authorannpaquette

[authorannpaquette]

Any advice on writing someone who's got a crush? I don't want to make it sound too "omg I think they're perfect" every other sentence.

Writing a character with a crush...

When you’re writing a character with a crush, tension is created through action and reaction. Every time your character acts, hesitates, speaks their mind, holds their tongue, makes a move, get’s discouraged, etc. builds the tension and encourages the reader to become invested. Crushes in storytelling should be shown through the character’s actions and the world’s reactions, not through dialogue or narration. 

Show the reader the character taking 20 minutes to build up the courage to walk up to their locker, where their crush has one right next to theirs because they’re worried they’ll blurt out the wrong thing if the other person shows up. Don’t just tell the reader that the character feels nervous around them or gets butterflies. Show the butterflies threatening to erupt as their crush sits at the only available seat left in homeroom, which happens to be next to them. 

Types of Romantic Tension

Tips On Writing Skinny Love

Guide To Writing Friends To Lovers

Guide To Writing Enemies To Lovers

Resources For Writing YA Fiction/Romance

Guide To Writing Will-They-Won’t-They

Rivalry vs. Abuse

Guide To Writing Forbidden Love

20 Mistakes To Avoid in YA/Romance

Best Friends To Lovers Resources

How to develop an Enemies-To-Lovers story

Prompts

Skinny Love Writing Prompts

Study Date Prompts

Best Friends-To-Lovers Prompts

Enemies-To-Lovers Prompts

Tol & Smol Couple Prompts

Romantic Prompts

Soulmates Alternate Universe Prompts

General Romance Tips

Resources For Romance Writers

Creating A Love Interest For An Introvert

Writing Opposites Who Attract

Describing Heartbreak

Balancing Fluff and Conflict

Writing Great Fanfiction

How To Write The Perfect Kiss

On Romantic Subplots

–

Masterlist | WIP Blog

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[authorannpaquette]

When someone says fairy garden, my imagination is brought to a place filled with wonder and sparkles. Where flowers grow no matter the season and the morning dew hangs a little longer in order to reflect the light of the sun like so many little glass beads. Everything is perfect, but not in a manicured garden kind of perfect. The effect creates a sense of stillness inside, where one can wander at peace. Where the air smells sweet and the sunlight inspires naps and relaxation like a lazy summer afternoon.

This may be the case with some fairies.

But what about those with a more mischievous soul?

Oh hell no, no calm gardens with eye-catching displays to create sense pleasing experience. Sure, one can still find joy in their choices of materials, but they are using mushrooms and acorns and dried branches with a bunch of pine needles thrown in for good measure. Pine needs smell great after all. Right? Crunchy leaves and decaying plant life and branches tossed haphazardly by the wind. The chill in the air forces you to hug yourself closer and toss on a sweater. Even the smell of coffee and lattes are factored into the scents, blending with an unexpected deliciousness.

Of course, they’d throw in a handful of stinkhorn eggs, just to keep things interesting.

[authorannpaquette]

It's almost Friday... Here's a caterpillar crawling across the pavement (he was later moved to a more caterpillar suitable space)

[authorannpaquette]

I think the most amazing part of my child’s mushroom fixation is the variety of mushies in a relatively small area. Something as small as a tot lot park yields a dozen varieties of mushrooms, and those are just the ones we found since August! They require more searching in the woods, and my amazement at child’s observational skills grows with each outing. We don’t know what most of the mushrooms we find are called, I have a book but it isn’t as easy as looking at a picture and saying “That’s it!” Color, size, ring/no ring/veil, gills/spines/pores, smell, vulva/no vulva, and sport print are all things to take into consideration, and so many mushrooms have look-alikes with just one little feature which could make the difference between edible and deadly. I simply love taking pictures right now.

[authorannpaquette]

Fall is here, which means the mushrooms are getting craftier at hiding. I still don't know how my child sees the brown on brown mushrooms!

[authorannpaquette]

I have literally spent my entire summer looking for mushrooms with my child, who btw turned three this year, in between working and family stuff. It never dawned on me to share any of our adventures here.

He started this thing himself, this obsession with mushrooms, but I picked up that rope and we bought a book and now we find fungi everywhere. He even got the kids at daycare interested in something they probably didn't pay attention to before. Now the daycare teachers have bought a kit to grow their own mushrooms and are giving it a go!

Mushrooms are only toxic if you ingest them, and I drilled it in his head that we aren't too eat them. No worries there.

This isn't even the tip of the iceberg when it comes to pictures of mushrooms, and I will be sharing some of my favorites here.

I'm lucky that my days are filled with adventure and discovery. So many "look mama!" moments I can't count them all!

[authorannpaquette]

How does one make a reader sympathetic to the main character? Is it just making them relatable, realistic, and/or have something bad happen to them that's also relatable (or just really dramatic)?

Guide: Creating a Sympathetic Main Character

If you want to create a character your readers will love, try including some of the following traits:

1) Admirable Positive Traits

Kindness, bravery, humility, selflessness, optimism, good morals, respect for others, generosity, open-minded, inclusive, problem-solving… these kinds of positive traits, and others, give the reader reasons to like your character. For more help with positive traits, check out the Positive Trait Thesaurus, a super handy reference that I own and recommend.

2) Sympathetic Negative Traits

Real people have flaws, so readers don’t tend to like characters who don’t have flaws, too. But if you want to create a sympathetic character, it’s also important to make sure their negative traits are believable, understandable, and don’t overwhelm or negate any of the character’s positive traits. Think about the negative traits of people you know and love, and there’s also a Negative Trait Thesaurus, which is also helpful. For added benefit, build in something that explains why your character developed this negative trait. For example, if one of their negative traits is that they’re a stickler for being on time and tend to freak out if they’re even a couple minutes late, find a way somewhere in the story to explain why they are this way. Perhaps they went to a school where tardiness was severely punished, or maybe being late once cost them a job they really wanted. Building in an understandable, relatable reason for why they developed the negative trait helps to make them a sympathetic character.

3) Skills, but not Skillzzzz

Readers love it when a character is good at something, but not too good at something, and definitely not good at everything. Maybe your character is a good student who studies hard and gets good grades. But maybe they also get an A- on a paper and are disappointed but happy they still got an A. Or, maybe your character is considered to be the top pilot at the space trucking company where they work, but maybe they also made an error a few months ago that led to a damaged shipment, so they’re currently on probation and could lose their job and pilot’s license if they screw up again.

4) Sympathetic Motivation and Admirable Goals

Every main character needs internal and external goals and motivation for wanting to reach those goals, but if you want your character to be sympathetic, it’s important to create goals and motivations that a reader can understand, even if they may not agree with them. For example, maybe your character witnessed a crime and is now in danger as the key witness. Maybe they are afraid they now present a danger to their beloved family, so they decide to disappear and take dangerous work in a remote mining operation so that they can keep their family safe and also save up money to give them a better life. Your reader may not agree that leaving their family is the best option, but anyone can understand wanting to protect one’s family.

5) Quirky, but Not QWIRKIEEEE♥!!!

Readers tend to like characters who are a little bit quirky, but “quirky” can get annoying really fast if you go overboard. Maybe your character wears their hair in a rainbow-colored beehive, wears cat-eye glasses, and has a few piercings. Maybe they have an unusual hobby, like collecting seashells or medieval coins, and they can identify almost any specimen by sight. Perhaps they’re a lovable geek who wears a different sci-fi movie/show t-shirt every day and can’t go an hour without quoting a favorite movie. Or maybe they’re obsessed with cats, are fluent in ten languages, run a medieval smithy in their backyard, or have an enormous doll collection. A few of these can make for an interesting character, but too many will make your character unbelievable and annoying.

6) Conflict with Aspects Anyone Can Relate To

I’d wager that most readers have probably never been stuck in an arena and forced to fight other people to the death, but that didn’t stop readers from sympathizing with what Katniss Everdeen had to go through in The Hunger Games. Maybe we couldn’t relate to the reality of what she faced, but we could identify with aspects of it: having to be away from friends and loved ones, facing uncertainty and danger, being pitted against someone you don’t want to be pitted against, being in an unfamiliar place, being in a situation you have limited control over, being forced to do something you don’t want to do, wanting to do the right thing but knowing it will come at a great cost to yourself… These are all things a lot of people can identify with on some level or another, so because we’ve “been there,” even though we haven’t been *there* (in the arena, facing down Clove and Cato, and all those other tributes). There are things about Katniss’s struggle that we can identify with, which allow us to sympathize with her even though we haven’t experienced exactly what she’s going through.

The bottom line when creating a sympathetic character is to go with your gut. If you’re worried that something will diminish your reader’s ability to sympathize with the character, skip it. Or, at the very least, see what your beta readers think. Remember, part of the point of the beta process is to give you feedback that allows you to tweak things like this. So, as much as you should follow your gut, also don’t be afraid to take risks. Create the character you want to see, and everything will fall into place. :)

[authorannpaquette]

Ohana

[authorannpaquette]

[authorannpaquette]

Missed yesterday's prompt, next time then!

Thursday's prompt: house hippos are real. Keep one as a pet!

[authorannpaquette]

Word prompt Tuesday: random name drop

Robbie Beasly

Hibba Nelson

Liya Santana

[authorannpaquette]

Word prompt: Monday

Fake headline with the help of predictive text:

Octopus hijacks Fisherman's body and phones home.

[authorannpaquette]

THINGS WRITERS NEED TO HEAR

you are allowed to take a break. you don’t have to write if you don’t feel like it.

everyone has their own pace. it doesn’t matter if you write one page or ten pages a day, you are still a writer.

your first draft is going to suck. every first draft or every book has sucked. i’ll get better and better as you edit. that’s what editing is for, making your work actually good.

experiment. try out new routines, new styles, new genres. it’ll never harm you. you’ll gain experience and become a better writer. you’ll understand what suits you and what doesn’t.

you don’t need publishing to be a writer. publishing is just an option but if you don’t want to you can just keep your writing to yourself.

if you write, then you’re a writer. no matter how much experience you have, what genre you write, if you are published or not. you are a writer.

everyone is different. everyone has a different style so find your own and rock it. search for inspiration but ultimately focus on what allows you to express your ideas in the best way possible.

you are doing great. no matter how productive you are, how much you’ve written, how fast you write. you are gonna achieve your goal and it’s gonna feel so good.

[authorannpaquette]

Injuries Reference List

If you’re writing anything where your characters are getting injured a lot, it might be helpful to have an injuries reference list on hand. WELL, DON’T WORRY ABOUT IT BECAUSE I CREATED ONE. This is mostly the result of me having to look up something every time a character was gravely injured/being a lifeguard for seven years. I have some knowledge of first aid and how it might apply to the characters in your story.

Simple scrapes/cuts: There’s usually not much to worry about besides MAYBE an infection, which can be avoided with rubbing alcohol or peroxide. Remember, peroxide usually doesn’t burn or sting, but rubbing alcohol probably will.  These injuries will bleed for a short amount of time, but it shouldn’t last too long.

Bruising: These occur when the blood vessels break under the skin, forming discoloration of the skin. The colors can vary, but they are usually purplish, bluish, or yellow. Again, this injury is usually not serious if it’s a result of a bump or cut, but if there’s significant bruising over a large area of the body there might be a serious problem. Usually time heals bruising.

Sprains: A sprain is torn or stretched ligament, but it is NOT a break. It is very common for someone to sprain an ankle or a wrist and it usually doesn’t require serious medical attention. The area might swell and should be iced. Sprains are usually treated with rest and a device that compresses the area—such as a sling or a bandage.

Broken bones (arms, fingers, legs, toes): Breaks can be serious, especially if they have to be set back into place. A person will most likely not be able to put pressure on a broken bone until it is healed (which could take weeks). A broken bone is REALLY serious when it fractures or breaks through the skin completely. If you write a character in this sort of situation, they will need to worry about infection and they might have to wait until the swelling goes down before splitting or covering.

Burns: Obviously, there are different degrees of burns, but simple burns will most likely be treated the same. Even the smallest burns will probably sting like hell, so it can be hard to function with an untreated burn. SERIOUS burns might require amputation (I’m talking about maybe 3rd to 4th degree burns). As a 1st degree burn is healing, it might itch—think how sunburn starts to itch after a while.

Broken back: A broken back can lead to paralysis, so you need to be very careful with how you treat someone. Your characters shouldn’t be throwing anyone over their shoulders with a back injury because it will only lead to more serious problems. If you suspect that someone has broken or injured their back, you need to keep them still until there is a way to safely move them.

Amputation: This happens when the removal of a body part because necessary to someone’s survival.If someone has a bad infection or there’s no way to stop the bleeding (you’ve applied a tourniquet, which will most likely end up causing an amputation later), a character might have to amputate in a serious situation.

Dislocated limb: If a bone “pops” out of its socket, a character might have to put it back into place. A dislocated limb restricts movement, so your character might not be able to go forward until the situation is resolved. Arms and fingers are commonly dislocated and there will probably be pain when they’re set back into place. Those limbs should be rested and iced to prevent swelling.

Jammed fingers: If you get your finger caught in a door, for example, and it doesn’t break; you might have a jammed finger. I’ve had a few of these in my life, which usually causes bruising and some pain, but it heals on its own. These types of injuries can be from jamming your fingers against something hard and you might lose a finger nail. They will most likely hurt for a while until they are healed.

Stab wounds: These are usually deep cuts by a knife or a sword or another sharp object. They need to be treated, as they are prone to infection, and they should be bandaged. If the bleeding is excessively bad, a common way to stop the bleeding is to get stitches or cauterize the wound. Cauterization is the process of burning the wound in order to seal it up. Think of lightsabers in Star Wars. No one bleeds when they’re cut because the “blade” of the lightsaber cauterizes the wound as it cuts. Your characters might have to stitch someone or cauterize someone in an emergency situation.

Gunshot wounds: Getting shot is a serious/life threatening situation, so your characters would need immediate medical attention.In an emergency situation, the bullet might have to be dug out and the wound cauterized if the bleeding is severe. If the bullet goes in and out, you might just have to worry about infection and covering the wound. A gunshot wound will be painful and will take a while to heal. If someone is shot in the leg, they will have trouble walking. The limbs will need time to heal.

Poisoning: This is a wide topic that could include food poisoning to being poisoned by another character, but they will probably feel very sick. Symptoms will include vomiting, dehydration, diarrhea, etc. Your character might get severe stomach aches and will not be able to function.Being poisoned can be deadly and can happen quickly. A medicine called Ipecac will induce vomiting in order to get the poisons out of someone’s symptoms, but will not work for EVERYTHING. Further treatment might be necessary.

Stomach wound: A person with a stomach wound will not last very long without addressing it. If it is deep enough, it will kill off your character unless the bleeding and infection can be stopped. Infection is usually what kills people with stomach wounds or gunshot wounds.

This is a list to be used for WRITING purposes only. Obviously you should call a doctor or get emergency treatment if something is serious. I also wrote this list assuming that your characters don’t have access to medical professionals, so keep that in mind. Hope this helps!

-Kris Noel

[authorannpaquette]

[authorannpaquette]

How three people use fifteen forks during a meal:

1: Think about forks on the way home, loudly announce "I wanna fork" a few times for good measure. Add in a request for a bar, because then the forks make sense.

2: get home, put dog outside. Eat requested bar.

3: get to work helping with supper. Open cutlery drawer and pull out the forks. Announce they are for daddy and place them on the table in daddy's spot.

4: return to drawer and take our another three forks. Keep these in your hand.

5: close drawer.

6: open drawer.

7: give mommy three more forks, she asked for one to poke vegetables with, but might need reinforcements.

8: place another fork on the table for daddy.

9: somehow all the forks mommy was given have disappeared. Take out two more to replace them.

10: bring another fork for daddy. (I should add that daddy isn't even at the table yet, maybe not even home)

11: somehow the forks keep disappearing. Take out two more to use for actual eating.

12: bonus spoon for daddy.

13: eat. Bonus points is you use a spoon instead of a fork.

I should mention that we only have eight forks.

[authorannpaquette]

These are neat!

by fediphedee