writesofpassing

[writesofpassing]

Sad things you can do in a book other than killing of a character

Character death is sad, but it also has huge consequences on your plot that can’t be reversed. Not to mention, depending on your genre, character deaths are often reserved for later in the series as a way of telling the reader that things are getting serious. 

So, until that moment, here’s a quick list of things you can do to tug at your readers emotions: 

1.- Destruction of an item of value. For this to work you’re going to have to set this up early on, it could be a childhood toy they need to sleep at night, a necklace they swear gives them good luck, and old family trinket or any number of things. The important thing is you show just how important it is to the character, make them happy and excited just to talk about it. Later on your character will feel loss and so will the audience. 

2.- Arguing. Two characters with a strong bond arguing can be heartbreaking, even if you know the argument is going to resolve itself eventually, going from cuddles and banter to cold looks and the silent treatment, can easily hurt the audience just as much as the characters. 

3.- Betrayal. When well done, it’s worst than character death. When you as a reader fall head over heels in love with a character, only for them to betray the rest, it’s heartbreaking, especially if when you read back the foreshadowing was there. It was so obvious yet you were all so blind! As blind as the other characters. Also, unlike character death, they’re still there, there to taunt you with their mere existence. 

4.- Failure. We have probably all felt that emptiness, that feeling as the world crumbles around us, haplessness, when we failed an exam in school or just couldn’t get the house clean in time for that visit. Take that feeling and reflect it into your characters, it doesn’t have to be an exam, it can be anything, a task they’re parents asked them to do and they tried their best, a mission, anything. Just let them fail and feel the world crumble. 

5.- Being forced to stay behind. Following from point four, if a character is not good enough they can be left behind, perhaps it comes from a place of love, an attempt to protect them from enemies too strong, yet it still hurts. Perhaps they haven’t failed, perhaps they are left behind for another reason, because they are “too valuable”, or because they’ll be more useful back home. Either way, watching those close to you go of to fight for what you believe in, without you, can be painful. 

6.- Finding out something they believed in was a lie. It can be something relatively insignificant, an assumption they never bothered to question. Or something world shattering. Allow me to offer up an example with an unimportant spoiler from my second book (it’s not even out yet but oh well): in this book, while talking about some law, Henry realises his daughter believes he and her mother were married. This is an assumption Itazu made and never questioned. It affects nothing, nothing changes, yet finding out her mother and her father were not the happy married couple she’d always pictured, it’s painful. 

This could also be something huge, finding out you’re adopted for example. 

7.- History. Oh, history, how depressing it can be. And if you have a fantasy world you have many opportunities to go into this. From slaughters to slavery, finding out how society got to where it is, the base on which it is built. Well, it’s pretty depressing. Obviously be careful how much inspiration you take from real world history and always be respectful and do your research! 

8.- Scarring. An injury can be painful, it can be scary. And depending on what caused it, leave you with traumatising memories. Now add to that a physical visible reminder on your skin you can never remove. Well, that can be pretty horrible. Imagine the scar came from a battle the protagonist longs to forget, but can’t because every night before going to sleep they can’t help but glance at their arm where the nasty scars forever lies. 

As usual,  check out my book, stories I’ve written plus other social medias: here.

This another post I could probably do a part two on someday. Can you think of any books where any of these are done effectively? Do any of these happen in your owns book? Please tell me! I love hearing from you all. 

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Writing agent Jonny Geller gives advice to young writers. 

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Do you have any suggestions on outlining by chapters? How much do you include?

For each chapter, I tend to write very short outlines, because if I over-plan them, I feel trapped and uninspired because there’s no surprises waiting for me in the actual writing process. I don’t outline chapter by chapter often, but when I do, I try to keep it simple by specifying the following about each chapter: 

the beginning point

the end point

the purpose(s) it serves

a general synopsis of what happens

what characters appear in it

the tone of it

what symbolism/details to include somewhere

Anything more than that, I leave to the editing process or to determine as I write.

Happy outlining!

x Kate

If you enjoy my blog and wish for it to continue being updated frequently and for me to continue putting my energy toward answering your questions, please consider Buying Me A Coffee.

I’d also really appreciate it if you would check out my separate blog dedicated to my current work in progress.

[writesofpassing]

Superpower Ideas for your Characters

Hey fellas! Today's post is just a masterlist of every common and uncommon superpower I could fit into 8 slides (on instagram). If I end up finding more I can make a follow up post to this one!

Sydney lockdown has also been extended for another week or so, so... more posts! And also online school, but most importantly, I can post more! I'm really excited to not be able to leave the house (with an excuse this time) so you all will be ✨blessed✨ with my definitely-not-obnoxious presence.

Without further ado, enjoy the post!

Water manipulation

Fire manipulation

Electricity manipulation

Earth manipulation

Air manipulation

Gravity control

Telepathy

Telekinesis

Weather control

Soul manipulation

Mind reading (sometimes a part of telepathy, sometimes not)

Super speed

Teleportation

Light manipulation

Darkness manipulation

Emotion control

Healing

Time stopping and/or slowing

Dimensional storage (think Janet from the Good Place)

Metal manipulation

Mind control

Illusion creation

Disruption/stopping of other's powers

Precognition

Postcognition (for events they weren't around for)

Plant manipulation

Speaking to the dead/necromancy

Sound manipulation

Destruction

Creation

Black hole creation

Memory altering

Dream entering and/or manipulation

Force fields

Super strength

Cloning

Glass manipulation

Crystal manipulation

Pain inducement (without damage to the body)

Enhancing senses of yourself and others

Removing senses of yourself and others

Petrification

Phasing through objects

Earthquake generation

Wood control

Fungi manipulation

Invisibility

Growth manipulation (self and others)

Carbon control

Projection of images through eyes

Sand control

Acid manipulation

Talking to animals

Explosion creation

Bomb creation

Dust manipulation

Necromancy

Giving life to inanimate objects

Takes the form of your worst nightmare

Solar energy manipulation

Lunar energy manipulation

Blood control

Fluent in all languages with no prior knowledge

Omniscience

Omnipresence

Truth manipulation/reality warping

Immortality

Boosting powers of others

Star manipulation

Immunity to pain and/or other powers

Wish granting

Manipulation of though (differs from mind control in that you aren't taking over every aspect of their mind)

Magma manipulation

Prehensile hair and hair control

Flight

Possession

Control of technology

Liquid manipulation

Siren song

Image manipulation

Thread and string control

Venom manipulation

Poison manipulation

Magnetism manipulation

Manipulation of living entities

Relationship manipulation

Disease control

Pain control

Fear control

Temperature control

Smoke control

Knowledge control

Space manipulation

Location manipulation

Future and/or past manipulation

Atom manipulation

Chaos control and creation

Death inducement

Dimension control

Ghost control

Monster physiology

God physiology

Shapeshifting

Turning into animals

Turning into inanimate objects

Wings and/or feather control

I hope you enjoyed the post! Follow me on instagram, @/dizzy.writess for more posts like these :) And if you want to... answer the question of the day: what's your favourite superpower from the list?

[writesofpassing]

I am a(n):

⚪ Male

⚪ Female

🔘 Writer

Looking for

⚪ Boyfriend

⚪ Girlfriend

🔘 An incredibly specific word that I can’t remember

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How to Write (US) Government Clearances

Step 1: Not like that (please, please, please)

Step 2: Like this:

1) What is a clearance?

A security clearance in the US is an official determination by the government that a person is allowed to access classified information or a restricted area. It comes after a pretty extensive background check and is basically the government deciding to trust that the person won't misuse, reveal, copy, sell, etc the data or access.

2) Who gets a clearance?

Because a clearance is to access classified information/restricted areas, people get them if they need that access for their jobs. That basically boils down to: government employees or contractors who work with classified information, and government employees or contractors who need to access restricted areas. The janitorial staff at the CIA have security clearances. In fact, at least some government janitorial staff workers are also government employees in other low-level positions (analysts, etc) because they already have a clearance.

3) What kinds of clearances are there?

There are three main levels of clearance (Secret, Top Secret, and Top Secret/Compartmented) and then there's what's known as a Public Trust.

Public Trust allows access to sensitive but not classified information, and it is what many federal government employees and contractors have. It is agency- or department-specific, so an employee or contractor switching from one agency or department to another will likely need to go through another background check and obtain another Public Trust. This can be moderate-risk or high-risk depending on the type of information that the person would have access to, such as tax data or law enforcement information.

Secret (S) allows access to Secret classified information.

Top Secret (TS) allows access to Secret and Top Secret classified information.

Top Secret/Compartmented (TS/SCI) allows access to not only Secret and Top Secret classified information but also Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI). This is generally what we think of when we think of "codeword" clearance.

4) What does getting a clearance look like?

It depends on the level of clearance. It requires filling out either the Standard Form (SF) 85 for Public Trust or SF 86 for S/TS/SCI, which is done electronically on e-QIP. There is then a background check which involves a credit check, employment check, and investigators speaking to listed references for all places of employment, education, and domicile. For more stringent checks like a high-risk Public Trust or S/TS/SCI, an investigator will talk to the person.

A short clearance process may take a couple months. A long process may take over a year.

For high level clearances, a polygraph may be required. There are a couple main types of polygraph: Counter Intelligence and Full-Scope (Lifestyle).

An individual can't apply for a clearance on their own. This either happens through employment with the government or through a contract with the government. Because a clearance doesn't automatically expire when a person leaves their position, someone can get a clearance at one place and then take it with them to another. This is really common and, because clearances take a long time

There are a lot of things that can cause someone to be rejected. Poor financial history is the main one, along with foreign activities and a criminal record. They don't want someone who can be blackmailed into sharing classified information or access, they don't want someone who might do it inadvertently, they don't want someone who is so desperate for money they would sell it, and they don't want someone who is loyal to somewhere/something other than the United States who might willingly choose to give that information over.

What does it mean if you character has a clearance?

They can access classified information, but only the classified information have a job-related reason to access. It's not actually allowed to go randomly poking around in classified networks to find interesting stuff.

They can't legally tell classified information to people who don't have both a high enough clearance and a job-related reason to know.

If they work with SCI, they do so in a SCIF

They either work for the government, used to work for the government, or are/used to be a government contractor

They likely wouldn't go around talking about their clearance. It's generally frowned upon

[writesofpassing]

6 Tricks to Layer on Stakes

Every great story has stakes–things that are at risk throughout the plot. It might be that the protagonist’s life is at risk, or perhaps a romantic relationship, or maybe the opportunity to go on a long-awaited trip. Years ago, I had a hard time understanding stakes, and I think it was in part because they were often defined vaguely. Everything clicked when I realized that they are really potential consequences, which is how I prefer to define them now.

Stakes are significant events that could happen, and they include a sense of cause and effect. Typically, you can fit stakes into an “if … then … ” statement (even if it’s not literally written as one in the text):

“If I don’t defeat [the antagonist], then he’ll hurt my family.”“If you become a vampire, then the only thing you’ll love is blood.”“If we don’t fight back, then he’ll take all our land, our homes, our lives we built.” “If we don’t keep moving, then dehydration will kill us.”

Great stakes are closely related to tension, suspense, and hooks. All three get the audience to look forward and anticipate what could happen, usually by getting the audience to hope or fear a potential consequence. The audience then has to keep reading to discover the actual outcome.

All easier said than done. For many writers, stakes can be difficult to get on the page specifically because they require the writer to brainstorm possible, future outcomes–some of which may not actually happen.

For example, say your characters are stranded in a desert. They decide if they don’t keep moving, they could die of dehydration. But perhaps, in reality, it turns out if they had stayed put, they would have been rescued. Stakes aren’t always about what actually happens. Remember, they are about risk.

In a page-turner of a story, you’ll want to brainstorm and put in much more stakes, or potential consequences, in the text than what actually happens. For some of us, it’s hard to brainstorm enough of those, so here are some tricks.

1. Look at both positive and negative potential consequences.

When it comes to stakes, we often focus on the negative … because that is what is at risk.

“If [the protagonist] doesn’t defeat [the antagonist], [the antagonist] will take over the world.”

But putting positive outcomes on the page can sometimes be just as effective.

“If Samantha can nail this audition, then she can finally star in a movie.”

In this example, a positive potential consequence is what is at risk. Sure, we could change it to a negative–if she doesn’t nail the audition, she can’t star in a movie.

But the exercise of looking at both positive and negative potential consequences can help you brainstorm new ones. After all, if we were only looking at the negative, we may not have come up with “starring in a movie.”

2. Add to the cause-and-effect trajectory

Once you have one stake on the page, you can often add more to it, by taking the cause-and-effect trajectory out further. Suzanne Collins does this well in the opening of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.

If the protagonist can’t eat cabbage soup, then he can’t get his stomach to stop growling (consequence #1), which means people will realize he’s poor, not rich (consequence #2), which means his reputation will be ruined (consequence #3), which means he’ll lose his opportunity to be a mentor through his school program (consequence #4), which means he’ll unlikely be able to meet the credentials needed for college (consequence #5), which means his family won’t be taken care of (consequence #6), which means his cousin might have to succumb to prostitution (consequence #7).

Whew, that’s a lot that hinges on making cabbage soup. Suddenly finding out whether or not the cabbage soup is going to work feels way more important!

You don’t have to take it out that far, but hopefully you get the idea.

3. Consider broad potential consequences

Another helpful approach is to look at how a potential consequence can have broader ramifications.

This works even with personal matters.

“If Jasper doesn’t return Emily’s love with a proposal, her descendants may be doomed to live in poverty.”

Here, something personal, love, has been broadened to include a family line–all of Emily’s children.

“If George doesn’t get to water, he could die of dehydration, which means his evil uncle could take the throne.”

In this example, the protagonist’s possible death affects a whole kingdom.

4. Consider personal potential consequences

A reverse of the previous is to look at ways to make potential outcomes more personal.

“If I don’t defeat the antagonist, he’ll take over the world–my mom, dad, Frankie, my entire hometown won’t survive.”

Here we move from a broad problem to a personal risk.

5. Pull in other cause-and-effect trajectories

In most stories, there are multiple cause-and-effect trajectories at work–this is what makes up the plot. There might be a primary plot, a secondary plot, tertiary plot, etc. There might be cause-and-effect trajectories that only last for several chapters or less.

One way to brainstorm more stakes, is to try to connect the current situation to an indirect stake.

For example, say in one plotline, the protagonist is concerned about training her dog. In another plotline, she’s concerned about getting her love interest to take notice of her. They may seem pretty unrelated, but you can look for ways to make them connect. If she can’t get her dog trained, then Fido might decide to try to chase after the love interest’s car–earning her the wrong kind of attention.

6. Look at perceived threats

Sometimes a perceived risk can also work well. Meaning, the character thinks something is at risk, when it actually isn’t. Multiple times in the��Harry Potter series, Harry is at risk of being killed or expelled, but since we know there are more books in the series, we can surmise that he won’t be … at least not until near the end, probably.

Or perhaps you are writing about a child who thinks if she lies to her teacher, she’ll go to jail. This is obviously not true, but to her, it’s a possibility.

When perceived threats are written well, it can often feel as if they are real, even when the audience knows they aren’t. This can be effective to layer on (and is better than nothing), but needs to be mixed up with the others, as its often not as powerful.

With these six approaches, you should be armed to brainstorm more, significant stakes. To learn more about stakes, you can read my other article on them here: How to Write Stakes in Storytelling.

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A couple thoughts about writing humor

Alrighty. My expertise in this field is there if you really, really squint. But I’m trying okay? As it is, most of these are more based on reading than writing anyway. They’re also all personal opinions.

Despite all of this, hopefully this will be useful :D

1 - self aggrandizing humor vs self depricating humor

Basically, this is the difference between falling and saying “I am the epitomy of grace” and saying “lol i’m a disaster human.” In my experience, characters who go with the former tend to be more enjoyable, not only because you can do a lot with a character who naturally defaults to that sort of ego-fueled comedy, but also because it can lead to more bonding moments between them and fellow characters as other characters can add onto the joke - even turn it into a running joke if you want it to - and it never feels like punching down. Not to mention, if it doesn’t land, negative humor can get awkward really fast, but self-aggrandizing humor gets an easier pass.

2 - unexpected/not obvious connections

The unexpected part can come in especially with a rule-of-three setup. Basically, two items follow a similar pattern, and the third item breaks it (this is very common advice, but I like it so it stays). An amazing example might be: “My job was simple. I was to sweep the floors, wipe down the counters, and tuck the soup cans into bed.” 

The not obvious connections part has to do with comparisons. If a super badass character walks in covered in twigs and leaves, a character could say “what? you fell from a tree or something?” which is kinda what it looks like. Or they could say “Let me guess. You lost a fight with Mr. Garner’s bluebird nest.”

To be fair, it kinda depends on who this Mr Garner is, but if he’s just some old guy up the street, it works. (just go with it)

3 - specificity

Part of what makes something funny is how specific it is. If you’re comparing something gross to, say, mud, it’ll lose a lot of its punch because there’s not a lot of specificity to be had in that word. Comparing thatthing instead to an item as specific as three day old bean water could end up being more fruitful. 

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Random mansion generator

The Procgen Mansion Generator produces large three-dee dwellings to toy with your imagination, offering various architectural styles and other options. Each mansion even comes with floorplans:

https://boingboing.net/2019/07/12/random-mansion-generator.html

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You know what I think is really cool about language (English in this case)? It’s the way you can express “I don’t know” without opening your mouth. All you have to do is hum a low note, a high note, then another lower note. The same goes for yes and no. Does anyone know what this is called?

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I have a mute character in the story I’m writing and one of my beta readers suggested I use italics when they sign so that I don’t have to keep peppering “they signed” or “their hands flashed” throughout the piece.

But like…I always read italics in a different tone like they’re thoughts. It seems quieter than using normal quotations which makes what they say look less significant on the page than other character’s dialogue.

I really don’t think my audience needs me to use completely different punctuation around a mute character. There’s no need to act like they’re speaking a different language since their muteness isn’t a focal point in the story.

So really this reader’s comment has done the complete opposite of what they intended. Now I’m actively taking out as many of my “hands flashed” notations as possible and just writing in normal body language because, clearly, the other characters understand them and my audience doesn’t need to be coddled.

[writesofpassing]

How I turned an idea into an outline

With NaNoWriMo around the corner, I thought I might show you how I plotted my novel.

This is the story structure I used:

0% inciting incident

0%-20% introduction in the world, ends with a point of no return

20% first plot point: the hero receives his marching orders

20%-50% response to the first plot point

35% first pinch point: reminder of the nature of the antagonistic force

50% midpoint: big fat plot twist that changes the hero’s AND reader’s experience

50%-80% attack: the stakes are higher now

65% second pinch point: again reminding the reader of the antagonistic forces at hand

80% second plot point: the final injection of new information into the story to give the hero everything she needs to become the primary catalyst in the story’s conclusion (no new information past this point)

80%-100% resolution + final conflict + return home

I didn’t make this up. I think it’s by Larry Brooks, if The Internet informs me correctly. Fun Fact: once you pay attention to it, you’ll see this structure everywhere. Just take a look at any Harry Potter book, for example.

These points are the “bones” of my story. Next, I decided what “flesh” to put on them.

I simply made a list of things I like to read about:

Books about books and libraries

Magic

Quirky characters

Intelligent, fast-paced and sometimes silly

So, I combined this list and the structure points into a story that makes sense. Because I don’t want to spoil my plot / I am still to shy about my wip, I will make up a new plot for this post, so I can show you.

0%: The hero does something magical without knowing how she did it. She discards it, because everybody knows it can’t have been real.

0%-20%: We see the daily life of the hero: she is unhappy because all she wants to do is read, but she is not allowed to. She reads in the dead of night and is punished for it by her evil stepcousin. She finds a book on magic.

20% It all clicks together: she can do magic!

20%-50% The daily life for the hero changes. Instead of reading all night, she practices magic. She now loves books even more. She has little victories over her evil stepcousin, but hasn’t won yet.

35% The evil stepcousin finds out that she can do magic and takes away the magic book.

50% She discovers she can do magic without the book.

50%-80% The hero is not the only one who is bullied by the evil stepcousin. Her younger cousin is a victim as well, and he doesn’t have magic to defend himself. The stakes are raised, this is bigger than herself now. The younger cousin also wants to read, so they have several bonding moments over reading.

65% The evil stepcousin hurts the younger cousin, he’s in a coma now.

80% The hero discovers the evil stepcousin could do all these evil things because he knows magic too.

80%-100% The hero confronts the evil stepcousin, fights him off, nearly loses but wins in the end. He gives up and releases his power over the younger cousin who wakes up from the coma.

It’s not the most genius plot ever, but I literally made this up in minutes. So can you! And imagine the genius plot you can come up with if you spend more than a few minutes on it.

Then I calculated how many scenes I need in which part of the story. My wip is a YA or 12+ book, so I want it to contain about 75,000 words in total. I want my scenes to be around 1,000 words long to keep it snappy, so I need 75 scenes.

Scene number 1 (0%) is the inciting incident, scene number 15 (20%) is the first plot point, scene number 26 (35%) is the first pinch point, scene number 37 (50%) is the midpoint, scene number 49 (65%) is the second pinch point, scene number 60 (80%) is the second plot point and scene 75 (100%) is the last scene.

Some sidenotes on the 1,000-word scenes:

That’s more of a vague rule of thumb than a strict rule. If your scene needs to be longer or shorter, make it longer or shorter of course. My wip has some 2,300-word scenes as well.

Having 1,000-word scenes does not mean I have 1,000-word chapters, that would be really short. I will divide my novel into chapters after I’m finished writing my first draft.

For NaNoWriMo, maybe you could write scenes of 1,667 words, so you do one scene per day. A 50,000-word novel has 30 scenes of 1,667 words. Inciting incident is at scene 1, first plot point at scene 6, first pinch point at scene 11, midpoint at scene 15, second pinch point at scene 20, second plot point at scene 24 and scene 30 is your last scene. That’s just an idea, you got to see what works for you.

Then I made up in one sentence what will happen in every scene. For example: “They meet the dragon and he sends them on a sidequest.” Now my outline consists of 75 one-sentence scenes. This way, I prevent the problem of the sagging middle and other pacing problems and I still get to surprise myself when writing.

From those one-sentence scenes, I flesh out every scene into a first draft, using the process I described in my post How I never have to face an empty page when I write.

And that’s my first draft! I hope everything is clear. Feel free to ask me questions if it isn’t.

I’m gonna tag a few people I admire, who I hope are interested. If you aren’t, feel free to ignore me, or message me to take you off my tag list. If you would like to be added to my writing advice tag list, let me know.

Keep reading

[writesofpassing]

Writing Advice Master List

Getting Started

Bad Habits of Beginning Writers Creating Writing Habits Prewriting 101 Returning to Old Works Setting Up Your Space Starting Again (if you’ve stopped) Where to Start Writing the Beginning Writing What You Don’t Know 5 Truths About Being A Writer

Career as a Writer

Making Money Writing for a Living

Characters:

Character Building Character Quirks Non-Binary Characters Religious Characters Writing A Hero Writing Non-Humans Writing Women 5 Ways to Name Your Character 5 More Ways to Name Your Character 7 Steps to Character Creation

Dialogue:

Dialogue Improving Dialogue: Eliminate Exposition

FanFiction

Fanfiction 101

NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo Tips & Tricks for NaNoWriMo 3 Tips for NaNo

Planning & Outlines

How to Start Outlining Is My Idea Good Enough? Research Should you Outline? 7 Things to Do Before You Start

Plot:

Details Fight Scenes Sequels Sex Scenes Sexual Assault in Literature Story Arcs

Poetry

Editing Poetry Reading Poetry 5 Quick Poetry Tips

Publishing:

Choosing a Title Rejection Letters Social Media When and Where to Publish

Romance:

LGB Relationships Romantic Subplots Writing a Romance Novel

Setting:

Description When Setting Really Matters

World Building:

Creating Another Species Creating World Maps World Building 101 World Building 201

Other

Editing Making Time to Write Point Of View Prologues Why I Write Writers Block Writing with Sound 5 Signs You Treat Your Reader Like an Idiot

[writesofpassing]

Gun Terms for Writers

As someone who writes fics with action sequences and the use of guns, I thought maybe it would be helpful to pass some things on. Even though I’ve done lots of research and talked with family members (I live in WI which is a big hunting state and we have lots of guns), I still catch myself making mistakes with specific terms and their usage. Reading more James Bond fics lately, I catch others making mistakes also. So here is a little guide to help writers. 

A ‘clip’ is something that stores multiple rounds of ammunition. It is not what you would insert into a handgun to load it. Clips make loading into a magazine easier because they simply store the rounds. It helps with organization. 

A magazine is what feeds the ammunition into the barrel. Magazines vary in capacity. They, unlike clips, are spring-loaded, which helps the ammunition move in the gun. So, when you want a character to reload, they would use a pre-loaded magazine, NOT a clip. 

A silencer is really a suppressor. ‘Silencer’ is a word that’s used in media to refer to a suppressor that doesn’t exist in real life. Guns that are suppressed will still be loud and have a sound. This is because compressed air will still leak out of the end of the barrel, you can’t silence a bullet moving extremely fast through the air, and you can’t silence the mechanical parts on a gun. There will be a noise, but it just won’t be as loud or more importantly, alert people in a nearby area that a gun was just fired. SO suppressor is a much more accurate term technically speaking. 

There are different kinds of suppressors. One important kind suppresses the muzzle flash. It’s likely a sniper would use this more than they would want to use a sound suppressor, as the muzzle flash more easily enables you to be spotted when you don’t want to be. These are simply referred to as flash suppressors. 

After a handgun runs out of ammunition, the slide will lock back into place and you will know that it is out. There is no ‘click’ signifying an empty weapon that is so dramatized in movies and tv. A more likely scenario that would prevent a gun from firing would be a jam. Or programming the gun to recognize certain palm prints. 

A great place for writers, in particular fanfic writers, who want information on guns is imfdb. You can find out what guns are used in movies and shows, and what guns characters use. You can also just search for guns. 

If you want to get really specific, check out YouTube. There are users who will post reviews of guns on there, which can be really helpful if you want to see how a particular gun looks or how to shoot it. 

So yeah! Here are just a few basic tips if you want to write a fic where a character uses guns. 

[writesofpassing]

[writesofpassing]

I have a disabled character and I introduce her through conversation. I mention that she’s disabled when a main character, who is a teenager, says “Oh you mean (Character)? The girl in the wheelchair?” and honestly I’m not sure if I’m being too blunt or rude because I’ve heard teens talk like this but also at the same time I feel as if I’m minimizing her to just her wheelchair/disability. Is this being rude and do you have any other ways to introduce a character in a wheelchair in writing

We had one blind student in a very big high school where other girls shared her name. If we wanted to be clear we’d name her, and if someone didn’t know which “Jane” we meant of course we’d specify the blind one. 

To be offensive would be to ignore her name and just call her “The Blind Girl,” thus reducing her to her condition. I was generally offended for her when the opposite occurred and people tried to uncomfortably skirt around her condition by describing her other aspects “…y’know, the brunette with green eyes and a nice laugh.” They sometimes partnered this with an attitude that dared you to mention her blindness, as though it was a sin to notice it at all. We also had a teacher in a wheelchair, but his name and reputation preceded him, so we rarely needed to describe his condition after stating his name.

You’re correct though, teenagers can be blunt with other teenagers. Saying “the girl who cuts” or “the really small guy” or things like that were pretty common. It wasn’t always appreciated, but it was honest without being insulting. Teenagers, like any kids, sometimes don’t know yet what’s considered offensive and may just now be learning as their social consciousness develops. So if a teenager in your story does say something ableist or borderline offensive, let them be kindly corrected and, if it’s in their character, learn from the correction.

Naturally, there are plenty of other ways to introduce someone in a wheelchair. With my grandmother and her wheelchair, sometimes the introduction can be “Oh, I have to go push her now, bye.” or “Why are you limping?” “Because Grandma accidentally ran over my foot.” You can explore these alternatives if you like, especially if the character cannot introduce herself due to circumstance.

I found a couple links that might help with other aspects of writing this character without getting too nitty-gritty:

How to Write a Disabled Character (basic tips, thoughtfully written) 

A wheelchair user is moving around - how do I describe that? (forumn)

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