The Dictatorship - Tumblr Posts
I'm an aspiring author, and I've been working on this one project for about three years now called the Dictatorship. It got to the stage of development of beginning the physical writing process a few months ago, which is very exciting! I hope to have it finished in the next year or two.
This is one of the main characters; Ai Unmei.
I began researching book publication today for my fictional novel and I believe I've decided to go through Amazon. I'm debating whether I should plan to hire editors and marketers, one or the other, or maybe neither....
If anyone has any advice or experience in this department, I'm very new to it all and would appreciate it!
(My novel is a psychological novel with themes of sci-fi and romance if that helps)
A messy sketch of another central character in my novel in progress: The Dictatorship.
Meet Youko Tanaka.
More of the cast from my novel in progress. Tomo Dachi.
More Dictatorship rough sketches. She looks like a character from a children's coloring book and I love it.
🌸🩷Hana Sato 🩷🌸
YES! YES! MORE OF THIS! ALL OF THIS!
I don't post about it much, so most of my followers probably don't know, but I'm currently working on a novel with intent to publish and have been for the past few years. When I was initially doing my character sketches in the beginning, my main goal was to avoid toxic, overdone stereotypes- specifically punk phobic and fatphobic ones. And to avoid the godforsaken "all the main characters are traditionally hot" syndrome.
The result of this is four plus size characters:
Ken; an athlete whose kindness gets taken advantage of.
Hyro; an opinionated nerd and fierce leader.
Akari; a caring emo girl with a mentally unwell boyfriend.
Hibiki; a seemingly lazy bum with a secret.
Is there a bummy, dislikeable fat character? Yes. There's also multiple lazy thin characters, including Jin who is traditionally sexy and attractive. It's all about fair representation and equality.
I have three alternative characters and not all of them are mentally ill or unstable or pagan or self harmers. In fact, Akari is none of the above. She's gentle and sweet.
My main character, Youko, is not aggressive and sassy and sarcastic as has become the one-size-fits-all for female protagonists. She's quiet, talented, insecure, and autism coded. Her possible love interest, Tomo, is one of the most average looking characters.
Gotta say, as a fat person and a writer, one of the most healing things I've done is writing fat characters of my own and giving myself the representation I never got to have. My two favorites are: a stereotypical 80's/90's skater guy who calls everyone "dude" or "bro" and fucking loves classic rock and has fluffy bleached hair that always covers his eyes and he's kind of got Bill and Ted vibes, I'm just realizing.
And a chronically ill lesbian whose weight is viewed as super positive because it's a sign she's recovering from her most recent bout of illness and she's artsy and passionate and geeky and her girlfriend absolutely adores her soft, round face because it reminds her of the moon.
We need more fat characters who get to be more than just The Fat Guy, I don't get why people just seem to refuse to give their OCs actual human traits and instead revolve everything around their fatness and how funny or bad it is to be fat.
I'm glad to know there are people who are actively working on bettering the miniscule positive fat representation we have in media currently. I especially love when people make fat characters who are the opposite of all of the stereotypes and tropes forced on us. The athletic character being a fat person whose body has stayed fat all these years, a fat video game character who isn't forced to be a tank, the fashionista character is a fat person who grew up having to sew their own clothes and now is a sewing master with the best sense of style on this side of the Mississippi river. The fat person with an eating disorder who actually gains weight in recovery, the popular girl in school who's fat and not the bully, a love interest who isn't stick thin for once. I hope you continue to write fat characters you enjoy!
-Mod Worthy