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if you’re ever feeling burned out, take a moment to sit back & take a break! eat a snack or maybe watch an episode of your favorite show. it’s important to take breaks to allow your brain to recharge. happy Wednesday writers!

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here’s a character prompt for everyone’s saturday! : - what are your characters deepest darkest fears?

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we hope everyone is enjoying the 100 days of summer so far & is getting super creative with their work!!

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which do you prefer to role-play? feel free to explain why in the comments!

- realistic

- fantasy/scifi

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happy thursday writers! ✨

here’s a QOTD: if you could be a mythical creature, what would you be and why?

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Don't neglect context! Your readers should know what's going on, if they don't it will only be confusing.

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Staff Openings

Evening Scribes, we'd like to announce here that we officially have staff openings open, for more info see here. We hope to here from you!

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Set Writing Goals

Set writing goals: such as word count, improved vocabulary or grammar, etc. This is also a good way so as not to overwhelm oneself, focusing on one smaller part of the whole.

Happy Monday Scribes!

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To be an artist means never to avert one's eyes.

Akira Kurosawa

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IF YOU’RE NOT A PART OF OUR WRITING COMMUNITY, FEEL FREE TO CHECK OUT ADVANCED SCRIBES! WE’RE AN ESTABLISHED, LITERATE/ADVANCED WRITING COMMUNITY WITH AN ACTIVE TWITTER AND DISCORD SERVER. COME JOIN US!

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I write to discover what I know.

Flannery O’Connor

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There are lists and dozens of good examples on how to improve your writing, but for me these three simple steps helped me over the time, and maybe they will help you too.

follow my instagram for more tips

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Writing Tip Monday!

IF YOU’RE NOT A PART OF OUR WRITING COMMUNITY, FEEL FREE TO CHECK OUT ADVANCED SCRIBES! WE’RE AN ESTABLISHED, LITERATE/ADVANCED WRITING COMMUNITY WITH AN ACTIVE TWITTER AND DISCORD SERVER. COME JOIN US!

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congrats if you’ve ever written a fanfic over 110k words you’ve written an epic 

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So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say.

Virginia Woolf

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Writing tip of the week

Hello everyone! Happy Tuesday. Today we’re going to very briefly discuss stakes. What are stakes? Stakes are what push your story forward and ultimately what drive your main character to change. 

Whatever the stakes of your story are, they can’t be negotiable. Your protagonist must be forced into their predicament in some way; it is the quickest and best way to propel character growth and action. There’re a couple methods of doing this:

1) By making the situation close to home for the character, or: 2) By giving the character no other options.

For example...

Let’s say your character’s neighbor’s kid disappears. Your character, Jill, had absolutely no connection to the missing child. Sure, she might do something out of some sort of character-driven need to be a savior, but that’s dependent on the personality of said character. A low-charisma person may not feel that drive. If there’s nothing tying you personally to a situation, it would be foolish to be driven emotionally by every single thing that happens.

However, one small adjustment can involve even the most lazy or apathetic character. Instead of the missing child being a neighbor’s kid, the missing child is now Jill’s younger brother and her best friend. Now there are not only huge stakes -- your character really, really feels the need to do everything in her power to find her brother -- but there’s a huge range of emotions that Jill must process and go through as the story progresses. She will never be the person she was before the disappearance of her brother; we are going to watch her become stronger and confront her situation and her emotions head-on.

Now, for part 2: giving the character no other options.

Sometimes, something may not be that close to them emotionally, but physically it forces them into a situation. Let’s use Into the Spiderverse for this example!

There’s a trope in films and books alike about the begrudging mentor situation; that is, a mentor that has been forced into their position of power due to having no other options. In Into the Spiderverse’s case, older Peter Parker is forced to help out Miles Morales not because he has any emotional connection to Miles, but because there’s no other option. He has to help Miles in order to get home. The stakes are clear: if he doesn’t help Miles, he can’t get back to his home world, and he’ll die. So of course, being forced into this mindset shift will ultimately allow Peter to become more open to growth and change.

These situations are fun too, because they’re usually more shallowly apathetic characters that are forced to endure growth and change due to their situation of having no other options challenging their mindset. This is important! Without your life, mindset, or situation being challenged, there is no reason to grow, but we read books and watch movies to watch others grow and change. Without change, there is no story.

Play around with your stakes, and see where they take you!

If you’re not a part of our writing community, feel free to check out Advanced Scribes! We’re an established, literate/advanced writing community with an active Twitter and Discord server. Come join us!

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Perhaps I write for no one. Perhaps for the same person children are writing for when they scrawl their names in the snow.

Margaret Atwood