@elisha-starquill
Active 3 years, 11 months agoForum Replies Created
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Posts
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@erynne – Yes I am! 😀 Are you?
"Moonlight drowns out all but the brightest stars." ~ J.R.R. Tolkien
@erynne – Ooh, looks fun! The character name pins will be especially helpful for me. XD Oh, and I’m The Voyaging Storyteller on there, just so you know. 😉
"Moonlight drowns out all but the brightest stars." ~ J.R.R. Tolkien
@erynne – Gracie’s got some fantastic advice there! 😀
From my experience, girls tend to use more words and more time to say basically the same thing, whereas boys are typically more curt. They also notice different things than women, because male/female brains see things differently (I’d spend some time reading up on their differences; it’s pretty interesting.) For example, women tend to notice color while men tend to notice shape.
OH, and a big thing to consider is that typically women would notice outfit details (i.e. coffee leather jacket and ripped white jeans), while men would either ignore outfit or just notice the bare minimum (i.e. jacket and jeans).
And for more general things about writing male characters, I thought this article had some interesting tips (fingers crossed so the link works XD)
Hope this helps! 🙂
"Moonlight drowns out all but the brightest stars." ~ J.R.R. Tolkien
Now, this is interesting, because for me I tend to ‘like’ intelligent villains, no matter how they look. Actually a lot of the smart ones look really ordinary, like Moriarity (who’s probably my favorite villain, @deeprun. Book Moriarity looks just like your regular old professor. The one in the TV show Sherlock looks like an average guy, to me. But, while on the topic of TV show Moriarity, the way he acts so calm and chill – even laughing or casually chewing gum – at horrifying things or during horrifying times is also what makes him frightening, despite how ordinary he looks.)
But what makes these intelligent villains extremely creepy is when they are so so so clever and they anticipate everything the good guys do and it just…gives me the chills. At how intelligence can be twisted and used for evil. But at the same time what they do makes sense and it’s all so clever.
AND THEN when the heroes manage to outsmart even them, I get a huge dopamine rush. 😛
(I feel like I’m not quite on topic here but whatever XD)
"Moonlight drowns out all but the brightest stars." ~ J.R.R. Tolkien
@melancholicwriter – I usually go to Google translate and translate a bunch of words (relating to whatever I’m trying to name) into several languages. Then, I have a nice list and stick words together or tweak them until it sounds nice and, preferably, fairly pronounceable. The languages I pick often correlate to the cultures that I draw inspiration from, or they just sound super cool.
I also LOVE to pore over maps looking for names, and I slightly tweak ones that I like. I typically use the names I find in maps for characters/races/terminology instead of for places/locations. (I have a sneaking suspicion that Tolkien did something similar, because Dunedin is a city in New Zealand, Turin is a city in Italy, etc. 😛 )
Hopefully this helps!
"Moonlight drowns out all but the brightest stars." ~ J.R.R. Tolkien
@rose-colored-fancy – Ooh I love learning about little cultural quirks! It’s so fascinating and equally fun to put them in my own worlds. That’s so funny about the flowers! XD
Recently I was watching a documentary about Greece, and on one island they whitewash all their houses so it’s not as hot, but the doorways are all different colors, so everyone knows which house is theirs. 😛 It looks really beautiful.
Also, in Vietnam you always take off your shoes before going in someone’s house, and wear sandals or flip-flops instead. They usually have several spares lined up just inside the door for visitors. And a lot of times, when talking about a meal, you don’t say “Let’s eat dinner” or something. It literally translates to “Let’s eat rice” because, chances are, there’s going to be some form of rice in the meal. 😛
I did have another example but it escapes my mind right now. XD
Cool topic!
"Moonlight drowns out all but the brightest stars." ~ J.R.R. Tolkien
@joelle-stone – Aww, thank you so much! That made my day. 😊
"Moonlight drowns out all but the brightest stars." ~ J.R.R. Tolkien
@joelle-stone – Hi Joelle! I’ve collected an odd conglomeration of blogging knowledge over the years so hopefully some of this helps!
1. I’ve heard a lot of good things about Bluehost and know several people who are pleased with it. It’s easily compatible with WordPress and not too expensive, if I remember correctly.
2. I’m not using/paying for any hosts, because WordPress’s free plan is enough for my current blogging needs. Also, I’ve never found a free host that’s reliable, but that could just be my lack of knowledge.
3. Again, I’m not too familiar with hosting stuff, but I do know that with WordPress alone, there are several plans that you can choose. If you’re not going to be running a business, you can either get a 4 or 8$ per month plan, depending on your specific needs. But I’ve been pretty happy with the free one, at least for now, especially since blogging isn’t super duper serious for me. I’ve also used Wix in the past which is similar in price, but for a variety of reasons that you probably don’t want me to wax poetic on, I much prefer WordPress for blogging.
4. It really depends. I personally post about every two weeks, because that gives me enough time to create a post while balancing my busy life, but I know a lot of other bloggers who post weekly. The trick is not posting too much that you spam your followers, and not posting too infrequently that they forget about you. You know, that ever-present balancing act. 😛
5. I’m not exactly sure what you mean by a business email address, but if you sign up for a website, WordPress or otherwise, you’ll need to sign up with an email, and you probably won’t want to use your personal one.
I wish you all the best in your blogging endeavors! 😀
"Moonlight drowns out all but the brightest stars." ~ J.R.R. Tolkien
@erynne – Ahh yes, writing blurbs. The struggle is real. XD I do love the post that @r-m-archer shared! It’s very informative and thorough.
What I’ve personally found the most helpful is to study blurbs from books I’ve enjoyed and read (so I have an idea of how much the author shared in the blurb.) I do this for books in the same genre that I’m writing in. It’s kind of like learning by osmosis, lol, the more you absorb them, the more you get an idea of what kinds of blurbs are intriguing and successful.
That, and critiquing other people’s blurbs, because it makes me analyze it deeply, gives me something to work off of, and because I love helping out other writers. Win-win all around. SO if you’d like direct critique on your blurb just let me know! 🙂
I hope some of this was helpful, and good luck in your blurb crafting! (yes, it is indeed a hilarious word, along with hunky-dory. XD)
"Moonlight drowns out all but the brightest stars." ~ J.R.R. Tolkien
@erynne – YAY I’m so glad I could help! 😀
"Moonlight drowns out all but the brightest stars." ~ J.R.R. Tolkien
@erynne – Hi Erynne! Your WIP sounds awesome! 😀
What if Ivy offers her assistance to find the jewel, but only at a price? The price being something the princess could offer that would give Ivy a chance at becoming more than a peasant, like bringing her along to an important city or a letter of introduction or…something.
I don’t know what’s going to happen/where they’re going to go after finding that last jewel, but this was just my initial idea. If you like, I’d be more than happy to brainstorm further with you. 😊
"Moonlight drowns out all but the brightest stars." ~ J.R.R. Tolkien
@macyjean – Hi Macy! There’s this rare condition called Polyglandular Addison’s Disease, which is a hormone disorder that can cause instantaneous death from sudden emotional stress (it doesn’t even have to be huge or anything – could be a scary movie, for instance.) According to one site I found: “To put it simply, sufferers are unable to produce adrenaline in response to stress. Adrenaline, or ephedrine, is the ‘fight or flight’ hormone that the body produces in response to stress. When the body can’t produce adrenaline, our organs cannot respond to stress sufficiently enough and so go into shock before completely shutting down.”
A lot of diseases in general typically occur in old age, but this one could affect even younger people. And diagnosis of this is usually delayed because it’s so rare and symptoms are unspecific.
So yeah, hopefully this helps! 🙂
"Moonlight drowns out all but the brightest stars." ~ J.R.R. Tolkien
Ooh, this is an excellent topic! I love discovering new awesome people’s websites. 😀
I have a blog called The Voyaging Storyteller where I post stories, gush about my musical and book-ish adventures, drag you along on my travels, and spew an occasional thought that is either profound or arbitrary or both, depending on who you are. 😛
I’ve never had any luck posting links on SE but it should be easy to find either with a quick search or on my profile page. 🙂
"Moonlight drowns out all but the brightest stars." ~ J.R.R. Tolkien
@princessmk – That is excellent advice! For me, it depends on the length of the story I was working on, but for a short story I would suggest spending a few days, maybe a whole week, away from it and trying to avoid thinking about it for as much as possible. And I totally agree, I don’t forget about my stories, because they’re basically my babies. 😛
"Moonlight drowns out all but the brightest stars." ~ J.R.R. Tolkien
That’s some great advice! I would add, as a perfectionist myself, that sometimes I need to remember to have fun. Which is harder than that sounds. It’s so easy for me to get caught up with making every little sentence absolutely perfect with the right amount of foreshadowing and showing-not-telling and character motivation and all that nitty-gritty. When that happens, I lose sight of the joy of just…creating, and oftentimes I end up not writing anything, or just procrastinating.
Of course, there is a place for the technical, structural side, otherwise you’d get the mess that my younger self produced when she wrote blissfully while breaking every writing rule out there. But at the same time, that younger self was not hampered by perfectionism, and she finished story after story. Like most things, I think it’s important to
not be as extreme as I ambalance both sides, keeping story structure/writing advice in mind while not letting it stifle the pure fun of creating worlds and souls out of twenty six letters."Moonlight drowns out all but the brightest stars." ~ J.R.R. Tolkien
