I am Mitch of Singapore, also an Ace. I enjoy reading superhero comics (especially Marvel); comic books aren't just for boys, girls read it too. However, I have no interest in any Marvel movie due to my jaded attitude, so I prefer Marvel cartoons like 90s X-Men TAS and Avengers EMH.
Those Marvel comics I love reading are New Warriors, X-Men, Young Avengers, X-Factor, Avengers (not that Bendis era), Generation X, Avengers Academy and X-Force.
Big fan of New Warriors and X-Men.
Quetzalcoatl, Feathered Serpent, Prince of the Nahuals
One of the four sons of Ometecuhtli, Quetzalcoatl reigns of the West, acting as a god of Light, Mercy, and wind. He and his brother Tezcatlipoca created humanity by sacrificing Cipactli, the earthmonster. As patron god of knowledge and learning, of Aztec priesthood, he invented books and the calendar. Being god of life & fertility as well, he gave maize to his people so that they may flourish and prosper. It is mistakenly thought that the Aztecs believed Hernan Cortes to be Quetzalcoatl; in fact, the myth was propagated by the Spanish after the bloody conquest of the indigenous people.
It was easy to base a story in fantasy when you were a kid. You ran around with a broom and pretended you were riding a horse. You climbed onto your swing set and pretended it was a pirate ship and that your backyard was a giant green sea. You pretended the living room floor was lava on a rainy day and that if you touched it you die.
When you’re an adult, it’s a lot harder because you’re constantly jumping back and forth, worrying about tiny details that you wouldn’t normally think twice about.
Worldbuilding is logic-based. Whatever rules you create, stick to them. Don’t keep changing things on and off all the time. That is if you’re writing absurdist literature in which there is no point or goal. Changing things constantly results in characters falling out of the story and plot holes.
When you encounter a plot hole, don’t panic. Take a break and experiment with some worldbuilding to see of you can stitch the gap back together. A character dies in a plot-holeish way? Well, how do they die? Are there ninja assassins in your world hired by the ruler or is there a plague started by a revolutionary who wants half the population dead?
The characters are the very fabric that holds your world together. without them, there really isn’t a story. If you’ve reached a snag in worldbuilding, pick a character and start building their backstory. That may start unraveling some strands that really need work.
For some, worldbuilding is never finished. So many people ask when will worldbuilding end? The answer is whenever the author says it’s done. If you think your story is complete enough with minimal worldbuilding, no one is going to judge you. If you have entire book lengths of backstories, moodboards, aesthetics, character face claims, etc, no one is going to judge you.
Hello! I hope you’re having a good day/night/evening (whenever you see this). I’m not good at explaining stuff so I hope what I ask isn’t too confusing.
I need a little help with the middle of my story. I already got the beginning, middle, and end in mind, it’s just something in the middle part that I need help with. Two of my characters find out about this big secret that someone of higher power (who is definitely power hungry) is keeping from everyone, and a lot of stuff happens(infighting and trying to make everyone aware before it’s too late) and it ends with the two characters betraying everyone else near the end of the story.
I didn’t want to use the “taking over the world” stereotype/cliche since I never really liked it, and I feel like it appears too often in fiction/fantasy worlds.
Basically what I’m trying to ask is, what are some secrets that people would betray each other for? Either for a good reason or a bad reason?
“What are some secrets that people would betray each other for” is a really broad question, especially when you allow for both good and bad reasons. It really depends on your story’s specifics. The big secret a medieval king might keep would be very different from the big secret a Steampunk industrialist or a modern oil and gas magnate might keep.
Also, it does matter whether or not that secret is good or bad. It would take me days to brainstorm and list some of the possible scenarios and different good and bad secrets that would go with each.
So, instead, I’m going to try to point you in the right direction. Answer the following questions for yourself and see if you can figure out what will work best for your story:
1) What is your story’s setting and time period? If you don’t know this already, it’s crucial to figure it out. Like I said above, when and where your story takes place can influence the kinds of secrets a powerful person might keep. If your story is set in a fantasy world, look for real world places and times to use as inspiration. Medieval Europe is the most common inspiration setting for fantasy worlds, but there are many other possibilities.
2) Who is the powerful person? What makes them powerful? How do they use that power on a daily basis? A person with power could be anything from the patriarch of a big family to a galactic emperor, so it’s important to define exactly who this person is, what power they have, and how they’re able to use that power. For example, the leader of a neighborhood Homeowner’s Association might have the power to make big decisions about how the neighborhood is run, what people can and can’t do with their homes and yards, and which businesses are hired to provide various services like maintaining the parks or playgrounds. They might use that power to manipulate people into doing them favors or doing things a specific way. Alternatively, a galactic emperor might have supreme control of all the various planetary governments under their control, as well as those planets’ militaries. They could use that power to further expand the power they already have, perhaps by starting a war between a planet under their control and a planet that’s not. Then they can either defeat the weakened planet to bring it under their control or pretend to save them, and still take them under their control. Who this person is and what power they have is essential to figuring out what secrets they might keep.
3) What is the powerful person’s goal and motivation? Whether you choose to make the powerful person Team Good (like say Tony Stark, Professor X, Padmé Amidala, or Chrisjen Avasarala) or Team Bad (like Darth Vader, President Snow, Cersei Lannister, Dolores Umbridge, or Miranda Priestly), you need to figure out what they’re after… what are they seeking with all this power they have? Why do they want to achieve that goal? Once you understand their goal and what motivates them to reach that goal, it’s easier to figure out what secrets they might keep in order to get there.
4) What entity does the powerful person rule? What function does the entity serve? Powerful people usually get their power by having some kind of authority within a powerful entity. That could be a homeowner’s association or city government, it could be a company or big corporation, it could be a monarchy or empire, or even just a group of people like a high school clique or a group of survivors. If you know what this entity is and what it does (its function, in other words) you can further understand how a big secret might play a role in the story. For example, if your powerful character is the CEO of a global corporation that makes and distributes candy, maybe the secret has to do with how the candy is made or how ingredients are obtained. If your powerful character is the 16-year-old leader of the popular girls at her 1990s high school, the secret could be that she’s in love with and spending time with the geekiest person in school. Or, maybe she’s the head cheerleader and is conspiring with the head cheerleader of another school to sabotage a third school’s team at the upcoming cheer competition. The secret your powerful person keeps is going to be tied to the purpose of the entity they control as much as to the power they hold.
5) What role do the betrayers play in all of this? What do they want? What is their motivation? First and foremost, whoever the betrayers are, they need to be in opposition with the powerful person. That means they either need to want a different goal than the powerful person is after, or they need to be mistaken about what’s going on–in other words, they think the powerful person is doing something bad (so they betray their secret) when in reality they misunderstood and the powerful person was doing something good. Either way, you need to know who your betrayers are, what their role in the entity the power person rules is, what their relationship to the powerful person is, and why they would oppose the powerful person to the extent that they would betray them and reveal their secret.
Sorry for the images of the dressed chickens, but I figured since they’re not so different from what you see in the grocery store (other than the legs and lack of shrink wrap) they wouldn’t be too offensive. This picture perfectly illustrates how melanistic silkie and ayam cemani chickens are; their skin, muscle, bone, and even organs are black (their eggs however are white or lightly tinted). Even in birds with white feathers, silkies still have black skin, as illustrated by the picture of the naked neck silkie.
Melanism (mel-uh-niz-uhm) is an increase in melanin, black pigmentation, in the skin, hair, scales, and/or feathers. Melanistic animals may be completely black or just unusually dark. In many melanistic individuals “ghost” markings where normally colored individuals would have black markings are apparent.
2. Choose a voice. The perspective of the narrator will determine how a character’s information is revealed over the course of the story
3. Do a slow reveal. Reveal information bit by bit as you tell the story—not unlike the way people get to know one another in real life.
4. Create conflict. Conflict is a literary device that pits opposing forces against one another, most often involving the main character.
5. Give important characters a backstory. We all have a backstory, and your fictional characters each need one, too. Dig into your characters’ lives and flesh out their histories.
6. Describe a character’s personality in familiar terms. To create believable characters, create a personality for your main and secondary characters based on characteristics of real people—that will help you create a multi-dimensional, round character with recognizable personality traits and quirks.
7. Paint a physical picture of your characters. Describe your character’s physical appearance: hair color, eyes, stature. What are their mannerisms? What is their body language like? Describe them to help readers envision a more realistic image of your character.
8. Develop secondary characters. Create different types of characters that contrast with one another.
Eva Perón’s corpse was embalmed with
glycerin to make it incorruptible. Her
body later disappeared for 16 years
before it was finally located, exhumed,
and flown to Spain- where her husband,
Juan Perón, and his 3rd wife, Isabel,
cleaned it by hand and kept it openly
displayed on their dining room table.
Isabel then began combing Eva’s hair
regularly as a daily devotion…
But it gets even weirder…
Her embalmer, Pedro Ara, was so meticulous that he preserved the body with all its internal organs, which are normally removed.
He also (allegedly) made several wax and vinyl replicas of Eva’s body, which were indistinguishable from the original, that the military later used to deceive those who sought the real corpse.
Evita’s body itself is profoundly symbolic of Argentina’s history.
The story of her remains does not end or begin here, because she was repeatedly moved around and displayed and ultimately placed in what is basically a nuclear bunker. She also got pretty banged up along the way…
The events that follow and precede this tiny snippet are fascinating; I encourage all history lovers to read more about it: SourceSource 2
Writing 1,667 every day for 30 days in a row isn’t easy for anyone. When you factor in your other commitments, it may be unrealistic without facing burnout or other negative consequences in your life.
Never force yourself into something that’s clearly not going to work. What’s the point of writing 50,000 words in a month if it causes you to resent writing in the future? People have written books before NaNoWriMo just fine. You can do it at your own pace.
However, NaNoWriMo is a massive event that breathes a lot of momentum into the writing community. Why not use that opportunity to take your writing projects a few notches forward?
In this post, I’ll share seven ways to make the most of NaNoWriMo, even if you end up dropping out.
1. Challenge Your Assumptions
If you’ve been writing for some time, you’ve developed various assumptions about how you work. You may consider yourself to be a morning person or night owl, plotter or pantser. Perhaps you consider yourself to be a slow writer — you’ve never written more than 2,000 words in one day. Maybe you think it’s impossible to finish a book in less than a year. Sure, other people can do it, but that isn’t how you work. Or so you think.
The good thing about NaNoWriMo is how shockingly high the goal is for most people. The vast majority of writers struggle to get anything done at all. Writing a novel in a month? Are you out of your mind?
It takes a crazy undertaking like that to force yourself to question what you’re doing. Let’s say your sweet spot is about 500 words per day. Why? Were you born that way? Or is it something you’ve always done so you assume that’s all you can do?
Perhaps if you cared less about the results, you could loosen up and write a lot more words than you ever thought possible.
NaNoWriMo is a fantastic opportunity to challenge your assumptions about what you’re capable of as a writer. Worst case, you quit early and go back to doing what you’ve always done.
2. Overcome Your Self-doubt
When you have all the time in the world to write, you waste a lot of it on doubting yourself. You’re wondering whether what you’re working on is good enough, going back and forth between different versions and prematurely agonising about minutiae.
Facing an ‘impossible’ challenge like NaNoWriMo and being on the deadline can help focus your mind on what truly matters. Perhaps for the first time ever, you may put your doubts aside, stop questioning everything and keep writing even if you don’t like what’s coming out.
The goal of NaNoWriMo is to write a novel, not a good novel.
3. Connect With Other Writers
Hundreds of thousands of people around the world will be joining NaNoWriMo this year. It may well be the biggest writing event of the year. It’s the perfect opportunity to connect with other writers and find like-minded people. Going through difficult things bonds people together.
Writing is a solitary pursuit. Finding people to share your woes with can be huge for your productivity as a writer. Although NaNo only lasts a month, if you hit it off with the right people, you can start a writing group and keep supporting each other for years to come.
4. See Others at Work
I am the most productive by far when I’m in the library. Being surrounded by people immersed in their work makes me want to do the same. Seeing others get things done will pull you forward with them.
There will be lots of people working on their novels next month. Tag along. Use the momentum of NaNoWriMo to your advantage.
5. Some Words Are Better Than No Words
Writing 50,000 words in a month feels pretty nice. But what’s wrong with writing 20,000 words in one month? Or 10,000 words? You don’t get punished for not reaching the goal. Anything that you produce during NaNo is valuable regardless of whether you finish.
Bad writing is more valuable than you think — that’s how you get to writing the good stuff.
If you’re sure that you can’t get to 50k, set a lower goal. Alternatively, try doing a different challenge.
In the past, I didn’t feel like joining NaNo. I was working on something else. It didn’t make sense. But I felt that I wasn’t reading enough short stories, so I challenged myself to read one new short story during the month of November.
The habit stuck with me for months afterwards. I ended up reading hundreds of short stories thanks to this simple challenge.
6. Learn from Failure
Perhaps you decide to have a go at hitting the 50,000-word goal, and it doesn’t work out. First of all, you’re far from being alone. 8 in 10 people who sign up don’t win.
Like anything else, it’s a lesson learned. What went differently from what you expected? Were you too tired to write? Did you get stuck often? What were the obstacles in your way? What can you do to reduce their impact on your productivity or remove them entirely?
Sometimes, epic failure can be a lot more valuable than mild success. You’ll learn things about yourself as a writer. You can’t work on improving what you don’t see.
We all have blind spots. A challenge like NaNoWriMo can be a great way of discovering them.
7. Create a Writing Routine
NaNoWriMo is a great time to challenge yourself to start a writing routine. Even if it isn’t feasible for you to hit the goal, you can write fewer words every day but use the momentum in the writing community during this time to create a routine that will last you way beyond the event.
If that’s something that you’re interested in, check out Writing Analytics — a writing app designed to help you create a sustainable writing routine. It combines several tools that writers use to stay focused and get words done consistently.
The app is free to try during NaNoWriMo (until 4 December 2021). Use *this link* to sign up to make sure you get the extended trial.
If you use Writing Analytics for NaNo and win, you’ll get 50% off your subscription for a year! Send your 2021 winner’s certificate to nanowrimo@writinganalytics.co, and we’ll apply the discount to your account.
About the Author
Hi, I’m Radek 👋. I’m a writer, software engineer and the founder of Writing Analytics — an editor and writing tracker designed to help you beat writer’s block and create a sustainable writing routine.
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