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Common! I don’t have all day! Pick up your weapon and face me!
He hates me! I knew it!
I didn’t know what to do so I hid in the bathroom and prayed!
I had never seen anything so beautiful!
The treasure glimmered in the firelight and reflected in her eyes.
Where were you last night?
Why am I the only one that thinks this is insane?
Tell me again, were there two of you or four of you?
I told him I could only give him a ride a couple of miles down the road, but when he pulled a gun on me I said, where do you need to go? He was pretty polite after that.
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If you enjoy Writing Prompts, Storytelling and writing in general, you might love owning a domain of your own where you can write about it? Ever want to own your own domain name (Yourname.com)?
Bluehost hosts your blog so that you can own your domain and make money blogging. Check them out only if you’re interested in making money blogging; otherwise, go for a free blog instead 🙂
In order for your tension to work at all, the stakes have to be high.
You have to make sure that the character has a lot at risk.
In order to create tension, we have to put things that our character finds important at risk.
And that risk doesn’t always have to come from another character.
In some stories, your main antagonist doesn’t have to be a human.
It could be nature for instance.
Let’s say we are writing a story set in the wild west.
The family we are writing about relies on the land and farm to live, but one winter it gets too cold and the land freezes over and the animals start to starve and get diseases and the family didn’t have a good harvest last year and now they are on the verge of starvation themselves.
What’s is the tension created here?
We create tension by making our readers think: What will the family do to survive? Will they survive?
Life or death scenarios work well but it doesn’t have to always be that high of stakes.
In order to create tension, the stakes have to be high.
# 2 Create Tension: By making your readers feel like they can’t guess what will happen.
In order for tension to really work, there can’t be an underlying thought in your readers’ minds of “I can see where this is going and they will be fine.”
That happens often in T.V. Series and that’s is partly why they die after season 2.
When you start to see a repeating pattern of how things will resolve and everything will be fine you start to lose interest because there is no curiosity there. There’s no mystery anymore.
It’s easy to lose interest when there is no mystery left anymore.
In order to create tension we have to keep our readers guessing.
# 3 Create Tension: By making your readers feel something.
We as consumers of stories LOVE stories that make us feel something and feel what the character is feeling or feel so much for the character that we want the worst or the best for that character.
If we can get our readers feeling emotions for our characters we will create tension for those characters when we put them in a bad situation or a sad situation.
In order to make our readers feel for our characters, we have to help our readers resonate with them.
One sure-fire way to make our readers feel for our characters is to make them as real and human and vulnerable as possible without going overboard.
If they are too vulnerable they can appear pathetic and whiny = BAD
If they are too perfect they can appear to be too far beyond us for us to feel for them = BAD
For our readers to resonate with our characters they have to be a little good and a little bad. Very much like regular humans. There are good people out there, but all of us have faults even though we are trying our best.
Find ways to make your characters more human and when you go to create tension, your readers will find themselves being surprisingly emotionally involved.
Fictional Characters: Bad Habits to Introduce to Your Fictional Characters
We made this list of character habits so that writers could use them to get creative inspiration for writing more dynamic characters.
Everyone has bad habits.
Some are more obvious than others.
Some characters are super-secret about their bad habits, while other fictional characters are oblivious that they have a bad habit.
And some are obnoxious about their bad habits.
This will be a list of bad habits for you to use for your fictional characters.
Use one or two or many, but remember, the more believable the better with little character traits such as bad habits.
Bad Habits for Your Fictional Characters:
Worrying.
Worry can kill. It can also ruin relationships and ruin a good date.
Doubting.
Doubting someone your character cares about can soil the relationship. A character could push others away with their doubt.
Distrust.
A character could be so jaded by the world that they chronically never trust anyone.
Easily angered.
You know the type. Ticking time bomb. Walking on eggshells being around them.
Picking nose.
Ew Gross.
Picking at face.
Distracting when you’re trying to talking to someone that is constantly touching their face.
Talks too much.
Ever get stuck talking to someone that never takes a breath?
Bad Listener.
Relationships can end or begin based on a character with good or bad listening skills.
Talks too little.
Ever been trying to get to know someone and all they have to say is, “yah” “nah.”
Flatulence.
Enough said.
Smoking.
This could be a habit they know they want to quit but have a hard time.
Chewing Tobacco.
Don’t pick up the wrong bottle in their house!
Alcoholic.
Nobody wants to be around an angry drunk.
Drug addiction.
Ever have your character steal for drug money?
Pain Killer Addiction.
Easy to get into. Even easier for a character to hide for a long time. No smell and everyone has prescriptions right?
Always late.
Your character could lose their job.
Nail Biting.
Does your character disgust their love interest because their fingers are always in their mouths?
Always on their phone.
Who isn’t always on their phone these days, but when your character is staring at their screen while having coffee with a friend bleeding their heart out, that friend might look for friendship elsewhere…
Talking with a mouth full.
Your character might not get asked to eat out much…I wonder why?
Gets lost in social media.
Who doesn’t? But maybe your character missed an important event because they were scrolling social media.
Video game addiction.
Ever miss Christmas because you had to get that game achievement? Family members do not like that sort of behavior.
Not sleeping enough.
We’re not talking insomnia here. A character could have an accident at work just from a willful lack of sleep.
Poor Posture.
Does your character look like a hunchback?
Not dealing with stress well.
Does your character bottle everything up and worry about it alone?
Eating addiction.
Does your character’s weight affect their life and relationships negatively?
Doesn’t brush teeth.
Doesn’t shower.
No care for hair.
Does your character lack hygiene? What type of social problems do they encounter on a daily basis?
Lying
Has your character lied one time too many and burned too many bridges with their lies?
Stealing
Who did they steal from? Are they a casual shoplifter, a bank robber, or did they bite off too much and steal from the mob?
Cheating
Did they cheat on a test, a lover, or a spouse? Did they get caught? What are the consequences? Does their lover know?
Yelling
Does this character shoot themselves in the foot with their mouth?
Junk Food
Cavities anyone?
Loud Mouth
Has their talk too big and not be able to back it up attitude got them into a little bit of trouble?
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Writing Characters: How to Write Character Reactions Your Readers Will Care About
As readers, we don’t think about character reactions much, we just enjoy them, but as writers, one of the most important parts of writing characters and any scene is how our characters are reacting to people and events around them at any given moment.
We need to understand how to write characters when they are at home watching T.V. doing nothing and when they are escaping a brutal shoot out with explosions.
When writing characters, writing their reactions is extremely important.
How they react to one another, how they react to events, how they react to dialogue; how they react to what you put them through is the most interesting part of your character’s true self.
The way your protagonist reacts to others will decide whether or not your readers like your protagonist, much in the same way that we decide if we like people in real life based on how they react to certain situations we engage them in.
All that to say, as writers it is extremely important that we understand that how our characters react is extremely important and we need to be able to write their reactions well to carry our readers along with the story without hitting any bumps in the road.
Writing Characters: Your Characters Need to React to Events that Happen and React Appropriately.
When it comes to writing characters we need to understand our characters well personally and how they would react to what happens in a scene and react well.
Imagine sitting down with your protagonist to have coffee or a meal. Can you imagine how they would act in such a scenario?
Can you ask them questions in your mind and see how they would react and answer?
Can you interview your characters in your mind to find out how they would react to the events you want to put them through?
And what does it mean for them to react well?
It means that character needs to react the way only that character would and not the way a different character would.
For Example: Two girls are sitting on a train. Let’s call them Girl A and Girl B They just met. They are not more than acquaintances if not complete strangers.
A staff member from the train steps up to Girl A and says “mam, I’m so sorry we just received word that your parents have died in a horrible car accident.”
Girl A shrugs her shoulders and says “Ok.”
But Girl B the stranger, balls and screams and cries inconsolably for the duration of the ride.
You can see this would be a weird reaction.
We would expect Girl A to react the way Girl B did as it was Girl A’s parents that died a horrible death and Girl B doesn’t even know Girl A or her parents. Girl B might even try to kindly console Girl A, but we wouldn’t expect her to ball and scream about the scenario, but we might expect Girl A to do so, and if she doesn’t we will immediately question her in our minds.
This example shows that when we are writing characters we do have to think about how our character will react and how it must make sense and if it doesn’t that will make our readers curious.
This type of reactive thinking can be played out in several ways.
We either make the character react the way the audience expects them to and it helps the reader solidify how the character reacts and thinks and who they are as a person.
We can also use a character’s reaction to make the reader question why they reacted that way if the character reacts in a way that doesn’t fit.
Both are great tools to help your readers enjoy the story and carry the story along while revealing a character’s true nature.
Writing Characters: Your characters need to react to each other.
Normal people react to what others are doing all day long.
We say how are you doing to the grocery clerk.
We move over on the subway to let people through the doors.
We hold open doors at stores for others walking in behind us.
If someone curses at us in traffic, we react to it. We all react differently depending on who we are and what we believe.
In the same way, when writing characters your characters need to react to each other and they need to react appropriately.
Friends are sad for each other when something bad happens to one.
Enemies might not react or they might even be seen enjoying some bitter happening to the protagonist and the protagonist may even react to the enemy’s reaction.
It is very important that your important characters react to each other and react to the events happening in the plot depending on who they are around when the event happens.
If it happens when they are together the reader will see them react together.
If it happens separately we get to see who tells who what, how much and why. All things that are important to the plot and character relationship building and development.
Some characters might react one way around their friends, but completely different in public around strangers.
While you are writing characters the better you can write this in and make it unique to each important character you have the better your reader will be able to understand who each character is as an individual.
Writing Characters: How Our Character Reacts Says Much About What They Believe.
When a person reacts to an event or another person it can say many things about what they believe.
When a person gets stuck behind a slow car on the road, if they get mad and scream and curse, they might be the type of person that believes that they own the road and that no one should get in their way and that the slow car is actually hurting or abusing them in some way unbeknownst to them.
If on the other hand the character ignores it and keeps smiling and whistling while driving, they may be more of an optimist that believes that they have to find the silver lining in everything.
We must do this as writers writing characters well. We must find events and dialogue to show what our characters believe about themselves and the world around them.
As we are writing characters the more our readers are able to see more deeply who our characters are they will grow to love and hate them and when they feel so deeply about our characters that’s when they are really hooked and curious as to what will happen to these characters that they’ve come to know so deeply and so well.
People, in general, are more interested in people they feel deeply about, even if they loathe them. The type of person we don’t think much about is the character we feel indifferent towards. We aren’t very curious about what happens to them.
Use this truth to your advantage and reveal to your audience who your characters are in a deep way through writing characters’ reactions.
What events have you put your characters through and how have you had them react?
Do you know who your character is and how they would react to any given situation, or do you create your character’s personality on the fly as you go?
I hope this helps! Now Get Out There and Write Something!
Psychopaths are usually well-adapted actors. They feel nothing emotionally and so they learn to adapt to society by figuring out the “rituals.”
-Smile
-wave
-be polite
– when someone tells you something bad has happened to them, react with a sad face and say “I’m sorry that happened to you.”
-when someone tells you good news, smile and say “How wonderful for you!”
-When someone tells you they are having a baby, don’t ask them if they’ve considered the safety of the vehicle they are currently driving. Pretend to be excited for them.
– In public, don’t stare.
-If you are caught looking, pretend not to be.
The Perfect Psychopaths think in terms of how to adapt to their environment and get what they want.
They can be very good at charming you while having sinister motives behind getting closer to you.
Usually, if a psychopath is charming toward you they are trying to get something from you or get away with something without you knowing.
They are like chameleons and do their best to adapt to any given situation. If they make a mistake they may lash out with anger or recoil and manipulate by feigning victimization.
The perfect psychopath will have multiple backup plans for blending into their desired social circles.
The Perfect Psychopaths have an extreme sense of self-importance and maybe even a “God Complex”
They usually see themselves as geniuses and view everyone else as less intelligent than they are.
Even if they carry out heinous acts against unsuspecting victims they can often be delusional in thinking that what they are doing has a “greater” purpose and centuries from their lifetime, societies will see their genius and call them heroes.
They act on the desire to have others see them as they see themselves: as the hero, the genius, the great savior of the world.
You may find that as a “good” characterthey are narcissistic and intelligent and think everyone around them is dumber than themselves, but they will act in appropriate manners when the social situation calls for it.
You can write your perfect psychopath as someone that has trained themselves to act correctly, or you can write your psychopath as someone that is learning social manners.
Either way can make for fun writing and complex dynamics.
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The Perfect Psychopaths MUST have a Plan and have Everything in Their Control
How to Write The Perfect Psychopath
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How to Write The Perfect Psychopath
I wouldn’t say the perfect psychopaths are big planners as much as they make a plan for everything because they must have a sense or feeling of control over everything they care about.
For example: Let’s say they have a secret murderous addiction in mind. They are going to be constantly planning out every move. This will enable them to control their family their friends, their victims, the police, and anyone else that happens to get involved along the way. No one must be allowed to get in the way of their plot.
If they are a boss of a company they are going to have each role planned out so that their company succeeds and if anything threatens that they may plan to “take care of it” by whatever means possible.
Child psychopaths will find ways to control their friends, siblings, and parents. Whatever their “world” is they will naturally plan out how to control the situations and they might not even realize it while they are doing it.
This trait plays a role in their need to be amazing actors. They don’t want to be good at acting, they need to be.
They have a hard time socially knowing when and how to express the right emotions at the right time until they learn to from an outside source.
They don’t feel emotions like the rest of us.
This makes them disconnected and unable to connect with most anyone.
Humans rely on emotions to connect with each other and feel for each other. They can only make real connections when they are taught or teach themselves social cues and showing emotions based on the circumstance.
They do emote anger, but sadness and regret they seem to have a difficult time with. It has more to do with how they feel about other character’s situations.
If someone knows what it feels like to experience loss, they are more likely to feel empathy for another human when they see them also experiencing loss.
Psychopaths are unable to feel empathy for this reason.
They have no idea what it feels like to feel emotionally bad so they have no idea how to feel bad for anyone else.
If they decide to try to learn to act appropriately, it is mostly to be able to control their environment to continue to get what they are trying to get and not lose relationship points with those that they have convinced to trust them and be around them.
Some psychopaths learn to react to situations as if they are feeling emotions and some don’t bother.
Usually, a sinister psychopath will view feigning emotion to make people happy as a futile game that is a waste of time and energy.
A more mogul psychopath that wants lots of power will view feigning emotion as a way to gain peoples’ favor and trust and they need people in order to become more powerful. (Think of some politicians that might think this way.)
Psychopaths are MASTER MANIPULATORS.
You may find your master manipulative psychopath being the second in command of an army whispering one thing to one general and another thing to another general so that the two generals fight and the psychopath gets what they want out of it.
They like to play master of puppets behind the scenes.
They love to know that what they say and do controls people and their decisions. It feeds their feelings of importance and intelligence above others.
You might find your psychopath in high school dating the most popular boy in school so that people like her and see her as popular, but in secret, she hangs out with the boy next door that is the weird kid at school.
You would never catch her dead talking to her true friend at school, but only at home when no one sees her. Remember she can never lose control.
Your master manipulator might be working his way up the corporate ladder and find him figuring out who his next competitor is so that he can find ways to take out his competitor from the running.
Remember, psychopaths, need to be in control. So she or he is not just going to work hard to get the position. They will plan and scheme to MAKE ABSOLUTELY SURE there is no way possible that he could lose.
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Even if it means creating a trap that breaks his competitor’s leg so that they have to take sick leave for months while the bosses choose who gets the position.
You might find your psychopath manipulator as a bank teller who regularly uses access to people’s information and money spending “habits” as blackmail for keeping their money secrets.
As you look to get ideas for writing your next psychopath I hope this helps!
If you enjoy How to Write The Perfect Psychopath, Storytelling and writing in general, you might love owning a domain of your own where you can write about it? Ever want to own your own domain name (Yourname.com)?
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If you enjoy How to Write The Perfect Psychopath, Storytelling and writing in general, you might love owning a domain of your own where you can write about it? Ever want to own your own domain name (Yourname.com)?
Bluehost hosts your blog so that you can own your domain and make money blogging. Check them out only if you’re interested in making money blogging; otherwise, go for a free blog instead 🙂
5 Tricks How to Hide Your Villain Right Before Their Eyes
One of the most fun and entertaining things to do as a story lover and writer is to hide the villain right in front of your audience and keep them guessing until the end.
Throw in a twist here and a twist there and voila, you surprise everyone that they knew who the villain was all along and they met them in chapter 2 but didn’t have a clue until the very end.
In some stories, the villain is bold and insidious and it’s obvious the entire time who they are, but some stories the villainous creature is scheming and conniving and even in their own mind is the good guy.
Whether your villain is insane and doesn’t recognize they’re evil deeds as evil or they are doing their best to fit into society and hide their dark secrets, it can be a lot of fun for readers to be surprised as to who the real villain is.
So here are some fun and creative ways that you can entertain your readers by hiding your villain right before their eyes:
When readers are poring over your words they expect to find the villain as some cruel ugly hag, but if you make her nice and kind and enjoyable, they might just skip right past this one on the possible guilty subjects list at first, expecting you to reveal them later, being none the wiser to have just met them.
Give your villain a scene or two where they are enjoyable and likable and perhaps even charming and potentially heroic and you’ll find folks are pleasantly surprised later on to learn that that charming character is actually an evil character in disguise.
Make your evil person a random shopkeeper that helps the protagonist find an item in the store in the first couple of chapters and even gives them a discount showing the villain to be charitable to throw them off the scent even more.
A good way to hide your bad guy from your audience at first is to make them believe he is a fool or a bumbling idiot.
By making him a fool at first, you make them look like a side character in the story. That adds extra dynamics and enjoyment, but nobody would ever expect the fool to be the cunning evil undertaker in disguise.
Give them some sort of physical handicap to make them “appear” to be physically “weaker,” but in truth, they are NOT weaker at all. It is only a guise. Give them a limp or hobble. Make them a character with paraplegia or quadriplegia. Make your villain a character with muteness, deafness, or blindness so that your heroine and reader are none the wiser to their evil schemes and less likely to put them on their mental suspect list.
It doesn’t even have to be an actual ailment to your villain. The antagonist could be feigning the injury or birthed medical condition altogether. Both work equally well for making a dynamic character with complicated ideas and emotions.
Readers expect the evil antagonist to be strong and of equal strength physically to the protagonist. By making the villain appear “weaker” or “vulnerable,” your readers could look right over them and might not suspect a thing.
Think Mr. Glass in Unbreakable and Glass. People all around him underestimate him, but that is the most dangerous thing to do. The main antagonist in Glass assumed she could control and outsmart Mr. Glass and that was her fatal mistake.
Because of her foolish assumption, she fell right into his plans perfectly and handed him everything he needed to show the world that the myth of superhumans was real. She assumed she was smarter than him and could control him and that was her downfall.
(Side note: make sure to have the utmost care and respect with how you research disabilities and write characters with disabilities, whether they are humans or fantasy creatures that you are writing. We all have friends and loved ones we know with disabilities, so be kind and respectful. Disabilities can be written about in fiction in a responsible and respectful way 🙂 .)
One of the easiest ways to throw your readers off the scent of the villain is to make them attractive. Make them kind, polite, and charming.
Make them the life of the party. The person that could spit in your face and that you would still want to be their friend and have their attention.
That character could never be the villain, could they?
5. Make the villain assist the protagonist.
Have the protagonist meet them on a train ride and have the villain help them find their cart and sit with them and have a very needed helpful conversation.
You could go as bold as to have the villain be there “sidekick” up until the time of turning against them, or you could have the villain help them in a moment and turn the reader’s mind to think that the villain is just a kind helpful person in the story.
One of the key secrets to great storytelling and writing stories is creating surprise.
Most writers and critics would call this a twist at times, but it doesn’t always have to be a twist.
With a villain that surprises our reader, it could be an act of cruelty.
One great way to do it is betrayal.
Think Judas and Jesus. Think Brutus and Caesar, “And you Brutus…”
Betrayal is a great way to surprise our reader with who the villain is as well as really put on the emotional sting when they find out.
The Way to Set Up Betrayal
If you want to use betrayal to surprise your reader with your villain you’ll have to set it up for it to have a great effect.
The villainess should start out in the story as someone close to the heroine. It could be their sister, mother, cousin, or best friend.
When we meet the villain we should think that they are a side character and are good.
Write them playing with the heroine as children. They can grow up together telling each other their deepest most trusted secrets.
They can go to the same school, or live in the same castle.
They can fight alongside one another in battle or be on the same basketball team.
Whatever you choose, make them close before ultimately showing that the villain was right underneath the reader’s nose all along and then write them doing some act of betrayal and showing little remorse for it.
They could be cheating with the heroine’s boyfriend or husband.
They could be secretly plotting to kill them to take their place on the throne.
They could be planning to take revenge for an act the heroine didn’t know they felt bitter about.
Whatever you choose, make the betrayal heinous and hard for the reader to accept without feeling angry for the heroine, or it might not work in the story.
Write a Villain that Could be Your Reader’s Next-Door Neighbor
If you want your villain to be bigger than life, you need to make sure the villain comes across as a plausibly real person.
Villains that are fun but too spooky are sometimes forgettable, but the villain that could be their next-door neighbor in real life is hard to get out of mind. If they have a hard time looking at their neighbors the same way after they have read your story then you’ve opened up their eyes to how dangerous a seemingly “good” person can be.
The idea is the psychopath next door.
Write the villainous character as someone that is the leader of the neighborhood watch in the cul de sac.
Everyone knows and loves the villain and the villain is greatly kind and generous in daylight and during office hours, but if you somehow got surveillance into their private home or office you’d cringe to find out what they are doing in secret.
That’s the key to a game making villain that’s real, but pure evil.
They are kind and generous in public, but in secret, they have nasty skeletons in their closet, or better yet the backyard of their second home.
Don’t take this overboard, don’t write them as fake nice that’s so easy to see through. Write them as genuinely kind so that when our reader learns what they do when no one is looking, they’ll be shocked, surprised, and in horror.
You can even carry this out in a creative way by picking a person in real life that you know or look up to.
Give the villain their personality and mannerisms and this will help your reader see and believe that this character is very real to life and could be their next-door neighbor.
Write a Villain That Doesn’t Care About Anyone But Themselves
A game making villain is completely selfish. A complete narcissist could work.
But don’t be so extreme or your reader will just be sick of them and ready to see them die or lose and move on.
Their actions have to give the reader hope that there is some good in them.
One of the reasons Darth Vader was so HUGE in villain history is that the entire trilogy Luke was saying “I can see the good in you. There is still hope.”
If our readers see a villain that does good things but surprises them with the evil deeds the villain commits our readers might cling to the idea that it is possible that they could change.
Leaving it possible means that curiosity about the villainess character can continue.
But we as the writer know deep down inside that our villain is complete and utterly consumed with selfishness and will never change despite leading the fact that the villain manipulates our heroine and leads them on.
Write a Villain that Has Extenuating Qualities
Give the villain excuses for the way he or she acts.
Give them a goal that the reader could possibly perceive as a good goal.
In Lord of the Rings, every member of the Fellowship of the Ring had the potential for good and evil.
Boromir wanted to take the ring and use it as a “weapon against the enemy.” But everyone knew the ring poisoned the wearer’s mind, turning them insane or against the good and towards the evil Saruman, making anyone a potential threat.
When Boromir says they should use it against the enemy it is tempting to think that this is a good idea. But deep down we as the readers know this is a bad idea.
When Boromir acts in this way his motives are potentially good, so when he tries to take the ring from Frodo the reader can be curious to know if his actions are good or bad. During this act, he acts as a potential villain but in the end, we know that ultimately the true villain is Saruman.
When we do this for the reader we make the villain and their acts more emotional and deep for the reader.
Write a Villain that has a Palpable Description.
Use the physical description of your villain to make her or him jump off the page and into your reader’s mind.
Give your villain a back story that leaves them with a hideous scar.
Use that scar to tell a story.
For example: the character has a deep gash in their back. When the villain was six years old the hero was fighting another villain in the same neighborhood that they lived in. The fight got so bad that it ended up destroying a part of the building above the villain. The villain’s apartment caved in and it killed her parents. A piece of rubble pierced her back and totally severed her spine, leaving her a paraplegic for the rest of her life. The villain blames the hero for her parents’ consequent deaths and her paraplegia. She hates the hero for this and plots ways to get revenge every single day.
Try to think of other ways to use their physical description as a way to remind the reader of their twisted back story.
As a Blogger, Why Making Viral Content is a Bad Blogging Strategy
If you are a blogger don’t get caught up in the wrong thing.
If you are a blogger and are wasting LOTS of time on trying to make EVERY post written a viral post you may be putting your energy into the wrong place.
This is a terrible goal and a waste of time for most any blogger and I’m going to tell you why:
1. The amount of time you put into the blog post is unlikely to amount to its “viralness.”
There is absolutely no guarantee that if you spend a bunch of time trying to write a post that you think we’ll go viral that it will.
It can be surprising what audiences like and don’t care for.
I use Pinterest to drive traffic and I am often surprised as to what pins people love and ones they don’t. I’ve created many thinking oh they’ll love this one. And crickets…
At the same time, I’ve had some that I threw together in a minute and they went viral, which really shocked me and made me realize:
As a Blogger, the goal shouldn’t be to spend most of our time and energy figuring out what goes viral and trying to make that.
Our goal should be to create more content as a blogger and adapt as our audience reacts.
Which brings us to our next point:
2. Our goal as a blogger should be to make lots of quality content.
This idea as all ideas should be taken with a grain of salt of course.
As a Blogger, you should definitely spend some of your time researching what people in your niche like and want to read.
The point is, when we first started we probably spent too much time on research and not enough time on building a habit of just creating and letting things flow naturally.
So as a blogger spend some time researching, but most of the time and energy creating.
3. Are you using your research time efficiently?
As a blogger, you should create while you research your topics.
Don’t make the mistake of researching a topic for a week without jotting down post ideas or even writing a post as you go along in your research.
As you’re reading, (if you are a blogger) great ideas will come to your mind. You should write them down.
Either write them in notes, or feel free to start putting them in your next blogger post and revise later when you’re done researching.
4. By creating more blog content that is well done your odds of it going viral go up exponentially.
It’s almost like a time bomb waiting to go off.
The more you create as a blogger the more likely you will create something that people will latch onto.
The less you create the less likely you will create a blog post that goes viral.
I personally found that the time I put into making something go viral didn’t work as well as making lots of content and then when one of mine did hit a nerve with my unique audience trying to create more blog content like that and better than that.
Convert your energy as a blogger into creating lots and lots of good content. Learn your unique audience and give them what they want.
Try this for yourself and let us know how it goes!
5 Neil Gaiman Insightful Tips For Beginning and Aspiring Writers
Ever since joining Masterclass and taking Neil Gaiman’s Masterclass on writing, Mr. Gaiman has been one of my favorite authors to listen to and learn from.
It is especially great for aspiring writers, whether you are a beginner or not.
As aspiring writers ourselves, when Neil speaks about writing it’s hard to not get inspired and want to create better stories and more interesting stories.
The way he talks about writing makes you want to be adventurous in your writing and throw caution to the wind. Not every idea has to be the pinnacle of all writing ideas ever. Just write down the idea in your idea journal and write a short story for the ideas that are really stuck in your head.
Neil is very good at motivating aspiring writers to go ahead and just write and not worry about everything coming out perfect the first time and his career speaks for itself.
So with that in mind for our aspiring writers, here are some great writing tips from Neil Gaiman:
# 1 Write.
I love it.
For years I’ve lived under the principle of just write. Just get it out on the page. Don’t stop and think about it, just write and get out it and then come back and think about it later.
It is easy for me and other aspiring writers personally to get caught up in trying to think out every corner of an idea and that it has to be perfect in order for me to get started.
But certain professional writers will tell you that that is a paralyzing fate and I couldn’t agree more, so I just love this simple advice from Mr. Gaiman.
Write. Just Write.
Don’t overthink it.It doesn’t have to be perfect the first time. It really doesn’t have to be perfect at all, but if you don’t get the story out, no one will ever read it and no one will ever be able to enjoy it. And there are too many stories that have never been told or heard for this reason alone and the world is worse off for it.
# 2 It’s Your Writing, You’re Allowed to do Whatever You Like With it.
As aspiring writers, we have to be very careful not to let others change it away from what you really want it to be.
The thing is, everyone has an opinion, even us at DTWT. I have my certain opinions on what elements of storytelling make a great story and my wife does too, and we don’t always even agree with each other.
The important thing here is that you have to feel confident in what you want the story to be and you MUST do your best to tell it as such without worrying about others’ opinions, just tell your story the best way it can be told and that’s all you can do.
# 3 Write the Story the Best You Can. Write the Story the way it NEEDS to Be Written.
At the end of the day, just do your best to write the story you see. You know the story and you’re the only one that knows the story (unless you are co-authoring of course.)
Envision each moment in your imagination and do your best to put the words out so that your reader will be able to enjoy the adventure, the mystery, the suspense, the way you saw it and felt it.
Make them feel what your characters are feeling, the pain, the joy, the surprise. Make your reader see what you see so that you are just passing along the story to someone else so that they could tell it next.
If you enjoy Fictional writers like Neil Gaiman, Storytelling and writing in general, you might love owning a domain of your own where you can write about it? Ever want to own your own domain name (Yourname.com)?
Bluehost hosts your blog so that you can own your domain and make money blogging. Check them out only if you’re interested in making money blogging; otherwise, go for a free blog instead 🙂
# 4 Fix It, But Remember that Perfection is Like Chasing the Horizon.
Perfection is an impossible task.
As aspiring writers, we can’t fall into the trap of editing over and over and over and never being satisfied with what it turns out to be.
At some point, it is like a child. You have to let it go make noise of its own and see how it does out on its own.
If we wait until it’s perfect we’ll never let it go and it will become nothing.
# 5 Put it aside. Read It Later Pretending As You’ve Never Read It Before.
I love this advice and I couldn’t express more how important it is in the writing process for aspiring writers. As a copywriter and blogger, I have made this a priority in my work and do it with almost every piece I write.
You’d be shocked at the things you see differently a day later or even a couple of hours later.
I am very much of the opinion that we as aspiring writers should write it all out first without editing almost anything.
Writing involves creating whereas editing involves more deep thinking. They are a little different in terms of work and energy so it seems to be a better workflow to do them separately. (Of course, you’ll end up doing some writing and editing simultaneously, but for the most part, try to make them different sessions in your workflow.)
As aspiring writers at some point, you’ll get very good and won’t feel like you need to edit much, but at first, you want to do your best to save your editing for after the entire document exists in its first draft.
Minor edits are okay but don’t get lost in the paralyzing habit of editing over and over and over again and not moving forward.
The best way for aspiring writers to keep moving forward is to just keep writing and come back to edit once the entire first draft is done.
I hope these writing tips help you as much as they have helped other aspiring writers!
If you’re aspiring writers or know aspiring writers and haven’t checked out Neil Gaimen’s Masterclass and love to write and learn I can’t recommend it more.
It’s easier to resonate with main characters that are written as not perfect because we ourselves know we aren’t perfect.
We want a hero that is good for the most part but “breaks the rules” sometimes to get the bad guys in the end. Or breaks the rules to help out others.
Audiences are tired of being hurt by “the rules” and seeing their loved ones hurt by the system so when the protagonist helps someone this way it makes the audience see them as gray and not “uptight.” (None of this is meant to be real-life advice, this is just creative writing ideas for fictional stories.)
For example: Venom, Daredevil, Vampires, Harry Potter, etc.
There are many now that could be named and a plethora to draw inspiration from.
And you might as well because right now audiences are loving it.
And why not? Many are bored with the same old knight in shining armor stories and are looking for entertaining stories outside of that box.
So you might as well write your protagonist in gray and make your antagonist gray as well.
Why not write stories where it is hard to tell who is the “bad guy?” And who is the “good guy?”
Keep your audience guessing all the way through in order to create great curiosity and suspense as to what might happen next.
Write your protagonist doing something Morally questionable when we first meet them.
This could be the case or later on, you could show that what they were doing was totally fine, it just looked questionable the way you wrote it.
Play around with this idea. The sky’s the limit.
Have your protagonist break the law to catch some bad guys. Have them blackmail someone, or even kill someone or injure them in order to make them talk.
How to Write your Antagonist Grayer
Make your antagonist a Doctor, or a person of good reputation. Someone that volunteers a lot, that is very charming and that everyone likes.
Show their home life to be nice and kind and polite. Make their wife or husband adore them and make them very kind to their children.
And then several chapters in surprise the audience with some heinous act they are committing.
Do your best to paint the antagonist in the best light before revealing that they are the antagonist.
Another way to write your antagonist gray is to write them a victim. They could be a victim of the home they’ve been raised in or a victim of society be it a community school.
Show in-depth their suffering before they snap and do something truly evil and your audience will feel conflicted about whether they are indeed evil or not, making them ultimately gray in your audience’s eyes.
To make your antagonist grayer find ways to make your audience root for them to win or succeed in their mission or goal.
Why Not Write Two Characters that are Equally Good and Evil?
Why not make your protagonist and antagonist equally good and evil and keep your audience guessing?
Make them run into each other and in order for one to solve their problem, the other cannot and choose which one you want to succeed and what the consequences will be for the other.
In order for one to win the other must lose, and keep the stakes high.
Or you can make it that in the end they team up and are able to accomplish both of their goals, but in order to do so something of consequence must happen. Either they are both evil or both good. Or the “good” one could help the “evil” one and in the end, this leaves the audience feeling the curiosity of which character was bad or good.
There are many possibilities with this scenario and it’s not done often.
Let us know how it goes!
Did this post inspire you on a story idea?
Did you agree or disagree with the ideas in this post?
5 Tips For Being a Better Storyteller that Hollywood No Longer Cares About (Apparently)
To be honest, in the recent making of movies and books there has been a push toward moving away from good dynamic storytelling to “trying to be different” and being “politically correct.” To have an agenda beyond telling an amazing story to viewers and readers.
What happened to the good ole’ days when you wrote or told a story so that the audience enjoyed it and it was good?
What happened to just being a good storyteller?
It would be one thing if they added in a few beliefs that add to the story or make it better, but when they blatantly add this type of propaganda and material at the expense of the story being told well and executed well it can be quite disappointing.
And let me state very clearly, I have absolutely no problem with beliefs and moral being in stories, BUT only if it makes sense and makes the story better. The problem I’m seeing heavily these days is when the writer cares more about their worldview and message than the story itself. This makes for poor writing and poor storytelling.
If you are going to be a storyteller and in the storytelling business, be it movies, TV, Books, etc. You should really take a hard look at why you are telling a story and if you like it yourself.
One of the keys to knowing you are headed in the right direction is to like what you are creating so much that it makes you curious to see where it will end up and you enjoy people reading or watching it.
If you are telling a story and you yourself aren’t entertained by it, why would anyone else be and we as creators that want to excel should be asking ourselves, “will anyone else enjoy this?”
It’s a hard question, to be honest with ourselves, but if we are going to make stories that readers enjoy we have to put ourselves in their shoes.
Is my story compelling?
Does it have a good flow?
How does the ending make my readers feel? Resolved and appreciative or unresolved?
If we aspire to be great storytellers we must appreciate and take note of the fact that our readers are “investing” their time to read what we write.
They take a “chance” on us of whether or not at the end of the time they have given to us, will they feel like it was worth their time?
Asking yourself good questions like this on a regular basis as a writer can help keep you on the right track for why you are a storyteller at all and how you can make the future of storytelling excellent compared to where it has ended up today with certain over-glorified “critics?”
In a world with story saturation, too many writers just trying to be different, and not keeping their main priority on telling a compelling story, can we do better?
I think yes, we can! 🙂
All that to say, you can use certain storytelling tricks that have been around for ages but have been neglected as of late in Hollywood and other major storytelling productions.
These tips and tricks are not so “secret” as one might think, but if you didn’t know them from studying the art and foundations of storytelling they might appear new to you.
So let’s dive in!
Keep these in mind the next time you are writing and you will do yourself and your readers a huge service:
Plot Must Move Characters And Characters Must move Plot
Create Good Plot Questions but Leave None Unanswered
Great Stories Have Characters That Change Respectively With Time And Experiences
A Boring Story Shouldn’t Be Written As An Excuse To Write One Exciting Scene
A “Secret” Message Behind The Story Shouldn’t Dictate Or Override The Direction the Story Takes
# 1 Plot Must Move Characters And Characters Must Move Plot
In reality, we have coined a little phrase. You may have heard it in a science class before. It is “cause and effect.”
To be a great storyteller we must think of cause and effect when writing.
In a great story, the author has done an amazing job of using cause and effect between characters and plot in such a way that you as the consumer didn’t think much about it. You just accepted it because well IT MADE SENSE.
This is huge in good storytelling. If what’s happening in your plot doesn’t motivate your characters or your characters don’t motivate the plot in a natural cause and effect sort of way, you will have many readers stopping mid-sentence questioning why or how something important happened in your story instead of accepting it without question.
Here’s a good example of using cause and effect.
For example: Polly loves chocolate chip cookies, but Polly’s mom said “No sweets on Tuesdays.”
So it came to pass that on one Tuesday afternoon poor Polly waited till mommy dearest went to the grocery store. On her way out, mommy said, “Remember, no cookies today Polly, so stay away from the cookie jar.”
Polly said “Yes, mommy dearest!” and out the door, mommy went.
Polly watched through the window as mommy pulled out of the driveway and down the street until she was completely out of sight.
The coast was clear, Polly sprinted to the cookie jar and looked inside. The Chocolate Chip cookies looked more golden brown and more crispy than normal. Polly loved when they were more crispy with a little bit of chewy in the middle.
Something inside Polly told her that she should listen to mommy and she gave her word that she wouldn’t eat them, after all, it reasoned we can have them guilt free tomorrow. That’s not so long to wait, is it?
Something else inside Polly pulled and tugged relentlessly without words the urge to eat them all in one sitting!
Polly listened to the latter and she reached for the lid and lifted it.
Just then she heard a terrifying growl behind her!
She dropped the lid and turned around to see a terrifying giant hairy monster towering above her.
“Get away from the cookie jar!” it roared.
Polly screamed and ran into the other room.
Now at this point, if I’ve done a good job of using the plot to motivate the character and the character to motivate the plot, a good cause and effect relationship if you will, then you won’t be questioning the plot or Polly’s actions based on what you know and are learning about her.
If I’ve done a really good job as a storyteller, then you might even be curious about what’s going to happen to poor Polly next.
If a writer is doing their job well than readers will almost always be wondering, “what happens next?”
This silly little story will hopefully help you see how you can make your characters move and motivate the plot and how your plot can motivate them.
By saying that Polly loves chocolate chip cookies we give the audience motive as to why Polly would have an internal battle about taking the cookies when she knows she shouldn’t.
This also takes liberty to assume that most readers understand the conflict of knowing they should obey parents and authority figures but also knowing the inner struggle of wanting to do something their authority has told them they can’t do (I didn’t explain that in the story because it is what we call an “assumed law” or “natural law.”)
As far as plot goes we set it up that the plot is Polly isn’t allowed to have her favorite treats on Tuesdays. By declaring that the protagonist loves something but can’t have it sets up a problem for the protagonist that makes the reader intrigued as to how they will resolve that problem. So we used the plot to motivate Polly to lie and then disobey and we used Polly to carry the plot along from her first problem to her second even bigger problem (the big hairy monster appearing behind her.)
If you’re doing your job well as a storyteller you will find unique and clever ways to use what you reveal to readers about the plot and about the characters to affect each other in a delightful give and take, cause and effect game.
This game goes back and forth until you decide it’s time to resolve all the big questions and problems that lead to a resolution. Also use the plot to reveal more about your character and use your character to reveal more plot points, major and minor.
# 2 Create Good Plot Questions but Leave None UnansweredStoryteller
A personal pet peeve of mine in stories I watch or read is loose ends or unanswered questions. Actually both my wife and I will sit and talk about a show after we watch it and talk about whether there were holes in the plot.
Sometimes the storytellers bring up these really great questions that pique your curiosity and then they do absolutely nothing with it. This is a HUGE letdown. I can’t tell you how many times my wife and I have watched what seemed like it was going to be a great show only to be let down by unanswered questions and plot holes.
Either they switched writers in the middle or the writer was trying to get away with something by making you curious to get your attention but then being too lazy to really have a good answer for that question. <—don’t do this to your readers.
Creating curiosity for your readers is a great service to them and a tool for making your writing more interesting, but only if you are going to give them the joy of answering the question you made at some point in the story.
As a storyteller, it is like making a promise to a friend. Any time you purposely create a question for your audience you are making a silent promise to them that you are going to answer that question later on. They are counting on it.
If you create a question with no intent to answer it just to keep them reading you are cheating your audience and they will lose interest in your work because there is no pay off in the investment that they have made by buying it and reading it.
Creating Curiosity in your Story and Why
Everything in your story must move the plot or the characters forward. If you create a question that leads your readers forward your answer to that question also needs to push the plot forward, help create character depth, and be enjoyable.
If you are going to create curiosity in your reader, make sure the payoff is good and clever. Give them what they are looking for, THE ANSWERS to their curiosity 🙂
# 3 Great Stories Have Characters That Change Respectively With Time And Experiences
This one is more of a personal opinion than writing code, but if you want to make your characters more realistic and more interesting, they are going to develop and change slightly as your time with them goes. Not all of them should change. Some should be static and not change, but some should also change with time and experience.
There are many factors that come into play with character change.
How much time are we spending with the character?
What type of trauma are they going through?
How old are they and what have they gone through in their past?
How do other characters react to their change?
Is it dramatic or subtle?
These are just a few important factors but there are definitely more.
Unless your character is very old and we are only with them a day or two they should change in some ways as we go because real people change as they live.
Some things about them don’t change and some things do.
Is it a growing-up story?
Do they cut their hair and start wearing make-up?
Is it more dior?
Do they start drinking and smoking heavily?
It is a complicated task but worth thinking about and including in your writing as an up and coming storyteller.
For example, in Lord of the Rings. Gandalf does not change much and this is appropriate for his character, but Frodo and Samwise do go through a deep maturing and change.
# 4 A Boring Story Shouldn’t Be Written As An Excuse To Write One Exciting Scene or Idea
This seems like a no brainer, but it should be said. A good story isn’t made from a motive of putting certain ideas into it. In recent films and writing you can tell that a good story isn’t always the motive of why something shows up in a story, sometimes the writer wants to share a political message or write a pretty looking scene. Things like this should not be motivations for writing a story or adding them in.
And all annoying political messages aside, some writers want to write about an amazing battle or a dramatic conversation, or an intergalactic space race. By all means, write what you want to, but we should watch out for writing entire novels around wanting to write out one battle.
There is nothing wrong with writing neat ideas that come up, but some of these ideas should go through a writing process.
They should be written as a short story first so that way you can enjoy writing and write what you want and get it out on the page, but give it time to marinate and look to expand it through a process that makes sense. Be wary of looking to write a big long book, just to make one specific scene come to life. You might find that the rest of the book is a letdown.
And at the same time, don’t be afraid to start with an idea and see where it ends up.
There are always two sides to a coin. I know for a fact that many wonderful stories started with a small idea and grew from that so definitely write any ideas you have down. I don’t mean not to write your ideas down and create many short stories along the way.
What I mean here is if you are going to create a beautiful scene or share a message or create an amazing battle don’t be lazy about making the story the best it can be and putting it in seamlessly and cleverly.
Be a storyteller, not just a writer.
In my opinion, I think that great stories should be written from the motive of writing an amazing story. That’s usually when the story turns out good. It is that simple.
It used to be that companies had to make good stories to be seen and heard. Now companies are so huge that they continue to make content with other motives.
I would love to see new writers and storytellers rise up that are interested in telling a story because it’s good and enjoyable and they want to serve their audience.
# 5 A “Secret” Message Behind The Story Shouldn’t Dictate The Direction the Story Goes
Some would say that the meaning behind your story is more important than the story itself. I would disagree.
That would mean that adding a scene or changing the ending to send the message instead of creating a well-made story is more important.
That is a horrible idea. Have you ever been reading an amazing story only to be let down by the ending and realize that the whole point was some political world message?
Disappointing isn’t it?
I mean think about it from a reader’s point of view. When you go into the book store and start browsing, what are you thinking?
“I’m looking for an enjoyable read. Something that will entertain me in the genre that is my favorite. I would love to find something that’s so good that I can’t wait to tell my friends and family about it.”
When have you ever walked into the romance section thinking, “I hope I find a romance with a secret message hidden in it about being respectful to the President no matter whether I agree with them or not?”
No, no one has ever looked for that. If someone is entertained by politics they look for books on politics and so on.
So be a better writer than these “secret message” writers that trick their readers into reading their message when really the reader is looking to be entertained.
If you are going to put an important message into your story, be sure that it makes sense and makes the story better. Make sure that it adds to the story and doesn’t destroy it in the end.
What are your thoughts about amazing storytelling?
Do you agree or disagree that Hollywood cares more about a message than telling a good story?
What is a tip you would add to tell better stories?
What advice would you give other storytellers?
Do you think the storytellers of Hollywood are doing a good job?
What is your favorite genre as a storyteller? Do you feel like that genre is being treated fairly by the storytellers that are influential right now?
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