The Quickening: Writing Tips that are not the usual

I know, right? Why a guy who has been criticized to death by his writing has to do this?

Well I'm not usual, you know. After reading and watching tons and tons of stories I decided to share some writing tips that might help you.

Now before I started I have to set things up: I won't cover the most obvious ones like "Read and write everyday" or "Show, don't tell", those are primary and I'm not against them, (you can check them here if you want) but there are times when you have to go to higher or challenging places. So here are my tips:

1. The blank slate character.

Creating an original character is hard. Writing about an already existing character who has its own personality is more hard. This is because you have to respect the character's ideals and dilemmas, its problems and virtues, its morality and limits. In summary everything.
But what about a character who has little to no personality? Whose characteristics are limited to quirks? Well, here you can add whatever you want! You can make it an "HM Slave" or a "Projection of yourself" and there's nothing wrong about it, this can work on background characters. If that said character has a little more personality however, you have to respect it more seriously. You can add whatever you want yet you have to respect its own characteristics so it can be more believable and not "out of character" as what could be seen. Sometimes I wonder why characters such as Noteworthy, Caramel, Raindrops, Amethyst Star and Cloud Kicker have their own tags while characters who deserve a tag more than them (Moon Dancer, Rara, Flurry Heart, Sunburst, Ember) don't have one yet but I suppose this rule is the reason why.

The perfect example of a blank slate character used in one of my stories. (Meanwhile I'm still waiting for my Moon Dancer tag)

2. Thoroughly research a topic.

Writing a short list of questions and then answering them is a great method to know what you're going to do before proceeding to your sheet because you can know where to start. Normally you want to start writing with a topic you already know. But what if is a theme you literally know nothing? You have to research for it and go deeper. Life won't give you easy things all the time, there'll be occasions you have to work with stuff you don't like and most likely there'll be no place to hide. You have to investigate your sources and sometimes they'll be in the most unexpected places. Who knows, maybe you'll like them in the long run. This is normally how Pixar's animators and writers get the inspiration for their movies. Also: although is recommended to start from the easiest point you should also do the first chapter, just to have something to publish while you finish the remaining chapters.

For Animal Cottage not only I have to read George Orwell's original work for the themes and topics and watch "Night of the Dolphin" for the gruesome scenes, but I also had to investigate a law which implemented VAT to pets while I was studying qualitative market research at college. I got mildy interested in the matter after the research.

3. Adapt your story in the aforementioned universe.

Sometimes you want to write your own version of a story done to death. Well first of all you have to take elements of both unverses and try to mix them, assigning roles to each character. I've seen parodies upon parodies of Disney movies with ponies that did great the mix between these concepts, this brings me to the next point: if you're going to do a parody, first you have to love the original material you're going to parody. The same goes to an homage: don't be pretencious and most of all, respect the source material.

A Pokémon wildlife-like documentary... Tell me if that's not the greatest idea ever. Also this story from Opium4TmassS is the perfect blend of two universes.

4. If you're going to copy, PUT EFFORT!

Let's be serious for a moment. Not everybody has a creative mind, sometimes they have to "borrow" material from others, but for the most part the differences are so minimal that they left you wondering.

This is literally a Hunger Games clone, inferior in almost everything. Even Honest Trailers mocks about it! If you like it that's good, I'm glad you enjoy it. No offense but why the fuck does this even exist?

This is where creativity comes into. The way the idea is done is what matters, the way you mold the concepts is what matters, effort is what matters. Even the most bland and uninteresting concepts can be intriguing if they're done right. Two of my most favorite writers, DisneyFanatic and Magpiepony, do this: For DF half of her works have been done before: Beauty and the Beast, Lion King II (which is already the Disney version of Romeo & Juliette), The Nutcracker, The Prince and the Pauper, Dracula, etc., while Magpiepony's most known story is a simple body swap concept, not to mention her pony versions of fairy tales. But the merit of doing this is taking these elements and create something new with them, giving them their own meaning. In terms of plastic arts both DF and Magpiepony are not painters, they are collage artists: they take already existing and preestablished elements and find new ways to view and combine them to tell us their own story with them. I consider myself a collage artist as well.

This man is literally one of the most unoriginal film directors of all time... yet he is one of the most acclaimed because of the previously mentioned methods.

5. Try to finish what you started.

We all have artist block, we all have those distractions that prevent us to continue, we all have that moment when we feel our project is not that interesting to us anymore. But you have to try, you should try to give your story an ending. There has been a lot of stories I wanted to read but I didn't even click on them because they were never finished (and probably won't) or I tracked some that haven't been updated for a while. I mean, just imagined if Catcher in the Rye, the Monkey King or Don Quixote were never finished. I could only accept an unfinished story if it was cancelled but otherwise try.

Congratulations bahatumay! It took you 6 months, 6 fucking months to finish this but you did it! I'm ready to read it!

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I hope you enjoyed this and let these tips help you as well as the basic ones. Tell me what do you think about them and let me know in the comments. Try to be better everyday!