family couldn't really afford a game console, and my mom didn't want to get one anyway, so I had to mooch off of my teenage uncle's instead). But here's five anyway, dipping into my early 20s when I was able to buy my own consoles.

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (youth)

Super Mario Bros. (youth)

Sonic Adventure 2 (20s)

Grandia II (20s)

Final Fantasy IX (20s)

I did most of my video game branching out in my late 20s/throughout my 30s, and honestly my favorites are mostly from that period rather than the early years, but Sonic 2 will forever be one of the more formative games I've played (it was—and still is—my first fandom).

Anagram Poetry - Hero of Ferelden

Someone on Reddit ran "The Hero of Ferelden" through an anagram solver and posted a bunch of the results. A lot of it sounded very poetic, so here's me cherry-picking the lines I liked best and turning them into actual poetry. Enjoy!

The Hero of Ferelden

Throne-offered heel Often freeholder, he. The red elf free. Oh no. There, hold off Renee.

He often fed her lore, Left horned foe here, Then offered her Leo. No elf fed her the roe.

Oh, let her offer Eden 'Fore hero-end he felt, Note led her off here.

Hereon the elder off, Done here, for he left.

Writing Tips Pt. 9 - Accents

Here's a more specific one that can really make or break a story: spoken accents.

You've probably all seen it happen in fiction. A character comes from a locale with a thick accent, and the author feels they have to represent it as faithfully as possible, leading to virtually incomprehensible dialogue.

"Ah dinnae ken what ta tell ye, lassie, but the wee scunner'll do ye dirty if ye don' take a firm hand ta him!"

"Sacre bleu, but zis is zimply unnacceptable! We cannot be having ze Rocheforts and ze Garniers zitting in ze zame room or zey will be tearing ze place apart!"

Absolutely awful attempts to render stereotypical accents aside, the above lines aren't very legible thanks to the deliberate mispellings in my attempt to convey sound. And for what gain? How easy is it to tell that the first is an attempt at Scottish, or the second at French?

Best to leave out the bulk of it. Use idioms, turns of phrase, or the general rhythm and structure of the words to convey the accent without leaning so heavily into sound changes. This way, you'll be less likely to shake your reader out of the story because they're too busy trying to puzzle out what someone is saying.

So let's try that again:

"I don't know what to tell you, lassie, but the wee scunner'll do you dirty if you don't take a firm hand to him!"

"Sacre bleu, but this is simply unacceptable! We cannot be having the Rocheforts and the Garniers sitting in the same room or they will be tearing the place apart!"

I left alone a few words that don't have a direct English replacement that keeps the same feel (lassie, wee scunner, sacre bleu), along with one phrase (do you dirty) and the general grammar structure of the second example, but all the stereotypical sounds have been removed. Much easier to read, and yet the general idea of the accent is still there.

By way of personal example, when I was younger, I wrote a story with a character with a very heavy accent that was supposed to be something...I don't know, thick American South?

"Mah name is Daphne. Ah'm a seer. Are ya deaf er somethin'? Ah s'pose ya nevah 'eard of da seers before? Waell, ya 'ave now. I must be 'least tree-undred years old er somethin'. Come in, Ah've been 'spectin' ya. Now, 'ave a seat. Right dere on dat box. Ah don't 'ave much in da furn'ture d'partment. Ya ain't from 'round here, are ya?”

An entire chapter with one character speaking like that. Oof. There were even points where she had to repeat herself and try to enunciate to make it clearer what she was saying to the other characters.

This is not good writing.

So here's an attempt to clean it up while keeping the idea of the accent.

"My name is Daphne. I'm a seer. Are you deaf or somethin'? I suppose you never heard of the seers before? Well, you have now. I must be least three hundred years old or somethin'. Come in, I've been expecting you. Now have a seat, right there on that box. I don't have much in the furniture department. You ain't from around here, are you?"

Much easier to read, and should still get the idea across.

Of course, you can ignore all of this if the incomprehensible accent is part of a joke.

Writing Tips Pt. 14 - Keep Notes and Reread

Two important details about writing I think a lot of beginners forget is that you should be keeping notes on what you're writing, and you should reread as you go along.

Keeping notes is important so you can reference things you've established in your story. You don't want your readers jarred out of the story because Alice's hair color changed partway through simply because you couldn't remember what color you'd made it and didn't feel like double-checking. If Bob's eye color keeps changing every scene he's in, it should be for in-story reasons and not because of authorial laziness. Other things you might track with note-keeping include which spells you've given your mage character, or who a character's family members are (and whether or not they have siblings). Even professional writers keep notes on the things they'll need to reference again.

I'm partial to keeping documents in a folder on my computer on different subjects, such as character backstories, family trees, magic systems, even something as silly as where everyone sleeps in their home base. Other authors may use index cards tacked up to the wall, or establish a wiki to help them link important things together, or have a series of notebooks they can pull off the shelf to flip through. There are different ways to do this, so find one that works for you.

And make sure you reread, unless you're writing your whole story in one marathon session. Each time you go to add a new installment to the story, whether it be a new chapter to an ongoing piece or a sequel to a previous work of yours, reread the older stuff first, especially if you don't keep regular and extensive notes. You will almost invariably forget important details if you don't do this, and it's quite immersion-breaking if your story loses internal continuity because you didn't review what you'd already written.

For example, if your hero has run afoul of one of the villain's machinations, it breaks immersion if your villain's motivation for the plot changes from chapter to chapter. If he was actively trying to kill the hero, but then later claims to have just wanted to scare him, but then goes back to wanting to kill him, then was just testing a contraption and it's the hero's own fault that he got injured and now the villain doesn't know what to do without the hero, you aren't creating good drama, you're just hurting your own story's continuity. What is your villain's motivation?

Yes, I have seen this before.

So at the very least, skim over what you wrote previously to make sure you aren't breaking continuity or introducing contradictions into your story.

I frequently write stories by hand in a notebook during moments of free time. Rereading also helps me remember what I was working on when I last had to pause so I can make sure I keep the story flowing properly, rather than suddenly cutting to a different scene because I forgot where I was, or having a random character show up because I didn't remember they were supposed to be elsewhere. I've even caught a few times when I went to write a turn of phrase and thought it seemed familiar, and sure enough, I'd used it just two pages prior.

So keep notes, and make sure you reread. Your continuity will thank you.

Writing Tips Pt. 11 - Points of View

So tense involves whether a story is narrated in the past, present, or future relative to events. But what about the POV, or point of view? I've seen a lot of confusion about this, especially among novice writers, so I'll try to clarify what they are.

Imagine you're standing in a crowded space, having a conversation with your reader. You're telling them a story, making you the narrator.

If you are the main character of the story, that is First Person POV. You will use "I/me" pronouns.

If your reader is the main character, that is Second Person POV. You will use "you" pronouns.

If one of the other people around you is the main character (not you and not your reader), that is Third Person POV. You will use "he/she/it/they" pronouns.

So the POV is relative to who the main character is.

Obviously, not every first person POV is going to be literally about you. But they will be told as if you, the narrator, are the one experiencing events. The main thing to remember with such stories is that your viewpoint character needs to be interesting or likeable enough to keep the reader's attention. No one is going to want to read an entire story with a flat, boring, or extremely unlikable viewpoint character. It's also easy to get enmired in the character's thoughts a little too much and forget to tell the story.

Of the three POVs, second person is probably the trickiest to write well, and is not normally encountered in fiction, but it isn't completely unheard of. Classic Choose Your Own Adventure books are written in second person to facilitate the conceit that the reader is the one experiencing the story, the main character. The Monster at the End of This Book, The Book With No Pictures, and other similar books for children that have interactive elements also work well, with the narrator or narrating character talking to the reader throughout the story. Self-help books and other articles will frequently use second person POV as well, as does fanfiction that puts the reader in the main character's shoes in order to ship them with a character.

Now, you may have heard of limited and omniscient POVs, specifically for third person. I've heard different ideas of what each of these mean, or how to use them, with a lot of misconceptions, so let's try to clear that up.

Third person limited POV is limited to one character's thoughts and feelings at a time. Think of it as riding in that person's head. You can hear their thoughts, know their feelings, but you don't know what's going on inside any other character's head. You learn what the main character learns, but if someone else is keeping secrets from them, you won't know those secrets. Limited POV is good for drama because it's easier to keep the reader from knowing things they shouldn't. This POV still allows you to use a character's "voice" in the narration, as with first person POV, just with third person pronouns.

Emily scrubbed the dishes with increasing vigor, glaring daggers at John over in the dining room the whole time. It's like he doesn't even care that I'm angry, she thought, dropping another handful of forks into the drain tray with a rattle. Staying out all night, not a word about where he's been or what he's been up to. And who needs that many shipping boxes anyway? Her thoughts spiraled away from her.

With this POV, you can stick with one viewpoint character for an entire work, or you can change as often as needed for the purposes of your story, but it's best to keep such changes at scene and chapter breaks to avoid confusing your readers.

Third person omniscient POV is aware of all characters' thoughts and feelings as needed. Omniscient means "all-knowing." The narrator of this story might tell us what a few characters are feeling, or inform us of a bit of backstory for a newly-introduced character without necessarily riding inside that character's head. Many older works of fiction were written in this style. This is arguably the simplest POV to write, and yet also the easiest to mismanage.

Many authors make the mistake of trying to write third person omniscient by constantly changing which character's head we're in. This is called head-hopping, and can cause literary whiplash for your readers as you keep bouncing around from one character to the next. One way to avoid this pitfall is to avoid getting so deeply into any character's head that you're writing out their actual thoughts. Create more distance between the narrator and the characters.

Emily scrubbed the dishes with increasing vigor, glaring daggers at John over in the dining room the whole time. Her thoughts jumbled about as she mused over where he might have been the night before, where he might have been every night for the past three weeks, and what all those shipping boxes that arrived every day might contain, unaware that John had been meticulously planning a surprise party for her—one that was about to go horribly awry, all thanks to assumptions and lack of communication.

In this example, you can see where I distanced myself from Emily's direct thoughts, so that it wouldn't be as jarring when I also shared John's side of things, along with a little narrative foreknowledge that neither of our characters could conceivably know at this point in time. I am by no means an expert in third person omniscient—I prefer limited for my writing—so I highly recommend checking out guides online for better examples on how to do it right.

One last thing: as with tense, it's important to be consistent, but that doesn't mean you absolutely must stick to one POV for your entire story. Perhaps you want to switch characters periodically, but you want one character's chapters to be in first person POV. Perhaps you want to include letters written between two characters as interlude chapters and thus need to switch to second person. Perhaps one person is literally a deity and thus has a more omniscient viewpoint in their scenes. This is fine, but be consistent within the guidelines you have set for your story. If Emily's scenes are written third person limited, don't switch to first person for one scene.