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Resources For Describing Characters
Physical Appearance
Arms
Athletic Build
Back
Butts
Cheeks
Chest
Chins
Curvy Build
Ears
Eyebrows
Eyes
Faces
Facial Hair
Feet
Fingernails
Fingers
Hair
Hands
Head
Hips
Jaws
Knees
Legs
Lips
Muscular Build
Neck
Noses
Shoulders
Slender Build
Sickly Build
Skin
Stocky Build
Stomach
Teeth
Toenails
Toes
Underweight Build
Character Traits
Affectionate
Ambitious
Bossy
Brave
Calm
Cautious
Charismatic
Clever
Conceited
Courageous
Creative
Critical
Curious
Determined
Diplomatic
Dishonest
Disorganized
Eccentric
Excitable
Friendly
Funny
Generous
Glamorous
Guarded
Honest
Impulsive
Independent
Intelligent
Just
Kind
Loyal
Manipulative
Mature
Modest
Mysterious
Naïve
Optimistic
Prejudiced
Persistent
Proper
Responsible
Sensitive
Sentimental
Serious
Shy
Reckless
Stingy
Stubborn
Talented
Thoughtful
Thrifty
Visionary
Wise
Witty
Worry Wart
Wounded
Talents & Skills
A Knack for Languages
A Knack for Making Money
A Way with Animals
Archery
Astral Projection
Astrological Divination
Baking
Basic First Aid
Blending In
Carpentry
Charm
ESP (Clairvoyance)
Empathy
Enhanced Hearing
Enhanced Sense of Smell
Enhanced Taste Buds
Farming
Fishing
Foraging
Gaining the Trust of Others
Gaming
Gardening
Good Listening Skills
Haggling
Herbalism
Hospitality
Hot-Wiring a Car
High Pain Tolerance
Knife Throwing
Knowledge of Explosives
Lip-Reading
Lying
Making People Laugh
Mechanically Inclined
Mentalism
Mimicking
Multitasking
Musicality
Organization
Parkour
Photographic Memory
Predicting the Weather
Promotion
Psychokinesis
Reading People
Regeneration
Repurposing
Sculpting
Self-Defense
Sewing
Sharpshooting
Sleight-of-Hand
Strategic Thinking
Strong Breath Control
Super Strength
Survival Skills
Swift-footedness
Talking With The Dead
Throwing One’s Voice
Whittling
Wilderness Navigation
Wrestling
Elemental Abilities
Miscellaneous
Voices
Voice Types
Speech Patterns
Speech Impediment
List of Character Flaws
List of Archetypes
Hairstyles
Describing Body Types & How They Move Around
Secrets To Give Your Character
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other words for “walked”
credits n stuff - i wont tag tho
@/msocasey aka the person who created this post (you can tell i was inspired through the titles lol) ((except mine are less funny))
@/blujay-png for the short list she created over a year ago
@/artieye for sending me a whole bunch of words
DEFINITION DEPENDS ON CONTEXT
Moved (this one is so vague lol)
Paced
Padded
Stepped
Treaded
LET’S GET OUT OF HERE OR ENTHUSIASTIC/HAPPY
Bounced
Bounded
Hopped
Jumped
Leapt
Skipped
Sprung
NERVOUS, SCARED OR MAYBE JUST CLUMSY
Crashed
Scrambled
Shuffled
Stumbled
Trotted
ANGRY/LOUD
Pounded (on the ground)
Stamped
Stomped
SNEAKY MOTHERFUCKER/QUIET
Crept
Loitered
Prowled
Slipped
Slithered
Slunk
Snunk
Stalked
Tiptoed
I’M IN CHARGE HERE, BUDDY/CONFIDENT
Led
Marched
Pranced
Strode
Strutted
GOTTA GO FAST
Bolted
Darted
Dashed
Fled
Hurried
Jogged
Raced
Rushed
Scampered
Scooted
Scuttled
Sprinted
Whisked
Zapped
I’M CHILL (OR MAYBE JUST LAZY)
Ambled
Dawdled
Drifted
Sauntered
Strolled
Waddled
AND I WOULD WALK 500 MILES
Hiked
Roamed
Set off
Trekked
Wandered
AND I WOULD WALK 500 MILES (BUT NOW I’M TIRED)
Dragged (themselves)
Lumbered
Staggered
Trudged
NOBODY’S GETTIN’ PAST ME
Patrolled
OH, I’M IN THE WATER NOW
Paddled
Splashed
Waded
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Looking for a random cause of death for a character? Click here.
Looking for a random city? Click here.
Looking for a random city that people have actually heard of? Click here.
Need a random surname for a character? Click here. (They also give prevalence by race, which is very helpful.)
Helpful writing tips for my friends.
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Em Dashes
A lot of people use semi-colons wrong because they know there’s supposed to be a pause in their sentence that they know isn’t quite a comma, so they think it must be that mysterious semi-colon. Usually, it’s actually supposed to be an em dash (—), which in some ways is more mysterious!
The em dash is the longest of the three dashes and most often used for interruptions. Interruptions in speech, in action, in thought. It’s also a great syntax addition for fight scenes, since it makes the narrative seem quick and unexpected and jolting from side to side like a fight scene should be. Read your em dash sentences out loud until you get a feel for how its pause compares to the pause of a comma. It’s a heartbeat longer. If a comma is one beat of pause, then I see an em dash as two beats of pause.
In this first example, the em dash is used to give an aside to the reader. It’s like a btw sort of moment, which can sometimes be replaced with commas or parenthesis. I think the em dashes are most suitable when your aside is decently long.
Her neighbor, Frank, is always blasting music.
Her neighbor—the one who always blasts the music—is named Frank.
My mischievous neighbor, Vince, seemed to have a knack for graveyard cavorting.
Vince—more often called (in a raised and angry voice) Vincent Price Ramsey—seemed to have a knack for graveyard cavorting.
Next up, here’s the em dash as a replacement for the semi-colon. Kinda like a slang or shortened sentence. Semi-colons have to connect two independent clauses—meaning each side of the semi-colon could stand alone as its own complete sentence. If you don’t want to do that, try an em dash:
I thought hanging out would be great—a chance to finally see the city, just like Aunt Lillian wanted.
I thought hanging out would be great; it would be a chance to finally see the city, just like Aunt Lillian wanted.
There was a headstone hardly a foot from where I’d emerged—dark grey stone a few inches thick and maybe as high as my knee.
There was a headstone hardly a foot from where I’d emerged; it was made of dark grey stone a few inches thick and maybe as high as my knee.
Sometimes, you can use an em dash to have a speaker correct themselves, or interrupt themselves to amend their sentence.
I could see the blur of the graveyard behind him—through him—
Similar to the last example, it can be used to interrupt a sentence in order to add additional information about the sentence. Often you can use a comma in this situation, too, so try to think of syntax and how that additional beat of pause changes things. In this case, Alice has just seen a ghost for the first time, so her mind is a bit too shocked for the normal pause of a comma. Read both. Doesn’t the one with the em dash sound more shocked or surprised, while the comma makes it sound like a simple observation?
He was glowing pale—almost tinged in cold blue.
He was glowing pale, almost tinged in cold blue.
Of course, it could be an interruption. It could be someone interrupting another in speech, one action interrupting another, or a character’s thoughts interrupting themselves. Here I’ll include the sentence with the em dash and the sentence following, so you can see the thing interrupted and the interruption.
You can have an action interrupt a character’s thoughts. For the first one, Alice is in a creepy situation and completely focused on something else, so when something touches her elbow, she’s shocked out of her thoughts. For the second one, Tristan is listening for an enemy when the enemy makes a move and startles him into action.
As far as I could tell it was some kind of berry—
An icy contact on my elbow broke my resolve, and I screamed until an equally cold hand clamped over my mouth.
The night was still, and yet—
Something whistled through the air. Tristan jerked backwards, narrowly avoiding an incoming dagger.
Here we have one character interrupting another in dialogue. Pretty self-explanatory.
“I’m not going to—”
Mom’s voice in the receiver cut me off. “At least consider it.”
“After all, you’re only a—”
“If you even say girl,” I interrupted, “I’ll stab you, I swear.”
The next one is part of a fight scene, so Alice’s thoughts are interrupting themselves as soon as she thinks them. She throws up an idea, “iron,” but interrupts herself from further exploring that idea, and instead casts it out. In a fight, you don’t have time to think out long, eloquent ideas. Your thoughts should come in fragments. Stab. Punch. Dodge. Swing. Would this work? No. How about this? Maybe. The em dash can help get across this uneven jolting of thoughts.
Iron—no use. I’d dropped the knife when her damn vines ensnared me, and the nails were in my pockets and out of reach. Blood—there were possibilities there.
Continuing in fight scenes, em dashes can have action interrupt action. Don’t just throw them in willy nilly, but if you have a chance for an em dash, jump on it. Instead of a word like “suddenly,” it makes it feel suddenly. Ups the tension. Em dashes are about interruption, and what is a fight scene but two people interrupting each other’s attempts to kill the other? This is especially useful for the last line in a paragraph during a fighting scene, because it’s a nice place to have one action interrupt another.
I snatched it—slit across my hand—
And stabbed her through the heart.
His swords whistled through the air—
A clean “X” appeared on the imp’s back, severing its body into four neat chunks.
So yeah, I’m basically obsessed with em dashes and I use more of them than the majority of writers. (At 72k words, my current project has 22 semi-colons and 344 em dashes. So. Yeah. Not to mention the length of this post…) Em dashes are way cool and can add a lot to your writing even though they’re just another form of punctuation. Syntax helps your reader into the mindset you’re going for, and em dashes can be a great, powerful part of that syntax!
—E
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as soon as i figure out whether there’s any practical difference between ‘that’ and ‘which’ in a sentence, you’re all finished
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Little Things to Do with Your WIP
Sometimes you want to work on your WIP when you don’t have much time (during school, work, out on errands, etc) so here are quick, easy, and little things you can do with it when you can’t actually write/plan in-depth. I’ve also included websites and links as jumping off points.
Create a playlist based on the WIP or a character/relationship
Brainstorm possible titles/chapter names (my post about titling format examples and a deep dive into two-word titling)
Write a journal entry/letter as one of the characters
Research very specific things about the setting/history, lore, clothing, hobbies/vocations, etc of your story
Deep dive into a category of worldbuilding (I have posts on WB here, here, and here)
Create a mood board for the setting, a character, or entire story on Pinterest or Canva (Some examples for countryside, city at night, summer abroad, and the coast)
Write down dialogue for a therapy session your MC might have
Design a section of a character’s room/home using pictures, descriptions, or drawings
Research names and meanings (The way I find OC names)
Write down a dream/nightmare a character might have
Take a personality test as your MC
Write a fortune cookie for each MC/side character
Research actors/models/etc if you’re still creating physical descriptions for characters (I recommend using IMDb)
Research mannerisms, habits, and quirks to enrich characterization (I wrote some down here.)
Hopefully these things help you satisfy your itch to work when you can’t exactly work. Happy writing!
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THREE BIRDS WITH ONE STONE: how aaron minyard somehow did it all
published researcher! championship winner! med school student! survivor!
aaron is a legend and i love him, i must appreciate him more on this blog
part 3 of my magazine series :))
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Helpful things for action writers to remember
Sticking a landing will royally fuck up your joints and possibly shatter your ankles, depending on how high you’re jumping/falling from. There’s a very good reason free-runners dive and roll.
Hand-to-hand fights usually only last a matter of seconds, sometimes a few minutes. It’s exhausting work and unless you have a lot of training and history with hand-to-hand combat, you’re going to tire out really fast.
Arrows are very effective and you can’t just yank them out without doing a lot of damage. Most of the time the head of the arrow will break off inside the body if you try pulling it out, and arrows are built to pierce deep. An arrow wound demands medical attention.
Throwing your opponent across the room is really not all that smart. You’re giving them the chance to get up and run away. Unless you’re trying to put distance between you so you can shoot them or something, don’t throw them.
Everyone has something called a “flinch response” when they fight. This is pretty much the brain’s way of telling you “get the fuck out of here or we’re gonna die.” Experienced fighters have trained to suppress this. Think about how long your character has been fighting. A character in a fist fight for the first time is going to take a few hits before their survival instinct kicks in and they start hitting back. A character in a fist fight for the eighth time that week is going to respond a little differently.
ADRENALINE WORKS AGAINST YOU WHEN YOU FIGHT. THIS IS IMPORTANT. A lot of times people think that adrenaline will kick in and give you some badass fighting skills, but it’s actually the opposite. Adrenaline is what tires you out in a battle and it also affects the fighter’s efficacy - meaning it makes them shaky and inaccurate, and overall they lose about 60% of their fighting skill because their brain is focusing on not dying. Adrenaline keeps you alive, it doesn’t give you the skill to pull off a perfect roundhouse kick to the opponent’s face.
Swords WILL bend or break if you hit something hard enough. They also dull easily and take a lot of maintenance. In reality, someone who fights with a sword would have to have to repair or replace it constantly.
Fights get messy. There’s blood and sweat everywhere, and that will make it hard to hold your weapon or get a good grip on someone.
A serious battle also smells horrible. There’s lots of sweat, but also the smell of urine and feces. After someone dies, their bowels and bladder empty. There might also be some questionable things on the ground which can be very psychologically traumatizing. Remember to think about all of the character’s senses when they’re in a fight. Everything WILL affect them in some way.
If your sword is sharpened down to a fine edge, the rest of the blade can’t go through the cut you make. You’ll just end up putting a tiny, shallow scratch in the surface of whatever you strike, and you could probably break your sword.
ARCHERS ARE STRONG TOO. Have you ever drawn a bow? It takes a lot of strength, especially when you’re shooting a bow with a higher draw weight. Draw weight basically means “the amount of force you have to use to pull this sucker back enough to fire it.” To give you an idea of how that works, here’s a helpful link to tell you about finding bow sizes and draw weights for your characters. (CLICK ME)
If an archer has to use a bow they’re not used to, it will probably throw them off a little until they’ve done a few practice shots with it and figured out its draw weight and stability.
People bleed. If they get punched in the face, they’ll probably get a bloody nose. If they get stabbed or cut somehow, they’ll bleed accordingly. And if they’ve been fighting for a while, they’ve got a LOT of blood rushing around to provide them with oxygen. They’re going to bleed a lot.
Here’s a link to a chart to show you how much blood a person can lose without dying. (CLICK ME)
If you want a more in-depth medical chart, try this one. (CLICK ME)
Hopefully this helps someone out there. If you reblog, feel free to add more tips for writers or correct anything I’ve gotten wrong here.
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Some words to use when writing things:
winking
clenching
pulsing
fluttering
contracting
twitching
sucking
quivering
pulsating
throbbing
beating
thumping
thudding
pounding
humming
palpitate
vibrate
grinding
crushing
hammering
lashing
knocking
driving
thrusting
pushing
force
injecting
filling
dilate
stretching
lingering
expanding
bouncing
reaming
elongate
enlarge
unfolding
yielding
sternly
firmly
tightly
harshly
thoroughly
consistently
precision
accuracy
carefully
demanding
strictly
restriction
meticulously
scrupulously
rigorously
rim
edge
lip
circle
band
encircling
enclosing
surrounding
piercing
curl
lock
twist
coil
spiral
whorl
dip
wet
soak
madly
wildly
noisily
rowdily
rambunctiously
decadent
degenerate
immoral
indulgent
accept
take
invite
nook
indentation
niche
depression
indent
depress
delay
tossing
writhing
flailing
squirming
rolling
wriggling
wiggling
thrashing
struggling
grappling
striving
straining
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PSA
ive been seeing these mistakes a lot and my mother’s english teacher genes are finally coming out. writers, publishers of text posts, students, please take note.
- vial is a slim glass container usually meant to hold liquids, vile is repulsive or disgusting.
- fair is even, you get half i get half, fare is a price you pay for something like a ride or a toll.
- for christ’s sake, if you write fanfic PLEASE note: wanton is usually what you mean, as in desiring, “wanting”, lustful. wonton is a type of food.
- “it was hung” versus “he was hanged”. the act of hanging a picture is different than hanging a person to kill them, items get hung, people get hanged.
- conscience is telling right from wrong. conscious is an individual’s awareness and subjective experience.
thanks and good luck
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THIS IS AN IMPORTANT ONE! Don’t ignore this in your writing!
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IT’S NOT ‘PEEKED’ MY INTEREST
OR ‘PEAKED’
BUT PIQUED
‘PIQUED MY INTEREST’
THIS HAS BEEN A CAPSLOCK PSA
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“This is your daily, friendly reminder to use commas instead of periods during the dialogue of your story,” she said with a smile.
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Blurbing;
How to relay a story with minimal headache*
*Minimal headache is still some headache. You’re trying to summarize something that needs thousands of words to properly convey. It’s not going to be easy.
Blurbs are an absolute necessity for marketing your book, and the sooner you have a good one, the easier it is to get people interested in your work. Unless you’re writing a short story, you’ll never be able to include all the interesting parts of your book into a single blurb. That’s okay. The point of the blurb is to pick out the key focus of the story as a whole, and relay that in the most interesting way possible.
When writing blurbs, it’s good to end up with one short/mini blurb, or logline, which should be a single sentence, and one longer blurb which should be a few paragraphs. (Note that a synopsis for a query letter is quite different from a blurb. There are links at the bottom of the post which will help you with a query-worthy synopsis.)
Tips and tricks:
Know what your story is about. No brainer, right? Keep in mind that this isn’t the same as having a summary or outline. You want to know the focus of your story, the thing that remains when you strip everything else away.
Use a formulaic starting point. A good formula to start with looks something like this: “When [INCITING INCIDENT OCCURS], a [SPECIFIC PROTAGONIST] must [OBJECTIVE], or else [STAKES].” Just remember this isn’t a cheat. You’ll still need to rework the resulting sentence.
Start small and expand, or start large and cut out. Figure out a solid short blurb and then turn every key aspect (the protagonist, the inciting event, the objective, and the stakes) into a sentence or two of it’s own, or write the full blurb first and cut away words until you have a single sentence.
Write many versions. Without any rereading, try speed writing 25 short blurbs and 5 long blurbs. Come back when you’re done and pick out the points you feel worked the best and were most true to your story.
Get feedback. Throw your favorite few blurbs at people you trust who are also part of your target audience. Which ones create the most interested in the story itself?
Good explanations on how to write loglines, blurbs, and synopsis, from non-tumblr websites who’s links shouldn’t die:
On short blurbs (loglines)- | One | Two | Three | Four |
On long (back of book) blurbs - | One | Two | Three | Four |
On query-worthy synopsis- | One | Two | Three |
Edit from 2/23/18:
Since I just spent some time reading a bunch of sci fi and fantasy blurbs in preparation for writing Pearl’s, I thought I might update this.
There is no right way to write a blurb. Some are a single paragraph, some are a full page. Some have quotes from the book, some directly mention the author, some focus just on the plot or dedicate most of their space to the worldbuilding. It doesn’t matter what your blurb looks like as long as it sounds good and gets people interested in your book!
A nice, simple format I’ve found to work really well for Speculative Fiction looks something like this:
Part one — The world. Give a strong sense of your worldbuilding and the set up for any political, magical, or technological building blocks important to your plot. This can double as a protagonist (or antagonist!) introduction, or you can leave that for the second paragraph, depending on what flows best.
Part two — The inciting event. What happens to get the story rolling? This should be something within your first few chapters, which sets your protagonist on their path. (If it’s not, you may have some structural edits to do for your novel.)
Part three — The hook. Leave the reader questioning what’s to come! Focus on the disaster the plot is heading for, or point out a game changer or upcoming obstacle.
As mentioned above, this is certainly not the only way to write blurbs. Some novels downright can’t follow this exact structure for one reason or another. Most don’t need to. But it’s still a nice, fairly headache-less exercise to try out when working on a blurb, and it might give you something worthwhile once you’re finished.
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THERE MUST BE A PARAGRAPH BREAK EVERY TIME A NEW CHARACTER SPEAKS
THIS IS NOT OPTIONAL
NO ONE WANTS TO READ ONE BIG BLOCK OF TEXT JESUS CHRIST
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Ways For Your Characters to Realize They’re In Love
Marathoning favorite shows/movies of their partner even though they don’t really like it
Watching their partner study for an exam
Seeing their partner sorting candy by color
Hearing the way their partner talks to kids
Looking into their eyes and really looking at their eye color
Noticing small details about them (physically)
When they remember details about their partner
Going on a road trip with their partner and having a good time singing and talking for hours with minimal awkwardness
Seeing how their partner treats another human being/animal
The way their partner looks when they fall asleep/wake up
Seeing their partner make them a meal
Smelling their cologne/perfume in a crowd
Hearing their laugh
Having their partner reach for them without looking because they know they’re there.
Giving their partner a nickname/having their partner give them a nickname
Hearing a song that reminds them of their partner
Standing up for their partner/Protecting them
Catching their eye when they’re in a crowd
When they’re crying
When they pick them up/get picked up by them from work, school, etc.
Seeing how much confidence they have when they talk about something they love
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