If you want to create a more diverse cast of characters for your story, including a nonbinary character is a great place to start. Gender variance is an often overlooked aspect of diversity, and, even in stories that prominently feature other LGBT+ characters, nonbinary people don’t often get to see themselves represented. Creating a nonbinary[…]
Writing About Cuts, Scrapes, and Bruises
If a character gets into a fistfight, chances are, they’re going to end up with a few nasty bumps and bruises. Likewise, tripping on asphalt or accidentally grabbing a sharp object could also result in your character looking a little worse for wear. There are infinite ways for characters to injure themselves over the course[…]
Writing Body Language: Bringing Your Characters to Life
Body language is an essential part of bringing your characters to life, and yet, many writers struggle to find a balance between drawing no attention to the characters’ body language and obsessing over the way their characters move. If you don’t describe how your characters move in a scene, you’re missing out on a lot[…]
How to Write a Flashback in Your Story
Flashbacks are a common tool used by writers to give some context to the story they’re writing. It’s so common, in fact, that readers are accustomed to regularly getting glimpses of characters’ pasts, historical insights, and events that lead up to the beginning of the story. Not every story uses flashbacks; really, not every story[…]
How to Write a Roleplay Starter
So, you’ve been hitting it off with a new potential roleplay partner, when one of you drops the dreaded question: “who is going to write the starter?” Writing a roleplay starter is not unlike writing the first page of a story. It needs to be interesting, concise, and cover a lot of introductory material in[…]
How to Describe Burns in Writing
Researching traumatic injuries is not fun. Even if you can handle fictional characters in pain, reading up on real descriptions of gruesome injuries can be emotionally taxing. Because of this, many writers don’t do the appropriate research before writing an injury into their story, and the resulting scenes end up feeling inauthentic and scientifically questionable. […]
Romance Writing Prompts and Love Story Ideas
When you want to write, but you’re scraping the bottom of the barrel for new ideas, you can rely on writing prompts to generate new inspiration. This is especially true when it comes to writing romances. In addition to that, it can be disheartening to feel that the romance genre has been exhausted, and there[…]
Action Beats: What They are and How to Use Them
If you’ve moved on to editing the first draft of your story, you may have noticed the word “said” comes up a lot. Using the word “said” is the quickest and easiest way to indicate which character is speaking in a story, so many first drafts are simply riddled with it. Though “said” is useful,[…]
Show, Don’t Tell: What It Is and How to Use It (With Examples)
If you’ve read a few of the other articles on this site, then you’ve probably seen me state “show, don’t tell” more than once. If that’s the first time you’ve heard that phrase, then you probably aren’t completely sure what it entails or how you’re supposed to apply that to your own writing. Without good[…]
A Guide to Killing Your Characters
No matter what genre you’re writing in, there’s a chance you may end up having to write a character’s death scene. Killing your characters is not an easy thing to do—you want to make sure the scene carries weight, is emotionally charged, and can really devastate your readers. If you’re empathetic, you may even have[…]
