honest-character-review:

• Give them flaws - There is no-one on this world who is perfect, so there’s no need to shy away from giving your character negative traits. If your character has no negative traits they’ll be less believable for your reader, and neither will they be relatable, but they will be BORING. Trust me, your character will be less believable then a flying pig cleaning out your Mum’s kitchen if they have perfect personalities and endearing flaws. Don’t be scared to make them have dislikeable sides - every person in the world has them.
•              If you want to, give them mental disabilities - done well, they can add depth and realism to your character. Don’t give them paranoia because ‘it makes them better’, give them paranoia because it makes sense - research these things and you’ll find that these things make your character more 3D. This being said, remember, research, research, research: people with manic depression aren’t just ‘sad all the time’, depression is an actual illness and therefore has far more to it then just tears and upset. People with autism aren’t ‘super good at maths but bad at english’, each person has a unique set of traits, way of speaking and interests.
• Make them relatable: If your readers aren’t connecting with your character, that’s an issue. We can all relate characters like Harry Potter, not because we’ve lived his life or because we’ve been to Hogwarts ourselves, but because of how complex and well written his personality is. The struggles and emotions he feels we can all empathise with. I’m not saying write your character as a different Harry Potter - I’m just saying make sure that no matter how far from ‘reality’ your character might be, make sure that the struggles they go through can be felt by the audience - even Killua, who has been through a far different life to most of us is relatable because he also feels and struggles just like we do.
•          Take time to consider what you want your character to be doing and what they represent, and don’t shy away from pouring emotion into their actions. As a reader, you want to be pulled into the action and therefore into their life - emotions are something we all feel and so we will connect with characters acting upon their own. Matching them, even subtly with those of your readers will make your character more relatable as a whole.
• Have them be realistic: Not in the sense that they have to be realistic in our world, but in theirs. Their actions have to make sense in comparison to the occurrence. If their friend has been taken, think about it logically and then have them react. Even the most spontaneous of characters will think and react before doing something. If you’re finding this tough or constantly questioning if they make logical sense, you’re finding it hard to get into the characters head. No matter what, make sure you’re writing to the reader why so that we can understand their actions.
• They should be a go-getter: This doesn’t mean that every single thing they do leads to  happy conclusions or are done with good intentions, but a good character should always dosomething. Along with this, they should also be able to do a lot of this alone. Of course they will have friends and comrades with them, but any protagonist must overcome the main milestone themselves without any help from their friends. Any shonen protagonist would be a good example - Luffy always overcomes the main points alone and reacts, but often loses things he meant to protect.
•             This doesn’t mean you must have a super active character, unmotivated characters can still work as protagonists. However, there would be no real story if all your character did was sit alone and do nothing. Eventually, they will do something. At some point their motivation can fade again, but the main thing is that they have to change this sooner or later. Luffy would work as an example - he loses motivation at the end of the marineford arc, but eventually gets over this and continues with his training.
• Balance them out: Every personality is going to have depth to it - think of it like one of those gobstoppers. The first layer shows them to be rude, but a little more delving shows them to be shy, or trying to be funny, or just someone who doesn’t see the point in manners. Balancing out all the positives and negatives is crucial in a character, and throwing in neutral traits, likes and dislikes, quirks and habits are equally important. They don’t have to make logical sense, for example a character who lies a lot could also dislike liars, but they do need to be realistic and therefore balanced as a whole.

- Happy writing !

Mod tabby

poesizing:

1. Authorship: Barthes, Death of the Author; Foucault, What is an Author?
2. Formalism: Eichenbaum, The Theory of the “Formal Method”;  Brooks, from The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry
3. Structuralism: Saussure, Course in General Linguistics ; Barthes, from Mythologies
4. Psychoanalysis: Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams; Lacan, The Mirror Stage & The Significance of the Phallus
5. Ideology: Althusser, Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses; Foucault, Truth and Power
6. Feminism & Queer: Sedgwick, from Between Men; Cixous, The Laugh of the Medusa; Wittig, One Is Not Born a Woman; Butler, Gender Trouble
7. Deconstruction: Derrida, from Of Grammatology;
8. Postcolonial: Fanon, from The Wretched of the Earth; Spivak, Can the Subaltern Speak?
9. Cultural Materialism: Adorno & Horkheimer, The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception; Williams, Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory  

these are about 2/3 of the readings for my intro to lit theory course, if you’ve ever wondered what one studies on such courses, the links lead to free pdfs  

anaquana:

closet-keys:

toboldlywrite:

Just in case this needs to be said:

It’s the first draft. Use the word “suddenly.” Put as many dialogue tags and adverbs as you want. Say “he saw” “she remembered” “she felt” “they wondered” as many times as you need to. Put the em dash there, put in too many commas, use semi-colons with reckless abandon. Type in [whatever] instead of thinking up a title for something. Just write it. If you worry too much about the particulars, about all the advice posts you’ve seen saying whatever you’re doing is wrong or not good enough, you won’t get anything done. It will slow you down as you go back and try to reword what you just wrote to make it better, proper. The first draft doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be done. And when you get to the end, you’ll find that all those “mistakes” are just clues for your future self to put together to make it all better.

Putting in adverbs and certain dialogue tags are a note for you as to who is saying something and how they’re saying it. When you’re editing, you can make sure it shows through the story instead. The word “suddenly” is a reminder to make things more abrupt. The first draft is just you mapping out where you want to go and how you want to get there. Don’t waste time trying to get it 100% right now, because then it will never get done. Don’t think too much– just write. Save the thinking for editing later.

The first draft doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be done

All of those things are allowed to be in your final draft as well if necessary. Nothing is out-of-bounds writing-wise as long as it conveys what YOU, the writer, want it to convey.

You will never have a perfect draft. Not the first, not the fifth, not the fiftieth. There will always be something that somebody somewhere will nitpick. Make it the best you can make it and stop worry about writing rules or making it perfect.

Just write.

pettydavis:

white girls really do that thing of like. if everyone hates the things they LOVE they call misogyny instead of examining the reasons why only white girls seem to love a particular piece of media. but then theyd have to stop thinking of their experiences as the universal standard of womanhood and we all know Thats Not Happening.

6lacksoul:

scorpiogy: