#problem developing

[luna-azzurra]

If You’re Writing a Female Character, Avoid these Bad Writing Mistakes

Avoid focusing solely on how she looks, what she wears, or how attractive she is to others.

Don’t make her dependent on male characters for rescue or decision-making.

Avoid giving her unrealistic abilities without any training or explanation.

Avoid portraying her as constantly crying, screaming, or overly dramatic without depth.

Don’t make her entire character arc revolve around finding love or getting married.

Avoid creating her as the only female in a predominantly male cast just for diversity points.

Avoid having her dialogue filled with stereotypical phrases and overused expressions.

Ensure she has realistic imperfections and challenges to overcome.

[zealouswitchwerewolf]

Has anyone seen/written any fics where Danny is so used to being an overpowered menace that danger doesn't even register the same for him anymore. Like he's gone against the likes of undergrowth and vortex, he's obviously not going to be intimidated by a middle aged man with sweaty hands pointing a gun at him.

It's all fine until he leaves Amity and starts being put in mildly dangerous situations that don't bother him at all but everyone around him looks super freaked out? And it can range from like being mugged or one of the DC superheroes facing one of their supervillains while all the civilians run away and Danny just keeps going full on ignoring cause not his circus, not his monkeys, but still.

And then he realizes that his reaction is abnormal and people are starting to stare and he doesn't need the extra attention on him but knows he can't act for shit so he just goes for the most deadpan sarcasm he can muster and goes all "oh, nooooo. This is so bad. I am SO scared." And it just makes the stares worse but by then he's committed to the bit and will throw gradually more concerning stuff about his past in conversations with the most dead expression just to see how far he can take it until someone confronts him about it.

[oysters-aint-for-me]

tips on refrigerator ownership for the mentally ill

1.) letting food go bad does NOT make you a Bad Person.

2.) it is okay to throw out only one thing at a time. even especially if there are a lot of expired things in there.

3.) give yourself permission to throw out tupperware once in a while.

[khaopybara]

❝This is your only chance, Ai'Mook.❞

CHANYA AMARIT as VIVI and AYA ORAPAN as KAIMOOK episode 8 of LOVE SEA

[lannegarrett]

Therapist: And what do we do with hurt feelings?

Me: give them to a character?

[epiphainie]

on this beautiful evening, i'm thinking about oliver stark saying how he wants to tell a happy but real story with buck and tommy 🥰🥰

[bixels]

Be honest, what are your thoughts on appledash? Do you hate it or its more of not a big deal

Not a big deal to me. I like it, I see all the appeals, I just personally like Rarijack more.

[icamefromadream]

°•°Habits to Give Your Characters°•°

╭┈◦•◦❥•◦ Constantly crosses legs when sitting

╭┈◦•◦❥•◦ Doodles when zoned out (if there's no paper around they could trace doodles like little hearts on a table or even on the back of their hand)

╭┈◦•◦❥•◦ Crucks knuckles

╭┈◦•◦❥•◦ Braids hair when their bored (or just generally plays with their hair)

╭┈◦•◦❥•◦ Stands way to close to people when talking to them.

╭┈◦•◦❥•◦ Avoids eyecontact when people talk to them.

╭┈◦•◦❥•◦ Clutches on to other's sleeves.

╭┈◦•◦❥•◦ Bites nails when nervous

╭┈◦•◦❥•◦ Raises their eyebrows when interested.

╭┈◦•◦❥•◦ Offers food to others, before taking a bite themselves.

╭┈◦•◦❥•◦ Scratches top of nails (like when you're scratching the coat of nail polish off your nails.)

╭┈◦•◦❥•◦ Whistles to ease nerves.

Follow @paranoia-art for more!

Do message me if you have anymore you would like to add!

[canonkiller]

making disabled characters as a disabled person rules because not only are you connecting with yourself + others by representing that condition and also introducing and normalizing existence with that condition to people who are unfamiliar with it, whenever you have a flare up there IS a significant chance that your first thought before all else will be "wow JUST like blorbo from my mind"

[luna-azzurra]

Expressing 'Anger' in Writing

Jaw clenching tightly

Hands balling into fists

Veins throbbing visibly at the temple

Eyes narrowing to slits

Breathing becoming quick and shallow

Stomping or heavy footsteps

Voice rising in pitch or volume

Flushing or reddening of the face

Throwing or slamming objects

Brows knitting together in frustration

Lips pressing into a thin line

Teeth grinding audibly

Staring with a hard, fixed gaze

Sarcasm dripping from every word

Snapping responses or barking orders

[burntoutdaydreamer]

3 Steps to Improve Your Characters and Make Them Three-Dimensional

So I don’t have a process for creating/developing characters (to me the process is intuitive to the point where I wouldn’t even know how to explain it), but I do have a process for revising characters that just… fall flat, for whatever reason. 

I like to get to know my characters by throwing them into a bunch of different situations and seeing how they react, but sometimes that’s not enough. In these cases I need to go back to the drawing board and figure out how to make them not feel like a cardboard caricature of the role I need them to fill. Here’s the process I use, and it involves three key questions to understand what makes your character tick.

1) What is this character’s fundamental belief- either about the world or themself?

2) Where does this belief come from?

3) How does this belief hinder them, and are they capable of growing past it?

Alright, here’s what the process looks like in action. 

Let’s say I have a character I need to flesh out for my story.

Character A is a middle aged coffee shop owner and the protagonist of her story. The central conflict of the story revolves around trying to save the family run coffee shop she inherited from her father when he passed away, which has recently fallen on hard times.

What is this character's fundamental belief?

Character A believes that the world is an inherently good and fair place. She believes that good is always rewarded and bad is always punished, even if the timing isn't always perfect. As such, she strives to live a virtuous life, putting as much good into the world as she possibly can. While she understands that even good people can face hard times, she believes that in the long term, if things don't work out, it'll be because she didn't put in the work needed to turn things around.

Where does this belief come from?

Character A grew up in a solidly middle class household with good parents that treated her well- rewarding her for good work, and fairly punishing her for misdeeds. Her parents gave her everything she needed, but also expected her to work hard for the things she wanted. She also had the experience of watching her father build a successful business through hard work and by building strong connections with the people in town. If we want to push this further, we could also say that this belief was reaffirmed by watching her brother ruin his own life, squandering all his money and goodwill with those around him on failed get-rich-quick-schemes and outright scams that landed him in jail.

How does this belief hinder them, and are they capable of growing past it?

Let's say that Character A recently hired a barista who seems perfect for the job. Strapped for help, she gets him started right away before getting the results of his background check. When the results come in, she finds out that he is on probation and was recently released from jail for a violent crime. Shocked, she fires him. Believing that people who end up in jail always deserve it, she can't see past her initial prejudices. As a result, her coffee shop suffers from the loss of her new star barista.

Some time goes on, and Character A encounters the barista again, and learns more about the circumstances that landed him in jail (maybe he was falsely convicted, maybe he was battling psychosis, maybe the violent act was done to prevent a loved one- anything that makes her question her initial assumptions). He then confesses that he is struggling to provide for himself and his family because no one will hire him because of his criminal record. Character A comes to realize that her belief isn't completely true, and that the world isn't entirely fair. Though it takes a lot of inner work to do so, including coming to terms with her privilege, she eventually accepts this, and revises her beliefs. She decides that even though the world isn't fair, people have the responsibility to make it fair.

She decides to re-hire the barista she fired. After doing everything she can to make things right with him, she proposes an idea she wants his help with. Together, they transform her family business into a joint coffee shop and community rehabilitation center. In addition to selling coffee, they also launch a program to provide resources to recently incarcerated individuals looking to reenter society. They'll host weekly events on job interview coaching, alcoholics anonymous, motivational speeches, group therapy, opportunities to connect with open-minded employers, and more. Their promotion of this new program enables them to secure funding from local patrons and public grants, and customers are willing to pay for more expensive coffee with the knowledge that that money will be put to good use.

Additionally, if we want to go with the brother in jail backstory, we could have this ending be an opportunity for her to reconnect with him and maybe even repair their relationship as she gets to see him in a new light.

Main Takeaways

And there you have it!

You can use this process on any character- protagonist, antagonist, side character, etc. By grounding your character's motivations and development in their beliefs, you can easily introduce depth and internal conflict while keeping everything connected to the themes and plot driving your story.

Depending on your character's role or your story's plot, the belief can be wide reaching and complex (such as a philosophy or ideology), or specific and personal (such as having to do with their self-esteem). Either way, it should always be tied to their personal experiences or observations. This doesn't necessarily mean a tragic backstory. It could be, but I encourage you not to make this your default way of creating character depth. A mundane but grounded and sincere motivation will always be more compelling than cheap, dark shock factor.

Generally, protagonists with happy endings and villains with successful redemption arcs are capable of moving past their beliefs, while tragic heroes and antagonists aren't, and this failure is usually the source of their downfall. Keep in mind that even if characters do move past their old beliefs, it will always be a difficult thing to do. It will require them to confront their own mistakes, biases, and emotional wounds, and require both internal and external work in order to fix whatever their old beliefs have damaged.

Hopefully this guide will help you approach your characters from a different perspective. Feel free to share any insights.

Happy writing y'all!

[wishchip106]

i’m still just thinking about how in apocalypse the thing that stops magneto from destroying the world is an edit of charles just seeing the good in him.

🤨

not even his DEAD wife and daughter?

or maybe mutants from the brotherhood?

nope. charles

[carrotsofthepirabbean]

bttf au where they send Jennifer (criminally underused) to retrieve the sports almanac to avoid the tremendous problem of Marty accidentally meeting himself, which instead causes some tremendous other problems

[byoldervine]

The Trick To Writing Filler

(TL;DR at the bottom)

Filler is when you spend a chapter padding the length of your story between plot-related events. Filler chapters have little to no impact on the overarching plot and can be self-contained, and thus in TV shows filler episodes are often reran the most as people unfamiliar with the show can casually watch without being confused without the knowledge of prior plot beats

So with the chapter being largely self-contained and acting outside of the plot, what do you use to make the filler chapter engaging? I’m going to use filler episodes from Avatar: The Last Airbender to provide examples

1. Worldbuilding. Zuko Alone depicts Zuko’s travels taking him through an Earth Kingdom village and becoming acquainted to the family that allows him to stay with them, especially their young son. He learns about what the Fire Nation’s impact on this village has been; destroyed houses, families torn apart, constant robbery and other abuses of power and injustices. And even after Zuko defends the villagers and his new friend, he’s venomously cast out from the village by even the little boy because he outed himself as a firebender. This episode explored the impact of the war on the people of the Earth Kingdom, the victims of war that have no involvement in it and no way of defending themselves from it

2. Character exploration. In The Beach, we learn more about Mai, Ty Lee, Azula and Zuko and how their own traumas and personal upbringings have impacted their personalities. For Zuko this is part of a turning point for him, but for the girls it’s more to understand why they are the people we’ve gotten to know over the seasons, especially Ty Lee and Mai. The episode also serves to showcase how Azula and Zuko are so out of place being just normal teenagers; Azula has no idea how to talk to her peers and no identity outside being Princess Azula of the Fire Nation, while Zuko’s hotheadedness and jealousy issues lead him to lash out and be far too confrontational and controlling for his own good. This episode isn’t really used to develop these characters, or at least not the girls, but instead explains and showcases their behaviours and the reasons behind them

3. Character development. Going back to The Beach, Zuko does indeed receive development rather than just character exploration like the girls do; he comes to understand that he’s not just angry at the world or angry in general, but angry with himself. This is a notable turning point for Zuko’s redemption arc, because he now understands fully that he truly regrets betraying Iroh and sacrificing his new start in life in favour of returning to the Fire Nation. He might not yet be fully decided on turning his back on Ozai, but without this moment I don’t know if he’d have gotten there, or at least not as quickly as he did

4. Relationship development. Sokka’s Master has a C plot of Aang, Katara and Toph all being rather bored and lost without Sokka’s presence. The A plot exploring Sokka’s feelings of inadequacy and uselessness in comparison to such powerful and formidable bending masters being contrasted with the Gaang unable to function without him already speaks volumes about their dynamics, but looking deeper into the C plot also shows how much value Sokka really does bring to the team; structure, planning, humour, a quick wit, strategic moves. The Gaang always supported Sokka and never seemed to view him as expendable outside of the occasional teasing, but having it acknowledged so clearly and plainly that they can feel a little aimless and flat without Sokka and being so delighted when he returns really shows us the kind of value Sokka brings to this team and brings us and the characters to further appreciate it

5. Downtime. The Ember Island Players depicts the characters taking a break to watch a comedic play based on their wacky adventures, only to be largely underwhelmed and displeased by how they’re portrayed. There are no stakes to this episode and barely any plot, just the Gaang taking a breather as they react to a bad play. This chance to relax and watch something inconsequential is just as important to the viewers as we’ve got the show’s finale in the next four episodes, which will be very plot-driven and intense. The Ember Island Players also has the additional viewer bonus of recapping the events of the show right before it all ends, giving the viewers time to reflect on the journey they’ve gone on with these characters. In order for the stakes to feel high and the tension to rise, there has to be downtime where there are low stakes and low tension; if things are intense all the time, the moments that are supposed to feel super intense will just feel average in comparison. Resetting that intensity right before such a big event while still acknowledging the looming threat coming soon will feel like the calm before the storm and allow your audience to soak it all up like the characters are

Wow, did I just go through all that without talking about Tales of Ba Sing Se? I’ll save that for another post if people are interested in more

TL;DR - filler provides a moment to breathe, reset the intensity levels the audience are experiencing and take a chance to step away from the external conflict (the overarching plot) in favour of worldbuilding and the characters within your setting. Small moments can amount to something big, and can help make large scale decisions or plot twists feel more build-up and in-character

[a-scary-lack-of-common-sense]

You know what, fuck you, I'm not listening to your bullshit anymore *takes out my hearing aids*