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10Q Writers' Tutorial: HeroTen Easy Questions to Fix Your Fantasy Hero
(may also work for sci-fi)

Fantasy is all about heroes. Dashing knights in shining armour. Swashbuckling pirates in baggy trousers. And sultry princesses in not-a-lot-really.

No story can last longer than the opening few paragraphs without characters, and no character in the history of story-telling has ever been as awesome as yours. They've got it all: good looks, witty words, deadly swordsmanship, wizz-bang magic, and a backstory of almost poetic tragedy. What they don't have is any rabid fans.

Why? How could your readers possibly miss the ass-kicking/heart-breaking/swoon-inducing nature of yo

10Q Writers' Tutorial: SettingTen Easy Questions to Fix Your Fantasy Setting
(may also work for sci-fi)

A fantasy story has to take place somewhere. And what better surroundings for your epic/tragic/blood-thirsty tale of war/love/orc-beauty-pageants than your mystical land of Neverheardofit?

Imagine it! The ragged mountains clad in purple fog. The bubbling streams sparkling with fairy magic. The sleepy-eyed dragons emerging from their noble lairs, their flickering tongues tasting the sweetness of battle in the air.

(Or just some spaceships and laser guns. This is a sci-fi tutorial too.)

You can certainly feel the magic (or techno-awesome) but, for some reason, your r

Character Tips 1 - AppearanceCreating Characters – Appearance
Here are a few tips to create the body of your new character. Appearance defines your character almost as much as personality. I hope something will be useful to you.

Body Shape
Is your character muscular? Tall and thin? Short and round? I think about body shape as basically height and weight. There are three basic body types that are also useful to know:

1) Ectomorph – This is a delicate build. Pretty much tall and thin, there are more angles on these bodies than curves. Limbs and neck are also long and shoulders tend to be small. They often have a flat chest. Ectomorphs tend to have fast metabo

Character Tips 4 - MagicCharacter Creation – Magic and Abilities
If you are creating a character for the fantasy genre, more often than not, they have some kind of magic. There are all kinds of magic, but some planning has to go into it.

How did they get it?
There are many ways your character could get their magic. It could be given to them by some higher power, it could be genetics, or they could use a magical item and have no real power of their own.

I'll start with genetics. If this is how your character got their power then somebody else in their family tree somewhere should have the same power. It wouldn't have to be in their immediate family since it

Advanced CHARACTER Creation

Advanced CHARACTER Creation ~ for Fiction
Hero ~ Villain ~ Ally
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There are three essential characters in every story. There may be any number of side characters, but in traditional Adventures, and Romances of every stripe (erotic or not,) the main conflict is usually, if not always, a TRIANGLE of complimentary opposites.

Translation: You could tell the whole story with ONLY these Three Characters; perhaps not with any real detail, but you could still do the entire basic plotline.

THREE Characters?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I'm sure you're familiar with the names Hero & Villain or Antagonist & Protagonist already. Those are pre

Writing DESCRIPTION

Tricks for Writing DESCRIPTION

------------- Original Message -----------
"I think the biggest problem I have is lack of detail. I can see things in my head, but other than the general surroundings, I'm always too intent on what my characters are thinking, or doing, or about to do to remember to add the details necessary to paint a really clear picture of where they are and their environment." -- Wanna Rite Reel Gud

The way to deal with that is by writing what you can. When you're done, go back and put in all the rest. Also, in situations like this, a beta-reader is your best bet at seeing where you skipped something.

As for What to desc

Writing Tips, Finding A MuseI've read a lot of tutorials on how to write and about one or two on overcoming writers block but none have really helped me in the past. I'm not the best writer in the world, but I'm going to give you some tips on approaching writing and some cures for those bloody annoying writers blocks!

Directory:
1. Beating Writers Block And Finding (New) Inspiration:
1a. Bouncing Idea's/Chat To A Friend
1b. Celebrities
1c. Dreams
1d. Extreme Emotional States
1e. Fan-Fiction
1f. Music
1g. Prompts/Time Limits
1h. Real Life
1i. Take A Shower Or Bath
1j. What Ifs
2. Approaches To Writing:
2a. The "Wing It" Approach
2b. The "Tho

Character Tips 2 - PersonalityCharacter Creation – History and Personality
So, you have the body of your character, but it's only the body. It has no life or personality yet. This will hopefully help to give it one.

History
Creating a history is not often fun or easy, but what has happened in your character's past will affect their personality. Of course, like with everything else, there are traps that you can fall into. Some things are horribly overused, it's not illegal to use them, but just keep in mind that they are really common. Whatever you do, don't have an overly sad past, and I don't mean that they can't be orphans, or be abused by a parent or partner, b

Character Tips 3 - ClothingCharacter Creation – Clothing
So, your character has a body, a life and a personality. The thing is, they're still naked! Well, this should solve their problem.

Basics
Before we decide on their clothes, we need to figure out what they actually do for a living. This is important because, apart from their personality, this will decide the type of clothing your character will wear. For example, a princess will wear a lot of fine dresses and have a lot of jewellery whereas a peasant will have patched up clothes and little to no jewellery. A business man will wear a suit to work whereas a person working on a construction site will wear jea

Writing ACTION Scenes

-------- Original Message -----------
"I can't write an action/fight scene worth a crap. Mind you, I can usually imagine them, I just can't write them." -- Wanna Do a Fight Scene.

If you can imagine it - you can write it. The easiest way is by doing it in LAYERS.

The Quick and Dirty Method for writing Action Scenes
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Start with a list of ACTIONS & Reactions < in that order.
-- Actions ALWAYS go before Reactions.

(IMPORTANT! Each CHARACTER gets a SEPERATE LINE. ~ NEVER clump the separate actions of two different characters in the same paragraph or the reader will get confused as to who is doing what very quickly.)
~~~~~

10Q Writers' Tutorial: EasyTen Easy Questions to Fix Your Fantasy Story
(may also work for sci-fi)

So, you've written your fantasy story and uploaded it to dA. Maybe it's a thousand-word short. Maybe it's a twenty-four-part epic. In either case, you know it rocks. There's a dashing/brooding hero/anti-hero, a beautiful/kick-ass heroine/seductress, and the most amazing fight/magical scene involving swords/fire-balls/spiritual-enlightenment that the world has ever seen.

The trouble is, no one's reading it. And, when they do, the comments are annoyingly lacking in the "OMG!" factor. Your readers just aren't "getting it". So how do you help these poor, unenlightened wre

10 Quick Tips: ProseFor the short of time, patience or remaining-eyesight: here is a quick, ten-point tutorial for better prose.

The points are drawn from books, articles, casually-offered-advice and my own experience. Much like the Ten Commandments, they aren't all concrete rules. Just things to strongly keep in mind.

1. Vary sentence structure.
-> In particular, avoid starting every line with "I..." or "He..."
-> Try to vary your sentence length too.

2. Don't repeat words within a sentence.
-> Or too many times in sentences that follow each other.
-> Avoid repeated use of character names by using he/she where possible.

3. Avoid adverbs.
-> They clutte

SW 101: Writers Block

Hello there everyone! I see you have called in an emergency. What's that? You have *gasps* writers block? Well have no fear! You've come to the right place! The Writerbusters will help you in no time!

The Opening Sequence
Alright, so you have a story going with characters and a good idea on where you want to go, you just don't know how to start it. That's perfectly fine. Take the time to look over different movies and how they begin. Notice how in Legally Blonde it's a continuing shot of the sorority the main character Elle along with the other girls live in. This kind of intro helps the audience get a good feel for who the character is and

The Amazing Dialogue GuideIf you're reading this, then chances are you will be using dialogue at some point in your story. Good for you. Dialogue is important. It should be there to save you when description doesn't work. The following are some tips for awesome dialogue.

Tip One: Know your characters.
Before anything comes out of your character's mouth, you need to have an understanding of the character as a whole. This will influence how he or she talks and interacts with others.

Some good questions to answer are:
-Where is your character from?This can mean the difference between your character calling a carbonated beverage "soda" or "pop". Your character's origi

Sentence Structure for FICTION

On Basic Sentence Structure for Fiction
(Grammar Nazis BEWARE!)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Everything I ever learned about writing Fiction DIDN'T come from school; not even college. In fact, the way one writes fiction is almost the complete opposite of everything I learned in school about writing.

In order to make my stories crystal clear in my readers' imaginations, I write in precise Chronological Order, in the order events actually happen, PLUS in the order that the eye sees it.

Case in point, when describing a character, I describe them from top to bottom, in the order that the eye notices them. Face, hair, upper body, arms, hands, then lower

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Tuto - Make Your Own Storyby *Izz-noxfox

Resources & Stock Images / Tutorials / Writing

:thumb164795740:

Some of you may recall a poll I did about writing tutorials, about one year ago... well here it comes! I actually struggled a lot with the layout, starting in Photoshop then going for Open Office to end in InDesign (totally had to learn to use the soft).

I think it's a nice tutorial for young writers seeking for advice, there are good tricks in it, some coming from a professional writer and others from my experience.

I hope you'll enjoy. And you'd be absolutely lovely if you gave it a

if you find it useful so other deviants can find it

There shouldn't be mistakes but if you ever see one don't hesitate to report it, I just had a sleepless night so it's very possible that I didn't see some.

tutorial©~Vixen-sama

ALSO if you seek for more tips about world creation don't hestitate to check *Charanty's World Creation Guide, it's nice set of tutos to make you think about the world in different aspects with nice tips!

For other tips you may check Dicicle.
Don't hesitate to request tricks and tutos on any matter

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*RosyKunoichi Oct 21, 2012 Hobbyist General Artist

I adore this tutorial! Read it all in one sitting, and it inspired me so much, I even got around to fleshing out one of my own stories some more, which I'd been having trouble doing. I love the layout, text, and especially those symbols

The examples and advice are all wonderful. It cuts off at the end, and there are only a few bits that seem grammatically off, but I know French is your first language and the whole thing is still very understandable

This is definitely DD worthy, in my opinion. Great work! _{(Also, it's been years, hiii!)}

*Izz-noxfox Oct 21, 2012 Professional General Artist

Thank you very much for your appreciation. I'm always glad to know this tutorial is helpful and often thinks of updating it and expanding it someday. I regularly see people keep on fav'in it but words such as yours are far more cheering.
_{(and I admit I sometimes wonder if someone will ever suggest it as a DD... xD)}

*RosyKunoichi Oct 22, 2012 Hobbyist General Artist

I actually really want to suggest it as a DD, I think it's totally worthy of one

I just don't know how D:

*Izz-noxfox Oct 22, 2012 Professional General Artist

You can write a note to a moderator of the stock gallery and tell why you suggest the deviation (and give a link to it of course). Finding gallery moderators is rather tricky but through the DD catalog some can be found like ^PirateLotus-Stock or ^Elandria. There should be a list accessible somewhere, it would be easier... At some point there was a group that constantly updated the list but I forgot its name.