This sounds silly, but i've got down characters and I'm starting to get a grasp on plotting, but it's come to my attention that I'm not good at writing anything else. (Description, Dialogue, Narration, ETC.) Any tips, help or resources? It'll be greatly appreciated!
your best friends are your imagination and pinterest.
Pinterest-
PIN is filled with literally thousands of prompts, exercises and writing tips that will absolutely change your life. I personally only have boards for my ocs, so I don't have any ones to link you, but searching things like "dialogue prompt" or "describing words" is a perfect place to start! I wholeheartedly recommend making aesthetic boards for your characters as well, not only is it incredibly fun, but it also introduces you to a bunch of ideas you might not have even thought of- which can add to both your descriptions of the character and how you write their speech!
Imagination-
this feels obvious but your imagination is literally incredible. I find imagining animated scenarios between 2 characters really helps me before I go on to describing it! it helps me actually see what's going on so I can go back and describe it in detail later! Your brain is a very valuable resource and can create beautiful content if you just give it the right prompts!
I also recommend-
Picrew- an art website where you can use other people's dress-up projects to get a good visual idea of what you want your character to look like, very helpful for describing
Picsart- an art app that I use mostly for clothes and items the character might use, gets a good feel for their overall vibe based on what bag they carry or what type of shoes they wear
Character Profile Thread- this thread if filled with helpful questions to get you thinking about how your characters might act, speak or look like
Any character thread really- just a great character resource and heaps of fun
Brainstorming with others- I find this very helpful too, just info-dumping can really get parts of your brain working that you didn't even know you had!
Milanote- a great website for visual reference, sort of like an online corkboard.
hng prose my best friend
okay!!! so lemme give you a few of my writing tips that i use throughout writing!!
Internal Monologues:
- okay these can get real boring real fast if they're more than a few paragraphs long. keep these suckers short and sweet
- pack the biggest punch you possibly can with this! writing is unique in the way that we get to "read" character's thoughts! that doesn't happen in art and film!! use you character's voice!! are they snarky, serious, clueless? do they use big words or a lot of interjections?
- piggybacking off of that–if you have multiple POVs in your story, ensure, that readers can tell who's narrating without having to flip back to the beginning of the chapter.
- internal monologues are also where we see the character struggle!!! have them ask questions to themselves. have them constantly remind themselves of their goal. have them question if what they're doing is right and then have them SHUT THAT VOICE DOWN!!!
Syntax:
- or also known as my favorite part of writing. OR in other words, the sentence structure and flow.
- short, snappy sentences build tension up to the big POW point! long, drawn out sentences set a much different scene. HOWEVER don't write your entire book with all similarly length sentences. If you do that, it will become incredibly difficult to read. a varied flow makes it MUCH EASIER to read!!
- punctuation choices are much more crucial than you think!! personally, I'm a dialogue-only-exclamation-mark kind of man. when written in a paragraph it feels a little funky. the ! aside, putting a period where there would otherwise be a question mark adds a level of finality to the tone that could make readers go OHOHOHO
LITERARY DEVICES!!!:
- omg i love these so much
- if you aren't familiar with them, I'd heavily recommend doing so before even beginning to write. they revolutionize creative writing
- one of my favorite things to do while writing is incorporate a metaphor that lasts throughout the whole book. In a past work (a fanfiction) I described one of the MCs eyes as the Mediterranean and the POV character constantly described how he would drown in them or compare them to the weather at sea!! the metaphor lasts throughout the 14k piece and its one of my favorites that I've ever written because of how concise it is
- in another work (also a fanfiction), I mentioned the POV character as having a glass heart and how it shattered deep within the empty cavity of his chest. he buried it with his love and then it slowly began to piece itself back together as he raises his love's child.
- personally, eyes are Mt favorite thing to allude metaphors and personification to bc I am just like this
Description:
- do not overdescribe. i don't need to know what color the floors are, I don't need to know exactly what Mee Maw cooks every night, I don't need to be walked through the MCs entire morning routine. long descriptions are BORING and I skip them 85% of the time
- UNLESS you have a Chekov's Gun sort of thing, then a little bit of overdesribing is OK.
- don't infodump descriptions of characters. it's okay to say like "Chris, a blonde and pale sort of thing, always loved to use my head as an armrest." this doesn't say much but we know that Chris is blonde, pale, tall and scraggly based on the sort of thing bit. a little later in the story you could say "Chris adjusted his glasses and scratched at his never-ending face acne."
- sometimes it's really fun to use words that you wouldn't usually use to describe things to describe them. describe a table as meek! describe a valley as longing! call a tree creaturesque! not only will yhis stick in your reader's brains, but it's also really fun to write
Dialogue:
- similar to narrator tone, make sure you can tell characters apart!! some might use slang, others might talk woth an accent, do some use really long words, does another make odd nosies in between sentences??
- read your dialogue out loud!!! this helps make sure that it sounds natural
- use varied tags, but it's okay to use say and said often!! when you switch said to a different word every single sentence, it gets funky and hard to read
anyways!!! hope I helped!! i am so tired and i will revise this after I get some sleep, but I hope I was of assistance!!
