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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

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

Bold / Strong Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetuer adipiscing elit. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetuer adipiscing elit. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetuer adipiscing elit. Italic / Oblique Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetuer adipiscing elit. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetuer adipiscing elit. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetuer adipiscing elit. Blockquote A blockquote creates a seperated part in a copy text. It is mostly used for quotes. Text set in … will have space on all 4 sides, making that part of the text stand out more. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Morbi commodo, ip

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

How to Be a Better Deviant Despite so many of the complaints some people have against it, DeviantART is a very good social network geared specifically towards artists and people who appreciate art.  DeviantART is, in fact, one of the very first sites of its kind, predating even such social networking giants as Facebook and Myspace. It is a wonderful place to share your work, to look at the work other artists have created, to offer and receive advice on artwork, and many other functions.  You will find that there are lots of fellow Deviants out there who want the best for you and want to see you excel as an artist and as

Brief introduction to your character: "(A quote from your character)" Name First name: -Meaning: - Pronunciation: - Origin: Middle name: -Meaning: - Pronunciation: - Origin: Surname: -Meaning: - Pronunciation: - Origin: Alias: -Why this alias?: Nickname(s): -Why this nickname?: Title(s): Characteristics Canon/Story: Role: Age: How old do they appear? Mental Age: Gender: Race: Nationality: Ethnicity: Blood Type: Birth Date: Birth Weight: Birth Length: Manner of Birth: First Words: Symbol: Sexuality: Religion: Native Language: Spoken Languages: Relationship Status: Chinese Zodiac Sign: Astrological Sign: Tarot Card: Social Secur

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

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

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

GETTING PUBLISHED: THE TRADITIONAL WAY A tutorial by M. Alice Chown If, like me, you have stories lying around gathering virtual dust on your hard drive, why not send them out to a publisher? You have nothing to lose. A couple of years ago, I attended the launch of an annual Canadian short story anthology, called Tesseracts 10. I knew one of the authors whose speculative fiction piece had been included in the book. Matthew Johnson and I had taken the same creative writing course. Our former prof, author, Robert Sawyer, was there at the launch too, as well as the editors of the anthology. Those who had contributed a story to Tesseracts 10 to

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

8 Tips for Writing Dialogue for your Characters Anybody Can Write a Novel   Chapter 5 “Choosing and Designing Characters” – Section 4 “Dialogue” With Links to Supplementary Material Dialogue is a tricky topic, and for two key reasons. The first is that creating realistic dialogue is a difficult skill to master—even in day-to-day life—without speech coming out plastic, pointless, or otherwise unconvincing. The second problem is that the proper dialogue for your story is deeply rooted within the other elements—the characters, the setting, the genre, etc... Because of this, writing dialogue tha

Anybody Can Write A Novel - Outline A Step-by-step Guide for Anyone to Learn How to Write a Novel This is an Outline of all my current articles, and a look at what is to come. I will try to update it, at least once every two weeks. Also note that just because something is absent from the Outline does not mean I don't plan to write it. This is a compilation of only chapters that have already been written. (You'll notice that I have neglected some points and chapters within this Outline. This this is simply a result of realizing that there is so much to learn, when it comes to writing. Don't worry, I'll be sure to come back and fill in the g

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

If you want to submit literature on DeviantArt, you have two choices: (1) Submitting it directly on the dA website as text (2) Submitting as a .pdf (I tried submitting with a Word doc and it didn't work like it should). After these two tutorials, I've also created a tutorial how to use Sta.sh Storage feature to edit a work. You can find the link for it in the description (or just go to the next tutorial) *Side Note for any deviant who's been here for years: DA's latest update prevents veteran deviants (long-time usesrs) from submitting text like we used to a few years ago; however, you can edit older deviations' text the old way by clickin

• Unusual Characteristics: Creating a species usually stems from the writer envisioning a character or a group with characteristics impossible for a human to have. Determine what odd characteristics you have in mind for your characters and collect them together to begin to form traits of a species. Determine any unusual markings or colorations, how they hold themselves, their tendencies, and begin to think about powers and special abilities apart from that which a human can do. • Powers: Writing normal lice of life humans isn't for everyone. Characters with powers are unique and intriguing if you can write them as such. Be carefu