There’s Nothing Special About Comic Sans

In this video I tell you how you can make the “Comic Sans Trick” work for any font of your choosing. This was written for NaNoWriMo, but this trick will work no matter what kind of writing you do, whether video scripts, articles, or even every day emails!

How to Murder Your Husband writer found guilty of murdering husband

As the saying goes, write what you know.

writingwithacutlass:

How to Get Unstuck

Source:https://www.writingclasses.com/toolbox/articles/12-techniques-for-getting-un-stuck [Article by Susan Breen]

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POV: you started your wip a month ago, fingers flying over the keyboard with excitement, writing 20 pages in a single night. You’re overflowing with brilliant ideas, you see every scene playing out in your head. You’re sure that this manuscript will be finished within a month. Then, one quiet morning, you sat down at your desk, pulled up your document, and didn’t know what to do. How are you supposed to continue from here? You read over the last few chapters, cringing as you skim over the pages. You don’t know how to move forward, and you can’t bear to go back. You’re stuck. It’s a terrible feeling. I’m sure you know what it’s like, as well as how hard it is to get out of that sinkhole. Here are 10 techniques to help you get unstuck!

1: Go back to the beginning

Often, a story stalls because you haven’t given your protagonist enough to do. Give them tasks, goals, motivations, anything to keep them on their feet. Jump to the action. Create a quest, even if it seems small. What does your character want? Is there a deadline? What happens if they fail?

2: Look at your protagonist’s backstory

A character’s backstory always provides for extra building material. The more you know about your character, the more you have to write. A character’s history can tell you a lot about why they are who they are now.

3: Throw obstacles in your characters’ path

Ask yourself, what is the worst thing that could happen to your character right now? And then have it happen. Make sure your character has to fight for what they want. The more you raise the stakes and the more obstacles you throw at your character, the quicker your story will move forward. Not only are obstacles interesting, but they also make characters change and grow.

4: Introduce someone new

This is a great way to shake up the story when you get stuck. Have a new character walk into your main character’s life, making things interesting. Are they an obstacle? Will they help your character achieve their goal? Make sure they spice up the plot enough; you don’t want an unnecessary character just wandering around in your story.

5: Unsettle your character

Every character has a particular way of seeing themselves. They believe things about themselves and that’s who they think they are. But what if something happens that challenges those beliefs? Will they start doubting themselves? Time for an existential crisis? Make the character rediscover who they really are.

6: Jump ahead

Say you’re stuck on page 140. Ever since you started the story, you’ve been really excited to write this one particular scene, but you’d expected it to take place on page 240. How are you going to fill in those 100 pages in between where you are now and where that scene will take place? I advise you to go ahead and write that one scene now. Who knows, you might discover an idea buried in that out-of-order scene that should have happened earlier. Boom, there you have an idea. Finding threads in future scenes might give you background to write earlier in the story.

7: Give yourself a deadline

This method is probably one of the most effective (perhaps most stressful) ways of getting your book written. Ever wonder how published authors get their novels cranked out so fast? Yeah, it’s because there are likely 20 people waiting for their manuscript on September 20, for example. You might not have publishers waiting for your manuscript, but you can set your own deadline. And then stick to that schedule. Setting deadlines really works, that’s why you always write more during nanowrimo than you would without a deadline.

8: Look inward

Many authors write about topics that are personal for them. Something painful, something they could never quite get rid of. A death of a loved one, an addiction, you name it. Writing our own experiences into our book can be extremely painful, but it might be for the better. One reason you may be stuck in your story is because you’re delaying a scene. You don’t want to write it, because you know it’ll hurt. But you’ve got to push through it sometime. Get it over with now and finish that novel. Now I know not all of us are delaying scenes because of some traumatic experience. Even if it’s only because you don’t like writing a certain character, the same counts for you.

9: Take a break

Step away from the desk. Change your surroundings. This always works for me. Whenever I go on vacation, sometimes even when I leave my room, ideas come to me like I wished they would when I’m sitting at my desk. Write down all those ideas, but don’t act on them right away. Give yourself a break when you need it, and that’s more often than you think. Go for a walk and write down all the ideas you think of.

10: Remember why you started

Whenever you feel like giving up on this story, just remember why you started in the first place. You wanted to write this book to portray a theme that’s important to you? To bring something special to the world? There are people out there who need your story. Your favorite book probably went through the same thing, but aren’t you glad the author persevered through it to publish this masterpiece?!

No, not the close friends, besties, roommates, colleagues anything but lovers, kind of roommates. 

Actual people who live together. Specifically I’m going to be talking from experience and I haven’t been independent too long (early-mid twenties so about four years of independece) so keep that in mind. 

Character’s who are roommates are great fun. They live together which means there are not limits, middle of the night? No problem, just a room away! 

But sharing your space with somebody can be frustrating, so here are some conflict ideas: 

-Breaking something valuable to the other, and not understanding. So, I’ve seen a lot of breaking something important, trying to hide it or fix it before they find out, trying to replace it. And that’s enjoyable and heartbreaking at the same time. But what about when they don’t understand the importance? So here’s a personal story, my new roommates broke a plate the other day, not one from the kitchen but one I had tucked away in a spare room, it’s old and a bit dirty, and they told me, promised to buy a new plate. But the thing is, I don’t want a new plate. The only reason I kept that plate is because it was in a big box of stuff my dad gave me when I moved out. Most of it is crap. It was when he gave it to me. It still is now. But he gave them to me. And they remind me of him. And his no longer with me. So I hold onto a good few things that are absolutely worthless. But it’s hard for my roommate to wrap their head around the fact that what they broke was irreplaceable to me. 

-This leads onto, banning stuff. My roommate also managed to break two pots, impressive given they’ve only been here two weeks. It’s not important, they just went and bought news ones. But because this has happened twice in two weeks I’ve now banned them form using a small pot my dad gave me. 

And when you start telling people you can’t use this kitchen thing, they usually get annoyed. Even though I have a full set of pots and there is literally no use to that forth one. Like, I only have space for two pots to cook at a time anyway. But, to them, it feels like I don’t trust them. And I don’t. That’s the problem. 

-Animals and pets. See, it’s amazingly fun when someone brings a pet into your house that isn’t yours, because there’s an animal you get to enjoy, play with, pet, and not be at all responsible for! Like, I don’t have to worry about weather I feed it in the morning or their water bowl is full. Except, what about when the cat scratches my furniture, breaks my things or has an accident while my roommates aren’t around? 

Pets are a lot of responsibility. And sometimes, they bring with them a lot of trouble. Because it’s one thing for my cat to destroy my favourite shoes, and it’s another for somebody elses’ to do it. 

-Things going missing. See, when I live on my own and something goes missing my first thought is, I’ve misplaced this. But living with others my first thought is where have they left this. 

Sometimes I’m right to think this, other times I’m not. You’d think good communication would be an easy solution, except sometimes you ask in the group chat if somebody moved x thing. And they become defensive, like, I haven’t touched this in forever. Why would I move it? Why can’t you trust me put it away? And then them becoming defensive makes you annoyed and more accusatory… it’s a spiral. 

-Arguments. Not between you and them, but between them and them. Okay, so say among your roommates is a couple. Couples sometimes argue, sometimes they do that loudly. And you can’t exactly get in the middle of that. So you just have to sit back and wonder when your noisy neighbours moved into your home. 

Noise in general can be a problem between roommates, but I find arguing to be worse because of the lack of willingness to get involved. Plus, they are already angry before you open the door to complain. 

-Common areas. So, living room, kitchen and bathroom. Who get’s what space? This has always been a hot topic for me because every time I’ve shared space, I’ve shared space from a spot of privliege. First, because it was my boyfriend’s property, now it is mine. Usually I try to make sure everybody has the same amount of space in places like the bathroom and kitchen. 

However, the living room is a different story. See, the living room has a style to it, and I quite like a specific style. So I don’t really want other people’s stuff decorating and covering up my own stuff. Because of this, I usually write in contracts that you can use the living room (obviously) but do not get any storage space there. Making that booksehlve entirely mine to full of numerous young adult fantasy novels. 

It’s selfish, I admit. And my current roommate have complained a bit that they don’t have enough space in their room for all their stuff, but as far as I’m concerned, the room is spacious they are constantly buying new stuff. If I let them use the living room I fear it would become packed with things I don’t like. So I put my foot down on this one. 

But if the flat were rented between several roommates and nobody had more power than the rest, I don’t know how this argument would go down. It could be an interested thing to explore. 

I’ve left out obvious ones here like, cleaning, taking the rubbish out, leaving the toiler seat up and locking the front door, I think that’s all been explores so much in media there really is nothing I could add. 

As usual,  check out my book, stories I’ve written plus other social medias: here.

Do you have roommates? What conflicts have you had that could be interesting?