"But My Plot Isn’t UNIQUE Or BIG Enough!”

[drawing of an orange bird with yellow wings saying “I’m writing a book! I got this!” in a yellow speech bubble.]

Writing great friendships

Some of the best chemistry/relationships in fiction exist between characters who are/become friends. Here are some tips for making friendships come alive on the page:

1. Banter

One of the most interesting aspects of fictional friendships is the way the characters interact with each other whilst important plot points are occurring.

If your characters have easy banter, teasing one another without missing a beat and managing to bounce off each other even in the toughest circumstances, it will be clear to the reader that these two are/should be good friends.

Friends know each other well. They know the other’s character so well that they can easily find something to tease each other over. However, this also means knowing which topics are off-limits.

If you want to write a good, healthy friendship, your characters shouldn’t use humour/sarcasm as a way to hurt the other. It should be good-natured and understood as such from both sides.

Different friendships will have different types of chemistry. Some friends may tease each other with facial expressions. Others may already anticipate a snarky remark and counter it before it’s been spoken. Others will have physical ways of goofing around. 

Some friends might not tease each other at all. Banter isn’t necessary; it’s just a good way to make your characters come alive and make their friendship one that is loved by readers.

What’s important is chemistry - the way they automatically react to each other.

Think Sam and Dean in Supernatural or Juliette and Kenji in the Shatter Me series.

2. Mutual support 

Unless you purposefully want to write an unhealthy/toxic friendship, your characters should both be supportive of the other. 

This means that, even if one is the MC and the other the side-kick, both should be cognisant of the other’s feelings and problems, and should be considerate in this regard.

Few things will make your MC as likable as remembering to check in and be there for their best friend even when they are in the thick of a crisis.

You need to show your characters being vulnerable in front of each other and being supportive in ways that are tailored to the needs of each friend.

So, if one of the characters really responds to physical comfort, the other should know to give hugs/rub their back when they’re not feeling well. Similarly, if one of them doesn’t like being touched and responds to material comfort, have the other bring them ice cream and join them for a movie marathon. Whatever works for your characters.

What gets me every time is when a character is falling apart and won’t listen to/be consoled by anyone but their best friend (but this is just personal preference).

3. Knowing the other’s past/family life

This really only applies to characters who have been friends for quite a while.

Good friends know each other’s backstory - the highs and lows and mundane details. They know they layout of their family home and they probably know their family members well.

Friends will often talk about these things, only having to mention a few words for the other to know what they’re talking about i.e. “The ‘09 Thanksgiving disaster” or “You know how Uncle Fred is”

This will instantly make it clear that your characters are close and have come a long way together. 

Perhaps there are issues at home/trauma from the past that the other character will immediately understand. So, if one character appears with a black eye, their friend might know that the father was probably drunk the night before and got violent. Or if the character has a nightmare, the friend might know that it was about childhood abuse etc.

This can also apply to good things i.e. if one of the characters gets a nice note in their lunchbox, the other might know that their grandma is in town.

Whatever works for your story should be used to indicate the level of unspoken understanding the friends have.

4. Being protective

Few things will make your readers love a friendship more than the friends being fiercely protective of each other (in a healthy, non-territorial way).

Has someone hurt one of the characters? The other should be furious and want to exact revenge. Does someone say something demeaning to one of the friends? The other should defend them immediately and vehemently.

This can also take on a humorous twist if one of the characters starts dating someone. The friend can make extra sure that said date is sincere and promise to exact vengeance if their friend is hurt.

This can also be a great plot device, since it could explain why the MC’s best friend joins the quest/goes along on the journey. Perhaps this is the main plot point: a character seeking to protect/avenge their friend.

If you want to go in a toxic direction, this can be taken too far i.e. a friend who never lets the other spend time with anyone else/stalks the other/is patronising etc.

5.  Common interest(s)

Even if the two characters are vastly different, there should be something that keeps them together besides loyalty.

This is especially important for characters who become friends throughout the course of the novel.

This doesn’t have to mean that both of them go hiking every weekend or want to become pilots one day. It could be something small, like a love of cheesy movies or a shared taste in music. Maybe they both enjoy silence/don’t like other people. Maybe they are both social justice warriors, but for different causes. 

This could also be common characteristics instead of interests. Perhaps both are very ambitious/funny/social.

There should just be some factor that ignited the friendship and brings the two of them together.

This doesn’t necessarily have to be a big part of your story, but you should at least have it mentioned to make the friendship appear more authentic.

Reblog if you found these tips useful. Comment if you would like a Part 2. Follow me for similar content.

a writeblr introduction

hello writeblr! i’m zie, a long-time writer and perhaps poet but that’s sort of stretch who just decided to publish my stories and other collection of words here. i had a tumblr account way back in 2013 but i wanted to start anew, so here i am.

about me:

she/her, aro-ace, infj(p), type 4, libra but pisces at heart, ravenclaw

overly enthusiastic for art, literature, books, music that punctures your inner psyche, psychology, philosophy, and you guessed it, theatre!

the superior time are afternoons and midnights, it’s when my imagination goes crazy and my aesthetics shift and morph

guilty pleasure is watching barbie movies and writing long-ass essays that i’m sure my professors are tired of reading, but oh well

i don’t know how to make cool edits like all the other splendid authors here on tumblr so heavens PLEASE, i hope my words will suffice

about my writing:

i love writing themes about mental health, fantasy, magical beings, and anything that borders on idealism, much like one of my favorite authors

pantsing or outlining a storyline really just depends on my mood. characters always go first before the plot, because i usually deem them as real people and the book revolves around them. they deserve just as much.

i am a sucker for symbolisms, metaphors, and paradoxes, it’s not that i overuse them, it just gives you a feel of what my oc’s are feeling.

i love creating dialogues, you’ll see a lot of ‘em. don’t get sick of ‘em, i beg of you.

current wips (all of which are subject to change):

sleeping at last is a mental-health centralized and mystery fiction set in the modern times of a fictional country/city. it explores the death of a recurring female character and how her friends try to search for the events leading up to it, making themselves subjects to ill-starred events all the while being under the same roof of adwell house, a mental wellness sanatorium for orphans such as them.

of curse and glory is a fantasy and dark academia story set in an alternate universe unbeknownst to humankind. it narrates the story of four kingdoms which do not know their history. but when the heirs of each kingdom receive an ancient message from those who claim are the oldens, they begin to uniyeld truth from a provocation—saving everyone else’s lives in the process.

in our orbit is a fictional romance story set in new york city, manhattan where two men meet each other in chaotic circumstances inside an art museum. when push comes to shove, they must decide whether or not love is worth keeping in the sacrifice of their dreams.

poems and essays is pretty much self-explanatory. this will be a series of thoughts constellated into words that i’ll share with the world. from my heart to yours.

please reblog if you’re also a writeblr because i would love to interact, be mutuals, and follow all of you! writeblrs supporting writeblrs, everyone!

contents coming very very soon in a poeticparchment near you!

Contemporary F/F Audio Books

Here’s a list of contemporary wlw books you can listen to on audiobooks.com. You can also check my list of sci-fi & fantasy audio books.

Everything Leads to You by Nina LaCour

It’s Not Like It’s a Secret by Misa Sugiura

The Brightsiders by Jen Wilde

Winning by Lara Deloza

Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden

We Are Okay by Nina LaCour

You Know Me Well by Nina LaCour & David Levithan

Leah on the Offbeat by Becky Albertalli

Lies My Girlfriend Told Me by Julie Anne Peters

Her Name in the Sky by Kelly Quindlen

Girl Mans Up by M-E Girard

Not Your Sidekick by C.B. Lee 

Ask the Passengers by A.S. King

The Summer of Jordi Perez by Amy Spalding

People Like Us by Dana Mele

Happy listening~ 🎧 

Plot Doctoring: 9 Steps to Build a Strong Plot

Like the main event itself, NaNo Prep is always better with an incredible writing community around you. Luckily, our forums come with such a ready-made community. Inspired by the Plot Doctoring forum, we asked Derek Murphy, NaNoWriMo participant, to share his thoughts on plotting, and he outlined his 9-step plotting diagram:

Here’s a truth: you must write badly before you can write well. 

Everybody’s first draft is rubbish. It’s part of the process, so don’t worry about it. The writing can be polished and fixed and improved later, after NaNoWriMo, during the editing stages.

What most writers get out of NaNoWriMo is a collection of great scenes that don’t necessarily fit into a cohesive story—and that’s a problem if you want to produce something publishable.

Nearly all fiction follows some version of the classical hero’s journey: a character has an experience, learns something, and is consequently improved. There are turning points and scenes that need to be included in your story—if they are missing it won’t connect with readers in an emotionally powerful way. And it’s a thousand times easier to map them out before you write your book.

Keep reading

WIP: The Hunters

Genre: Futuristic Sci-fi

Themes: Good vs Evil, Right vs. Wrong, Abuse of power, Corrupt government, Guilt, Revenge

Synopsis: At the edge of the universe all hell is about to break loose. Victor Romanov, the man responsible for The Attacks, has escaped maximum security prison and is out for revenge. Captain William Marlow and his team of bounty hunters plan to bring him in and collect their biggest award yet. However, Marlow’s past catches up to him in the form of Eve, a defective AI, and he soon begins to question who the real villain is. Maybe Victor Romanov should get his revenge.

Excerpt: Before him kneeled a young woman. Her big blue wondrous eyes were skyward. It annoyed him that she wasn’t focused on the gun in his hand that was pointed at her face. It angered him that he was annoyed. But above all else this was not the face his gun should be pointed at. But he had orders. And the law came before everything else. Order before everything. And yet this felt… wrong. Sweat rolled down his temple. Don’t pull the trigger. He screamed inside himself. His body didn’t listen. He squeezed the trigger. Before the body could hit the floor Marlow woke up.

Eve was sitting on his bed looking down on him with those big blue eyes. “What is this noise?” she asked over the music which was still playing. Marlow sighed “They call it music if you can believe.” He rubbed the sleep from his eyes. “Oh, I don’t like it.” She stated matter of factly. “Music off” he commanded and the ship obeyed. Now in silence, Marlow sat up and found his face mere inches away from Eve’s. This close he could smell her. She smelled warm with an underlying sweetness. She lean forward, her sweetness was a little overwhelming and brought unease to his stomach. That’s when it dawned on him that he was only wearing boxer shorts and nothing else. He pulled the covers closer and leaned away from her. Her eyes searched his face. He wondered what she was looking for. He wondered if she would find it. He tried to remember what her kind were capable of. All of the destruction he witnessed. But being face to face with her… well he was having a hard time wrapping his mind around the idea of her being capable of any kind of carnage. But that’s the point isn’t it? Look non threatening then rip their throat out. He resisted the urge to cover his throat. “You talk in your sleep.” was all she said. He realized that he was holding his breath. “Did I say anything interesting?”

“You said no a lot. No to what?”

He swallowed hard. How the hell was he supposed to deal with this. His eyes landed on the mark on her face. This time he didn’t hesitate. He brought his hand up and cupped her cheek running his thumb over the black cross. To his surprise she leaned into his touch. “Do you remember Aquaria?” he asked. She answered with barely a whisper. “Yes.” Just then the door hissed open and Marlow jerked his hand away. Doc stepped in. “We’re … uh almost there.” He said as his eyes bounced back and forth between Marlow and Eve. Doc, now blushing, turned and left. Marlow scooted around Eve and got out of bed. “Where are we going” Marlow pulled on his black pants and buckled his belt. “Hiemal” he answered as he strapped on his thigh holster. “It’s a hellhole filled with bad people.” He pulled on an old grey Henley. Then he grabbed his boots and sat down next to Eve. He began lacing up his boots. “If we go there does that make us bad people?”

“Depends on who you ask”

“Well I don’t think you’re bad.”

Marlow straightened up and chuckled. “Thank you” He noticed she wasn’t wearing her shoes and saw an opportunity to get rid of her. “Now go put on your shoes and meet up in the control room.” She hopped off the bed and left the room. The tension Marlow didn’t realize he was holding left him. He run his hand through his buzzcut. What the hell just happened? Marlow had seen a lot and been through a lot but this was taking the cake as the weirdest. He grabbed his gun from underneath his pillow, checked that it was loaded, and holstered it. He pulled on his coat and left his room.

I may have messed up. I may have, perhaps, created another WIP just a bit late for Camp Nano. But never fear! Introducing…

When Stars Die

The empty clutches of deep space have been their home for years. The abandoned planets that have lain in beautiful destruction for centuries have been their refuge. The nights of the creatures that stalk them with every breath have been their fuel. But something has changed - and Avery is the catalyst. The galaxy that has ignored them for so long has awakened, sending battle carriers and soldiers into Avery’s territory, putting out notices for their capture or confirmed kill. Aliens and humans alike are whipped into a frenzy as entire solar systems are crushed, and time is running out as Avery must face one question above all others - What do you do when stars die?

This is very early in the works and I have not yet fleshed out the characters or plot fully. This will probably be a side project to The DELTA Archives, and I’ll work on it a bit slower than usual. I also plan to make this a duology. But what I can tell you is that there will be a huge amount of world-building, a non-binary protag, and lots of found-family feels! 

people talk all the time about “primal instincts” and it’s usually about violence or sexual temptations or something, but your humanity comes with a lot of different stuff that we do without really thinking about, that we do without being told to or prompted to

your average human comes pre-installed with instincts to:

Befriend

Tell story

Make Thing

Investigate

Share knowledge

Laugh

Sing

Dance

Empathize with

Create

we are chalk full of survival instincts that revolve around connecting to others (dog-shaped others, robot-shaped, sometimes even plant-shaped) and making things with our hands

your primal instincts are not bathed in blood- they are layered in people telling stories to each other around a fire over and over and putting devices together through trial and error over and over and reaching for someone and something every moment of the way

Looking for a random cause of death for a character? Click here.

Looking for a random city? Click here.

Looking for a random city that people have actually heard of? Click here.

Need a random surname for a character? Click here. (They also give prevalence by race, which is very helpful.)

Helpful writing tips for my friends.