25 Ways To Fuck With Your Characters. As storyteller, you are god. And to be frank, you’re not a particularly nice god — at least, not if you want your story to resonate with readers. A good storyteller is a crass and callous deity who treats the characters under his watchful eye like a series of troubled butt-puppets. From this essential conflict — storyteller versus character — a story is born. (After all, that’s what a plot truly is: a character who strives to get above all the shit the storyteller dumps on his fool head.)
Put differently, as a storyteller it’s your job to be a dick. It’s your job to fuck endlessly with the characters twisting beneath your thumb. And here’s 25 ways for you to do just that. 1. Gods have avatars, mortal or semi-mortal beings that exist on earth to embody the deity’s agenda. 2. The audience and the character must know the stakes on the table — “If you don’t win this poker game, your grandmother will lose her beloved pet orangutan, Orange Julius.” 3. 4. 5. 6.
This one? 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations. The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations is a descriptive list which was created by Georges Polti to categorize every dramatic situation that might occur in a story or performance. To do this Polti analyzed classical Greek texts, plus classical and contemporaneous French works.
He also analyzed a handful of non-French authors. In his introduction, Polti claims to be continuing the work of Carlo Gozzi, who also identified 36 situations. Publication history[edit] “Gozzi maintained that there can be but thirty-six tragic situations. This list was published in a book of the same name, which contains extended explanations and examples. The list is popularized as an aid for writers, but it is also used by dramatists, storytellers and many others. The 36 situations[edit] Each situation is stated, then followed by the necessary elements for each situation and a brief description.
See also[edit] References[edit] External links[edit] 60 Awesome Search Engines for Serious Writers. June 20th, 2010 Finding the information you need as a writer shouldn’t be a chore. Luckily, there are plenty of search engines out there that are designed to help you at any stage of the process, from coming up with great ideas to finding a publisher to get your work into print. Both writers still in college and those on their way to professional success will appreciate this list of useful search applications that are great from making writing a little easier and more efficient.
Professional Find other writers, publishers and ways to market your work through these searchable databases and search engines. Writing These helpful tools will help you along in the writing process. Research Try out these tools to get your writing research done in a snap. Google Scholar: With this specialized search engine from Google, you’ll only get reliable, academic results for your searches.WorldCat: If you need a book from the library, try out this tool. Reference Need to look up a quote or a fact? Niche Writers. Write a Novel in a Month. Rhetological Fallacies. 12 Character Writing Tips for Fiction Writers. Character writing tips. Characters are the heart and soul of every story. Almost every great story is about people. Plot, setting, themes, and every other element of fiction is secondary to realistic characters that an audience can connect with on an intellectual or emotional level.
There are exceptions, of course. We connect with characters in fiction for any number of reasons. Some writers argue that it’s not necessary for readers to connect or identify with characters in a story. Character Writing Tips Readers won’t care about characters unless they are believable. The answer is simple: the best characters are realistic.
Here are 12 character writing tips to help you develop characters that feel like real people: Backstory: we are born a certain way, but our life experiences continually mold and shape us. How to Put These Character Writing Tips into Practice Characters need to be detailed and complicated in order to seem real. You could tackle each idea as a separate exercise. Kurt Vonnegut's 8 Tips on How to Write a Great Story. By Maria Popova The year of reading more and writing better is well underway with writing advice the likes of David Ogilvy’s 10 no-bullshit tips, Henry Miller’s 11 commandments, Jack Kerouac’s 30 beliefs and techniques, John Steinbeck’s 6 pointers, and various invaluable insight from other great writers.
Now comes Kurt Vonnegut (November 11, 1922–April 11, 2007) — anarchist, Second Life dweller, imaginary interviewer of the dead, sad soul — with eight tips on how to write a good short story, narrated by the author himself. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.Start as close to the end as possible.Be a Sadist. Books that will induce a mindfuck. Here is the list of books that will officially induce mindfucks, sorted alphabetically by author.
Those authors in bold have been recommended by one or more people as being generally mindfucking - any books listed under their names are particularly odd. You're welcome to /msg me to make an addition to this list. And finally, although he's way down at the bottom, my personal recommendation is definitely Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, as it turns the ultimate mindfuck: inverting the world-view of our entire culture, and it is non-fiction. The 10 Most Disturbing Books Of All Time.
In my younger days if I heard a book or movie was disturbing or hard to handle I generally took that as a challenge. Most books generally turned out to not be too bad, but occasionally I’d come across something that would leave me with a sick feeling in my stomach for weeks. I’ve largely outgrown this “genre” of late, but here are my picks for the ten most disturbing books of all time. Any one of these books is capable of leaving you feeling a little depressed at the least, and permanently scarred at the worst.
I’d say enjoy, but that doesn’t really seem appropriate … 10. Blindness is a book with a truly horrifying scenario at it’s heart: what if everyone in the world were to lose their sight to disease in a short period of time? 9. Anti drug crusaders should stop airing goofy commercials that nobody takes seriously and start pushing to have Requiem For A Dream made required reading for every high schooler in the country. 8. Naked Lunc is another ode to drug addiction. 7. 6. Bleak. 5. The 10 Types of Writers' Block (and How to Overcome Them) Tips for Writing Journals.