Whole Again

Whole again

Me: About to post new fic soon.

Id, Ego and Superego: 

Wow, these are fantastic tools! Thanks!

how to make a story file

As I am preparing for Camp NaNo*, I have been working on my story file. It occurred to me this might not be common or popular practice. “Story File” is a name I gave it and maybe some of y’all have a different name with the same contents. 

*There’s still time to apply to join my Camp NaNo cabin!

My Story File contains everything about my story that doesn’t go in the outline.

It’s broken up into major categories and specific templates. So without further ado, here is how I structure my Story File. 

Intro

Title

Logline

Synopsis

Genre

Estimated Total Length (word count)

Draft Length Goal (word count)

Character Bank

Main characters and brief, one-sentence descriptions with ages

Themes and Character Development

Central Question

The Yes/No question that is being asked through the whole story

Should have objective qualities, rather than subjective

i.e. “Will they fall in love?” (subjective) vs. “Will they leave their partners and become a couple?” (objective)

Thematic Questions

These are the internal conflict questions that reside in your character(s) and your story

ex. “Can there really be a successful government?”

ex. “Does grief excuse bad actions?”

Themes at a Glance

Words or phrases that relate to the themes of the story

ex. person vs. nature

ex. isolation

ex. grief

ex. first love

Motivation / Stasis State / Final State

for each main character, you should write a sentence or two pertaining to these three things

Motivation: What is the drive behind this character and their past, present, and future actions? What part of their background makes them the way that they are? What are they looking for? What do they want out of this/a situation?

Stasis State: What are they like before the inciting incident? What problems and questions do they have?

Final State: What has changed about them and their outlook? What questions have they resolved? What has happened to their internal conflict?

Relationships

I usually make a little web of the MCs and their relationship to one another. One for the stasis and one for final.

Stasis: How do these characters see each other? How do they act toward the other? (All before the inciting incident)

Final: How do these characters see each other now? How has their idea of one another shifted? 

Even if a character dies before the end, include the most recent relationship status in the Final web.

ex. this is how I organize it, using the Draw feature of Google Docs

Character Bank

This is just a very preliminary character bank. If you prefer a more in-depth one, check out my 6 Box Method.

Per (relevant/important) character:

Name

Nickname/preferred name

Age

Field/Occupation

Physical Description

Personality

Personal History

Education/Occupation History

Extra Notes:

Worldbuilding Bank

(Check out my worldbuilding posts on Categories Pt. 1 and 2 for better context)

Seasons and Climate

Languages

Other Cultural Pockets

Folklore and Legends

Fine Arts

Dress and Modesty

Classes

Jobs

Currency and Economics

Shopping

Agriculture and Livestock

Imports and Exports

Literature, Pop Culture, and Entertainment

Food and Water

Holidays and Festivals

Family and Parenting

Relationships

Housing

Religion and Beliefs

Government

Health and Medicine

Technology and Communication

Death

Transportation

Plants, Animals, and Human-environment Interaction

Education

Beauty Standards

Gender and Sexuality

—————————

I hope this helps y’all and supplements what you’re probably already doing. I know it’s helped me tons to have everything in a central place.

Best of luck!

Me thinking about my new fic: It's going to be amazing! THE story I've always wanted to tell and write and read! And it's going to be epic and sad and happy and angsty and fluffy and....

Me in front of my computer: Erm, Shazam?

how to punctuate dialogue

(a general guide, dedicated to anon)

For the purposes of this description I’m going to use the word Words to indicate whatever the character is saying and the word Attribution to refer to the dialogue tag (the bit where you write ‘she said’). Further details and actual examples behind the cut.

1. dialogue followed by speaker

“Words,” attribution.

1a. quotation that is a question or an exclamation followed by speaker

“Words?” attribution.

“Words!” attribution.

The only difference from the above is changing the comma to a question mark or exclamation point. 

2. speaker followed by dialogue

Attribution, “Words.” 

Attribution, “Words?” 

Attribution, “Words!”

3. dialogue with the speaker in the middle of the quote

“Words,” attribution, “words.”

“Words,” attribution, “words?”

“Words,” attribution, “words!”

4. dialogue without attribution (the speaker is obvious and doesn’t need to be named)

“Words.”

“Words?”

“Words!”

Afficher davantage

Tables turned

read it on the AO3 at http://bit.ly/2I7nIrw

by malikandaltairinahaystack

In a society which began to despise alphas and got rid of nearly all of them and keeps the few remaining ones in pounds and kennels to be matched to their omega mate who can’t make do with a beta, Jimin finds his mate and alpha Jungkook in one of these kennels and takes him home.

Words: 7696, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Fandoms: 방탄소년단 | Bangtan Boys | BTS

Rating: Explicit

Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Categories: M/M

Characters: Park Jimin (BTS), Jeon Jungkook

Relationships: Jeon Jungkook/Park Jimin

Additional Tags: Alpha Jeon Jungkook, Omega Park Jimin (BTS), Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Jimin is in charge, Not your typical ABO, a bit non con at one point so please be safe

read it on the AO3 at http://bit.ly/2I7nIrw

I write my fics out in Google Docs and then paste the text into Ao3 when I'm ready to post it. Does anyone else have the problem of pasting with italics? If there's a word in italics next to punctuation, Ao3 will add in a space for some reason and it's kind of infuriating.

One of the AO3 translation volunteers (Min) created a Google Docs script to handle issues when copying from a doc into AO3. It’s really easy to use

create a copy of this google doc. It contains the script that will do all of the HTML formatting for you.

Delete all of the text from the document.

Write or paste your fic/chapter into the document.

Go up to the top menu and click the new menu option Post to AO3, then choose Prepare for posting into the HTML editor

Note: because this is an apps script, you’ll need to give it permission to run the first time. 

The script will automatically mark up your document with the required HTML that you can then paste into the AO3 composition window. \o/

To revert your text back to normal, just go back up to that menu and choose Remove HTML. It will look like regular text again. 

Once you have the doc, you can make a new copy of it for each new fic you write and that way you’ll always have that script available when you need it :)

For other cool stuff, read this post from @ao3org - which is where I found this script in the first place ❤