I Just Made It To Chapter 19 Of My Wip And Am Astonished By How Terrible It Is Compared To The Rest Of

I just made it to chapter 19 of my wip and am astonished by how terrible it is compared to the rest of my first draft. It’s filled with dialogue that has no purpose and characters that never come back. I literally groaned when I saw wrote interactions that already happen in previous chapters several times over. I’m only about halfway through the chapter and already cut about a quarter of it.

What always amazes me about writing is how a few words can make such a big difference.

I was writing dialogue about how one character met another and the original, “She saw me sitting by myself in the dining hall one day and came to speak to me. We’ve been best friends ever since” is fine but then I added “Actually, she wouldn’t let me not speak to her” before the last sentence and it baffles me how a few more words gave my dialogue so much more personality and made it so much more fun to read.

Writing seriously feels like real life magic.

Here’s my advise as someone who’s been a poc my whole life:

1. Every poc has a different experience so it would be good to give your characters different backgrounds and personality traits. A personality trait I often include in soft black girls. We get a rep for being loud and aggressive so it’s good to get this kind of representation

2. Look into culture. It’s so important to pocs to express culture. Since you do high fantasy, you can even make up your own similar to real ones. Some important things about culture to include is language (including dialects), hairstyles, music, clothes, etc.

3. I don’t know the rules of your world, but you could also address how systemic racism affects your characters to give them more depth. Things like how some neighborhoods are majorily poc because of things like redlining and white flight, and that those neighborhoods are often underfunded because no one cares. A way this can show up in your story is a character comes from this neighborhood and doesn’t have as many opportunities or something like that

4. My last piece of advice is to just be careful. A lot of poc stories are just about the suffering and we can use some joy!

Thanks for including poc characters and being mindful with them. Good luck with your writing!

I'm trying to find the best possible way to write poc characters that is respectful and also gives them immense depth and characterization that contributes to the main plot as well as their individual plots moving forward (two of my other wips are centered around these two poc characters) and I would love to know any ideas, thoughts, concerns, etc that you all have in mind!

I also have a good amount of disabled characters as well, each disability and the degree falls within a wide range so any thoughts, ideas, concerns, etc about these topics as well would be amazing!

I want to learn from the audiences. I want to know good and bad experiences with other literature and/or media, things to avoid, things to include, and anything else you have in mind!

for context this is a high fantasy novel with a lot of world building and whatnot with a wide range of characters types!

Hi!! I also love fantasy and am a fan of ATLA, The Owl House, and Steven Universe! Your series sounds exciting. Can’t wait to see more posts about it.

Writeblr Intro

Hello, ladies and gentlemen and assorted others of Writeblr! I am R. J. Copeland, 21, he/they, and I just landed here on Tumblr not too long ago. I have been chipping away at the first entry in my fantasy novel series since September of 2022, and I joined this platform in the hopes of befriending some fellow literarily-minded folks.

What’s my deal here:

I mostly write fantasy, though I do have some sci fi on the back burner

My current serious work in progress is a fantasy novel which I intend to turn into seven books.

But what’s that WIP about? Well, it’s what you get when the author’s favorite show is The Expanse, but they clicked better with the aesthetics of the ATLA universe, plus watched The Owl House, Andor, Carnival Row, and Steven Universe. Oh and they play Paradox map games (but it’s ok because I have good politics I swear guys trust me bro)

The actual story is that of a twin brother and sister’s grand adventure across the waters of their colonized homeland, as they discover ancient cosmic beings and learn magic. But all is not well, as you might have gathered—and I don’t just mean the state actors enforcing the will of empire. A deeper threat stirs outside of the minds of humanity. One that may someday force a reckoning….

I also write fan fiction, of which I’m ashamed; so until it’s posted, that shit is top secret. Even though it’s not even nsfw so what am I worried about

Otherwise, I’m just looking to make some friends here. I am very hyped to meet some fellow writers!

I might not be able to respond immediately, but I am very open to receiving messages from anyone; so long as they are not a bot or a scammer, of course.

I wish you all happy writing, and I hope to see you around!

Pass on the Dialogue Tag

Thanks for tagging me @squarebracket-trick. I’ve never seen this one before!

I’m soft tagging @faeriecinna @owlsandwich and I’ll leave an open tag for anyone else!

Rules: turn some lines of dialogue from your own WIP into an incorrect quote that the person you tagged can insert their characters into.

Here’s my incorrect quote (psst! @squarebracket-trick, the dialogue you gave me is so good!)

Kelsee: I made a promise to you, Catalina. I said you were living on borrowed time.

Catalina: Before you kill me I think I should like to collect the winnings from our bet.

Kelsee: Oh?

Catalina: Don't you remember? The loser must address the winner as your highness for a day. That means... do whatever pleases you but, no matter what happens, I am going to live through the day.

Kelsee: You think death is the worst I could do to you, your highness?

And here’s the dialogue I’m passing on

Character A: Can y’all read faster? I’m getting bored.

Character B: Why are you even here?

Character A: To be the first to know what you find.

Character C: You know, we could speed up progress if you help us.

Character A: And read? I don’t do that.

I JUST SAW DAVEED DIGGS IN THE FLESH