kelpie-writes

[kelpie-writes]

i've seen enough horror movies starring upper-middle-income white families stuck in spacious haunted mansions. gimme stories about millennials stuck in haunted studio apartments. consider the realism:

why is this protagonist staying in an obviously haunted building despite the glaring warning signs? because a week at a motel would send them spiraling into credit card debt, they'll take their chances with the vengeful spirits. why did they chose this apartment complex to begin with, despite the many many unexplained mysterious deaths that show up on the first page of a google search? hon some of us don't have the credit score to move away from high (paranormal) crime areas. how could i be so careless as to sign a soul-binding contract with a demonic entity? bitch they're called LANDLORDS

[kelpie-writes]

[kelpie-writes]

When your Character...

Gets into: A Fight ⚜ ...Another Fight ⚜ ...Yet Another Fight

Hates Someone ⚜ Kisses Someone ⚜ Falls in Love

Calls Someone they Love ⚜ Dies / Cheats Death ⚜ Drowns

is...

A Child ⚜ Interacting with a Baby/Child ⚜ A Genius ⚜ A Lawyer

Beautiful ⚜ Dangerous ⚜ Drunk ⚜ Injured ⚜ Shy

needs...

A Magical Item ⚜ An Aphrodisiac ⚜ A Fictional Poison

To be Killed Off ⚜ To Become Likable ⚜ To Clean a Wound

To Find the Right Word, but Can't ⚜ To Say No ⚜ A Drink

loves...

Astronomy ⚜ Baking ⚜ Cooking ⚜ Cocktails ⚜ Food ⚜ Oils

Dancing ⚜ Fashion ⚜ Gems ⚜ Mythology ⚜ Numbers

Roses ⚜ Sweets ⚜ To Fight ⚜ Wine ⚜ Wine-Tasting ⚜ Yoga

has/experiences...

Allergies ⚜ Amnesia ⚜ Bereavement ⚜ Bites & Stings ⚜ Bruises

Caffeine ⚜ CO Poisoning ⚜ Color Blindness ⚜ Food Poisoning

Injuries ⚜ Jet Lag ⚜ Mutism ⚜ Pain ⚜ Poisoning

More Pain & Violence ⚜ Viruses ⚜ Wounds

[these are just quick references. more research may be needed to write your story...]

Writing Resources PDFs

[kelpie-writes]

I will NEVER not fuck with women using a traditionally masculine title. Tell me more about that girl that's also a prince.

[kelpie-writes]

Reblog if you're a writer who re-reads their own work for funsies.

[kelpie-writes]

Every time I see an author promoting their debut Greek mythology retelling on twitter I mourn the loss of like. To put in ineloquently. Just using these stories as inspiration for your own. Your story does not need to force itself to fit the shape of Orpheus and Eurydice it’s fine you can just allude to their story!! You can use their themes!! Nobody is going to arrest you for being allegorical instead of literal!! I might eat them alive at this point. It’s the only way.

[kelpie-writes]

*struggles while writing* i suck and writing is hard

*remembers some ppl use ai* i am a creative force. i am uncorrupted by theft and indolence. i am on a journey to excellence. it is my duty to keep taking joy in creating.

[kelpie-writes]

Microsoft Office, like many companies in recent months, has slyly turned on an “opt-out” feature that scrapes your Word and Excel documents to train its internal AI systems. This setting is turned on by default, and you have to manually uncheck a box in order to opt out.

If you are a writer who uses MS Word to write any proprietary content (blog posts, novels, or any work you intend to protect with copyright and/or sell), you’re going to want to turn this feature off immediately.How to Turn off Word’s AI Access To Your Content

I won’t beat around the bush. Microsoft Office doesn’t make it easy to opt out of this new AI privacy agreement, as the feature is hidden through a series of popup menus in your settings:On a Windows computer, follow these steps to turn off “Connected Experiences”:

File > Options > Trust Center > Trust Center Settings > Privacy Options > Privacy Settings > Optional Connected Experiences > Uncheck box: “Turn on optional connected experiences”

[kelpie-writes]

protagonists are just author self-inserts on their worst behavior.

[kelpie-writes]

Feel the breeze this summer.

[kelpie-writes]

How to OC post without being an artist (or spending money)!

As much as I yelled about OC-posting, some people said that they struggled to know what exactly they should be posting. Obviously the answer is whatever you feel like but if you’re already aimless, that answer isn’t very helpful. Additionally, not everyone knows how to draw (which I think is an obvious method of OC-posting) so I wanted to give some ideas for what people could post for their OC! This will be split up into different sections.

Creating visual representations of your OC

Disclaimer: I will not suggest nor support the usage of generative AI. OCs are about creating something yourself, not allowing a computer to do it for you.

Outside of commissioning someone else for art, it can be disappointing and frustrating to not have any visual representation for your character. An easy way to get a representation of your character is to use Picrew, Meiker and other similar sites. There’s a large number of art styles, types of fashion, species, that can all be used to make your OC and that amount only grows by the day. Many of these websites can be accessed on PC and mobile and take very little processing power.

However, this can be limiting at times since you might not find exactly what you’re looking for, especially if your OC has a unique combination of features. For something with more customisation, you can use video games with character creation to make a version of your character. I personally would recommend games like The Sims or Skyrim as both have very active modding communities. This way, if a certain type of clothing or facial feature isn’t present in the base game then you can often find someone who has created a mod that adds it in instead. This does require you to have access to a computer that can run not only the game but the mods as well.

Another option would be using a program like Vroid Studio to make your character from a base model. This has both a mobile and PC version, although I will primarily be speaking from a PC perspective. The mobile app, while able to create a character from scratch, is a lot more limited than the PC version. The great thing about Vroid is that there’s a lot of user-made content that you can often get for free through websites like Booth, as well as many tutorials for beginners to follow along with. Again, this requires a computer that is able to run it. I would recommend against using Vroid on a laptop as it will likely be too intensive for it.

My final suggestion for character visuals is to take a character from anime or cartoons and simply edit them. This was actually how I first got into making original characters! You can recolour their hair or outfits with an editing program (with some free examples being FireAlpaca, Krita or GIMP) and even edit different images together to create something more unique. Please only do this with characters from existing media and avoid using fanart for this.

Other OC visuals

Other than just what your OC looks like, there are other ways to visually put together your OC. Moodboards are the most obvious example of this, but you can also edit other things such as putting together outfits for them or finding pictures of items they would keep in their bag.

If you have multiple OCs, you can create fake text conversations between them using a number of websites. These can be as silly or as serious as you like!

Finally, you can always build them a pinterest board. I am a massive pinterest enjoyer and not only can you use pins that others have posted to pinterest, you can add your own from off the site. 

Writing

Beyond writing out your characters’ story, there are numerous other things you can write. Keeping in line with what you’ve already written, you can re-write scenes from alternative perspectives. These can add context to what is seen in the main story, as well as flesh out background or side characters and their relationship to your other OCs.

Another fun thing to write is non-canon scenes. Write a beach episode! Write about a character getting sick and someone else having to take care of them! There are countless ways to draw your OCs interacting with their world or other characters that wouldn’t necessarily ever fit into the “main” story.

Next is genre changes. If you had to categorise the genre of your OCs’ current story, what would it be? Now image what if the genre was something completely different? Romance to mystery… Slice of life to horror… Part of the challenge is figuring out what story beats remain the same and what gets changed, including character dynamics! And of course… Alternate Universes. There are too many types of AUs to list but some of my favourites are superpowers, mafia, zombies, time loops and time-travel-fix-its. These are similar to genre-changes but often include a number of AU specific tropes. If you’re struggling to figure out the staples of a certain AU or what kind of AUs exist, there’s a really good page about alternate universes on Fanlore.org!

Other ideas

These are ideas that didn’t quite fit into the other categories.

First is music playlists! There are two types of these. The first is a playlist of songs that describe a character and their story while the second is a playlist of songs that the character would listen to. Some people like to combine the two as well! There are no rules to this, simply have fun listening to music and picking out songs that remind you of your OCs.

Second is incorrect quotes. I remember these used to be beloved by fandom and now they can be beloved by you and your OCs! The concept of incorrect quotes is that well-known and funny quotes from pop culture (such as memes or movies) get written out and your characters are assigned a line of dialogue. While there’s a website that’ll generate these incorrect quotes for you, I personally find more fun in coming across quotes organically while scrolling social media and realising that they fit my OCs almost perfectly.

Finally, ask games. These typically take the form of lists of questions or prompts with emojis or numbers next to them. People can send in the relevant emoji or number and you then answer the corresponding prompt. There used to be a kind of “ask game etiquette” where if you reblogged an ask game from someone, you sent an ask from the list to them as well. This way, it allows the game to continue circulating and you can spread the joy of OC-posting with others! It can also lead you to making friends within the community.

And that’s it for my post! If you have other suggestions for kinds of OC-posting then I would love to see them!

[kelpie-writes]

"if you want to hear about my ocs, my inbox is ope-" NO!! START YAPPING UNPROMPTED!! DO NOT WAIT FOR OTHERS TO TAKE INTEREST, POST THINGS THAT WILL MAKE THEM TAKE INTEREST!!!!

[kelpie-writes]

Who holds the power in your scene?

This is something we really explored during my time at film school, and is easier to see on the screen but still very applicable on the page. Essentially, in every scene there is one character who is holding the power—meaning they are driving the conversation, driving the action, they are in control because they are going after a goal, and if they are in power, are going to get the closest to achieving it. Every character should have some sort of goal going into every scene, and thus the power can and should shift between characters within the scene to create more interesting dynamics. So how do we do this?

1. Understand each character’s goal—and who is going to “win”

Each character comes into a scene with expectations that form their goal. Let’s do a breakup scene. Character A comes in with the expectation to go on a hike with their partner and have a good time. Their goal may start out as something simple like: “have a good time on this hike” or “avoid fighting with Character B”. Character B is going into this scene knowing they are going to breakup with character A, their goal is to literally just breakup with them.

If we know, as the author, that Character B is going to be successful, we know that this is their scene and they will ultimately hold the majority of the power. Vice-versa if Character A is successful in achieving their goal.

In knowing that, we can get into the actual mechanics of a power shift.

2. Character spacing and movement

Spacing and movement is the most obvious aspect in filmmaking, but may be forgotten on the page. In our example, I would place Character B ahead of Character A on the hike so that they are standing slightly above them on the incline. When they begin discussing their breakup, I would turn them around. Subconsciously, we know that B is “lording” over A, they have the high ground (har-har) and thus are the more imposing, powerful person.

Even the act of turning around would be a display of this power. So I would write it as,

B: Listen, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something… I just don’t really think either of us are happy—I don’t think this is really working anymore. A: What are you saying? B stops walking, turning on their heel to face them. B: I’m saying I want to break up.

3. The Driver of Conversation

Seen a bit in the last section, whoever is driving the conversation, steering the topic and tone, holds the power. You may notice throughout dialogue that there tends to be a questioner and an answerer, or someone providing the action while the other(s) are reacting.

A: I thought we were trying to connect more. Isn’t that what this stupid hike is about? B: Well it’s not working. I’m sorry. I’m done trying.

However, a character can grapple for and shift the power by calling them out or otherwise steering the conversation in a way that they would like instead. At this point, A would likely have shifted their goal from “having a good time” to proving that they were right about some change they picked up on, or in another case, may be trying to convince them to not breakup. If you allow them to “win” for a portion of the scene, you can reverse the power.

A: This is because of that person you met at work isn’t it? How dare you try to pretend that it has anything to do with me. B: Hold on—this has nothing to do with her… A scoffed, stepping forward on the incline. A: You are such a liar. You have been since the day we met. I don’t know why I ever trusted you.

B: I didn’t lie about that. I swear.

And let’s reverse the scene back:

A: What is it then? What is this really about? B: We’re just too different! I’m sorry. B steps past A and starts walking back the way they came.

Power can shift because another character took it, but it can also shift by the character in power giving it up, either intentionally or unintentionally.

4. The leader of action

Otherwise, the person who directs the action; is winning the fight, points out directions or creates the plan, or otherwise is determining where the characters go next or what they do next, holds the power in the scene. A grapple for power doesn’t necessarily need to be verbal but could rather be two people going opposite directions and one of them relenting, for example. This one is more obvious because it’s very visual, but is still an important aspect to how characters “win” or “lose” their goals in a scene.

[kelpie-writes]

PLEASE for the love of the universe read anti-colonial science fiction and fantasy written from marginalized perspectives. Y’all (you know who you are) are killing me. To see people praise books about empire written exclusively by white women and then turn around and say you don’t know who Octavia Butler is or that you haven’t read any NK Jemisin or that Babel was too heavy-handed just kills me! I’m not saying you HAVE to enjoy specific books but there is such an obvious pattern here

Some of y’all love marginalized stories but you don’t give a fuck about marginalized creators and characters, and it shows. Like damn

[kelpie-writes]

A short piece on aged up Violet and Talia because I cannot get them off my mind.

Talia didn't sleep the nights Violet was gone. Out until all hours of the night always with tepid offers for her to come that she rarely accepted.

All too dangerous. All too late.

She'd occupy her time with books, reading them aloud to the walls for discussion. Plating blackened cookies for calloused hands, another pastime. Dozing off into students English essays before she'd finally head to their room, mussing the covers Vi meticulously made before work.

All too dangerous. All too late.

Violet was always quiet when she returned, taking off her heavy boots before she even opened the front door. The gasoline smell always woke Talia from fitful sleep. A welcome scent compared to the nights like iron and singe.

All too dangerous. All too late.

They'd do their dance. Vi would apologize for waking her, she'd say she didn't mind. She didn't. Vi would strip herself bare under the watching eye of Talia buried deep in her pillow; her hair like a halo from the hall light. She'd hiss as her cracked knuckles broke open, rush to the bathroom to keep the bloodstains out of the carpet like she knew Talia hated. And Talia loved her, bloodstains and all.

All too dangerous. All too late.

Violet would return and fall on top of the covers, her hands reaching for Talia like she brought her life. Talia would kiss her expertly wrapped hands like she did, blood still seeping under the bandages. She'd pull her tight and ask her how her night was and her soul relaxed into safety. Violet would whisper to her about races, fights, chases, until Talia was finally able to rest. She should have listened.

All too dangerous. All too late.

Talia didn't sleep the nights Violet was gone. She needed to feel her under her hands, hear her voice, breathe in gasoline and smoke and blood and life. She didn't sleep the nights Violet was gone.

All too dangerous. All too late.

[kelpie-writes]

Every time I watch a stellar animated show/movie/ANYTHING it just makes me so desperate to make an animated show

[kelpie-writes]

Your wip’s protagonist is forced to become proficient in the use of a weapon.