jordans-writing-blog

[jordans-writing-blog]

hey do you have any tips on plot development? how to do come up with relevant but dramatic things to keep the plot going? i also don’t want to make it too intense?

I actually have quite a lot of resources that I’ve created over the years surrounding plot development. I’ve linked as many as I could find for you:

Resources For Plot Development

Useful Writing Resources

Useful Writing Resources II

31 Days of Plot Development

Novel Planning 101

How To Write A Good Plot Twist

How To Foreshadow

What To Cut Out Of Your Story

Tackling Subplots

Things A Reader Needs From A Story

A Guide To Tension & Suspense In Your Writing

How To Turn A Good Idea Into A Good Story

Planning A Scene In A Story

21 Plot Shapes and the Pros and Cons Of Each

How To Outline Effectively

Tips On Writing Intense Scenes

Writing The First Chapter

Tips On Starting A Scene

Plot Structures

Finding & Fixing Plot Holes

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Police officer: You’re a wanted woman, Ortiz

Alex: Impossible, I wasn’t even a wanted child

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Eddy: I’m 31 cheetos tall

Marlene: Why did you think it was necessary to measure yourself in cheetos?

Eddy: We were out of doritos

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there is NO WAY to avoid tropes!! everything is a trope!! that doesn’t mean it’s bad!! embrace it!!

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Cassandra: If a dead ancestor doesn’t appear in the sky to stop me, it can’t be that bad of a decision.

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Kat: Don’t worry! We’ve got this completely under control!

Robert: Oh, is that why everything is on fire?

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Robin: It’s a simple question!

Marlene: I am not gonna answer that!

Robin: Oh come on, just pick one! Between the six of us, if you had to- if you had to- who would you punch?

Marlene: No one! You’re my friends!

Robin:

Robin: Cassandra?

Marlene: Yeah, but I don’t know why

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Someone: So what is your novel? Middle grade? YA? Adult? NA?

Me:

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Worldbuilding: life in a small village

I saw a post about living in a small town, and I decided to make my own version about life in a small village (smaller than a town). I have lived in one until I moved to university in the city when I was 19.

Nobody uses their front door. If you visit someone, you walk into the kitchen through the open garage door, or you walk around the house and enter the kitchen through the back door. If nobody’s there, you go to their living room, yelling “Hello? Visitors!” If nobody answers you, possibly they are not at home. (It would be rude to venture further into the house. They might be doing private stuff.) You leave, or check if they are not in the garden. When you’re in the garden, you’d like to check out their veggie garden to see if the potatoes/leeks/… are doing well.

In the summer, I used to lay down on the street and watch the meteor showers. It’s better to lay down on the street (there’s barely any traffic during the night, and you can hear a car coming from a kilometer away) than in the fields (almost harvest time).

We only have one crossroads with traffic lights. It does not have a zebra crossing, though. People sometimes cut off the corner through the field to avoid the traffic lights.

I can’t pay by card and I can’t withdraw money, so I have to pay anything in cash, except at the apothecary. True story: About 10 years after I moved away, I visited my parents. My boyfriend and I went to get ice cream at the grocery story and we discovered we didn’t have any cash. The woman at the grocery store said no to mind, because she’d tell the woman from the bakery to ask the money from my mom on Sunday. A) She knows who I am, even though I moved away when I was 19. B) She knows I am my mom’s daughter. C) She knows my mom’s shopping habits in another store. D) The cash register of the grocery store and the bakery - two separate businesses - can sometimes mix.

Said grocery store is smaller than my city appartment living room. It carries not only food but other random things people might need, for example comic books as a last-minute gift for your child’s classmate’s birthday. The prices are on the high side, because the grocery woman buys them in a regular supermarket in the nearest bigger town. It’s just the convenience of having a shop near.

We don’t have a butcher anymore (they retired) but we have seven bars.

My village (in Western Europe) is very white. I can remember every person of color I met saw before I moved to the city. Two people from Indian descent, who were adopted as babies. And technically, they were from another village. One black family from Congo, with three children. That’s it. Seven.

Any occasion is good to come together and eat and drink in the square. Every summer, they put up a huge tent between the church and the brewery and we have music, food and drinks all weekend. The village upwind from ours can hear our music.

There were 12 children in my year at elementary school. This was an average sized class. My village doesn’t have a high school, so I had to bike to my school in a village five kilometer away.

Locking my bike when I left it in front of a shop was unnecessary. I would only be inside for a few minutes. Locking my bike when I parked it in our back yard was laughable. They would have to walk around our house to get my bike. Locking my bike at school, I don’t think I ever did that. I did lock my bike at the train station most of the times. It was also safe to leave your bag, with your money in it, outside for hours. I never had anything stolen that I left unattended outside.

That’s it from the top of my mind now. Feel free to add more experiences and examples!

My other posts with writing advice can be read here.

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Alex: Cass I don’t think is the best idea-

Cass: We’re doing it though, right?

Alex: Oh, yeah, definitely.

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“I’ll have you know I stubbed my toe last week while watering my spice garden and I only cried for twenty minutes”

- Henry

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[rebloggable by request]

Well, first of all, WELCOME TO ONE OF MY PET PEEVES.

A female character does not have to be “strong” (whatever your definition of that is) to be a good character.

Women can be strong, or wussy, or emotional, or stoic, or needy, or independent, and still be legitimate people and interesting characters.

In our totally understandable desire to see portrayals of strong women (in reaction to decades of damsels in distress and women as appendages), we’ve somehow backed ourselves into this corner where the only acceptable portrayal of a woman in the media is a strong, kick-ass woman.  That is not doing women any favors.  It just leads to the attitude that you have to be ONE WAY ONLY to be legit as a woman.  You shouldn’t have to be Natasha Romanoff or Xena to be considered a good character.  Don’t get me wrong, I love a good Buffy as much as the next person, but that should not be the only acceptable portrayal.  It should be okay for a female character NOT to be strong, too.  Let’s take Molly Hooper as an example.  She is not the stereotypical “strong” woman.  But hell, she went through medical school, didn’t she?  She’s smart, and she’s funny, and she serves a story function - she is not a major character, but she doesn’t have to be.  But her character gets criticized because she pines after Sherlock.  What, you never pined after somebody?  Did it make you invalid as a person?  You never got a bit silly over a crush?  I know I did.  And I still consider myself a strong woman.  It should be okay for Molly to have a crush on Sherlock without getting the “oh, she’s so pathetic, what a terrible example, what a horrible female character” thing she so often gets.  Yes, because it’s so terrible that a female character should reflect an experience that like 99% of us have had.  

Screw writing “strong” women.  Write interesting women.  Write well-rounded women.  Write complicated women.  Write a woman who kicks ass, write a woman who cowers in a corner.  Write a woman who’s desperate for a husband.  Write a woman who doesn’t need a man.  Write women who cry, women who rant, women who are shy, women who don’t take no shit, women who need validation and women who don’t care what anybody thinks.  THEY ARE ALL OKAY, and all those things could exist in THE SAME WOMAN.  Women shouldn’t be valued because we are strong, or kick-ass, but because we are people.  So don’t focus on writing characters who are strong.  Write characters who are people.

The only bad female character, if you ask me (and you did), is one who’s flat.  One who isn’t realistic.  One who has no agency of her own, who only exists to define other characters (usually men).  Write each woman you write as if she has her own life story, her own motivations, her own fears and strengths, and even if she’s only in the story for one page, she will be a real person, and THAT is what we need.  Not a phalanx of women who can karate-chop your head off, but REAL women, who are people, with all the complexity and strong and not-strong that goes with it.

This is why I disagree with the “damsel in distress” criticism of Irene in the last scene of Scandal.  Here’s the thing about being a damsel in distress…it’s only bad if that’s all she is.  If the character’s defining characteristic is being a damsel in distress, that’s bad.  But if an otherwise complex character with lots of other agency and actions happens to be in distress, then…that’s all it is.  She is in distress.  That happens.  Characters are often in distress, or there would be no plots.  Should a female character never be allowed to be in distress, at ALL, to be valid?  No.

A strong female character is one who is defined by her own characteristics, history and personality, and not solely by the actions or needs of other characters.  She is a person in the story, not a prop.  That is the best definition I can come up with.  Note that my definition did not involve martial arts. 

That was probably longer than you were anticipating!  I’ve had that percolating for a long time.

[jordans-writing-blog]

Florence, dropping Robert off somewhere: Stay safe.

Robert: I have no say in the matter.

Florence: Die then. *drives away*

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Eddy: Why must the cute ones (me) suffer?

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Robin: You can never lose an argument if you say “shut up, nerd” at the end.

Marlene: Yes you can.

Robin: Shut up, nerd.

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When your OC gets fed up, how do they finally snap?

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tag your ocs that are bilingual or multilingual

bonus: tell us what languages they speak