Scribbled Fiction

Those of you who have read Gail Carson Levin's book 'Writing Magic' will remember Gail's character questionnaire, and specifically, two unconventional questions on it. 1) Describe his/her room 2) Items in his/her pockets, backpack, or purse Most questionnaires don't have questions like these, and that's what made them stand out to me as a young writer. Why would one need to know either one of these things to understand the character, you may ask? Because they help us figure out what kind of person your character is, all based on what things they keep around them. Why it's important For example, the state of your character's room says something about their personality. If their room is messy, that tells us that their state of mind might be messy, or that they're currently too busy or distracted to clean, or that they're bad with responsibilities such as cleaning. And we could take it a step further from there. The room is messy, bu...

So I'm really in love with magic systems. Not just the basic ones where hocus pocus you cast a spell and that's it. Those have no consequences, no rules, no structure.  No, no, no, my dear spellcasters, I am here for the really unique and complex magic systems, and when I find a good one I will literally seek out my sister and start ranting about it immediately. For a very long time. Hehe. Sorry Rachel. But really can we please talk about how gorgeous  some magic systems are??? I seriously love when someone puts in the time and the effort think  about their magic: what it is, how it works, and what can make it shine. *chef kiss* I love it. So today we talk about the greatest unique magic systems in books and film. Matthew Swift (Urban Sorcery) Oh mah word. I cannot stop talking about how awesome this series is. Because it is awesome!! One of the primary reasons I love it is the amazing magic system . The magic in these books has such intense urban fanta...

Makeup. To be honest, I'm a little nervous about posting on this topic solely because I'm certain everyone I know will use it against me every time they're telling me I don't need more makeup. And maybe I don't. But we're going to pretend that I do because all the eyeshadows are so pretyyyyyyyyyyyy. I mean, what was I supposed to do when this was only $3? It's Burt's Bees! So, I got to start using some makeup when I was elevenish. I got some clear lip glosses, and then, later on, I got a cheap palette of colorful eyeshadows. Let us just say that I was... not  spectacular at it back then. But who was at that age? Obviously I don't have any of that makeup now, or else I'd show you, but I will give you a massive dump of photos of my collection later in this post. So this is the main part of it. It's got a lot in it hehe. The whole thing is basically full up. And this is the rest of it. This basket is mostly hair stuff...

How to Write a Cliche Best Friend Here are the basics of best friend characters: She's probably a girl, she's probably black or some other minority, while the main character is not. She's super cool. She has some kind of epic hobby that makes her unique and makes her stand out from the crowd. She is confident and sassy where the main character is shy. She goes to the same high school as the main character and defends her from the sticks and stones of all the bullies. No one messes with her. At least, not that we see. She doesn't need defending. Her home situation is unknown. She helps the main character through thick and thin, but whatever her thicks and thins are seem to be none of our business. When the main character says something she can't take back, it hurts the best friend, but when the main character apologizes, of course, the best friend forgives her. She never says things she can't take back. She is wise in her own way. She always knows...

Yeah, all the geeking out about the Mandalorian might be getting a little old, but hear me out. I am not really a Star Wars person(yeah, sacrifice me at the temple of Darth Vader), I LOVE the Mandalorian. Does it have its problems? Yeah. But so do most other stories. I'm not claiming it's perfect. I'm not even claiming that Cara Dune, despite the title of this post, is really perfect . But through her, the writers of this show have accomplished something that has been managed very few times before it. They wrote a really good strong female character. Now, the Strong Female Character™ thing is a piece of work that should really be saved for another post, but I do think that the whole thing is a little overblown. I think that everyone's putting undue pressure on writers to create female characters as tropes, and really poor tropes at that, rather than just people . And because of this pressure, the writers are giving the audience really weak girl characters beca...

I can guarantee you've seen this trope before. When the Witch followed Digory back to London. When the monsters made it into the TARDIS. When Hobbiton burned to the ground. When the hero made it home only to discover the supervillain was waiting for them there. Anytime the villain manages to force their way into a place that both the protagonist and the reader thought was safe and untouchable, that's the Invasion of the Sanctuary. The purpose of this trope is to shatter the protagonist's illusion of safety and to throw them off balance. It's great for giving the readers and 'all is lost' moment. After all, when the place we thought was so beautiful and immortal is invaded and perhaps is destroyed, how much worse can it really get? Why it works This technique is almost not used enough to even call it a trope, but trope was the best word I could think of to describe it, so trope it shall be. The Invasion of the Sanctuary is a wonderful oppo...

Around this time last week, I was bored, so I put up a post on both Instagram and Twitter, inviting writers from all over to describe their characters for me to draw. I got a fair amount of retweets and story views, which gathered a fair amount of responses to sift through! It made me happy, thanks to all who participated. So I drew a bunch and made it into a YouTube video for your viewing enjoyment. The video should appear just below this paragraph. If it doesn't show up, click the link here:  https://youtu.be/zyVDNESj91o I really hope you enjoyed, and that you follow me on some platform so that you can get in on the action the next time I draw characters! If you're interested, my Twitter handle is @ScribbldFiction and my Instagram handle is @scribbledfiction See you on Tuesday for another post!

As those of you who have been following the blog for a while know, or as those of you who follow me on Instagram definitely know, I like to draw. And since the creation of Wick and Archer, I have discovered that their dynamic is HILARIOUS when put in the form of comics. So now we have a small gallery of all the comics right here. Enjoy! This first one is basically just their dynamic in a single image. I die. XD This one's another one I did to try to capture their basic dynamic. There are so many things wrong with the drawing style, but I still like it. Especially Archer's expression in the second panel. I actually wrote this next one into my story, more or less. It'd another jest about Wick's love of cooking. This one was made to be viewed horizontally, so the images are a little off-sized here, but I still like it. It was just poking fun at how Wick looks like a tree, but isn't actually, so who even knows what happens in this one. ...

March. Hmm. Do we really want to talk about March? Well, I guess it's better to discuss a problem rather than trying to ignore it, so I guess we're going to talk about March. Almost half of March was totally fine. The talk of the spreading virus existed, but it had yet to really touch anything in my life, and that was fine by me. But on the week of my birthday, that was where everything went sideways. The talk of the virus was getting more and more prevalent, to the point where I still won't listen to the radio because that's all anyone can talk about between songs. My birthday itself was all right, although the outing I had planned that day got canceled due to scheduling complications and just public panic in general. That weekend, the virus had officially hit my state, everyone went crazy and got savage at the grocery stores, and I don't know, my birthday just felt like the least important thing going on in the world at the time. I turned 20 th...