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Basic Statistics Name: Nickname: Meaning of name: Origin of name: Age: Sex: Blood type: Nationality: Ethnicity: Race: Sexual Orientation: Current status: Political Party: Police/Criminal/Legal record: Socioeconomic level as a child: Socioeconomic level as an adult: Birth date: Birth place: Current residence: Occupation: Title/Rank: Hobbies/Pastimes: Talents/Skills/Powers: Past History Hometown: First Memory: Most important childhood event that still affects him/her: Why/How? Other memories/events that still affects him/her and why/how: Past failures s/he would be embarrassed to have people know about and why: Bigg

Hello, folks! The purpose of this exercise is to delve deep into a character's mind and tease out interesting eccentricities about them, the bits and pieces of unique information that make them special. Each question is designed to help think about the character more and understand them. Whether you're responding to one question or all of them, hopefully your character speaks to you all through it! PERSONALITY PROFILE    1. People don't behave the same way all the time. In fact, they generally have a mask for every social group -- friends, family, business. Sometimes they have a different mask for different groups of friends. How does your

Please copy and paste this into a Word document or deviation. Then highlight the information after the colons and type over it. Setting Time/Era: Exact year or approximate time Name of Country: For fun, you could alter the name of an old country to amuse more educated readers. For example, I altered the Assyrian Empire's name for a conquering people to evoke images of brutality and Mesopotamia. Geography: Keep track of all the places you mention and their approximate locations. I find it handy to draw a rough map of the area. Landscape: Trees, soil, water, buildings... Imagine you were flying over the place in an airplane. What would you

Update notice as of January 17, 2013: I have given this guide a MAJOR overhaul. It was originally written over a year and a half ago, and since then my own views and understanding of copyrights has changed. I felt that this guide should reflect those changes, so if you read this guide in the past, please take a moment to look through it again as I have added MANY new topics, information, and sources. Unlike my first draft, I have also changed my viewpoint to neutral throughout this writing. Update notice as of July 17th, 2015: Check out DeviantArt's new article on art theft, fanart, copyrights, and other relevant topics! http://protectart.de

10 Tips for Creating a Protagonist Anybody Can Write a Novel 2.0 Chapter 5 “Characters” – Section 2 “Protagonists” (Previous Tutorial)             (Next Tutorial)  “Plot is people. Human emotions and desires founded on the realities of life, working at cross purposes, getting hotter and fiercer as they strike against each other until finally there’s an explosion—that’s Plot.” —Leigh Brackett Apart from Primary and Secondary Protagonists, there are many other different protagonist characters-types that can drive a story—ranging from heroes, to villains, to antiheroes

I recently solicited my watchers to ask me writing questions that I would then attempt to answer in a writing guide such as this. This article is my first response, and there will be many more to come. I've been asked to give advice on ways a writer can begin to put words on a page. The bottom line is as simple as this: sit your butt down and write. Duh, right? It's the only way I know to actually write. Sure, sitting your butt in a chair is easy, but getting your fingers to move and stay moving is a challenge. Here are three things that have helped me. 1) Have a goal. Your goal can be as simple as "describe the person in this picture" o

1. Know what you're writing. It's easy to get off track while you're writing. Thus it's always a good idea to know what you're writing. As soon as you have a good grasp on what your story is about, you'll find yourself writing quicker. This includes the main plot, a majority of the subplots, and where all the vital plot points are going to be. 2. Know what inspires you and stay around it. Now this doesn't mean that you should go through an entire personal evaluation. It just means to keep track of where you get inspired and what caused the inspiration. For some, it could be listening to music of some sort, while for others, it could be w

6 Tips for Creating Paragraphs in Your Novel   Anybody Can Write a Novel 2.0   Chapter 7 “Editing” – Section 2 “The Paragraph”  “I will try to cram these paragraphs full of facts and give them a weight and shape no greater than that of a cloud of blue butterflies.” -Brendan Gill Once you have completed a first draft that is broken down by carefully constructed plot-points and chapter breaks, the next element you need to look at is the paragraph. Think of paragraphs as the glue by which you hold the sentences, which form your story, into cohesive and unified ideas. The difficulty, however, is that

4 Tips for Writing Your Story's Second Pinch Point Anybody Can Write a Novel 2.0   Chapter 6 “Plot Points” – Section 8 “Second Pinch Point”  “If you look at the great superheroes in any universe, you will always find that they have the very best super villains opposing them. It's because they are foils; they are people that the heroes play off of.” -Jim Lee The villain, the antagonist, adversity, and the struggle against them are the elements which define the hero, and often even the device by which the hero finds the strength to fight. Nowhere do we see this more clearly than in the Second Pinc

  15 Tips for Writing Horror Chapter 2 “Genres” – Section 6 “Horror" Anybody Can Write a Novel 2.0 (Previous Tutorial)             (Next Tutorial) “[Horror fiction] shows us that the control we believe we have is purely illusory, and that every moment we teeter on chaos and oblivion.” ― Clive Barker Horror is a genre which plays upon the emotions of the audience, but it does so for very specific reasons. We may not always analyze why we are made afraid by a sotry, but there are usually specific reason for our fears, a specific nature to them, and a specific way in which we can make fear more eff

- - - - - - - - - - UPDATE for January 2020: I created this guide in 2011, so you'll have to take it with a grain of salt since dA has updated a bazillion things since then LOL. It now looks like many codes don't work in Literature submissions anymore,  (or disable the "Eclipse" version of the site and show the old site instead), so some of the demonstrations here only look like regular text.  But they should display properly if you copy/paste them in the comments.   I'm so glad to see how many of you wonderful people still utilize this resource, so I wish you the best and encourage you to go ahead and experiment to see what works and what do

PLEASE NOTE THAT WHILE THIS PAGE WILL REMAIN ACTIVE FOR PURPOSES OF EDUCATION AND RECORDS, IT IS OUTDATED. CLICK HERE TO ACCESS THE NEWEST VERSION. 6 Steps to Creating Your Plot Premise Anybody Can Write a Novel   Chapter 2 “Creating a Plot” – Section 1 “Plot Premise” Unlike what I once thought, plot is not a natural result of telling a story. Plot, like all other parts of writing, is a craft that must be studied and then designed with purpose. That being said, there are many different ways that one creates a plot—and countless theories as to how they can be created with the most efficiency. Over the ne

8 Tips for Composing Each Chapter of Your Novel Anybody Can Write a Novel 2.0   Chapter 7 “Editing” – Section 1 “The Chapter”  “Many first-time novelists end up rewriting their first two or three chapters, trying to get them 'just right.' But the point of the first draft is not to get it right; it's to get it written - so that you'll have something to work with.” -Matt Hughes Recently, we've been working on all of the plot-points contained within a story and what function they serve to the overall plot. And if you've been following along with the “Write-A-Novel” exercises, and writte

6 Reading Tips for Improving Your Writing Anybody Can Write a Novel Version 2.0 Chapter 1 “Beginning to Write” – Section 2 “Constructive Reading” (Previous Tutorial)              (Next Tutorial) “That's when I started being a writer. I got the Tarzan books and studied how Edgar Rice Burroughs kept the pace going, because he was really good at that. And I studied Stephen King. Although Burroughs wasn't that great on character, he was great on pace and adventure, and King is very good on character as well as pace. I read the same book over three times to see how it was put together. That's how I trained

6 Tips for Sentence Creation in Your Novel -- Part 1 of 2 Anybody Can Write a Novel 2.0   Chapter 7 “Editing” – Section 3 “The Sentence” Click here for Part 2 (file size was too large)  “I rearrange a sentence many times before moving on to the next one. For me, that editing process feels like a form of play, like a puzzle that needs solving, and it's one of the most satisfying parts of writing.” -Karen Thompson Walker Once you have placed emphasis in studying, designing, and formatting your plot-points, chapters, paragraphs, the next unit on your list is the sentence. The composition and arrang

-----Original Message----- I want to write a story. I have a couple of ideas, but no idea what to do with them, or even how to begin! Help?! -- Newbie Writer So when you wanna write a story, where do you begin? With your PASSION! Write what you KNOW & LOVE What do you KNOW, really? What do you love to Do, to Study, to Think About, to Talk About...? Whether it's cave-diving, model trains, skate-boarding, sewing, horses, mythology, ghost legends, or particle physics your passion is where you will find your most unique and powerful work. Make a list of all the things you know well and all the things you've done -- seriously! Mythology

Note: I wrote this after reading a similar article in The Writer magazine about a year ago.  Hope it's helpful! Not all characters are created equal.  Here are some steps to make yours superior. 1) Desire Figure out what your character wants, needs, desires.  A closer relationship with God?  A place to belong?  Just to survive?  Figure it out.  You can’t move on to number 2 until you have. 2) Fear Now that you know what your character most desires, you should be able to figure out what he/she most fears.  Doing the wrong thing, being alone, death?  They are the polar opposites of your character’s desires. 3) History Go back i

PLEASE NOTE THAT WHILE THIS PAGE WILL REMAIN ACTIVE FOR PURPOSES OF EDUCATION AND RECORDS, IT IS OUTDATED. CLICK HERE TO ACCESS THE NEWEST VERSION. 7 Steps to Creating a Great Protagonist Anybody Can Write a Novel   Chapter 3 “Characters” – Section 3 “The Protagonist” With Links to Supplementary Material So I've talked about a couple types of protagonists, and how to create them: Heroes and Antiheroes. As well as what types of Character to Use or to Avoid. But not every Protagonist will be a hero or antihero. Today, I'm going to discuss what universal attributes make a great protagonist, that will drive your

The tips that really work... It's been a while since I wrote one of these guides and, since V1.0 and V1.5 proved to be so popular, I feel it is about time I update my guide to getting noticed on deviantART. :la: So, you want to get noticed on deviantART but you're not sure where to start? You've come to the right place; pull out your note pad and pen, you'll need them. WHY? Before beginning to read this article, ask yourself why you want to get noticed on deviantART. Do you want to play more of an active role in the community or do you want to raise attention to your commissions and make a living? Do you want to get noticed to meet more de

4 Tips for Writing Your Story's Second Turning Point Anybody Can Write a Novel 2.0   Chapter 6 “Plot Points” – Section 9 “Second Turning Point”  “Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.” -Thomas A. Edison In the last few tutorials, I've compared the Disaster to having been put into a literal pit, and the Second Pinch Point as the antagonistic force having begun to shovel dirt into the pit with the intention of burying your hero alive. For a second, your hero thrashed around in horror at what was happening, but now comes the mo

8 Tips for Writing Horror Stories Anybody Can Write a Novel   Chapter 2 “Genres” – Section 6 “Horror" With Links to Supplementary Material PLEASE NOTE THAT WHILE THIS PAGE WILL REMAIN ACTIVE FOR PURPOSES OF EDUCATION AND RECORDS, IT IS OUTDATED. CLICK HERE TO ACCESS THE NEWEST VERSION. The next on our list of genres to talk about is the Horror genre. I talked a bit about this on my chapter on creating a Monster; but horror does not necessarily require a monster, just like monsters do not necessarily need to be strictly within the horror genre. So I highly recommend checking out that chapter as the second half of t

Introduction First things first, a quick introduction coming from myself. My name is Jade Choung, but I am better known as mzzazn / mzzy on the world wide web. I am an artist that primarily focuses on digital media. My art work produced for income is of the anime/manga genre. A majority of my publicity is derived from deviantART.com. I have held the position of Community Volunteer (CV) on this popular art website in the past. A community volunteer is pretty much a moderator. This means, there's a handful of tasks given to a CV on this website, but one that last a huge impact on me was selecting Daily Deviations ('spotlights' for art pieces t