Top 110 Most Common Fears

rphelper:

1. Fear of Snakes
2. Fear of Heights
3. Fear of Flying (on a plane)
4. Fear of Public Speaking
5. Fear of Darkness and Dark Places
6. Fear of Not being able to Escape
7. Fear of Spiders
8. Fear of Terror Attacks
9. Fear of Rejection
10. Fear of Getting Cancer

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List of 300 Possible Secrets to Give Your Characters

crissverahelps:

• This is a list of 300 possible secrets for your character when joining a secrets based rpg, or just to further character development.
• This is not my original work. The original author is from the invisionfree site Caution 2.0
• Please like or reblog if this helps

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55 Words to Describe Someone’s Voice

writinghelpers:

I was sitting on the computer last night trying to be productive and actually write something. My first sentence included the character listening to a voice through an intercom and my first thought was, “What kind of voice is it?” 

So, naturally, I found myself googling the different ways to describe a voice. I present to you my findings! I hope you all find it useful. 

• adenoidal (adj): if someone’s voice is adenoidal, some of the sound seems to come through their nose
• appealing (adj): an appealing look/voice shows that you want help, approval, or agreement
• breathy (adj): with loud breathing noises
• brittle (adj): if you speak in a brittle voice, you sound as if you are about to cry
• croaky (adj): if someone’s voice sounds croaky, they speak in a low, rough voice that sounds as if they have a sore throat
• dead (adj): if someone’s eyes or voice are dead, they feel or show no emotion
• disembodied (adj): a disembodied voice comes from someone who you cannot see
• flat (adj): spoken in a voice that does not go up and down; this word is often used for describing the speech of people from a particular region

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ibelievepracticemakesperfect:

Escher Girls: Developing your Characters and Making Them Interesting

eschergirls:

referenceforwriters:

Recently I got a message about a person struggling on how to develop their characters, as they normally wrote about already created characters—also about how to make them interesting and make the people reading your story actually want to continue reading it.

I’d say this is one of the main differences between fanfiction and original work. Writing fanfiction you already rely on the fact people know the characters—how they look (or are supposed to look), personalities, and backgrounds… unless you’re writing an AU.  There’s people that already like the characters and would (probably) be willing to read your story. Now, you focus on a good plot to interest them.

But then we are back on our original stories, our novels, anything we write. We have to create our characters from scratch—interesting characters that can fit and make our story flow. Because good characters can handle a poor plot, yet a good plot can’t handle poor characters. I guess this is all we do here, right? this is the bane of our existence as writers. 

Truth is, there’s no right way to write a story. And there’s no right way to develop a character! I tested this by asking you guys how you do to create and flesh out your characters. Every response was personal and different.

Sometimes it starts with the spark of an word, an archetype, a color, a trait, a flaw, a song lyric, a painting, someone you know in real life—then you go from there.

Here are some basic steps on developing a character, yet, you can do it as you see fit:

1. You start with the personality. Once that’s done it’s relatively easier to know how they look like. You sculpt and pick virtues and vices, flaws and qualities—perfect characters are not interesting. When it comes to protagonists and antagonists, they’re neither 100% good nor 100% bad, because there is not fully good or bad people. Get what I’m saying? Round characters are the thing we’re going for. Take details from people in real life, if you want: funny habits, mannerisms, what makes people human. 
2. Work on the appearance of your character. What’s their body type, their eye color, skin color, hair color, shape of their face/nose, if they have birthmarks or scars somewhere… 
3. Pick a name as you see fit. This can be the first step depending on how you work. Is there a meaning behind it? does it show somehow their character’s personality? remember sometimes they are relevant to the setting/genre. 
4. Flesh. ‘Em. Out. Think of hobbies and background. How’s the relationship with their family and friends, how they act around authority, what kinds of clothes they like to wear…
5. Always remember: character development is an ongoing thing. You never “finish” developing your character, just like we, as people, don’t stay the same. 

That being said, be creative with it! Don’t imitate the way your favorite authors develop their characters- create your own way! your characters are all yours! Make playlists about songs that remind you of your characters, keep a journal for them- sky’s the limit.

Good links for you:

• Fuckyeahcharacterdevelopment: a blog just about character development. Seriously, if you are not following this blog, you are in nothing.
• Our character descriptions and characters tags, along with body and mind and personality.
• Create fictional characters from scratch
• 13 ways to create compelling characters
• Moral Alignments and Jung Personality Theory: both good resources by the same person. They’re a different way to add dimension and understand better your characters. Even if you aren’t using them, they’re still a pretty good read.
• Get to know your characters interesting questions require interesting answers.

-Alex

I saw this on my dash from a friend’s reblog, and given that we had a post on Escher Girls recently about writing characters and their arcs, I thought people might be interested in this, and some of the links provided which go into much more detail. :)