#yeahh but long story short i wrote a book

[hanniballecter-pleaseeattherich]

Writer’s Journal

Call it how you like. Writer’s Journal, Story Notebook, I don’t care. But I love it. 

A PS at the beginning: I spent two valuable hours of my life, which I could have spent editing and actually working, writing this post and inserting every fucking picture indivudially, so PLEASE appreciate this post!!???

So, I’m no author, obviously, but after finishing a fucking long first fucking draft (I have a lot of pent up emotion about this) I think it’s safe to say that I am at least kind of a writer. An aspiring writer. Or so. At least I write. 

When I started my first draft I did a LOT of research on how to write a book, a novel, a fully developed, finished story. I looked up tips and tricks, I have still no idea what most of them were about, but I found the concept of a writer’s journal. Now, this is mostly used as an overall thing for wirters, for prompts, spontaneous short stories, daily writing practice, etc. I read a few things about PROJECT-SPECIFIC WRITING JOURNALS and I set up my own. 

The only reason I’m sharing this here is because there are so, so many writing people on this platform and, different than with bullet journals, I personally didn’t find a lot of material and inspiration for my story notebook - and I would have needed that. So I want to share this, just in case someone else is as desperate as I was and needs some inspiration. I’m not saying it is perfect or anything, but what I managed to do is develop a concept that works for me. 

What I did was: I bought a notebook. (I already had about a thousand (32, now it’s 40), but that’s another story.) I bought this one:

It’s from Clairefontaine, it has environmental paper that’s super soft, dots (because I personally like dotted pages for stuff like this), 184 numbered pages (the last 16 of which you can rip out), an index and thos pocket-thingies in the front and the back. Oh, and a  bookmark-band and this rubberband-thing to close it (yeahh, my vocabulary is leaving me). 

Sooo. What I did was, I tried to figure out, what I would need before and while wiriting my story. I set up pages, I fill out the index, adding the stuff as I go along. It’s not very pretty, but it’s practical and it helped me a lot with keeping my head over water in that mess that was writing the first draft.

On the very first page I wrote a short summary of everything that’s happening in the story. Then I set up the important basis-stuff. I glued a map on page two, did a timeline-parallel on pages three and four and started a (very rough) plot outline on 5 and 6. 

I have a Character Masterlist (honestly, I didn’t use that as consistently as I should have, but now, reading through draft 1 for the first time, I can still complete it), an overview over the gender/sex - distribution in different importance-categories (I don’t want to be another writer who writes a story with female main characters and 90 percent other male characters, no way), and a Settings Masterlist. 

I have pages with summaries for the main and (important) side characters. 

I have a whole bunch of pages dedicated to the world, the beginning and background of it, the background story that led up to the events of my story and like 6 maps to have a good overview over geography and cultural stuff (languages, religions, peoples, politics, …). Also, I write down things like the magic-rules in this part of my notebook. 

Then, solo-pages for my main characters. Just random stuff I think of while writing that I don’t want to forget or pictures that resemble them or sketches I made of them. 

A whole double page with just names and exisiting stories and pictures and art that I find inspiring. 

Pages for Name-, Title- and Plot-Ideas, Dialogue that I heard in real life that I find interesting, Q&A -pages (for research stuff), a word count tracker (I remember the time I thought I wouldn’t make it to 80 000 words - HA). 

Monthly To-Do lists, weapons overview, random notes, ..

And now that I’m starting to edit it the first time (holy fuck I’m so scared somebody help me I can’t do this), a page on what to keep in mind while rewriting, the steps of starting editing (that I copied from a post here that I can’t remember right now), how to name places and characters efficiently (because most of the place-names are just placeholders right now)…

So, well. I hope this was able to give at least one of you desperate mutuals out there in the void some inspiration or the idea on how you can finally finish your FUCKING FIRST DRAFT. 

Love you guys and peace out. (Sorry, I’m jazzed, I’ve never written this long of a post.)

[neige-leblanche]

🖊 uwu

OH THIS IS THE GUSH ABOUT MY OCS MEME

SO

my next oc (co-protag of the next book me n my friends are writing) is named Mariana Ulurain, mari for short, she’s a princess of the alternate dimension kingdom Ulurith! Her parents are Thessalia (the last princess of Ulurith) and Sonia (an earthling girl who was the first protag i wrote), and she has one little sister named Jing-Na who’s adopted and also like her lil partner in crime bc theyre both Absolute Madmen

I haven’t actually written Mari yet or made a character sheet but I have a lot of ideas as to how I want to write her, most of which come from my own childhood lol she’s kind of a self insert. her favorite music artist is kesha and up to a very recent point in her life, she doesn’t think any music is good unless it either is kesha or sounds very similar to kesha. this would be normal and kind of funny usually, but the fact is that she lives in an alternate dimension (planet called Vauria that’s basically just earth but under an alternate name bc alternate dimension yeahh u get it) and her universe does not have kesha, what’s more most of her media technology is kind of old and crappy bc her family never really sees the need to get new versions of earth technology when theres not even wifi and shit in ulurith, so long story short mari listens exclusively to kesha vinyls on a shitty old record player even though her story takes place in like 2027 or some shit.

also!!! she loves mulan! similarly, she only ever watches mulan on her tv, think like when the second grade teacher wheeled that bigass vhs cart in and sat u all down to watch magic school bus, that’s the kinda tv the ulurain family has. when she’s growing up she thinks the tv is magic because magic actually exists in her dimension and she doesn’t understand technology, like one of her moms will push some buttons, and poof theres mulan on the television, when really it’s just a vhs player and tv. in a way, she doesn’t want to know about technology and shit bc shes a complete Dumbass and lowkey proud of it, like it’s her Aesthetic to not know shit about fuck even though eventually i guess she’s gotta become queen and like, rule a whole kingdom and shit ANYWAY it’s because of mulan that mari realizes she’s nonbinary (im thinkin shes either a demigirl or genderfluid still gotta solidify that)

mari’s the kind of girl who will do loads of dumb shit just to have fun and annoy people in the process, like she calls bathrooms “pee lounges” and uses a bunch of 80s slang that she learned from her earth mother that she doesn’t understand, doesn’t want to understand, and often completely misuses. let’s seee looking at my mari notes she loves cheese puffs and picking things up with her toes, says that the palace is the most important building in the kingdom just bc she lives there, she thinks being called an angel is a bad thing bc when she was little her mom told her that rain was just angels peeing and she doesn’t want to be compared with someone who pees on people, she can and will use the words “milk pores” in canon (NOT n/i/p/p/l/e/s its a kids book), she calls things “straightup satanic” as a really heartfelt compliment even though she has no idea what that means