writerightmojo

[writerightmojo]

Here’s a list of weird/strange articles on wikipedia in no particular order for you to read and just add more useless knowledge in your puny human brain. General murder/death trigger warning for most.

Bloody Mary || Kennedy curse || Taman Shud Case || La Voisin || Greyfriars Bobby || Pripyat || Albert Fish || Mary Toft || The Cure for Insomnia || Roanoke Colony || John Murray Spear || Arecibo message || Nuckelavee || Phaistos Disc || Tanganyika laughter epidemic || Mad Gasser of Mattoon || Murder of Junko Furuta || Peoples Temple || Ed Gein || Stargate Project || Jackalope || Numbers station || UVB-76 || Bélmez Faces || Donner Party || Adam || Mariana UFO incident || Valentich disappearance || Cleveland Torso Murderer || Trepanning || Dyatlov Pass incident || Grey goo || Overtoun House || The Garden of Earthly Delights || Wilhelm Reich || Starchild skull || Original Night Stalker || Owlman || Ararat anomaly || British big cats || Jack the Ripper || Clapham Wood Mystery || Pope Lick Monster || Shadow person || Out-of-place artifact || Black Dahlia || Jersey Devil || Crawfordsville monster || Koro || Philadelphia Experiment || Glasgow smile || Roswell UFO incident || David Parker Ray || D. B. Cooper || Total Information Awareness || Goatman || Grey alien || Joachim Kroll || Peter Kürten || Gilles de Rais || Alien abduction || Joseph Vacher || Mothman || Polywater || Catacombe dei Cappuccini || Villisca Axe Murders || Grace Sherwood || Loveland frog || The Hermitage || Jatinga || Sankebetsu brown bear incident || Mongolian death worm || Devil’s Footprints || The Sick Child || H. H. Holmes || Dysaesthesia aethiopica || Bloody Benders || Lamia || Black Paintings || The Monster with 21 Faces || Shirime || Lina Medina || Exploding head syndrome || Quantum suicide and immortality || Mokele-mbembe || Spontaneous human combustion || Dulce Base || Chandre Oram || Oscar || Men in Black || Vladimir Demikhov || The Great Red Dragon Paintings || Bloop || Retroactive continuity || Elizabeth Báthory || Delphine LaLaurie || Silverpilen || Polybius || Guided rat || Robert J. White || Chelyabinsk meteor || Armin Meiwes || Big Crunch || Belchen Tunnel || Moberly–Jourdain incident || Boy Scout Lane || Princes in the Tower || Rosenheim Poltergeist || Peter Stumpp || Bermuda Triangle || Bachelor’s Grove Cemetery || Hill of Crosses || Self-immolation || Lycaon || Burke and Hare murders || Pykrete || Kate Morgan || List of unusual deaths || Sawney Bean || Rogue elephant of Aberdare Forest || Yoshio Kodaira || Incorruptibility || Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus || Toynbee tiles || Rat king || Sailing stones || Thalidomide || Jersey Shore shark attacks of 1916 || Tunguska event || Head transplant || List of cryptids || Borley Rectory || Sedlec Ossuary || Alien hand syndrome || Capgras delusion || Mellified man || Atuk || Monster of Glamis || Spring-heeled Jack || Allagash Abductions || Aokigahara || Raymond Robinson (Green Man) || Premature burial || Brain transplant || Nightmarchers || Decompression illness || Midgetville || Zombie || Mercy Brown vampire incident || Necromancy || Lamkin || Harry K. Daghlian, Jr. || Icelandic Phallological Museum || Neisseria meningitidis || Unit 731 || Bunny Man || Bubbly Creek || Malleus Maleficarum || Moll Dyer || Original Spanish Kitchen || Charles Bonnet syndrome || Voynich manuscript || Black Annis || True name || Dorothy Talbye trial || Black dog || Wandering Jew || Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway || Yara-ma-yha-who || Rod Ferrell || The Juniper Tree

[writerightmojo]

WIKIPEDIA MONSTER COMPILATION PAGES FOR PEOPLE

japanese creatures

greek creatures

creatures organised by type

creatures listed by letter

humanoid creatures

filipino creatures

chinese creatures

cryptids

‘fearsome critters’

angels

beings referred to as fairies

creatures that pretend to be human

a page on therianthropic creatures

shapeshifters

hybrid creatures

extraterrestrial creatures

deities

a page of mythology page links

a section of folklore page links

flying creatures

theological demons

fictional species lists

mythology related lists

legendary creature related lists

[writerightmojo]

11 Different kinds Of Ghosts We Find In Bengali Culture

Bengali culture, especially Bengali literature is extremely indebted to ghosts. Ghosts stories are there at the heart of most of the folk tales from almost all regions of Bengal, borders notwithstanding.

And unlike ghosts from most other cultures, Bengali ghosts are often friendly and live among humans as neighbours. They often help people [or not], and live a pretty “normal” life… afterlife I mean. So without further ado, let me introduce you with some of the most famous ghosts you may or may not come across while navigating through Bengal.

Source

[writerightmojo]

How do the people of your setting believe the world was created?

[writerightmojo]

If someone from the real world was magically transported into your setting what are the first things they’d notice?

[writerightmojo]

How it feels to be stabbed

Getting stabbed is an experience that no one in their right mind would want to have. But, what if you do get stabbed? What would that feel like?

It usually feels like you’re being punched.

The description of being punched really hard comes up a lot when people describe the experience. One woman said she didn’t even realize she was being stabbed, she just thought her attacker was punching her as hard as he could. Many people don’t feel the actual puncturing, just the force of the knife hitting them.

You might feel nothing at all.

This wasn’t as common as the feeling of being hit, but some people said they literally felt nothing. One person said they felt nothing, but their brain started racing and their fight or flight kicked in. Another didn’t realize someone stabbed them until they saw that they were bleeding profusely.

Occasionally, it feels like you got shocked.

A few stab wound survivors described it as a very quick, but powerful, electric shock. One person described it as static electricity, while another said it was like lightening hitting them. The pain of the initial shock goes away as quickly as it occurred.

Eventually, over time,  it’s probably going to hurt.

Of course the location of the stab wound effects how much it would hurt. Getting stabbed in the arm isn’t going to hurt as badly as a stab that punctured a lung. But after a while, you will most likely feel some pain. If the person wiggles the knife while it’s still in you, the pain may be more intense.

[writerightmojo]

Resources For Writing Dystopian/Apocalypse Stories

Ko-Fi || Masterlist || Work In Progress || Request

Dystopian Resources

Characteristics Of A Dystopia

7 Tips To Writing Dystopian Fiction

380 Best Dystopian Novels Of All Time

How To Build A Dystopian World

Dystopian Cliches To Avoid

Ultimate Guide To Writing Dystopian Literature

Realistic Political Strife

Political Corruption

Dystopian or Not Dystopian? 

The 10 Most Important Dystopian Books and Films of All Time

How To Create A Dystopia

The future of energy

Waste management in SF

Enclosed ecosystems and life support

Near-future scenarios for us & our planet

Dystopian Prompt Generator

Totalitarianism

Propaganda

Apocalypse Resources

Writing Apocalyptic Stories

A Study In Physical Injuries

GunHoo

Snipercountry.com

Tips for writing blood loss

The Writer’s Forensics Blog

Poisonous Herbs and Plants

Apocalypse World

Cliches To Avoid

Mass Depopulation Conspiracy Theory

How Long Would Infrastructure Last?

What Does Nuclear Radiation Do To Human Bodies?

How Does Nuclear Radiation Do Its Damage?

What Would Happen If Humans Just Disappeared?

Preindustrial Society

Nuclear radiation for writers

Climate change and cli-fi

Mutation myths in fiction

Plagues in science fiction and fantasy

Rogue viruses in science fiction

Apocalypse Generator

World Building

A Politics Of Worldbuilding

Government Worldbuilding

The Five foundations of Worldbuilding

Dystopian World Building Worksheet

Apocalypse Hypotheticals

Climatology

Planetary Geography

Water Geography

Rational Wiki

BioMedNet

Phys

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[writerightmojo]

Writing Gangs

We got a few questions about gangs versus organized crime, and what the difference is. So, I figured we’d do a follow up post about gangs. (The Wiki article about gangs rolls organized crime in with them which is… not accurate, they’re organized, yes, but different beasts.)

The main difference between gangs and organized crime is time. If the street gang survives, it grows up to become organized crime. They’re the Lost Boys in the interim stages before they grow up to become the Pirates. The gang is the proto phase of organized crime, the beginnings of the group before it’s become entrenched. Most Mafia/Mobs do find their original roots in street gangs before they grew up into professional enterprises. The main difference between the Mob and the Gang is the Mob has had time grow, develop, and learn from previous experiences.

The way to think about “organized crime” like the Triad, the American Mafias, the Yakuza, and others like is that they’re a criminal enterprise. They’re a business, and this is where Russian organized crime meets up with the Mafias. The heads of these organizations are like CEOs, and they function almost exactly like any other corporation except their working outside the law in human trafficking, drugs, etc. This includes stealing fashion designs and using sweatshop labor to sell cheap knock offs as an industry, which is something the Triad does. “Organized crime” is money moving to the tune of billions as international business versus the most enterprising of the street gangs which may own, maybe, a city.

Easy difference, the Black Mafia family sells drugs. The Cartels produce drugs, and sell them, and they sometimes contract out to street/motorcycle gangs. This is the pharmaceutical company versus your local pharmacy versus a single location Mom & Pop shop. The street gang is Mom & Pop. The older well-established gangs that’ve been around for forty to fifty years are the Rite-Aids. The Triad are Bayer. Given time, and assuming they survive to adulthood, the gang can hit the big time and own some place like Las Vegas before moving on to bigger and better. That takes time though, and they’ve got to grow up first. There are quite a few gangs moving toward, if they haven’t already become, organized criminal enterprises. The Bloods and the Crips are close, the Black Mafia, and MS13 is aggressively pursuing its transition into criminal enterprise. It might be tempting to lean toward the cartels or mafias for the sense of legitimacy they bring to the narrative, not to mention the romantic relationship some groups have with fiction.

The Gang is rougher, but much more suited to any narrative involving teens and about growing up. Let’s face it, the gang is the angry teenage phase of organized crime. They’re the dark side of found families, they’re messier, and they will stress characters with themes of brotherhood/sisterhood, respect, loyalty, co-dependency, and the meaning of family in ways you won’t get from an organized businesses because they weed that shit out. They don’t have time for your angst. The Gang, though? They thrive on emotional narratives about brutality, trauma, broken bonds, and shattered friendships. They’re about getting in over your head from the word go; before you ever learned how to swim and long before you’re ever given the chance.

The Lost Boys

Gangs form in marginalized communities that are not protected by the bureaucracy of the ruling government. Their purpose, their beginning purpose, is to protect. Their originating goal is to provide security and safety to their communities, to protect them from outsiders, and they recruit on that honorable ideal. Any community which is treated as “Other” runs the risk of creating not one gang but multiples. The behavior and culture of the gang is dependent on the culture of its participants, before the gang develops a culture of its own, their ideals, their beliefs, their views come fractured through the eyes of disenfranchised youth. They combine with a teenager’s volatile emotions and impulsivity.

The main draw of the gangs is sense of family they offer, the brotherhood. They primarily exert influence on young, disaffected, lonely neglected youth with absentee parents. In plain terms, they hunt up Latch Keys. These can be impoverished children from single-parent households whose older family members work so hard to put food on the table they can’t be there, the ones from white-collar households in a similar boat, those whose parents genuinely don’t care, those from abusive homes, and came out of a similar life. The key theme is the offer of stability, purpose, guidance, and open to influence by the gang. The gang offers the child or teen the love, attention, and guidance they crave, but at a price.

You know all those tell-tale warnings you got about peer-pressure? This is peer-pressure reworked into targeted social engineering.

A character’s initiation into a gang is an act of violence. Sometimes, it’s a beating. Sometimes, it’s a murder. Sometimes, the initiated murderer is thirteen years old. And, yes, the street gang is where you’ll find that sixteen year old hitman who was recruited out of elementary school and started running drugs at nine or ten years old. They’re not “professional” in the conventional sense, but they go out to perform hits and the resulting collateral damage is often very messy.

There’s more emotional depth here than “just business”. Leaving the gang is a betrayal of the brotherhood, betrayal of the family. Killing can be seen as retribution, to claim turf, get respect, exert authority, or protect from invaders.

A major theme for gang characters is exerting their identity through violence, establishing themselves as adults, and lashing out at cultures/societies/institutions that they feel have rejected/failed them.

They’ve turned to the only figures in their lives they feel understand them, the older members of their gang. The relationship between gang members is elder sibling and younger sibling rather than the patron-client, mentor/student, parent/child relationships you’d find in gangs with organized crime.

If you want to learn more about child recruitment and culture in gangs, I highly recommend reading Monster: The Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member by Sanyika Shakur.

The Lord of the Flies

The sort of “send a message” brutality you get out gangs, the behavior, the emotion, and the thematic resonance they have with coming of age stories is, I think, what most of our followers are really asking for whenever they ask about the Mob. It’s worth exploring the romantic aspects of the gang, what they offer, and why they so easily lure young people in.

This is a writing advice blog. I’m going to take this last part to talk about how you can use gangs in your narratives. First…

To write crime, you must understand crime.

Understanding crime requires understanding the culture which spawns the crimes, the society, and the laws of the world your character exists in. You can’t break a rule if you don’t understand the rules. Right? If your reader doesn’t understand the rules of your setting, they won’t understand the impact of your character breaking with them.

Spend as much time on your lawfuls as your chaotics, if not more.

To write the gang, you must understand the necessity and purpose of the gang.

You need to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes. The pressures of their world, the loneliness of it, and the desire to have someone, anyone, who understands them. The intoxicating effect of fear, how inflicting fear makes you feel powerful, and the need to exert control in an overwhelming world where your environment is wildly spinning out of your grasp.

If you want to write a character who exists in the criminal underworld, and never spent any time looking at the criminals in question then you will come up short. I understand that it’s not a comfortable subject to research.

Romanticization station…

“The Gang” as a narrative trope lacks the prestige and legitimacy brought by more established organizations such as “The Mafia”. With youth, however, comes flexibility. Rogues living outside the system, renegades struggling to make it in a world overwhelmingly weighted against them, Band of Brothers, Rebel Without A Cause, Protect the Family, Paint the Town Red, and all your James Dean tropes can be applied to and claimed by gang members.

For your narrative, it’s always worth looking at the romanticized aspects of gang life because those tropes are often embraced and used as justifications by the gang members themselves. They’re also good recruiting tools.

With youth comes opportunity…

Where the greater adult world won’t take an underage character seriously, the gang will. Where a group like the American Mafia will turn up their nose at a sixteen year old hitman because they’ve already got a kid who acted as a courier, parked their cars, and went into the military to get the skills they needed, the gang will give the sixteen year old the chance to prove themselves and couch the hit as an opportunity for advancement.

They also see murder as a means of binding the gang member to the gang, even incarceration is a means of binding them tighter into the family. They care a little less about the character getting pinched. They might expect it. After all, everyone mucks things up that first time and most gang members have felt the weight of the juvenile justice system. Better to make the big mistakes while you’re still young so you can do better next time. Well, you can do better if you survive on the inside.

I got harder, I got smarter in the nick of time…

Take a hard look at your character, their motivations, their experiences, and how those resulted in the actions they’ve taken. They’re in a situation rife with manipulation and betrayal, where they’ll be pressured to take actions they may not feel comfortable with. Caught in an inevitable cycle of escalation where the violence they commit in the name of their brotherhood/sisterhood becomes more and more brutal, where they need to do more and more to prove themselves, are motivated to do so by advancing up the chain of command. Breaking this cycle is difficult.

In conclusion:

I’ve gone on long enough, and this post got longer than I intended. Gangs are a subject you can write whole books on and not even scratch the surface of. We’re probably not done with this subject, but if you want a teen criminal then the likelihood is that they’re in or have been involved in or, at least, aware of their local gangs to varying degrees. Your narrative should always have more than one, some run by kids, some run by older teens, some run by adults, and so on. You want to research the history of gangs, the current famous gangs that exist, and so on. The answers won’t always be easy or easily digestible. They’re not quick.

So, food for thought.

-Michi

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Writing Gangs was originally published on How to Fight Write.

[writerightmojo]

A summary of how people die (and don't) in swordfights

This is a really good article about how quickly people actually die from cuts and punctures inflicted by swords and knives.  However, it’s really really long and I figured that since I was summarizing for my own benefit I’d share it for anyone else who is writing fiction that involves hacking and slashing your villain(s) to death.  If you want the nitty gritty of the hows and whys of this, you can find it at the original source.

…even in the case of mortal wounds, pain may not reach levels of magnitude sufficient to incapacitate a determined swordsman.

Causes of death from stabs and cuts:

massive bleeding (exsanguination) - most common

air in the bloodstream (air embolism)

suffocation (asphyxia)

air in the chest cavity (pneumothorax)

infection

Stabbing vs cutting:

Stabbing someone actually takes very little force if you don’t hit bone or hard cartilage.

The most important factor in the ease of stabbing is the velocity of the blade at impact with the skin, followed by the sharpness of the blade.

Stabbing wounds tend to close after the weapon is withdrawn.

Stabbing wounds to muscles are not typically very damaging.  Damage increases with the width of the blade.

Cutting wounds are typically deepest at the site of initial impact and get shallower as force is transferred from the initial swing to pushing and pressing.

Cutting wounds have a huge number of factors that dictate how deep they are and how easily they damage someone: skill, radial velocity, mass of the blade, and the size of the initial impact.

Cutting wounds along the grain of musculature are not typically very damaging but cutting wounds across the grain can incapacitate.

Arteries vs veins:

Severed veins have almost zero blood pressure and sometimes even negative pressure.  They do not spurt but major veins can suck air in causing an air embolism.

Cutting or puncturing a vein is usually not fatal.

Severed arteries have high blood pressure.  The larger arteries do spurt and can often cause death due to exsanguination.

Body parts as targets:

Severing a jugular vein in the neck causes an air embolism and will make the victim collapse after one or two gasps for air.

Severing a carotid artery in the neck cuts off the blood supply to the brain but the victim may be conscious for up to thirty seconds.

Stabbing or cutting the neck also causes the victim to aspirate blood that causes asphyxiation and death.

Severing a major abdominal artery or vein would cause immediate collapse, but this takes a fairly heavy blade and a significant amount of effort because they are situated near the spine.

Abdominal wounds that only impact the organs can cause death but they do not immediately incapacitate.

Severing an artery in the interior of the upper arm causes exsanguination and death but does not immediately incapacitate.

Severing an artery in the palm side of the forearm causes exsanguination and death but does not immediately incapacitate.

Severing the femoral artery at a point just above and behind the knee is the best location.  Higher up the leg it is too well protected to easily hit.  This disables and will eventually kill the victim but does not immediately incapacitate.

Cutting across the muscles of the forearm can immediately end the opponent’s ability to hold their weapon.

Cutting across the palm side of the wrist causes immediate loss of ability to hold a weapon.

Stab wounds to the arm do not significantly impact the ability to wield a weapon or use it.

Cuts and stab wounds to the front and back of the legs generally do not do enough muscle damage to cause total loss of use of that leg.

Bone anywhere in the body can bend or otherwise disfigure a blade.

The brain can be stabbed fairly easily through the eyes, the temples, and the sinuses.  

Stabs to the brain are more often not incapacitating.

The lungs as targets:

Slicing into the lung stops that lung from functioning, but the other lung continues to function normally.  This also requires either luck to get between the ribs or a great deal of force to penetrate the ribs.

Stabbing the lung stops that lung from functioning, but the other lung continues to function normally.  It is significantly easier to stab between ribs than to slice.

It is possible to stab the victim from the side and pass through both lungs with an adequate length blade.  It is very unlikely that this will happen with a slicing hit.

“Death caused solely by pneumothorax is generally a slow process, occurring as much as several hours after the wound is inflicted.”

Lung punctures also typically involve the lung filling with blood, but this is a slow process.

The heart as a target:

I’m just going to quote this paragraph outright with a few omissions and formatting changes for clarity because it’s chock-full of good info:

…[stabbing] wounds to the heart the location, depth of penetration, blade width, and the presence or absence of cutting edges are important factors influencing a wounded duelist’s ability to continue a combat.

Large cuts that transect the heart may be expected to result in swift incapacitation…

…stab wounds, similar to those that might be inflicted by a thrust with a sword with a narrow, pointed blade may leave a mortally wounded victim capable of surprisingly athletic endeavors. 

Essentially, the heart can temporarily seal itself well enough to keep pressure up for a little while if it’s a simple stab.  The arteries around the heart, while they are smaller and harder to hit, actually cause incapacitation much more quickly.

[writerightmojo]

THROUGH A RAPIST’S EYES” (PLS TAKE TIME TO READ THIS. It may save a life, It may save your life.)

An Article from Neena Susan Thomas

“Through a rapist’s eyes. A group of rapists and date rapists in prison were interview…ed on what they look for in a potential victim and here are some interesting facts:

1] The first thing men look for in a potential victim is hairstyle. They are most likely to go after a woman with a ponytail, bun! , braid, or other hairstyle that can easily be grabbed. They are also likely to go after a woman with long hair. Women with short hair are not common targets.

2] The second thing men look for is clothing. They will look for women who’s clothing is easy to remove quickly. Many of them carry scissors around to cut clothing.

3] They also look for women using their cell phone, searching through their purse or doing other activities while walking because they are off guard and can be easily overpowered.

4] The number one place women are abducted from / attacked at is grocery store parking lots.

5] Number two is office parking lots/garages.

6] Number three is public restrooms.

7] The thing about these men is that they are looking to grab a woman and quickly move her to a second location where they don’t have to worry about getting caught.

8] If you put up any kind of a fight at all, they get discouraged because it only takes a minute or two for them to realize that going after you isn’t worth it because it will be time-consuming.

9] These men said they would not pick on women who have umbrellas,or other similar objects that can be used from a distance, in their hands.

10] Keys are not a deterrent because you have to get really close to the attacker to use them as a weapon. So, the idea is to convince these guys you’re not worth it.

POINTS THAT WE SHOULD REMEMBER:

1] If someone is following behind you on a street or in a garage or with you in an elevator or stairwell, look them in the face and ask them a question, like what time is it, or make general small talk: can’t believe it is so cold out here, we’re in for a bad winter. Now that you’ve seen their faces and could identify them in a line- up, you lose appeal as a target.

2] If someone is coming toward you, hold out your hands in front of you and yell Stop or Stay back! Most of the rapists this man talked to said they’d leave a woman alone if she yelled or showed that she would not be afraid to fight back. Again, they are looking for an EASY target.

3] If you carry pepper spray (this instructor was a huge advocate of it and carries it with him wherever he goes,) yelling I HAVE PEPPER SPRAY and holding it out will be a deterrent.

4] If someone grabs you, you can’t beat them with strength but you can do it by outsmarting them. If you are grabbed around the waist from behind, pinch the attacker either under the arm between the elbow and armpit or in the upper inner thigh – HARD. One woman in a class this guy taught told him she used the underarm pinch on a guy who was trying to date rape her and was so upset she broke through the skin and tore out muscle strands the guy needed stitches. Try pinching yourself in those places as hard as you can stand it; it really hurts.

5] After the initial hit, always go for the groin. I know from a particularly unfortunate experience that if you slap a guy’s parts it is extremely painful. You might think that you’ll anger the guy and make him want to hurt you more, but the thing these rapists told our instructor is that they want a woman who will not cause him a lot of trouble. Start causing trouble, and he’s out of there.

6] When the guy puts his hands up to you, grab his first two fingers and bend them back as far as possible with as much pressure pushing down on them as possible. The instructor did it to me without using much pressure, and I ended up on my knees and both knuckles cracked audibly.

7] Of course the things we always hear still apply. Always be aware of your surroundings, take someone with you if you can and if you see any odd behavior, don’t dismiss it, go with your instincts. You may feel little silly at the time, but you’d feel much worse if the guy really was trouble.

FINALLY, PLEASE REMEMBER THESE AS WELL ….

1. Tip from Tae Kwon Do: The elbow is the strongest point on your body. If you are close enough to use it, do it.

2. Learned this from a tourist guide to New Orleans : if a robber asks for your wallet and/or purse, DO NOT HAND IT TO HIM. Toss it away from you…. chances are that he is more interested in your wallet and/or purse than you and he will go for the wallet/purse. RUN LIKE MAD IN THE OTHER DIRECTION!

3. If you are ever thrown into the trunk of a car: Kick out the back tail lights and stick your arm out the hole and start waving like crazy. The driver won’t see you but everybody else will. This has saved lives.

4. Women have a tendency to get into their cars after shopping,eating, working, etc., and just sit (doing their checkbook, or making a list, etc. DON’T DO THIS! The predator will be watching you, and this is the perfect opportunity for him to get in on the passenger side,put a gun to your head, and tell you where to go. AS SOON AS YOU CLOSE the DOORS , LEAVE.

5. A few notes about getting into your car in a parking lot, or parking garage:

a. Be aware: look around your car as someone may be hiding at the passenger side , peek into your car, inside the passenger side floor, and in the back seat. ( DO THIS TOO BEFORE RIDING A TAXI CAB) .

b. If you are parked next to a big van, enter your car from the passenger door. Most serial killers attack their victims by pulling them into their vans while the women are attempting to get into their cars.

c. Look at the car parked on the driver’s side of your vehicle, and the passenger side. If a male is sitting alone in the seat nearest your car, you may want to walk back into the mall, or work, and get a guard/policeman to walk you back out. IT IS ALWAYS BETTER TO BE SAFE THAN SORRY. (And better paranoid than dead.)

6. ALWAYS take the elevator instead of the stairs. (Stairwells are horrible places to be alone and the perfect crime spot).

7. If the predator has a gun and you are not under his control, ALWAYS RUN! The predator will only hit you (a running target) 4 in 100 times; And even then, it most likely WILL NOT be a vital organ. RUN!

8. As women, we are always trying to be sympathetic: STOP IT! It may get you raped, or killed. Ted Bundy, the serial killer, was a good-looking, well educated man, who ALWAYS played on the sympathies of unsuspecting women. He walked with a cane, or a limp, and often asked “for help” into his vehicle or with his vehicle, which is when he abducted his next victim.

Send this to any woman you know that may need to be reminded that the world we live in has a lot of crazies in it and it’s better safe than sorry.

If u have compassion reblog this post. ‘Helping hands are better than Praying Lips’ – give us your helping hand.

REBLOG THIS AND LET EVERY GIRL KNOW AT LEAST PEOPLE WILL KNOW WHATS GOING ON IN THIS WORLD. So please reblog this….Your one reblog can Help to spread this information.

THIS COULD ACTUALLY SAVE A LIFE.”

[writerightmojo]

10 Ways to End a Book: http://www.lifeofastoryteller.com/2017/06/19/10-ways-end-novel/

[writerightmojo]

The Straight Person’s Guide to Portraying Queer People

Courtesy of your friendly neighborhood queer author, for all the anons who have been sweet enough to ask!

Avoid:

1.  Any queer character that exists exclusively to support the development of a straight person.

(Gif source.)

Most commonly, this is exemplified with the Sassy Gay Best Friend.  The Sassy Gay Best Friend has no queer friends, inexplicably content to surround himself exclusively with heterosexual, cisgender women and listen to them vent about what pugnacious assholes their boyfriends are.

The Sassy Gay Best Friend exhausts me just by thinking about him.  The closest friends of every other queer person I know are composed predominantly of other queer people, myself included, and it’s with other queer people that we tend to best connect.  

Dealing with large groups of straight people tends to exhaust and upset me, and I cannot imagine voluntarily opting into half the amount of heterosexual melodrama as the Sassy Gay Best Friend.

2.   Needlessly killing off queer characters.

(Gif source.)

Especially to forward the development of straight people, which it usually is.  

The Bury Your Gays trope is thought to have originated with the strict censorship laws of the twentieth century, which dictated that queer characters and relationships could only be portrayed if they atoned for their sins and “turned straight” by the end of the story, or – drumroll please – died.  

It is not, as many authors believe, a realistic portrayal of what life has always been like for queer people, because there have been innumerable examples of us living and loving happily throughout history.

In other words, the only thing burying your gays accomplishes is contributing to an ugly cycle.  So if you have the option not to kill off queer characters, don’t.

3.  Exclusively subtextual queer relationships.

(Gif source.)

This phenomenon, commonly known as queerbaiting, originated with clever creators finding loopholes in the aforementioned censorship laws of the nineteenth and twentieth century, by weaving romantic and/or erotic relationships between same gender-characters in between the lines.  

One of my favorite examples of this phenomenon is 1950s film Some Like It Hot, a surprisingly tender and thoughtful examination of gender identity, femininity, and sexual orientation.  Concisely put, the two male leads are circumstantially compelled to disguise themselves as women and travel with an all-female band, during which one of the men captures the affection of a (male) millionaire, who asks for his hand in marriage.  He says yes, and the film ends with this exchange:

(Gif source.)

Okay, this isn’t exactly subtext, which is why the film was produced without the approval of the Motion Picture Production Code.  But you get the idea:  this is as blatant as queer identities could be in 1950s America.  

The key difference?  It is no longer the 1950s, and what was revolutionary for the time period is not revolutionary now.  Don’t repeat JK Rowling’s fallacy and expect to squeak by with subtextual or offscreen representation.  

Include:

1.  Happy, healthy queer relationships.

(Gif source.)

Far too often, queer rep in the media showcases dysfunctional relationships, usually short-term, sex-based, and/or with a reasonably severe power imbalance (looking at you, Call Me By Your Name.)  This is worrisome, because it conveys an unhealthy message to queer youth about what normality looks like, and perpetrates a pervasive stereotype that queer people are more likely to be deviant and unhealthy than their straight peers.

In reality, the inverse is true:  queer couples show statistically higher rates of happiness and contentment than straight couples do.

So allow your work to reflect this!  Portray loving, supportive, and affectionate queer couples who encourage one another’s success and quality of life.  Think Jamie and Amanita from Sense8, or Holt and Kevin from Brooklyn 99.

2.  Wholesome queer love.

(Gif source.)

A reported root of homophobia is the fact that straight people, ironically, can’t stop thinking about kinky gay sex.

I’m not kidding:  research shows that straight people are so thoroughly conditioned to associate gay people with stereotypes of promiscuity, sexually transmitted diseases, and paraphilia that they think of non-straight sexuality is inherently unclean.  This is always what makes the “lol i’m sinning” culture straight girls build around queer couples and ships so harmful.  

To countermand this, try to portray queer love as sweet, pure, and wholesome whenever possible.  Depict puppy love and crushes and adorable dates between same gender couples.  Expunge the idea that queer sexuality is inherently profane.

This doesn’t mean the couples can’t be interesting or complex, mind you – books such as Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe are excellent examples of tenderly portrayed first love, while painting intriguing portraits of complex feelings and characters.

3.  Casual queer representation.

(Gif source.)

If you’re a straight person who hasn’t interacted much with the queer community, I’m going to personally recommend that you stay away from stereotypes.  Promiscuous bisexuals, flamboyant gay men, butch lesbians, et cetera.  

These people exist and deserve to be depicted – I’ve even depicted two out of the aforementioned three examples in me my most recent novel �� but I’m inclined that it takes a member of the queer community to portray them with authenticity and respect.

So where do you start?  Casual representation, that’s where.

Give me trans men relaxing in their binders at the end of the day, casual mention of same-gender crushes or past partners, a same-gender partner that the hero is fighting to get home to.  Sometimes the best form of representation is to depict queer people as simply existing and living their lives.  

Disclaimer:  

These are all based off of my personal pet peeves and opinions as a queer woman, and you don’t have to follow any of them.  Though I firmly believe we need better representation from up-and-coming authors, I’m profusely anti-censorship, and I believe everyone deserves to write their story the way they want to.  

I hope this helps, and happy writing!  <3

[writerightmojo]

Limits of the Human Body by Soda Pop Avenue

Credit goes to SPA, but I wanted this here for a writer’s reference. This way we know exactly how far we can push our characters ;)

[writerightmojo]

You know what’s fun to write? Healthy relationships. 

I don’t mean in the sense that healthy relationships are important to portray in fiction–no, I mean, they’re actually enjoyable to scribble down. Think of these examples:

A and B kicking ass together 👍

A and B believing in and listening to each other 👍

A and B communicating their problems (doubles as good scene-setting to further explore the characters’ reactions to stress) 👍

Makeout sessions 👍

Quick kisses that makes one/both smile 👍

One swearing to protect the other and then doing it 👍

A and B both contributing to the other’s character development in sweet and positive ways 👍

One recognizing the other’s faults but not letting the knowledge overshadow why they love their partner 👍

One doing something nice for the other, even if it’s in the middle of a battle for the fate of the world 👍

A and B overcoming all the torture you throw at them but never losing their friendship and sense of peace when they’re together 👍

and more

There’s something to writing unhealthy relationships, in the sense of drama and conflict, but there’s no reason a healthy one can’t have drama and conflict while the characters still work to make their partner happy. There’s also something to not throwing unneeded drama and conflict at them, allowing them to interact with themselves and the story in positive ways. Honestly, it’s refreshing and puts a smile on your face (or, at least it puts one on mine). It shows everyone else what the characters prioritize: a healthy dynamic with the person they care about most. It doesn’t have to be boring.

(Also applies to non-monogamous and platonic relationships.)

[writerightmojo]

things people do in real world dialogue:

• laugh at their own jokes

• don’t finish/say complete sentences

• interrupt a line of thought with a sudden new one

• say ‘uh’ between words when unsure

• accidentally blend multiple words together, and may start the sentence over again

• repeat filler words such as ‘like’ ‘literally’ ‘really’ ‘anyways’ and ‘i think’

• begin and/or end sentences with phrases such as ‘eh’ and ‘you know’, and may make those phrases into question form to get another’s input

• repeat words/phrases when in an excited state

• words fizzle out upon realizing no one is listening

• repeat themselves when others don’t understand what they’re saying, as well as to get their point across

• reply nonverbally such as hand gestures, facial expressions, random noises, movement, and even silence

[writerightmojo]

On making one’s own magical tools

I read recently an impassioned essay by the Skeptical Occultist titled What a wizard must know. Please go read it. It argues passionately for constant learning, and for the acquisition of deep and comprehensive knowledge about everything, as an essential pursuit for any serious practitioner of magic.

The starting point of that essay was the idea, common in older magical writings, that “the practicing wizard had to make most, if not all, of the tools and implements in their practice.” But it seems to me that nowhere in that essay was the question actually answered of why this is so.

Of course, knowing everything that can be known about the phenomena one wants to influence, and the properties and inner workings of one’s equipment, means that the magician knows exactly what she needs in order to accomplish a particular task. Such knowledge is important for the effectiveness of any technical endeavour, including magic.

So naturally, it is important to know how one’s magical tools are made, and why they are made that particular way, down to the smallest detail; but knowing and making are two different things, and I don’t feel that the argument was ever made as to why the magician must actually craft her own tools with her own hands, as much from scratch as possible. So I will try to make that argument, albeit with certain practical limitations.

Based on my own experiences as a Wiccan (priestess and witch), I see three reasons why creating one’s own ritual tools is valuable.

1) The ability to create exactly what you need, as opposed to settling for what happens to be available. Knowing exactly what you need is the reason you have to have the knowledge – like a doctor knowing what treatment to prescribe. But a doctor doesn’t have to compound all her own drugs: we have drug companies for that.

Likewise, in today’s world, we have magical specialists: people who can make things that otherwise would not get made. These people serve others as a specialist or professional. Passionate about herbs? Become an herbalist! Not so passionate about herbs? Find yourself an herbalist that you trust, and go to her for help! Similarly, in today’s world one can often get the tools one needs made to spec. So why is it still important that the magician make her own tools herself?

2) Focus, will, and intent. This is the heart of magic, and it goes beyond the physical tools. By making a tool from scratch, or modifying a pre-made object to personalize it, the process of creation provides a conduit for the magician’s focus, will, and intent. Knowledge is key here because it informs the design – each design choice is made deliberately and with the ultimate purpose of the tool in mind – but it is the act of making or modifying in which the focus, will, and intent are actually applied. This is how a mundane object becomes a magical object.

“Making” now becomes a matter of degree: one can anoint a candle with scented oil and carve a sigil into it; or one can grow cotton and keep bees, spin and braid one’s own wick, harvest beeswax, melt it, and hand-dip one’s own candle, with the particular working in mind all the way from day one.

This latter approach can be rather impractical if a magical need arises on short notice; in that case, making one’s own generic magical candles can still be more powerful than buying them in the shop, but less powerful than creating them from the first step with a particular magical purpose in mind.

3) The reaction of spirits to implements made by the magician herself. This surprised me when I noticed it about half a year ago, and I am still trying to understand the phenomenon. It seems that some spirits (my experience is with elementals) are fond of, and fascinated by, things that I have made myself. I think there’s a connection here to the concept of offerings – it’s not the physical object that matters so much, but rather the personal time and energy that the magician has put into the object that actually constitutes the offering.

And here’s a fourth, for those working in groups.

4) Collectively creating the coven’s magical tools strengthens the group mind and creates a unique identity for the coven itself, composed of the individual identities of the group members. Whenever those tools are used, the essence of the maker(s) can be consciously pulled into the working. This is the situation in which I think making one’s (group’s) own magical tools becomes most valuable.

The bottom line? Try it. Try making a tool, or modifying a tool. Use it and see what effect it has on your magic. Then decide for yourself what you need to do to be effective in your own practice.

[writerightmojo]

I feel like I should make a post about this because it’s not something that’s very well-known, and that Americans in particular may need to know about given the uncertain state of our healthcare system at the moment. I’ve wanted to write this out for a while, It’s kind of a long post, so sorry about that!

If you have an emergency and have to go to the hospital, you’ll owe the hospital a lot of money. (I got into a car wreck and broke my ankle and my arm. My hospital bill was around $20,000)

You’ll also owe the ambulance provider, if you need one. (My ambulance bill was about $800)

You may get separate bills from the anesthesiologist or surgeon. (My anesthesiologist bill was $1,700)

You may need follow-up appointments. (My orthopedic surgeon billed me for the appointments and his surgery together and it was about $1,000)

You’ve also got to pay for medical equipment you need afterward, like crutches or a walking boot. (Mine cost about $75)

Altogether, I ended up with almost $24,000 in medical debt from one car accident. That’s a really scary number for someone like me who makes $10/hr at a 12 hour a week job.

I got my debt down to $1075 by making some phone calls and submitting some paperwork.

The first thing I did was contact the hospital. They don’t make it easy to find, but many hospitals (perhaps most hospitals?) have financial assistance programs for people who can’t afford medical bills. I don’t make a lot of money, and I have bills to pay, so they were able to help me. I called the billing department and asked if they had any assistance programs for low income people who can’t pay their bills. I had to call multiple times, and I got transferred in circles by people who didn’t know what I was talking about. Finally, I got an appointment with someone in “Eligibility Services” (I don’t know what other hospitals call it, if it’s something different). I had to bring my pay stubs and copies of all of my bills. When I got to the hospital for the appointment, nobody knew what I was talking about so I had to wander a little to find where I needed to go. I spoke with the guy in Eligibility Services, and I waited for a decision on how much of the bill they would forgive. A month later, I got a call telling me it was totally forgiven.

I did the same thing for my ambulance bill and my anesthesiologist, but the process was a LOT easier. I just had to mail some paperwork and it was totally forgiven.

I didn’t bother with the medical equipment suppliers, since the bills came from separate companies and I didn’t feel like going through the process twice for $75. I was assured at the hospital that they had similar programs for debt forgiveness, so I could have probably avoided paying that too.

The only thing I couldn’t get taken care of was the surgeon/follow-up appointment cost, but they were able to put me on a no-interest payment plan.

Medical debt is scary because it’s something that can come from stuff that’s already really scary. I didn’t need the burden of $24,000 in debt on top of trying to get around on a crutch with a broken arm (it’s not easy, believe me!).. but I can’t imagine what it would be like with a bigger debt or a more severe medical emergency. I see lots of people in even worse trouble than I was in, both financially and medically. Please know that there are options for you when that GoFundMe doesn’t do enough. Even if your income is higher than mine, it’s worth a shot even for partial debt forgiveness.