Scribbled Fiction

Photo by  Kaboompics .com  from  Pexels I'm so picky about dialogue. Probably too picky. But it's people! Talking! And they gotta sound real!! I know everyone tries so hard to make dialogue sound good, but there are just some things I see over and over that pull me out of the narrative and make me go 'well yuck'. Bear in mind that these are opinions . They're subjective, you don't have to listen to me. I'm just talking about it because I want to. So let's go! 'he presented' 'she queried' 'he cautioned'  Just seriously, don't use a distracting, complicated word when 'said' will work just fine. Of course, there is absolutely nothing wrong with plenty of other dialogue tags, but some of them are just useless. I can tell he's cautioning because he's saying "be careful!" Honestly when I see the word 'queried' being used instead of 'said' it just sets my teeth on edge. And on another note, s...

I haven't done a list post in a while, and this isn't exactly a list post, not like  A List of Quirks To Give Your Character  or  Subtle Details You Can Add To Your Character's Look , but I think all of these things need a little more attention and a little more representation in stories. So without further ado, let's go! Platonic relationships I can't stress this enough. People can be friends. Just friends. They don't have to get romantically involved. People can care about one another and be willing to die for one another and hug each other and not fall in love. Some friendships be strong like that. Parents and siblings that are involved in the conflict Pretty sure right now the only stories that let parents or siblings get involved in the main story are contemporary stories. Y'know, realistic fiction and stuff. Why can't the parents get involved in other genres? Horror, fantasy, science fiction, steampunk, all of those? Families should be involved mor...

I love love love the movie Black Panther, and I could probably watch it every week. I love the way they balance culture with innovation, and how T'challa himself is super cool but also very human, and I just love every character in the movie. It's just awesome. It deserved every award it received for its awesomeness. What I love especially(other than everything) are the girl characters . This is not about sexism or feminism or anything like that, but rather just about good writing . Girl characters have had a problem for a long time because normally there's only one girl in a whole book or because their personalities are flat and useless. But not in Black Panther! I talked about Cara Dune as being the perfect 'strong female character', now I'm going to bring up the most perfect female representation I've seen in film. *Mario voice* Lets-a go! Why are these characters awesome? They're all very different All people want to know that they're not being s...

Hi, I'm Bethany, I'm an asthmatic, and I'm here to    e d u c a t e  y o u So the inaccurate way asthmatic people are portrayed in stories really bugs me. They shouldn't be taking their inhalers for nothing, and certainly not every thirty seconds. I would dearly love to see a realistic asthmatic character, one that I can identify with and laugh with. I would love that. So. Your education on asthma begins now. What is asthma? Good question, I'm glad you asked. From Mayo Clinic: Asthma is a condition in which your airways narrow and swell and produce extra mucus. This can make breathing difficult and trigger coughing, wheezing and shortness of breath. So basically, my airways have less room to breathe in than yours, so I'm constantly at risk of having them suddenly close up or fill with mucus, therefore causing: an asthma attack. An asthma attack happens when either my tubes produce too much mucus(filling the airways) or when my tubes cons...

Females are people, just the same as everybody else. And so are female villains. So there's a thing people are talking about right now concerning female villains and their motivations. They're pointing out how the motivations of most lady villains are centered around one of two things: 1) Men who broke their hearts, or 2) Jealousy over a female who's more beautiful than them. Both sound kind of shallow and have been overused to the point where they're almost eyeroll-worthy. I mean, let's genderbend this for a minute. If a man was destroying lives and chasing people down because he was angry over a girl who broke his heart or because(even better) he was mad that another, more handsome man existed, he would look crazy! Or stupid. Or both. It would be absurd. So why is it acceptable the other way around? Let's fix this. I've got a few ideas for you to consider. Motivations for Female Villains 1. Protecting home and hearth. Call me weir...

I honestly don't know what's with the way people write families anymore. I've known a lot of big families over the course of my life, and none of them look like the family from Yours, Mine, and Ours , with fighting every minute, absurd schedules for bathroom time, the house is near burning down at least twice a day. Just... no. So let's do a little list of true and false so that all of us writers out there can get this right. False: Everyone is constantly fighting because there's limited space. Yeah, I'll admit, with eight of us total in the house, there's a little less elbow room than there could be. But if you've grown up like that (like the kids in every since big family movie have) you don't really notice it. You're more likely to notice the extra space other people have. The family in  Yours, Mine, and Ours had a massive house anyway, so I don't know why they were all bunched together in every scene. Realistically, if they re...

Yeah, I know I've talked about romantic cliches before, but not in this series! (This heavily-spread-out series that I never seem to be done with, anyway) Some of the ones in this post are ones that are harmful, and others are ones I'm just sick of. So let's get into it! 1. Abusive relationships. I can't talk about this enough. Abuse is not romantic, is not funny, is not okay. If someone's getting beat up, whether it's physically or emotionally, the relationship should either be over or head straight to counseling. 2. They're clearly not in love, don't even like each other, but the writer puts them together. I've been noticing this a lot anymore. If one of the characters in the relationship is meant to end up with a different character, the relationship they're in seems. . . strained, to put it nicely. The two of them always seem like they're not in love, not in like, not even friends. They just kiss or live together or something un...

There's a problem here. People seem to be demanding more diverse novels, and I'll demand with them, don't get me wrong. Just let me get my picket sign. Out of habit, I write white characters, because 1) That's what I read, and 2) I am white. Sorry. I want to write more diverse characters and I've even considered changing some of my existing characters to include a more diverse cast. BUT there's a really big problem here that's holding me back. There is undue pressure put on anyone trying to write diversely. Allow me to show you what I'm talking about. Someone tries to write a Chinese heritage character. "She clearly doesn't know anything about this culture." Someone tries to include a black character or two in their novel. "Token characters. Such poor writing." Someone writes a Latina heroine instead of the white girl they were originally thinking about. "Where's the African-American represen...

Since Rachel already helpfully started me on this series with her post on  world building tropes , I must continue it! Y'all know how I love to talk about tropes and the like. Today's post is on sci-fi, admittedly a newer genre so there are fewer tropes, but there were some I wanted to talk about anyway. So, onward! 1. Questionable science        Ever watch Because Science's video on space battles ? Or. . . any  of his videos? Not only does he break down the actual science of what would and wouldn't really happen in popular stories, the way he does it gives you good ideas for how to write your own story! Now, I'm not saying I want realistic science in everything . I love my wormholes and lightspeed travel and the fact that Peter Quill totally didn't die within seconds of taking his mask off in space! I'm just saying it would be cool to see some more realistic elements involved in sci-fi novels because the ideas that come along with them are AWESOME....

For this Monday, Rachel of R's Loft and I decided to exchange blog posts! Fun, right? I've never had a guest post on this blog before, so this is super exciting for me. My post is over on  Rachel's blog , and it's a post full of things in books that make me stupidly happy. You should go check it out, but not before you read this fabulous tropes-busting post from Rachel! ________________________________________________________________________________ You know what's annoying? Tropes that won't go away, even after they've been beaten to death by the writers of the world. That's why today we're going to be talking about tropes that you should ward off with a large stick while backing away slowly and keeping your manuscript safe behind you. Specifically the ones related to fantasy and science fiction worldbuilding, because they're pretty similar. Prepare the bullet point lists! Fantasy Worldbuilding • Medieval Europe. For years ...

I'm going to say it straight out: lots of book characters have too much money. Throwing extravagant parties, going on huge shopping trips and maxing credit cards... I mean, what is this??? It might be the reality some people live, but it's certainly not realistic for most. It's going to cause your readers to question how realistic your book is to actual life, and more importantly, for a lot of people, it's just going to seem unrelatable. So let's talk about how you can fix this, using... wait for it... a list !!!    1. Think about the characters you already have. Do your characters extravagantly spend money, or expect their parents to do so? Is your MC upset because her parents haven't bought her a car yet? Perhaps she could be altered to having her parents match what she makes and putting it toward a car, or she could even earn it all herself!    2. They don't all have to be the same. Not all of them can be rich, and not all of them have to be d...

I. Love. Antiheroes! YAAAAAAAASSSS Antiheroes are my favorite kind of character. They're unpredictable, more often than not they're sarcastic and witty, and they're definitely the most interesting of all the character archetypes. But people are ruining them left and right. How? They're making them become good guys. The allure of the antihero is that they're not really good or bad. They look out for number one as their top priority in life, and making them necessarily good or evil ruins the allure unless done correctly. Tell me if this process sounds familiar: 1) Something that shouldn't really be earth-shattering happens to the antihero, such as the hero saving them or something, 2) The antihero realizes that this means they've been wrong all along, 3) They dedicate their lives to doing good in this world, acting like their past of wrongdoing never happened. It's annoying. To me. I'm sorry if I'm coming off as really ang...