Jaques (London) Antique Portable Chess set.
Untitled (landscape with man plowing fields), Edward Mitchell Bannister, 19th century
Oil on paperboard 10 x 15 ¼ in. (25.3 x 38.7 cm) Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC, USA
Eft, Newt or Salamander?
Salamandrids are collectively known as the “newts”, a term which often breeds some confusion — as in “What is the difference between a salamander and a newt?” The simple answer is nothing: a newt is simply a specific type of salamander, namely members of the family Salamandridae. In other words, all newts are salamanders, but not all salamanders are newts [1].
In North America, there are only two genera of newts, Notophthalmus with three species, and Taricha, also with three species [2]. All of these species are only found in North America.
Among Notophthalmus species, Notophthalmus viridescens (the Eastern Newt or Red-spotted newt) is one of the most attractive because of the bright orange or red coloration of its terrestrial stage (juvenile), usually called Red Eft (shown in the photo).
Notophthalmus viridescens can be found just about everywhere in eastern North America [1]. These newts are unique in that they undergo two metamorphoses. The first is the usual transformation from aquatic, gilled larva to an air-breathing terrestrial form, this sexually immature land phase is the eft. However in this species there is a second, less striking metamorphosis to a breeding aquatic adult, called newt [3].
Photo credit: ©Alan Cressler | Notophthalmus viridescens viridescens, red eft (terrestrial juvenile), Mine Mountain, Dupont State Forest, Transylvania County, North Carolina, US.
The Most Basic Roadmap Through Your Novel with Ninja Writers
Every year, we’re lucky to have great sponsors for our nonprofit events. Ninja Writers, a 2020 NaNo sponsor, is a writing community that helps you build a bridge between your imagination and your novel. Today, Ninja Writers creator Shaunta Grimes shares a helpful story structure to keep you on track with your writing:
Imagine it’s the beginning of November and you’re starting an epic month-long road trip. You’re headed from California to New York City! You’ve got your car packed, your playlist loaded, the good snacks in the front seat. You’re ready to go.
So, you pull out of your driveway and you start driving. You even manage to get going eastward, but you end up in Florida a month from now after winding all over the place between Canada and Mexico.
Ah, right. You forgot your roadmap.
Starting NaNoWriMo with the spark of a story idea is like an epic road trip we take every November. The good news is, we don’t have to head off without a roadmap. There are five key plot points that every story has. (Yes. Even yours!) If you figure yours out for your story, you’ll have some guideposts to keep you headed in the right direction all month long (or to get back on track if you’ve gotten lost).
“The unreliable narrator … Ah, don’t you love that unsettling, page-turning, blockbuster-making literary device? An unreliable narrator makes for the bad boy of novels—ensuring a delicious but uneasy read, an on-the-edge wondering of what might happen next.
Usually, we feel we’re in good hands with whatever main characters we’re spending time with between the covers. We can count on them, we think, to tell us the truth. But then comes a protagonist you’re just not sure you can entirely trust, and the dark and compelling journey begins. How, as writers, do we take our own readers on such a ride?”
Tips for Writing a Difficult Scene
Every writer inevitably gets to that scene that just doesn't want to work. It doesn't flow, no matter how hard you try. Well, here are some things to try to get out of that rut:
1. Change the weather
- I know this doesn't sound like it'll make much of a difference, but trust me when I say it does.
- Every single time I've tried this, it worked and the scene flowed magically.
2. Change the POV
- If your book has multiple POV characters, it might be a good idea to switch the scene to another character's perspective.
- 9/10 times, this will make the scene flow better.
3. Start the scene earlier/later
- Oftentimes, a scene just doesn't work because you're not starting in the right place.
- Perhaps you're starting too late and giving too little context. Perhaps some description or character introspection is needed before you dive in.
- Alternatively, you may be taking too long to get to the actual point of the scene. Would it help to dive straight into the action without much ado?
4. Write only the dialogue
- If your scene involves dialogue, it can help immensely to write only the spoken words the first time round.
- It's even better if you highlight different characters' speech in different colors.
- Then, later on, you can go back and fill in the dialogue tags, description etc.
5. Fuck it and use a placeholder
- If nothing works, it's time to move on.
- Rather than perpetually getting stuck on that one scene, use a placeholder. Something like: [they escape somehow] or [big emotional talk].
- And then continue with the draft.
- This'll help you keep momentum and, maybe, make the scene easier to write later on once you have a better grasp on the plot and characters.
- Trust me, I do this all the time.
- It can take some practice to get past your Type A brain screaming at you, but it's worth it.
So, those are some things to try when a scene is being difficult. I hope that these tips help :)
Reblog if you found this post useful. Comment with your own tips. Follow me for similar content.
I have … a tip.
If you’re writing something that involves an aspect of life that you have not experienced, you obviously have to do research on it. You have to find other examples of it in order to accurately incorporate it into your story realistically.
But don’t just look at professional write ups. Don’t stop at wikepedia or webMD. Look up first person accounts.
I wrote a fic once where a character has frequent seizures. Naturally, I was all over the wikipedia page for seizures, the related pages, other medical websites, etc.
But I also looked at Yahoo asks where people where asking more obscure questions, sometimes asked by people who were experiencing seizures, sometimes answered by people who have had seizures.
I looked to YouTube. Found a few individual videos of people detailing how their seizures usually played out. So found a few channels that were mostly dedicated to displaying the daily habits of someone who was epileptic.
I looked at blogs and articles written by people who have had seizures regularly for as long as they can remember. But I also read the frantic posts from people who were newly diagnosed or had only had one and were worried about another.
When I wrote that fic, I got a comment from someone saying that I had touched upon aspects of movement disorders that they had never seen portrayed in media and that they had found representation in my art that they just never had before. And I think it’s because of the details. The little things.
The wiki page for seizures tells you the technicalities of it all, the terminology. It tells you what can cause them and what the symptoms are. It tells you how to deal with them, how to prevent them.
But it doesn’t tell you how some people with seizures are wary of holding sharp objects or hot liquids. It doesn’t tell you how epileptics feel when they’ve just found out that they’re prone to fits. It doesn’t tell you how their friends and family react to the news.
This applies to any and all writing. And any and all subjects. Disabilities. Sexualities. Ethnicities. Cultures. Professions. Hobbies. Traumas. If you haven’t experienced something first hand, talk to people that have. Listen to people that have. Don’t stop at the scholarly sources. They don’t always have all that you need.
I … LOVE reading the replies and tags for this post! I’m happy that, out of all my posts, this is the one that’s blown up so quickly.
I love the people who are a part of a minority, that are gushing about their favorite fics or books that seem to have done this and offer proper representation.
I love the people who are bringing up the toxic mindset that is very popular on tumblr, the “you can’t write about it if you haven’t lived it” ideology that makes writers feel guilty for providing representation.
I especially love the people who are mentioning how they should start doing this. I love the people who are probably young or inexperienced writers that are seeing this and thinking of doing this for the first time. I love that there are people who read this and then think to better their writing because of it.
Yes, I do teach creative writing: your opening scene
The opening scene is the most important piece of your novel. This scene determines whether your reader is pulled in or puts the book down. Here are some important do’s and don’ts.
DO write it as a scene, not a data dump. You may have a fantastic premise, a marvelous alternate history or post-apocalyptic world or magical realism to die for, but if you don’t engage your reader in an actual scene, you will bore them.
DO write a scene that immediately introduces a character that the reader can root for. Yes, I know Stephen King has had great success introducing victims that are then shortly afterward killed off. That’s a horror trope and we expect it. But if you are caught up in world-building and haven’t dreamed your way into a character who is worth following through 100,000 words of writing, your story is pointless. I have read many pieces of fiction by would-be writers who can’t grasp this essential concept, and without exception, they fail to engage the reader.
DO introduce the stakes right away. In case that’s a challenge that needs some exposition to develop, create some immediate stakes (a life threat works) that keep the tension high and the reader engaged until you can lay out the larger stakes.
DO begin in medias res, which means “in the middle of things.” Most beginning fiction writers make the mistake of starting too early in the plot. Meet the monster on page 1.
DON’T include a flashback in the first chapter. Work on a scene, which means time is NOT compressed. It should include dialog, action, description, setting, and interior monolog. Keep everything happening within that scene for at least the first chapter. You can bring in a flashback in Chapter Three.
DON’T shift points of view within a single chapter. Let the reader establish a strong bond of interest (even if it’s with a POV villain) over the course of a whole chapter.
DON’T open the story with your character waking up unless it’s because she’s got a gun in her face (or a knife to her throat – you get what I mean). We don’t need to follow a character through their mundane daily routine.
DON’T be coy. Beginning writers often have this idea that they need to hold back on revealing all their secrets – what’s in the box, who’s behind the curtain, where they’re going next, etc. Their well-meant plan is to slowly reveal all this over several chapters. Trust me on this one: tell your readers instead of keeping it a mystery. You WILL come up with more secrets to reveal. Your imagination is that good. Spill it now, and allow that revelation to add to the excitement.
Anonymous asked:
What is the average wordcount per chapter? My chapters are about 4-5k words long, and I feel that's a lot more than the average. Would you advice splitting it into more chapters so it's easier to read?
Hey!
This may not be the most helpful answer, but the truth is, there’s no rules for how long your chapters are. There should be maybe a few scenes per chapter, but that’s not a hard and fast rule, either. I’ve read books with chapters that were ten pages, two pages, and fifty pages.
It really depends on the pace of your book. Chapters generally get a little shorter towards the climax of the novel to keep the reader interested–but again, this isn’t a rule, and just making the chapter shorter doesn’t increase the quality of the work.
Look over your manuscript. If your chapter breaks make sense (serve as markers between action, build suspense, provide a natural pause point), then leave ‘em, regardless of the length. If your manuscript itself is too long, that’s another issue entirely.
But you definitely shouldn’t go and trim away your content just because you want the chapters to be arbitrarily longer or shorter. There’s no rules. As long they work for the story, they’re fine.
–mod Gloria @gloriawriting
Anonymous asked:
Hi there ! Question about plot & flow of a story. I've got my plot line mapped out from start to end with one or two main conflicts throughout the story, but when starting to write I am realizing that i am lacking a lot of the "middle stuff". I don't want to jump to the major conflicts because my story will end up being way too short. Any advice on how to come up with more situations, conflicts etc when planning/writing a novel?
The middle of the story is usually the hardest for most writers, including myself, to write. We know where our characters begin, and where they should end up, but we’re unsure of how they get there.
The journey your characters go on shouldn’t be easy. They shouldn’t win every battle or solve every problem with ease. Problems should arise, and they should run into obstacles besides the main conflict. Make your characters work to get to the climatic point of your novel. (Think about Muphy’s Law! Anything bad that can happen, will happen).
Here’s a couple ideas that can help you fill in your empty middle:
- Include a subplot: A lot of novels have some kind of subplot that is happening during the main plot. Maybe the protagonist has fallen in love and is trying to begin a relationship, maybe they have a personal goal and want to change something about themselves on their journey, or maybe they have to go on a “mini-quest” of sorts to convince possible allies to join them.
- Create more obstacles: Don’t let your characters rest for too long. Throw a problem at them. Things seeming a little too peaceful? Throw in some chaos, create a new problem the characters have to deal with, have a character make a big mistake. Maybe they get lost. Maybe one of their plans fails. Maybe the “worst-case scenario” did happen. Maybe something happened and a character was killed, and now the rest of the team has to figure out what to do, while mourning their friend.
- Use the middle to explore the main plot/let your characters discover important information: Perhaps there’s someone that could help defeat the villain, but the main characters have no idea who this special person is and must look for them if they want help in defeating Villain. Maybe they need to collect evidence of the villain’s misdeeds, or maybe there are just questions that haven’t been answered yet. Write a scene or two that feature your characters trying to solve a problem or discover more information that could help them later on in the story.
Here’s a link to multiple articles about plot development and creating scenarios for a story:
And an article about whether a scene/conflict in a story is good or not
Hope this helps!
Mod Carolyn @theories-fans-andwombats