#writeups
Prospective:
Have your readers “walk in your character’s shoes”.
It’s attractive to read about a worse situation than your own. Your annoying neighbor next door or your upcoming doctors’ appointment.
One way you can do this is by putting your characters in tough situations, allow the unimaginable to happen to them.
Ideas:
▪️A character loses leg/legs
▪️A character contracts a rare, uncuriable disease
▪️A character is forbidden to ever marry but is desperately in love
▪️A character watches someone close to them suffer and die
▪️A character accidentally kills someone they love
▪️A character’s life is threatened
▪️A character contracts a psychopathic stalker
▪️A character gets amnesia
▪️A character forgets how to speak
▪️A character that’s a millionaire suddenly goes bankrupt
▪️A character is blackmailed into committing crimes
▪️A character is sentenced to death for saving someone’s life
▪️A character loses their job and can’t find employment
▪️A character goes into a coma for five years and suddenly wakes up
▪️A character is cheated on repeatedly but fights for their partner regardless
▪️A character loses their beauty to a horrible accident
▪️A character goes to a mental ward but they’re perfectly sane and can’t prove it
Escapism:
1. seeking to escape from reality
2. seeking to escape from reality by form of books
▪️your readers want to escape from the worry and unpleasantness of life.
▪️keep this in mind and you’ll write great stories that your readers won’t be able to put down.
This is especially easy if you add suspenseto your book.
How to create suspense:
▪️start scenes and chapters with urgency
Example:
Molly woke up.
She yawned and stretched and moseyed into the kitchen to make her cereal.
She found her favorite kind (cinnamon toast crunch) and poured it into a bowl with milk.
Now, she sat down in front of the window to watch the morning birds pecking the ground.
Let’s say someone is about to break into Molly’s house and kidnap her. Well… your readers will probably never make it to find out because this scene started out with no promise and no urgency what so ever. It’s just a boring morning routine that no one wants to hear.
Let’s try it another way…
Molly woke up with a strange feeling in her gut.
The house was quiet and she remembered that her parents had left on vacation.
Maybe she was just nervous about being alone. Yeah, that was it.
She started breakfast but the feeling wouldn’t leave her so she decided to lock all the windows and bolt the front door.
But the strange feeling persisted.
Suddenly, she remembered that she had forgotten to lock the basement door.
She sat down her bowl of cereal and slowly headed down the dark stairs…
Synonyms for “Looked”:
▪️Heglanced at the girl.
▪️Shegazed at the horizon, unaware of how much time had passed.
▪️Shespotted him in the crowded airport.
▪️Shepeeked through the curtain, giggling.
▪️He saw a glimpse of the cabin through the trees.
▪️Hewatched her car disappear down the road.
▪️Shesurveyed her child’s arm for any scratches.
▪️Shestudied the words on the page.
▪️Hespied the dog in the bushes.
▪️The girl eyed the boy, crossing her arms.
▪️Shechecked her purse to make sure nothing was missing.
▪️His eyes focused on hers, his heart fluttering.
▪️Heinspected her expression, seeing that she was upset.
▪️Hescanned the church building. It was empty.
▪️Sheogled the cake, licking her lips.
▪️Hepeered up at the balcony, seeing her there.
▪️The child squinted at the ocean against the sunlight.
▪️Heviewed the blood on the carpet.
For more, try this book with impactful synonyms that will bring your writing to life ☺️ link below:
Synonyms for “Walk”:
▪️Theystrolled through the garden hand in hand.
▪️Shetramped through the mud, her legs aching.
▪️Hehiked up the hill.
▪️The cat awoke and moseyed to her food bowl.
▪️Heprowled around the corner as the girl neared.
▪️Hemarched around the school yard, feeling proud.
▪️Sheambled into the kitchen with a yawn.
▪️Hewandered through the hallways, staring down at th map.
▪️Shetrodslowlyacross the old bridge, watching her feet.
▪️Heproceeded on his way after stopping for a drink.
▪️The boys trooped into the locker room after a long game.
▪️The boy and girl sauntered down the road.
▪️Sheplodded toward the house, having finished her jog.
▪️Hepatrolled up and down the street.
▪️The dogs roamed the open meadows.
Word count: 13,140
How is yours going?
Writing Hooks
- Start your book with an onomatopoeia: (Sounds words)
Bark!
I jet up in bed with a racing heart. Why is Luna barking at this hour?
Bang!
The sound echoed through the woods, birds hurrying into flight.
- Start your book with repetitive phrases:
No. No. I stared at the torn picture in unbelief.
“Where’s dad? Where’s dad?” I asked, tears running down my face.
- Start your book with ADJECTIVES:
White swirls covered the top of my salted caramelcoffee.
Agiant blue wave crashed over the little blonde-headedgirl.
- Start your book with a personal experience:
I always loved the way rain sounded on a tin roof; it would lull me fast to sleep.
When I was five, my big brother had punched me in the nose. He used to always get away with bullying me.
- Start your book with SETTING:
The neighbors’ house was dark, always shadowed even on a sunny day. The black iron gate that surrounded the mansion kept everyone out and what was in, stayed in.
The park was full of children and their pets, racing back and forth through the sandboxes and dewy morning grass.
Designing the white wolf (and dog) trope.
It can be difficult to differentiate canine characters with similar color pallets. It’s really important to express the feelings and emotions of the character through the pose and facial construction or otherwise they’ll basically be a clone. I took Aniu as the base design that I referenced from for all 3 drawings. I LOVE her design in general as she really hits the mark for me as far as great wolf designs. She was just a re-hash of her source work, but it gave me a lot of ideas as to HOW to build a good looking wolf character.
The original art style for Wolf’s Rain is gorgeous, but the wolves themselves fall short in terms of designs within the style. They’re all basically the same with a few tweaks here and there, so I wanted the wolf designs to reflect their human designs and personalities. Kiba is the most wolf-y acting of the main cast, so I didn’t give him a dynamic post that would make him look too human. He’s proud, but also pensive and determined. Since he’s obviously some kind of arctic/tundra wolf I gave him a lot more fur than the other wolves (but not as fluffy/ethereal as Aniu). This also gave him a nice silhouette to distinguish him form the rest of the cast. My main focus was on his eyes/face. I really wanted to capture that serious far off look he has in many of the episodes while searching for paradise.
Akame is a kishu inu, not a wolf, but his design is also a good example for comparison. Similar to Kiba, he’s proud, but not prideful. The source of his pride come to the dedication to his clan, not an internal struggle like Kiba, and his pose reflects that (head held high, more open stance). He’s also older than Aniu and Kiba so his face is a more worn and roughed up. Since his name means ‘red eyes’ I played with the idea of him being albino and gave his base palette a red tone. This is also because I had planned to also draw Jinnai and Kirikaze as white kishus, once again to differentiate them from their leader in color and design. Probably could have blocked him in a bit more to make him look more doggy, but sometimes the design speaks to me more than 100% accurately portraying the animal. You can lose a lot of good lines and character if you make them too stiff or too close to real animals. It’s a cartoon, so it’s good to relax sometimes and have some fun with lines, shape, and weight :0!!
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