5069670 5069675

So I guess the better question, is why do we like torturing our characters as children? Is it to make them 200% more pitiable, because they were only kids?

Well, I think it's more the age-group we're dealing with; Teens (which I'm guessing is what we all were during the time we thought angsty edgy stuff was the beesknees.)
There's a reason there's a genre in fiction specifically for teens; the YA(Young Adult) genre. Harry Potter, Hunger Games and Twilight are examples of this and they all have this edginess to them.
Teens generally look for a connection between themselves and a fictional character so they can emphasise with them. (Fiction also lets them escape reality, and connecting with a character plays a part in that.)
This usually means that the character is of the same age and is generally facing the same struggles in life.

But this character needs a backstory! Events in their lives before the the story that shaped them and with an age range of anyhere between 10 and 16, there's not a lot of room to put it anywhere but their childhood.

And so we have children live the worst lives possible, before they bloom into a beautiful, broken black flower that is misunderstood and enjoys wearing trenchcoats.

It's a bit of a generalisation, so ofcourse it's not true for everyone. But hey, I heard this somewhere and it made sense to me, so there you go.

Also:

wai, me, wai?

It's the magic of friendship, isn't it?
It's the most powerful magic of all

5069737 I have that file too. It's titled "Genesis - HAPPY ENDING" XD

Also, to shove my own sins into the pile. I love adjectives. I have always loved adjectives. JFC Purple prose, get thee into my soul! The longer the sentence (and paragraph), the better it becomes, right?? The more lines of dialogue you shove in between descriptions, the more interesting it is, right???? (Also, it took a long while before I started using the appropriate commas in dialogue. :|)

"Nonsense, it is no worry of mine to have you tampering about in here." Aldric smiled patiently, drawing the larger man's attention back to him as he ran a tidily trimmed fingernail along the ridge of a skull of some animal. "I fear that the late Master and myself did not find each other's affections agreeable. I suppose you could almost say we rather disliked each other, despite the fact that we only had each other for company." He absently walked over to one of the shelves, fingering a small globe of the earth. "I was much more fond of the late Master's wife." He pushed it, the globe spinning squeakily before jerking to a stop with a long, drawn-out whining squeal.

EVERYTHING NEEDS AN ADJECTIVE. In fact, there's some confusion as to what adjective goes with what noun...... And the commas, THE COMMAS.

The figure itself was hazy, fuzzy around the edges. It was a tall slender woman, the head, with its dirtied cheeks, wobbled loosely, much like a loose bobbin before finally settling into an uncomfortablely [sic] angled position. Long ashen hair, filled with leaves and twigs, hung limply in tangled mats across the form's shoulders where it was tainted a vibrant red that colored the strands as it dripped from the neck of the creature to dye the long white and torn petticoats that draped and dragged on the floor a dark crusty crimson. It made no sound as it inched closer and closer to the girl, other than a low whining sound that was issued from it's gaping black mouth.

5076374 And you always said you thought I was little miss "needs a fairy tale ending". EH? WAS THIS NOT WHAT YOU WANTED, ROSSBY?

Okay, I guess now's a fair time to bring out the old rapid fire lessons from this thread's original post before the group's Reckoning. There are, of course, exceptions to every rule, but these are all excessive offenders in Teenage Crystal's writing.

1) Stop being so edgy that it cuts your seconds.
- It happened within a matter of second-fractions, and she was now in the form of a wolf.
- The empty void filled back up with his own thoughts after a fraction of a second.
- After a fraction of a second, his words began to sink in.

2) If you can say something is "clearly", it was probably already clear before you pointed it out. There are a lot of exceptions to this, but the below are, IMO, not.
- She nodded, clearly agreeing with him.
- She cried into his shirt sleeve before pulling away from him, clearly confused and indecisive.
- He trailed off, yawning, clearly tired.

3) There is such a thing as artistic license and stylistic choices, but when I have to stop and wonder what the heck "orbs" are referring to, maybe you should reconsider and just call them "eyes".
- She had emotionless black orbs, and sat perfectly straight, as if she had some sort of dignity.
- Her blue orbs flashed with more rage and hatred than before.
- She stared at him, shocked, her orbs dulling to lifelessness.

4) JUST. USE. CONTRACTIONS. It's okay! They won't hurt you!
- A tad disappointed he did not get her joke, she transformed herself into a bird.
- She really did not think about the greed of humans...
- She did not take kindly to such foul language, even though she lived in Hell, and the lower demons used it all the time.

5) Speaking of that last snippet, please, tone down the edge, seriously.
- She turned her arm, showing a deep scar that looked as if it would start bleeding. Stupid humans. Outsmarting her. How dare they.
- "Death. War. Destruction. I was meant to stop all that. Now..." She smiled kindly. "Now, I cause it."
- He bit down hard onto his paw, causing his white fur to soak up with black Demonic blood.

5a) No, seriously, what is this? This one needs its own bullet point, all just for it.
Before the drunk man could do anything, she reached up and kissed his lips, and as she did, his skin seemed to melt away, leaving nothing but bones. She broke the kiss and gave the other two men a seductive grin. "Guess I was a bit too hot for him. Anyone else want to take a try and see if you can keep up with me?" After having seen their drunk friend melt to near-nothingness, they stumbled off into the darkness.

6) Get out of your dark, abysmal cloud of edge and talk to another human being to learn how people actually talk. Or, at least, just read your dialogue aloud and realize how... blech.
- "She has been a fool lately, and this whole brawl with Satan is her doom. It was fated so. Not even her lover, or the guardian he specifically selected for her, can stop this doomed fate."
- "Try to stay sane, or my claws will dig into your scalp. Forgive me, my Lord, but you must admit you haven't been yourself lately. I must take drastic measures."
- "Have it your way, wench. I hope you enjoy being a Mortal. Have it known I could give you back your Demonicity. But I won't, no, not now."

7) ... In my experience, people are terrible at gleaning specific meanings from looks. General ones, sure. But some of these are a little too specific.
- ... giving him a 'This can't be good' look.
- ... giving him a 'I'm sorry, but I have to say this' look.
- ... giving her a 'Do you honestly think I can understand females?' look.

5079077 you are beautiful. <3 AND IF I CAN'T HOLD TEEN-CRYSTAL THINGS AGAINST YOU, YOU CAN'T HOLD TEEN-ROSSBY THINGS AGAINST ME

5079077

Actually I think Teenage Crystal was on to something with point #7 given #3. If those orbs can flash and dull on command than language isn't out of the question. In fact point #1 makes it even more likely. With all kinds of things happening so rapidly having entire conversations with strobe-like eyes is a real possibility.

5079205 This is true. Perhaps I was just inventing a race of beings that communicate through the power of rave eyes.

5079077
It's almost depressing how many of those I still see in stories on this site, even ones that make it to the feature box. Especially the contractions. Oh my god the lack of contractions.

And some of these people get so edgy it cuts their seconds 'til they're not even fractions anymore; everything happens immediately. Because that's how you know it's an action scene, right? Everyone starts moving like they're in a DBZ episode and nothing takes any time at all anymore.

5079317

F r o m n o w o n I ' l l w r i t e a l l o f m y a c t i o n s e q u e n c e s w i t h t h i s s t y l e o f s p a c i n g s o y o u k n o w i t ' s s l o w m o t i o n . W i l l t h a t h e l p ?

5079324
Definitely. I could literally feel my brain slowing to a crawl as i read that.

Okay! Been a while. Let's open a document and go to a random page and see what we find...

"Seth. Now." Xian's eyes narrowed as she drew a dagger from a hole in the wall behind the microwave. She pointed the dagger at him, holding it carefully in her hand. "I think you know what I can do with this."

Dæmak glanced up at Tenchi. "Well, everyone has their secrets, I suppose..." He then pranced about in a circle, chanting, "No bank-robbing for me-e, no bank robbing for me-e!"

Dæmak laughed. "Oh, no. I am a cat Demon. I can just take on the form of a more human-like Demon. Haven't you noticed?" He held out his arm, tracing the pattern that resembled scales along his skin. "It's my mark. Demons are marked, depending on their rank and type. I'm a higher-level Demon, but because I'm a cat Demon, I can't look like a full, true Demon. Take Lord Sanglant for example. He's a full, high-level Demon. So his skin looks normal. I'm the closest to being of his rank, so my Demon form looks a lot like him in some ways, but my skin is different. Also, so is my hair." He ran a hand through his black hair. "If you haven't noticed, my hair is much thicker and much shorter than Lord Sanglant's. Plus, I'm a bit darker tanned, and my eyes are slightly off-black..." He choked on his words. "I am rambling! I apologize, Miss Tenchi."

Dæmak sighed, and hopped out of Tenchi's lap. The usual blue puff of smoke 
filled the air, and after it was gone, a rather young-looking were-tiger sat 
indian-style. He wore medieval-style clothing, with a deep green
 long-sleeved shirt and knee-length brown pants made of soft leather. At his
 side, strapped to a black belt, a silver-hilted longsword rested in it's 
sheath. Dæmak flicked his right ear boredly. "This doesn't mean I'm going to
 help you, Miss Xian." He turned his attention to Tenchi. "I hope I don't
 frighten you, Miss Tenchi. I'm still the same cat you were petting only
 moments ago."

5096994 Welp, we all start somewhere. (Admittedly, this is tenfold better than a quarter of what I've read on this site.)

5096994

Are you sure you don't have a new best seller series on your hands? Add a bit of sparkle gleam to your demons and watch the money pour in.

5097049

What is this nonsense? Who in their right mind would write this?

Day Mac averted his gaze, his cheeks darkening to a deep shade of red. "I..." His light purple orbs shimmered a bit as his gaze crept back to her. "I forgive you, Miss Saline."

In a fraction of a second, she smiled and threw her forelegs around him in a gesture widely known as a "hug." He was not prepared for the physical contact and stared straight ahead with a look that read, 'What do I do?'

This writer makes me sick.

5100832

Just you wait until the sequel. You'll long for the clarity present in part one.

5100838 Ah, right, the sequel where Satan Lucy Fir is introduced. That pile of crabapples...

For any interested parties: the "Miss Saline" line in the original story was "Miss Tenchi". Tenchi -> "heaven and earth" -> searching names meaning heaven -> lots of Celestia, Celeste... Selene -> Saline

It seemed fittingly stupid.

5100832
Mmmm... Orbs and second fractions. My favorites.

It's been too long since we doused ourselves in the flame of EDGE!

She closed her eyes, thinking carefully. “A young woman walked into the bar… She waved her hand, and everything stopped. She yelled about me being a Demon, and she being a servant of Him… And…”
He narrowed his eyes, seeming to be displeased. She winced, until she noticed the concern on his face. “Go on, Xian.”
“I chided her a bit… I guess I didn’t really understand what she was capable of.”
He smirked. “By the looks of her corpse, you don’t seem to understand what you are capable of.”
“What do you mean?”
“Her skull was completely shattered, her neck snapped in two, and along her arms and legs, her bones had been snapped and the sharp edges of the snapped bones broke through her skin.”
The corner of her lips twitched. “Oh. That.”

Eiri was lying on the bed with blood tubes and IVs everywhere, making him look like some kind of sick and twisted experiment straight out of a stupid sci-fi movie. A mask was over his face, forcing him to keep breathing. A few blood splatters decorated the inside of the mask, and the front of Eiri's shirt was covered in the crimson liquid.

Mm... I am sated.

5143034

All I can think about is why there is still a shirt to be covered in raspberry kool-aid instead of it being cut off.

5143034

some kind of sick and twisted experiment straight out of a stupid sci-fi movie

Well... what you're showing us does look like such a movie.

Well everyone, here we are. It's in the title, so let us delve a bit deeper in the writing of our beloved Juvenile Quartz and see what we can learn.
We're going to do some serious dissecting and learning here (which I'm qualified for since I'm a scientist), but I won't let that stop me from letting in the occasional wit.

Now, I'm told I can't go wrong unless I recognize these snippets as "masterpieces of literary greatness" (which they are) so it looks like we have quite a challenge ahead of us. We'll start from the beginning, so grab a drink, a snack, and some plate armor to prevent the edge from cutting your soul.

What I'll try to do is look at a snippet, identify what's happening, why it's something you (probably) shouldn't do, and then maybe offer some suggestions in what you could do instead or how it can be better.
Now most (pretty much all) of the books I've read recently are by Brandon Sanderson, so don't be surprised if I mention his name a bunch of times.
Here we go.

5063144

Once upon a time, in a land of magick and faerie's, there lived a princess. She was beautiful, and wise beyond her years. Yet, akin to many other princesses, she had a curse of her own. She was trapped in a man's body.

That is how this story would start if it were a faerie (or fairy) tale, and if it were about a princess. However, this is not a faerie tale, and it is not about a princess trapped in a man's body, although that would be an interesting topic. So, let us quit this rambling nonsense and get on to the true beginning.

"Here's a world. Here's a character. This story is not about those."

Well... then why are you telling us about them?!

So yes, what we have here is the false hook, we're being pulled into (the beginning of) a story which is not the story that's being told further on.
Next, we're told that we've just been duped and only then do we get the start of the actual story.

Straight off the bat, you'll push your reader out of the story and stop their immersion into your story before you've even started. I don't think I need to tell you, but that's not what you want. Even if this story of a different world is in some way related, you still have to establish the world and the characters of your main story before you introduce complex mechanics like interconnected worlds or alternate dimensions. If what you're writing is unrelated, then just leave it out. It has no purpose of being in your story.

Looking at the hook itself, it's quite generic. The "once upon a time" opening introduces a narrator, which you don't really want if you're aiming to write an immersive story, and it doesn't really do anything interesting. The line "in a land of magick and faerie's" builds off the reader's preconceived notion of magick and faeries, which doesn't have to be a bad thing—throughout writing your story, you continue to imply that there is a larger world beyond the page which you're not showing—but in this case, it's too broad. The entire world is still undefined and you can end up introducing new elements further on that don't 'fit' into a reader's version of "a land of magick and faerie's" which can be cause for disconnect between the reader and your story.
In short, don't build a world or story off your reader's knowledge of a particular theme, be concrete in building your own world.

So how do you start a story with a good hook?
Well there are as many good hooks as stories out there and there's nothing quite like reading some of them and analyse what they're doing.
Whatever you do, try and grab the reader's attention in the very first paragraph. It's not much of an exaggeration that your opening paragraph is your most important one. I think the best thing you can do is: show us something that is unique or significant about your setting/world, your main character or your plot. These are the main elements that drive your story (particularly character and plot) and getting a reader engaged in them straight off the bat is probably the best hook you can get.

Giving an example of Brandon Sanderson, he opens up in "Mistborn" with a passage from an ancient text, which is the journal of the hero of a thousand years ago. Every chapter starts with one of these passages and these aren't even relevant until much later in the story. BUT THEY WORK. They work because it introduces a world building element: A legend that has shaped and defined the world of today. There's no narrator to distract us from it, it's just the text from a journal.

Going back to the beginning of Mistborn, the very first line beyond journal text is this:
"Ash fell from the sky."
Well there you have it. Wouldn't you say that's quite striking? What is it that causes ash to fall from the sky? Is something happening right now that's causing it? Is it perpetual? If it is perpetual, then how do the people living in this world deal with it? How does it affect them?
That's a hook right there.

Welp, that's all for the first lesson. For those that managed to read through it all, thank you and I hope my rambling hasn't been off-mark and I managed to distribute some learning. If not and I've just been saying stupid things, by all means, shout at me. (But be gentle, please)

If you're reading this because you skipped the big wall o' text and were hoping for a tl;dr, well, maybe one of the following comments can help you out on that front.

Next lesson: Gem Cutting Lesson 2: Dense Paragraphs and assigning Viewpoints, Identity, and details in Descriptions

Previous lesson: Gem Cutting Lesson 1: False Hooks and Story Openers

Good morning again, class. (I've elevated myself to teacher now)

We're going to continue our deconstruction of Juvenile Quartz' writing, which from henceforth will be called "Gem Cutting" lessons. (Seriously, I'm a genius. Master-level punnery right here.)

So, welcome! Let's begin.

5063301

The creature smiled a cute little smile, one of that you would find on a little kid in the candy store. It bent at the mid-torso, plucking a small black berry from a bush and looking it over. Dropping the berry into the metal pail held in its other hand, it seemed to anticipate something. Plink – the berry hit the bottom of the pail. The creature laughed, and plucked another. Drop – Plink. Pluck – Drop – Plink. After this was repeated numerous times, the creature walked off, pausing only two inches from the edge where the ground dips, and water collects, widely known as a “lake”. It set the pail down and crouched on its toes, elbows rested on its knees. It stared out over the water, as smooth as if it were glass. Smiling contently, it reached into the bucket and scooped out a handful of berries. Its trench coat folded over itself, being long, and having to compensate for the solid ground denying it the ability to let gravity pull it any further. The creature tilted its head back and poured the berries into its mouth, chewed slowly, then swallowed. It rubbed the back of its hand against its chin, smearing a trickle of dark purple liquid. It grimaced, realizing that the stuff was still there, and slipped its trench coat off its shoulders. Folding the coat, it set it near the bucket, and dove into the lake. The water was shallow, causing the creature to pull up quickly, and then it stood. The water reaching to about its waist, it stared down at its reflection, seemingly curious. It stretched out its index finger and lightly poked the surface of the water, amazed at how disrupted it is now. It watched the ripples grow larger, creating tiny waves, until after silence and no movement, the water settled again, back to its glass-like form. Before it could move to poke the surface, a drop of water gathered between its eyes, and it went cross-eyed to watch the drop trickle down its nose, then fall. When the drop hit the surface, it was as if it shattered the surface. Amazed, the creature dipped its cupped hands into the water and lifted them out. Before it could use the water to rinse its face, the water drained through the crease between its hands. Blinking, the creature attempted to try to catch the water before it los-

Well if this is an example of anything, it shows how we, as writers, can manipulate pacing. In fact, it's one of your greatest tools. You have the ability to make 10 minutes go by in a single paragraph, or have it last throughout an entire chapter.
Buuuuttttt, unfortunately, this particular paragraph, aside from being way too long, falls in the category of "big block o' boring". Sorry to say, Quartz. :(
We went through the false hook previously and this paragraph immediately follows that opening. I told you guys about interesting story openers and, while this paragraph has some interesting aspects, it's overshadowed by the rest of it.

So what's going on? There's a whole bunch of stuff happening, but at the same, nothing is happening.
That is to say, nothing significant is happening. This snippet introduces a creature in a world collecting and washing berries and then taking a swim in a lake and wash its face, with incredible detail of its actions. Excessive detail, actually. But after reading through it, you're left wondering what the point of all of it was.
What's the significance of, what seems to be, this creature's daily life?

The overall idea isn't bad, actually. A character introduction beginning somewhere in their day-to-day. In this case, it seems to be in the wild. Describing how it gathers berries to eat, or how it lives in a forest can be a pretty interesting start, especially if it deviates from the norm of the rest of the world. The other interesting part in this paragraph is the berry and pail, and the reaction this creature has to it. Finding pleasure in hearing a "plink" sound adds a touch of character. Maybe this guy likes music and this could become a plot point? Looking at the reflection of itself in the lake can also be an easy transition into describing appearance.

But aside from that, we're not given much; We don't have a clear viewpoint and the descriptions and details goes to the wrong places.
We're told about "The creature", but what is this creature? It could be anything ever! We could be looking at a human, an ogre, a dog with hands, or a giant sparkly butterfly with ten limbs. Tall as a tree, or tiny as a ping pong ball? Are 'we', as reader, taking on the viewpoint of this creature, or are we someone else observing this creature? What I'm getting at is: we should have an identity and appearance, more than being a... "thing". I guess, if we are taking on the viewpoint of this creature and we seem to be of low intelligence, we can't properly describe what we look like, but that's some tricky business.

Next, there is an incredible amount of detail describing actions, while that should go to other places. Mainly describing appearances of the creature and its surroundings. It all ends up being filler words. Without significance, they lose purpose, and words without purpose can be cut.
Significance is, again, related to your setting, your plot, or your characters. Every other sentence or so, should move the story forward, be that through characterisation (like how they react to things) or character growth, world building, or advancing the plot. This isn't a rule more than it is a loose guideline though, but the latter half of this paragraph doesn't do any of this and that's why it becomes a drag to read.

It's not all bad, however. It has some interesting elements in it, but those are smothered by the sheer size of the paragraph, filled with unnecessary details.
This is terrible for your opening paragraph and it's something you have to avoid.
Writing short and sweet is going to have more impact, which in turn will keep your reader's attention better, which, as a result, immerses them into your story and gets them to keep reading!
Long paragraphs like this are actually something you might come across when you're writing your early drafts and then go to do revisions. If ideas keep flowing forth, you'll write them all down, but then you'll need to find the few sentences that stand out and do something interesting and cut all the rest.

Before we go on, yes, I do have to comment on this little tidbit:

the edge where the ground dips, and water collects, widely known as a “lake”.

Being clever here, eh? Well, something like this can actually be used cleverly as world building.
We're going back to Brandon Sanderson's 'Mistborn' and the land with ashfalls, where flowers don't exist. So, when a character shows a picture of a flower to someone else, it's not described as "a flower", but as a weird tree with a thin, green stem that should snap under the weight of the blob with oddly colored leaves on top. (or something to that extent, I don't have the book with me right now.) If it's not common knowledge in your world, you can play off that.
If it is common knowledge though, don't do this. Just call it by what it is, be concise in describing things whenever you can, it makes it much easier to read that way.

Alright, what should we be doing. Like I said before, start with something unique or interesting about your world or character. In this case, beginning in the middle of something's day-to-day is actually kinda interesting, the particularly interesting element here is that we're living in the wild, rather than a society. Next, the amusement by the "plink" sound adds a nice bit of character, so whenever you have something like that, use it. Most of the rest though, can be scrapped. We don't gain anything by describing how this creature bends at the mid-torso, it just bends. A lake is a lake. The ground is usually solid. Taking off a coat can be done in a couple of words, Etcetera, etcetera. There's a bunch of stuff that can be cut.

Let's touch on viewpoints as well. When writing a story, you'll have a viewpoint. Most of the time, this will be 1st person, or 3rd person limited. (3rd person omniscient exists and it kinda looks like that's what's happening here, but it's really hard to pull off well and I'm honestly not experienced.) We still have this narrator kind of feel throughout the paragraph; it doesn't seem clear what our viewpoint is. The description of merely "the creature" lacks identity and because of that we, as readers, feel like we're observers, rather than a participant, to the story. In turn, this makes the story less engaging to begin with. The best way to start with immersing your readers, is by giving them an identity of a character first.

To review: begin with identifying the character whom's viewpoint we'll be inhabiting and use the knowledge they have. Right from the start, we're not a creature, but we have a name. We're collecting our berries, as we usually do every day, so we have something to eat in this scarce forest. We enjoy the little "plink" sound when we drop berries into our pail. Sometimes we pluck a couple of berries before dropping them in succession, and enjoy the little melody it creates.
We see things the way this character sees things, their eyes become a lens, of sorts, through which we get to see the world. The little things the character does (like making music by dropping berries in a pail) makes them come alive.

Next, cut on what can be cut. Focus your detailing on describing the appearances of important characters and surroundings, but be short and concrete when describing things of lesser importance and actions. (This is something I'll go over more in the next lesson, on the scale between abstract and concrete language.)

Build on the knowledge and characteristics the character who's viewpoint we're inhabiting has or doesn't have. A warrior looking at a city wall may describe it as being able to hold against a siege of so many trebuchets for several days, while a historian may describe it as having been destroyed and rebuilt during a particular battle. Use this to your advantage.

And don't make your paragraphs this long. :P A paragraph should end whenever you change a subject. You can spend a couple of lines talking about the moon, but when you go to talk about some ice cream next, it needs a new paragraph. I might talk about this in more detail in another lesson, since we've already covered a lot here.

Hopefully, I've been somewhat comprehensive in my babbling, if not you may shout at me again. (but gently, please)
If you want to, you can do a little exercise by rewriting this opening paragraph and using some of the stuff I've explained. Work those writing muscles!

In the next lesson of Gem Cutting, we'll go over abstract and concrete language in relations to descriptions, and a short bit on exposition. See you then!

Next Lesson: Gem Cutting Lesson 3: Descriptions and Abstract vs. Concrete Language and the Learning Curve

I'm super duper enjoying the analyses by Iryerris. If anyone else has any interest in taking the time to do something similar with them, I'll keep providing more snippets to work with. They don't have to be as wonderfully in-depth! Just anything to help others learn from Juvenile Quartz's mistakes.

Vvaren's eyes shimmered brightly at the sight of the rows of many, many types of candies.
“You'll be working hard on perfecting your English, so I feel you need to have something to keep yourself entertained. Mortals claim chocolates and candies are the best.”
Vvaren stared up at Dæmak, seemingly amazed at the thought of such fine riches. Such riches, it had never even imagined.
“You let I have candy?”
Dæmak cringed, but managed a smile. “I'll have a lot of work to do, it seems... And yes, you can have any candy you want.”
Vvaren clasped its hands together, laughing gleefully. In the spur of the moment, it gave one small twirl, and then dashed off into the store. It grabbed an empty basket, plucked various candies as it went, and simply enjoyed itself as it almost skipped through the aisles. Dæmak rubbed his hands together, as if spreading lotion or a brand of liquid soap on them into a fine film before washing. The clerk watched him, giving him the look the cloth storeowner had. Dæmak returned the expression with a look of pure evil and utter demonicity that appeared to spook the man beyond Mortal mental capacity. With a simple snap of Dæmak's fingers, the man seemed to dissolve into the air itself, giving off a ghastly shroud, and an unbearable scent. Soon, the multiple types of candy (such as chocolates, gummies, caramels, mints, and liquorices) overpowered the smell of death and fear from the one single man. Dæmak glanced about himself, eyes narrowing at the sight of a security camera. Casually, his expression calmed, as if teasing the camera. With one hand in his pocket, he waved slightly and pivoted on the heel of his left foot, heading toward Vvaren. Vvaren drummed childishly upon the sides of its large barrel full of assorted candies, singing in rhyme.
“Bucket, bucket, full of a nice treat,
Many, many, taste oh-so-sweet!
Vvaren's friend let it loose in the store,
But soon, Vvaren will want much more!”
Dæmak laughed, clapping his hands in soft applause. Vvaren hiccuped on the dragged out 'more', bending backwards to look at Dæmak upside-down.
“Hi there!”
“Lovely rhyming, mi amigo. Though, you named yourself as Vvaren and not 'I' and 'My', but I suppose it wouldn't sound as well with proper grammar.”
Vvaren smiled at him, struggling to lift the bucket up while standing on its feet. It swaggered over to him, lifting the bucket up onto its head, and attempted to balance it, giving him a smile, overflowing with optimistic rapture.
“I ready to go learn, for it is knowledge I wish to earn!”
“How much exactly have you eaten already?”
“I had lots lots lots, especially the treat with many many spots!”
“Hm... I don't believe it is wise to try and teach you anything while you are in rhyme, but it should be comical. Let us go, mi amigo.”
He turned, shaking his head at the sight of Vvaren faltering under the weight of the bucket of candy, still in its singsong mode.
“Let us go-diddly-go, so it is words I will know!”

Previous Lesson: Gem Cutting Lesson 2: Dense Paragraphs and assigning Viewpoints, Identity, and details in Descriptions

Alright everyone, settle down. I know it's the weekend, but remember: You're here because you want to.
Not because we're holding you here against your will.

First off, thanks very much for the kind words, Crystal. I do enjoy writing these little breakdowns and I hope people can learn something from it.
But, and this is to everyone, don't let that stop you from making observations and commenting yourself! I'm only one guy with only my own perspective and I could easily have missed something. So if you see something you want to comment on, by all means, share it!

Also my post are stupidly long... seriously, look at them. This may not been for everyone and that's totally cool, but in that case, we need the rest of you guys to share your observation that are easier to digest, 'kay?

Anyways, let's get started, shall we?

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Xian nodded once, and grasped the charm that hung on a golden chain around her neck. Holding the charm tightly, she began to phase into a new appearance Vvaren simply has never seen before. It is still wolven, but different. You might find it similar to the Centaur, except with many, many more wolf features. The torso, which would be human on a Centaur, is the wolf-woman from before. Where her legs would join, a pure wolf body is connected. She reached back and patted the area you would sit on if it were a horse. The back, in other terms.

In this sequence, Xian transforms into a Centaur, while keeping her upper-body appearance: that of a wolf-woman.
I hope, after reading the above line, everyone has a similar picture in their heads of what Xian looks like. If not, then I sadly failed in making her description briefer and more concrete.

The description of Xian is delivered somewhat vague and seemingly unsure of itself. Lines like "You might find it similar to the Centaur" and "with many, many more wolf features." aren't concrete and only add confusion, rather than clarity. It still builds off the reader's knowledge slightly, but not nearly as much as the snippet from Lesson 1, so this is an example of where it works. Centaurs and wolves are creatures that are widely known and it's possible to explain to an unaware reader what they are through context.

I think it's clear from this point that we are in a 3rd person omniscient viewpoint through a narrator, and that's because of this:
"she [Xian] began to phase into a new appearance Vvaren simply has never seen before. It is still wolven, but different. You might find it similar to the Centaur"
If we assume we are in 3rd person limited and we're taking on Vvaren's viewpoint, then we cannot describe Xian's new form as being a "wolven centaur". Remember: in 3rd person limited, you build off the knowledge your character has or doesn't have. Vvaren doesn't have knowledge of what a centaur is, so what he sees cannot be described as a centaur.
But ok, we're in 3rd person omniscient, so we do get to do this.
Buuuuut, with vague description, like explained before, this narrator omniscient viewpoint breaks our immersion.

So let's introduce the Pyramid of Abstraction, BEHOLD:
http://imgur.com/HiNxBMS

Beautiful.

The pyramid of abstraction is a visual representation of a scale between Abstract and Concrete language. It signifies that you need a foundation of concrete language to hook your reader into your story, (represented by the hooks at the bottom. It's glorious, I know) and use that to build abstract language upon later in your story. If your abstract language is built on top of a concrete foundation, the reader will read about things the character(s) are thinking about, or are experiencing, rather than it being a narrator telling them stuff.

But, what is Abstract and what is Concrete language?
Well, think of "a beautiful dress" and "a red square".
You'll have realised that a beautiful dress is much more subjective and open to interpretation, while a red square is pretty much the same in everyone's mind. That's what it boils down to.
A beatiful dress is quite abstract, while a red square is concrete.
Now it's not quite that easy: dresses share similar characteristics, and there are plenty of different shades of red, so these two aren't the absolute extremes of either one, but they're quite close.

When you start off your story, you want to make descriptions concrete. When you say "a dog" everyone will picture a different kind of dog. We can make the dog more concrete by adding more descriptive words to it. This narrows down what kind of dog it is and what it looks like. There's a catch, however. Adding descriptions will mean you'll be more concrete, but you'll also be less brief, and brevity is something you want to try and maintain as much as possible in your story. So your goal isn't to find all the words to describe things, but to find the right words. Focus on the things that are immediately important at this point in your story, and leave the other stuff for later on. Don't put all your descriptions in one paragraph, but spread them out, possibly across chapters.

The ideal descriptions are those that can evoke tone, character or that add to the setting.
What can we say about a dog? Well, it can be a whimpering dog. We wonder what happened to it.
A famished dog, scavenging for food. Why is it hungry? Why is there no food?
A disgusting dog.
A fine hunting dog.
A dog that hasn't been caught and eaten yet.

You can see how these description add something to the dog itself, adds character or knowledge to... the character we're inhabiting, or says something about the world. That's the ideal for making descriptions. You're adding words, thus gaining concreteness for the price of brevity, but because it speaks volumes about several things, it doesn't become boring.

Quartz' story lacks the concrete foundation that we need to be hooked. Look back to the snippets from lessons 1 and 2, and you may realise that "a world of magick and faeries" and "the creature" are incredibly abstract and since we don't have a foundation to base this on, we're left confused. While the forms of a centaur and a wolf in this snippet are quite concrete, it's followed by vague descriptions that add to this confusion.

I'm truly sorry for being so harsh on you Quartz, we all love you regardless.

Xian blinked, her ears folding backwards. “Well, Vvaren, a dæmon is a demonic entity, similar to a demon. Those creatures you saw were dæmons, shrouded by an illusion of the werewolf perspective. I am a demon, which is a higher ranking than the average dæmon. It's really hard to explain, Vvaren. Just think of it this way – A general commands the soldiers. I'm the general. They’re the soldiers.”

Here we have a form of exposition that is the "Wattson character", in this case, Vvaren.
The Wattson character is a character in a story that doesn't understand what's going on. As a writer, you can then deliver exposition quite easily, by having other characters explain to them (and so also the reader) what is what.
Other than this paragraph being a bit... jarry, which I can understand because Vvaren seems to be of low-intelligence, so things have to be explained in a rather basic way, it does the Wattson exposition quite well.

Now, how do we handle delivering information to the reader?
Every story will have a Learning Curve, that is to say the level of understanding a reader has about your story. This includes character names, appearances, occupations, relationships, social structures, cities, and pretty much everything else. And that's A LOT.
During your story, this level will keep rising, until your reader becomes somewhat of an expert of your setting.
When they reach this level they'll have knowledge of whatever you're mentioning and you can get through the story faster, as you don't need to explain the workings of your world anymore.

Your job, as writer, is to ease your reader into all of this knowledge, while remaining in-character.
This can be pretty hard to do, especially if there is a lot of stuff to learn about your world. Try to focus on one thing at a time, focusing on what is immediately important and try to have every paragraph do multiple things, most importantly:
-Build character
-Setting/World-building
-Forwarding the plot
If you can give your main character a good reason to think about something in the world that's related to the plot, and you can mention this early on, then that is a great hook to begin a story.

Vvaren nodded meekly, carefully putting the charm in its pocket. Xian smiled half-heartedly, then returned to her poker face. There was an eerie pause. The crackling, ember-spitting smoke ceased, though it continued to burn away the wood. Xian appeared to melt away from vision, fading into the thick air, heavy with smoke. Where Xian's heart would have been, a faint glow appeared. The glow, of a red tinge, grew larger, until it was the size of a troll's head (which would be quite 'dumb' to put it lightly, but this is merely a size comparison, not intelligence) and began to move. It paused for a moment in front of Akaihane, and then lowered until it was horizontally level with his heart, and entered. Akaihane's whole body trembled, and he collapsed, Vvaren attempting to keep him up. His body was heavy, and quivering; like a Chihuahua. He inhaled and exhaled deeply, his frail body seemingly unable to adjust to the new level of power. Soon, though, he regained control, and stood; with Vvaren's help, of course.

Oof, how do we tackle this?
I'm not sure if I can connect this to anything in particular, but we can go through some sentences and see what happens.
A better writer than I will probably do a much better job at this than I, though.

The crackling, ember-spitting smoke ceased, though it continued to burn away the wood.

Bit confusing; it implies the smoke is what's crackling, spitting ember and burning away wood.

Where Xian's heart would have been, a faint glow appeared.

Be brief and concrete: "From Xian's chest..."

until it was the size of a troll's head (which would be quite 'dumb' to put it lightly, but this is merely a size comparison, not intelligence)

Witty, but otherwise unnecessary info, sooo we can leave this out. Sorry Quartz, we don't take kindly to humour around here :P
The comparison to the size of troll's head is fine though, given that we know what that is. But it's a good in-world comparison of size.

It paused for a moment in front of Akaihane, and then lowered until it was horizontally level with his heart, and entered.

A bit too detailed in my opinion. "It paused in front of Akaihane, before entering his body." would do fine.

His body was heavy, and quivering; like a Chihuahua.

If chihuahuas aren't established in this world, then this is a real-world comparison that's being made.
Keeping things in-world and in-character helps keeping us engaged in the story. Going outside of that breaks immersion.

Alright, this was a lengthy one and I spent at least 3 hours on this. Like, where has my time gone?
Thanks for making it this far! I hoped I've dispensed some good learning. Remember to gently shout at me if I messed up somewhere though, the feedback is appreciated.
Any questions are also welcome, of course.

Next lesson we may cover orbs for a bit, I heard that is the favourite topic for many of us.

Until next time.

Next Lesson: Gem Cutting Lesson 4: Back and Forths and Dialogue Mechanics

Previous Lesson: Gem Cutting Lesson 3: Descriptions and Abstract vs. Concrete Language and the Learning Curve

This is going to be a shorter lesson. Nonetheless, we'll go over something important: Dialogue. Let's jump straight to it.

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“But I'm a good demon! Ree-ah-lly! I haven't killed anyone sense... a few minutes ago!”
Akaihane fell over. “You killed people!?”
“They attacked me first!”
“Vvaren not like death.”
“Aiie!” Xian rubbed her forehead. “Two against one isn't fair!”
“Two against one? How many people did you kill?”
“Um...” Xian stared down at her feet innocently, “around twenty...”
“And how many dæmons were you commanding?”
“...Lots.”
“How many is 'lots'?”
“Like.... fifty.”
“Two against one is better than fifty against twenty.”
“It's still unfai-r!” Xian, beginning to wail, dropped to her knees.

Ok, there are some hiccups here and there, but overall this is an alright piece of dialogue.
We have a couple of instances of slightly weird phrasing, like "Ree-ah-lly!", "Aiie!" and "unfai-r!" Which accentuates a tone of voice, but makes it a bit weird to read.

There's a lot more to dialogue though. First we'll cover a general structure, look at these:

1: “---------.--------,------.------------,-------,” Iryerris said.
and
2: “---------," Iryerris said. "--------,------.------------,-------.”

In the second structure, the attribution, in this case "said", is given at the earliest reasonable break in a sentence.
This is what you ALWAYS want to do. The sooner you assign spoken words to the character saying them, the easier the dialogue becomes to read.

There are two ways to assign dialogue to a character: through Attributions and through Beats.

Attributions are things like "said", "whispered", "asked", or anything variation of an action that means talking. Put these after the first reasonable break in a sentence, not before, we can't tell readers a character said something if they haven't started speaking yet after all. Their purpose is to let the reader know who is doing the talking.
There is a situation where you can completely skip these though, and that's when you have a dialogue between two characters whom are already established. In this situation, the dialogue becomes a back and forth between the two, with each new paragraph being the other of the two characters speaking. With more than two characters speaking though, you almost always need attributions

There are things like Said bookisms which are all the things you use instead of "said". And yeah, those are also attributions, but hear me out. Said is mostly invisible to a reader, so it doesn't interrupt their reading flow. Readers are not actually reading the words, but they're interpreting them. And that's good! But some bookisms can break them out of this 'mode'.

Using something other than said shifts attention away from the dialogue, and more towards stuff that's outside of it.
Depending on the situation, this can be good or bad. It's a balancing scale between the importance of the dialogue and the importance of events happening outside of it. Something like "screamed" has a very different tone. (What is this character screaming at?)
With all that said, don't worry too much about this. You're fine with using "screamed" or "whispered" if it helps you set the tone of your scenes.

From what I've heard, though, A LOT of professional writers and editors hate these bookisms and will pretty much only use "said" and "asked", and if you use them, they'll see your writing as amateurish.
But hey, that's the professional world, and we're fanfiction writers, so no fuss about it. If anything, you can try to avoid these bookisms if you're going to send your story to an editor and you can then talk to them about it after they've read it.

Let's move on to Beats.
Beats are character actions done aside from their dialogue: "He grimaced", "she turned", "Iryerris stood up and offered his hand. "Let's get going then.""
If you're using beats, you'll leave out the attribution. The purpose of both of them is to let the reader know who is talking. Beats can be in front of dialogue entirely, as opposed to attributions, Beats signify action which characters can do before they say anything.
Anytime a character does something which you can use a short beat for, you want the dialogue to be in the same paragraph.

Now be careful with using too many beats one after another. Sometimes, the dialogue is what's important, not the little things characters do while talking. If you can use it to say something about your setting/world or your characters or the tone of the scene then yes, go ahead. But keep in mind that modifying every sentence in a dialogue slows it down and makes it more difficult to follow.

Try to have a flurry of conversation in between descriptions of what’s going on.
Like, 3 to 4 back and forths, then get into what someone is doing. Then another flurry with 1-2 beats and then describe what’s going on, for example.
Go out and read some stories and pay attention to Attributions and Beats and see how they do it.

Now that we're equipped with new knowledge about dialogue, let's look back to Juvenile Quartz' snippet:

“But I'm a good demon! Ree-ah-lly! I haven't killed anyone sense... a few minutes ago!”
Akaihane fell over. “You killed people!?”
“They attacked me first!”
“Vvaren not like death.”
“Aiie!” Xian rubbed her forehead. “Two against one isn't fair!”
“Two against one? How many people did you kill?”
“Um...” Xian stared down at her feet innocently, “around twenty...”
“And how many dæmons were you commanding?”
“...Lots.”
“How many is 'lots'?”
“Like.... fifty.”
“Two against one is better than fifty against twenty.”
“It's still unfai-r!” Xian, beginning to wail, dropped to her knees.

It's a dialogue between Xian, Vvaren and Akaihane. Three characters.
So I said that dialogue between more than two characters almost always need attribution, right?
Well, in this case, it works fine without it, and that's thanks to Vvaren.
Vvaren is our low-intelligence creature and because of that, he has a very distinct voice. He uses very basic language, much unlike any other character so far. He even talks about himself in the third person. Because of that, we as readers don't need an attribution to know when Vvaren is talking, we'll realise it through the dialogue itself.
Now, ok, Vvaren does have only one line and the rest is a back and forth between Xian and Akaihane, which is done fine, but there are a few things that are going a bit awry.

First rule, new character speaking, new paragraph.
Starting on the next line isn't a new paragraph; you start a new paragraph either by Indenting or by spacing (I really have no idea what they're actually called)
_____________________________
[...]This is the tail end of a paragraph that was really long and spanned several lines
This is the start of a new paragraph, using indenting.

This is another new paragraph, but now I'm leaving a white space.
______________________________
Use only one of these in any story. Not both, don't switch between the two. Use only one.

There's also too many Beats being used here. Akaihane is flabbergasted by what Xian did and Xian is a bit on the defensive. You don't really need more than one Beat to set the tone for the dynamic is this dialogue, so further Beats become unnecessary.

And finally, our weird phrasing: "Ree-ah-lly!", "Aiie!" and "unfai-r!"
If words are being dragged out, then you can multiply the amount of letters. "Ree-ah-lly!" then becomes "Reeeeeally"

Sounds that can't really be put into words like exclamations of surprise or laughter are not dialogue, so instead of having them be said, you'll assign a attribution or beat if possible. You don't want to use too many in succession. But if this was an isolated instance: "Aiie!" would turn into: Xian squealed.

The same with "unfai-r!", emphasis on a particular letter in a word is hard to convey. You can't do it outside of dialogue either, because you'd have to put it after the dialogue, and then your reader will have to go back and re-read the dialogue so that they read it "correctly".
In this case, Xian seems to whine a bit and we can use that give a tone to her dialogue: "But," Xian whined. "It's still unfair!”

When I said short, I... thought it would be short. It's still shorter than the previous ones... I guess?
Anyway, I think I'll cut back a bit with the frequency of these things. You know how it is, places to go, people to see, stuff to do and all that.

As always, you may send gentle shouts my direction for any mishaps that may have occured. Until next time. o/

Next Lesson: Gem Cutting Lesson 5: Characters and their craft

5151088 The main reason I'll never be a professional author (aside from several other reasons) ... dialogue tags. Or boukisms. I've never heard that term before, so I learned something new!

I love my whispered, my yelled, my hollered, my grumbled... I love them so much! Only said and asked. Pffbbtt! I'll take my colorful amateurism with pride, thankyaverymuch!

The only push-back I'd have is that even if you have an action/beat, sometimes throwing in a dialogue tag / boukism to vary things up or add emphasis is fine (in my amateur opinion).

"We need to go. The zombies are coming." He grabbed her around the arm and glanced over his shoulder at the approaching, shambling horde.

She rolled her eyes. "Okay, and?"

He stared at her and enunciated more slowly, "The zombies are coming. We need to go."

5151266
Oh yeah, in my opinion they're fine. I think they're an easy way to get a tone of voice across and they make dialogue less... static. You know how it is though, different people, different opinions, and most seem to disagree with us :p

Something I probably should have mentioned somewhere along the way, is that all of these things are guidelines and not rules. Knowing about them can really help your writing along, but Its fine if you deviate from them (within reason ofcourse)

Previous Lesson: Gem Cutting Lesson 4: Back and Forths and Dialogue Mechanics

Alright, we’re back. I guess it’s been tough without me the last few days, but here’s another dose of Gem Cutting to keep you busy.

I found some interesting things regarding last lesson; first off, it’s bookism not boukism. I messed up on the spelling. I’m not perfect, unfortunately.
Also it seems that logic for being against these bookisms, like most professionals are, is the idea that the dialogue should speak for itself. The tone should be clear from that alone, and the dialogue tags shouldn’t have to repeat that.
I guess that makes sense, but we don’t have to listen to that.

To preface this, I'm going over some concepts I've learned from Brandon Sanderson lectures on youtube. (If you go watch those you'll see that pretty much all of the info comes from those.) If anything, these may get you to think more about characterisation, rather than it being the absolute truth when it comes to characters. Consider rules in writing to be more like guidelines; they help, but it's perfectly fine to deviate from them.

Anyway, let’s get going.

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His right hand rested on the black and silver gun in its holster, similar to a Zigana T in design but much heavier due to the larger grip for more bullet capacity. He didn't need the extra bullets, but it didn't hurt to have more than necessary. It was better to be cautious than dead.

A name was etched into the side of the barrel. 'Thanatos': the Greek god of death.

Hmm, oh yes, that’s just the right amount of edge I need.

He was rather tall, about six feet, with pale skin that seemed chalk white from the cold of the rain and half-closed jade green eyes. His hair was normally a bright foxy red when it wasn't soaked with rainwater to a deep burgundy hue, and in the midst of the hair was a pair of black cat ears, white tufts of fur on the inside of them.

This is probably how most people will start writing their descriptions of characters. Fair enough, sometimes you just need to get it out there and done with, it’s all good, but whenever you can, try and weave descriptions into the narrative. An easy example is something like: “her curly hair bounced in rhythm with her step.” Something like that. Remember to write as unobtrusively as you can and have your paragraphs do multiple things at once.

So, there’s not too much interesting I can say about the snippets themselves, but I’ll take the opportunity to talk about the characters in a story and how to go about crafting them. (If you thought I was talking about the character’s occupations in the title, then I gotcha, HAH!)

And thus we have to ask ourselves: What makes a good character?
And the answer is A TON OF STUFF.
A TON.
Seriously, here’s the list from my notes:
-Sympathetic
-Relatable
-Similarities (between reader and character)
-Exist beyond page
-Backstory/Motivation
-Growth
-Admirable
-Flaws
-Quirks
-Problems (underdog syndrome, problems personal to the character)
-Consistent
-Avoiding being ‘out of character’
-Depth
-(something the reader) Aspires to be
-Expert at something (or a strong quality)
-Proactive
-Build things that are unanticipated into them (cast them in each other's role)

That’s quite some things to cover, but we’re going to have a shot at it.
Keep in mind though, this isn’t the way to craft characters, it’s just some things you can build into your character to give them more depth and most importantly, breathe some life into them.

The first thing to realise is that the character doesn’t start with the story. The character has lived a life before the story that made them into who they are before you even put a word on a page. Their daily job, their hobbies, any other passions they have are all things that are keeping them busy. These don’t that just stop being there as soon as the plot comes to kick them in the face. These don't just disappear when your story starts. Your characters will still have the dreams and desires they had before and they value those. It makes them feel human. (Or, pony in this case?) Making your character exist purely for the story is something you want to avoid. They aren't puzzle pieces to fit perfectly into a story, they might not fit in at all and have to develop and learn before they can find their place.

Be careful with overemphasising any single aspect of your character. If one trait about them is incredibly strong, then it becomes what defines them. “That angry guy.” or “That singer.” You want them to be more than that.

You also need to give your character reasons for thinking certain things, or acting in a certain way. Don't have a reason for their likes and dislikes be “well, he just does.” that's never enough. You can do this by giving them a solid backstory and through foreshadowing and world building. Make us believe it.

Next, a character that is interesting, has Flaws.
You can think of a character flaw as three different things: Flaws, Limitations and Handicaps. I’ll just drop in a little table to explain the differences between these three.
http://imgur.com/IY61ZV1

The goal with having a flawed character is to show character progression and growth. After all, that’s what the best part of the story is about, isn’t it? All the work and effort made towards getting to the end. So you, writer you, have to deliver us this progression towards the end. Challenge your characters, make them stumble and fail a couple of times, before letting them rise up to new heights.

What people seem most attracted to is a character that is sympathetic, has a passion, is capable and is proactive. You can add to that by adding in elements from the list above. Of course, this isn’t everything you can put in a character and at the same time, you don’t have to put in everything either. These four generally are the ones that come most into play and give a good measure of depth to a character, so it doesn’t hurt to have these thought out.

Sympathy comes down to “a character has feelings.”
Things happening around them affect them emotionally. An apathetic character is really hard to emphasise with as a reader will often be very disliked.
A stoic character that doesn’t show how things affect them is particularly challenging to do well because of this reason.

Next stop is a Passion, something your character has been keeping themselves busy with for the most of the time. For our lovely equines, this is usually related to their cutie mark, so pony characters will almost always have this. But, go beyond that. How did they find out what their talent is? What are other things that they have they learned from their talent? Who did it bring them into contact with? And how did interaction with the different characters in their life affect them? Going forward, what conflicts can occur between a character’s passion and the plot/other characters?

The next trait, Capable, is particularly important to your main character. Your side characters can probably get a pass on this for the most part, but your main character does so much better when they are capable of doing stuff. There’s a reason (s)he’s your main character, right? (S)He’s the that’s driving the story forward. If they’re incompetent then they’re much less interesting, the story stops being about him/her as they just watch things happening and have other characters progress the plot, while it should be the other way around.

And lastly, being Proactive. This is the big one.
In a lot of stories, people may find themselves cheering for the villain, because they’re out there, doing all these things for reasons we understand and can sympathise with.
And what does the hero do?
React to what the villain does.

And that’s when the hero has no purpose outside of the story. It’s the villain that’s causing them to take action, but if the villain does nothing, then the hero has nothing to do. This is the same if you replace the villain with any kind of plot element. If nothing happens, then the characters won’t take action and that’s boring. This is one of the biggest pitfalls you may easily fall into, it’s difficult to do. Try and have your main characters do something relating to their hobbies or passions, but don’t have them discontinue them completely as soon as the plot kicks in. Starting off with a proactive character is a great way to give an impression of them that lasts.

There are ways you can make your characters proactively react as well, however. For example, if a situation surprises them, don’t have them stand around and be surprised, have them jump straight into action instead and make quick decisions. This way you show they are capable and proactive while having them react to situations.

Now, ok, if you’re writing Slice of Life, then the story is about a character’s life, so in that case you don’t have to worry about these so much. But when you’re adding in a plot element, don’t forget about the lives your characters had before that. I’ll mostly talk about stories with a serious plot element that drives the story, so keep that in mind.

The start of a story is usually the first time the plot interferes with the life of a character. Their life is interrupted by an event of some sort and that can serve as their call to action. To respond to what’s happening and play a part in the bigger picture.

Try having your characters have their passion, but are unable to pursue it because the plot calls them to do something of greater importance. That's a conflict and that's interesting. Stories aren't interesting because of what they can do, but because of the conflicts that develop from what they can't do.

Then there are the little things. The Quirks
These are things to help you humanize characters through small details, like hobbies, general interests, or little tells (i.e. a striking visual characteristic, an important item they always carry or 'tapping their foot/hoof whenever they have to wait'.)

These don't need as much of an explanation, but is something a reader will probably fill in for themselves. Your world is larger than what you show in your story an d you'll probably show some hints towards this without actually going to all the places that are interesting.
So in a way, the world you've created doesn't exist, but is made up by the reader. That's kinda fun, isn't it?

The great challenge is then to show who your character is, rather than tell us. Instead of saying “She hates birds”, have her respond to birds singing. Again, sentences or paragraphs like these do multple things: convey that the character hates birds and show that there are birds singing. This borders into general writing technique more than character creation, but I think it's worth mentioning.

To review: Your characters are more than their role in the story, try to make them relatable and sympathetic. Avoid flat characters with a singular trait, but don't overemphasise a single trait either; give them multiple things that make them unique from your other characters.
Give your character reasons, through their backstory, for being the way that they are, and acting they way that they do and give them some flaws to work with and develop through conflict in the story.

This lesson was a bit weird to write. In regards to the snippets, the introduction only scratches the surface of a character and we've covered how to do descriptions previously.
You can make characters in so many different ways, it's hard to cover all of it with some general statements and only a few examples. so if any of y'all have insights on characters, please do share them.

Consider these to be tools to help you make characters. Using them can help you along, but they're by no means rules you have to follow.

That's all for this time. Until the next.

Next Lesson: Gem Cutting Lesson 6: Surprise Attacks and Fight Scenes

How to kill and mourn a character in 800 words or less.

Akaihane glared distastefully at Dæmak, assembling the excess logs in the correct formation, then lit it. “I don't know why we even bother calling it a camp.”
Vvaren wandered to the light radius' limit, plucking flowers and putting them in its sack, until returning to the group. “I'm not tired. I'll keep watch tonight.”
Dæmak, Akaihane, and Xian nodded, Eldyrion already in his statue-sleep state.

Vvaren giggled softly, exhaling into the cold, chilly air. It watched its breath enlarge, and then dissipate. It then looked at Xian, Akaihane, Eldyrion, and Dæmak as they all slept, tilting its head.
“I wonder what they're dreaming about.” It shrugged, looking over at the horses, also sleeping. “And I wonder if they even sleep.” It giggled once more, sliding its palms back until it was propping itself up with its elbows. In this position, it watched the stars, eyes closed. Its breath shortened, inactivity requiring much less oxygen. To its right, a thin object whistled through the air, the object just barely grazing its cheek. Vvaren opened its eyes, flinging a hand to its cheek. A warm liquid felt hot against its hand, and it watched as the statue of Eldyrion had an arrow deeply jabbed into him. Before a single alarm could escape from Vvaren's mouth, before Vvaren could think to react, a rather large man swung a large blunt object at the statue. Eldyrion shattered, his pieces crumbling. Dæmak, Akaihane, and Xian woke up immediately, startled by the noise. Xian gasped, and Akaihane snatched the large man by the wrist, unsheathing his sword. He pressed the blade against the man's throat, eyes narrowed. Dæmak crouched down beside Vvaren, rubbing his thumb against the wound, turning to Akaihane and Xian.
“What in Lord Sanglant's name is going on here!?”
Vvaren, trembling, stuttered out an answer. “I... d... don't kn... know.”
Dæmak growled softly, lunging himself at the large man. “Mi amigo, explain to me what is your goal in this.”
The man pointed at the stone remains scattered on the ground. “You were traveling with a demon in the city limits. You're lucky I didn't kill you, too.”
Xian bared her fangs, growling deeply in her throat. “Eldyrion was no demon. I am the one you should fear, pathetic Mortal.” She clutched the charm around her neck, transforming into her more demonic self. The man gaped at the sight of the demon-werewolf, inhaling to yell. Akaihane pressed his sword deeper into the man's throat, on the verge of crushing the vocal cords. Dæmak helped Vvaren to its feet, keeping a hand against its cheek to help stop the blood flow. He waved his hand, and the man burned in front of them, before reducing to ashes. Akaihane sheathed his sword, and fell to his knees. He clasped his hands together in a silent prayer, eyes shut tight. Vvaren emptied out its sack, and began to put the stone remains in the sack. Xian returned to her regular werewolf self, and helped Vvaren collect the stone pieces.
Dæmak shook his head, sighing. “I know a place where we can properly bury him. It is not far.”
All three of the others nodded, not any of them one to argue in the presence of The Silent Lord, Death. After Vvaren had all of the pieces in the sack, it struggled to hold the sack, and untied its horse. It mounted the horse, looking at the others, ignoring the stream of blood flowing down the side of its face. Akaihane mounted his horse, followed by Dæmak and Xian. Dæmak lightly kicked his horse in the sides with his heels, and shot off in one direction, the others following behind.

All four of them circled the freshly turned earth, where Eldyrion's remains were buried. They bent on their knees, heads bowed in respect, murmuring silently in prayer.
Dæmak stood, sighing. “We should get going.”
Vvaren rubbed its eyes, the wound on its cheek scabbed over. Akaihane and Xian stood, and Dæmak laid a comforting hand on Vvaren's shoulder. “Vvaren, we need to get going. We are close to Raven's Lair. We're close to finding the answers to our questions.”
Vvaren looked up at him, offering a half-hearted smile for him. “I understand. I just feel... guilty. I asked him to come along, so it's pretty much my fault, you know.”
He winced, already knowing the extreme guilt weighting its soul, and dragging his soul along with it.
“It is not your fault, Vvaren.”
Vvaren shrugged, standing to its feet. “Let's get going.”

so it's pretty much my fault, you know.”

hmm how should Daemak comfort him?

“It is not your fault, Vvaren.”

nailed it

5168968 I also like how "it's pretty much my fault, you know" doesn't sound remotely like how Vvaren talked in the earlier chapters. The whole "let's teach Vvaren proper English" took hold way too well, that I can't even recognize the character by the dialogue. At all.

Tralala! I did a reading of one of Juvenile Quartz's scenes. I tried to read the typos as they were written, which made me stumble a bit, and I don't feel like editing. It adds to the... uh... charm?

5173399
that was amazing crystal, although you should've let runic do some of those voices, could be hilarious.

now that i think about it, when the AU AU project comes to an end we should have that read by someone.

5173486 Runic's at work, so you're stuck with my very limited voice acting. :D

Previous Lesson: Gem Cutting Lesson 5: Characters and their Craft

I'm starting to run out of things to teach, we might be nearing the end of our lessons!

We're going to do something exciting today; Fight scenes!
They might not happen that often, but they're fun and allow you to make your characters shine in ways otherwise not possible.
If it's a part of your story, you definitely don't want to mess it up.
This could possibly extend to certain action sequences as well. Any situation your characters find themselves in and requires them to think and/or act quickly counts, I think.

5168954
I won't quote the full thing here, since it's quite lengthy, but you can click the link for the snippet of this lesson.
(I totally didn't ask Crystal to post it just so I can talk about fight sequences, that's crazy.)

Let's talk about some pointers regarding fight scenes before we go into this snippet further.

Something to realise is that fight scenes in writing will be WAY different than in tv or cinema. This is quite obvious, but still very important as it also changes what you want to write in a fight scene. Where tv or cinema will let you see the actual action happening, in writing, it has to be described.
It's easy to fall into the 'blow by blow' style of writing a fight scene if you don't realise this. Blow by blow means that you're only describing the physical actions your characters are taking during a fight, it will become something along the lines of "He kicked, then kicked again, then kicked with his other foot, the he spun and punched." etc. It works in visual media because it's entertaining to see but not so much to read about it.

So what do we do in fight scenes? If it's not entertaining by writing cool action, then what is it?
There are a few things that can be important in regards to the purpose of a scene:
-To progress the plot where a character dies?
-To show your MC being resourceful in a time of great danger?
-To add a level of danger and threat to the world?
-To showcase magic in the world?
Also shows MC being resourceful in using their magic in inventive ways: show their expertise.
-Can also be used to convey a sense of tone to the time period
Are your characters fighting a monster, or other members of civilisation? In a major city/town, or somewhere out in the wilderness?

Just like any other scene, your fight scenes need to have a purpose. Generally, if they are early on in your story, the fight scenes would contribute to world or character building, while later fight scenes would be more focused on progressing the plot. As you have more and different fight scenes throughout the story, try to give them a different purpose if it's appropriate. You can try and make this happen by asking "What is something different that can happen in this scene?" These can be small things; a chase in a city is vastly different from a chase in the woods. If it allows you to explore a location in a different way, then it can add to your setting.

Blow by blow is still a part of a written fight scene, though, without it, we wouldn't have a fight after all. It has to be accompanied by a character's thoughts and emotions, observations of the surroundings, remembering their goal and what happens with that through the fight. But with it not being as entertaining in a written form, you need to pull a sense of enjoyment and awesomeness that you want to convey to the reader from other sources, and for this, characters are your greatest tool.

A fight scene can be made awesome if you can make your character do something awesome, or respond to something awesome with... well, awe. Showing the inventiveness of your characters can be the greatest joy to a reader, but it's the reactions that characters have to something that makes it come alive. If the actions and reactions are written to be awesome, they'll come over as awesome to a reader as well. This is still hard to do and I don't have solid examples to show of this, unfortunately, but again, reading books and observing these things for yourself is good practice!

Another important aspect of a fight is your character's goal. What are they trying to achieve and how does the fight relate to that? Just as a fight needs a narrative purpose, it also needs a purpose in the story; the fight is happening for a reason. These don't have to be world-changing reasons either, right? You don't have to overthink things as much as you'd think. Escaping a dangerous situation because some characters took a wrong turn somewhere is fine, but a heated argument leading into a brawl, with a character having to prove a point is good too.

Let's set one rule for doing fight scenes though.
Clarity is King
You have to make sure you're being clear. A confused reader during a fight scene is something you don't want. They need to be able to know what's going on during the fight. If you're jumping through different small skirmishes in a larger fight, it'll be much more difficult to keep track of all the different things that are happening. These are the times when you want to use the most concrete language by using fewer metaphors (though you can still use these were appropriate) and getting rid of 'to be'-verbs and passive voice that make writing feel slow.

You want to be short. Brief. Clear. Fights are paced faster. Characters don't have time to think much. They act and react on instinct. Being brief will have more impact. You want the most impact in fights.

So how do we go about clarity in a fight scene?
Start off by placing characters in the scene. Who is where?
This doesn't have to be a detailed description of what everyone is doing. But a short sentence description of where they're situated.

"On Silent's signal, they bursted into the building. Iridescence jumped behind a couch and prepared her magic, while Winterspear jumped to the left."

From there on, you take on the viewpoint of a single character and write the scene from their point of view:
"Silent jumped over Iridescence, tackling the shadowed figure in the middle of the room, bringing it down to the floor."

As the scene goes on, you have the character give updates to what's happening with the others.
"Glancing to his left, he saw Winterspear spin, her laser wings deflecting magical bolts out of the air. The lights were like a firework show."

Changing point of view during a fight is up to you, but I think it works best if they are fights happening simultaneously in isolation. By that I mean that the characters can't see each other and are not fighting the same fight.

While writing does have its limitations when it comes to fight scenes, it also has its strengths you want to play into. You're able to describe a character's thoughts and emotions during a fight. Show them, rather than tell them, though, if done properly it will still be apparent what the character feels. With a fight being faster paced, there's also no time to write down "s/he thought...". Use direct thoughts instead.

Using the five senses can also add to the scene. Particularly smell is something that works well in writing.
Related to this, you can bring out a lot of your character by having them be inventive or do something awesome like mentioned before, but also by bringing them to life through the few times you can use metaphors. If they see, smell, hear or feel something, what is something they can relate it to?
A construction worker may compare the sound of bones breaking to wood snapping. If your character has had combat training in the past, they may mention a technique they learned.

Pacing is also your greatest strength. You have the ability to manipulate it. Like when describing thoughts and emotions and the example before with Silent&co. bursting into a room, the initial setting of the scene is something that happens instantly, with different characters doing different things simultaneously, but since you're writing you're still able to describe everything you need to. Just be sure it's still from your character's viewpoint.

Also, while your special effects budget is actually UNLIMITED, be careful not to overload on long descriptions. Taking a long time to describe how utterly awesome a thing that happened is by giving it all the descriptions severely slow the writing down.

Try and alternate between a bit of blow by blow, character thoughts and emotions and updates without being too stale or predictable in swapping between them. Analyzing how writers do fight scenes is, as always, a good way to learn.

All of this put together, a fight scene is less about the blow by blow, but more of an experience of a character and their mental state as they are in danger.

Alright, Juvenile Quartz, you're up:

“I wonder what they're dreaming about.” It shrugged, looking over at the horses, also sleeping. “And I wonder if they even sleep.” It giggled once more, sliding its palms back until it was propping itself up with its elbows. In this position, it watched the stars, eyes closed. Its breath shortened, inactivity requiring much less oxygen. To its right, a thin object whistled through the air, the object just barely grazing its cheek. Vvaren opened its eyes, flinging a hand to its cheek. A warm liquid felt hot against its hand, and it watched as the statue of Eldyrion had an arrow deeply jabbed into him. Before a single alarm could escape from Vvaren's mouth, before Vvaren could think to react, a rather large man swung a large blunt object at the statue. Eldyrion shattered, his pieces crumbling. Dæmak, Akaihane, and Xian woke up immediately, startled by the noise. Xian gasped, and Akaihane snatched the large man by the wrist, unsheathing his sword. He pressed the blade against the man's throat, eyes narrowed. Dæmak crouched down beside Vvaren, rubbing his thumb against the wound, turning to Akaihane and Xian.

Ok, it's not much of a fight, but there's action happening, and... it's very much blow by blow isn't it? This happened, then that happened, then before he could do this, that other thing happened." The pacing isn't changed much compared to normal, while unexpected things are happening that characters need to process and react to quickly. It's a rather short segment though, so it's hard to fit in characterisation, I think.
That said, it's clear in what's happening.

One more thing to touch on is that it feels like there's a lack of impact. Probably because it's all in the same paragraph.
That's something that Brandon Sanderson's writing really impressed me with; his deaths were sudden and brutal, thus making them incredibly impactful. I think it's too hard to properly convey that feeling without full context, though. It's hard to do. Best advice I think I can give is to have some people proofread your fights and ask at what point (if any) they got bored.

So I really don't have much left to talk about. For next time, I think we'll cover plotting and building a setting for a bit, though I won't be able to link this one particular snippet of our lovely Quartz, since this is something that is covered throughout a story.

Next Lesson: Gem Cutting Lesson 7: The Finale - World Building

Previous Lesson: Gem Cutting Lesson 6: Surprise Attacks and Fight Scenes

And so here we are at the end. This final lesson is dedicated to you all who are looking to add some extra flavor to their worlds. Whether you are exploring things canon hasn't covered or developing your own Alternate Universe much like Quill and Blade, I aim to give you some things you can think about that makes your world feel more real.

Now really, there's not much to actually explain on this topic. The point of this is really to give you some things to think about that can be added in to your world. There are many different ways a world can work, many different themes to explore, and many different ways all those themes can interact with each other.

In a way your World should be similar to a character in construction. It has existed before the story starts, it has quirks, flaws and strengths. These are different from how they work from characters, though, but we'll get to that.

There are various different levels of World-building that can be divided into categories. From world-wide, to nation-wide, to local. Divided in the Physical and Cultural setting.

Most of us probably won't look at the physical setting that much. Physical setting entails things such as geography and topography. It's basically all the things about the world that would be there if sentient beings wouldn't exist. For Equestria, that has largely already been defined. That said if you want that to be a part of your world, or you want to have a map drawn to go with your story, here are some (bullet)-pointers:

-World
-Coastlines
-Coastlines are fractals
-Look for patterns in nature
-Pick an area on Google Maps, zoom in on a coastline of a city=world coastlines
-Rivers
-Flow out and away from mountains towards the ocean
-Don’t normally divide, but combine
-Take the path of least resistance
-A lake will have only one exit river
-Mountains
-Formed by tectonic plates colliding
-Tall mountains, jagged tops=new
-Worn down mountains, rounded tops=old
-Deserts
-Caused by rain shadows (mountain range between sea and land)
-At 30 degree parallels of the world (sub-tropics)
-Transitional areas
-Like Sub-tropic or savannahs
-Flora and Fauna
-Day/Night cycles
-Climates
-Nations
-How are they divided?
-Local Setting
-Food delivery and Waste management in a city
-Food is the limiting factor (moving armies, building cities)
-How far out can the farmers go, work, and still have enough time to go back home
-Seaside town needs to be defensible
-Walls built on water, with a chain strapped across
-Natural breakwater
-Islands out of the shore with cannons

The Cultural setting is what you want to focus on the most. Where physical setting is everything that's there if sentient beings didn't exist, cultural setting is everything because sentient beings exist. There are A LOT of elements to a cultural setting and too many of them can easily overload your story. It's best to pick something like 2 or 3 to focus on, develop and potentially make a theme or part of the plot in your story. Or, if your setting has one element to it that's simply really interesting or unique, expanding on it will add that little extra spice to it as well.

-Governments
-Google some government structures and apply (some aspects of) those.
-Ask some questions: (What if the people who ruled were oppressive, kind, favoring the nobles, etc.)
-Religion
-What do people worship and why?
-What's interesting about their worship services?
-What is required of them to practice this religion?
-Gender Roles
-Does society favor males or females in certain ways?
-Common male or female occupations?
-Why is it the way it is?
-How does this affect the way genders interact with each other?
-Offensive
-Are there certain things considered offensive?
-Small things during interactions, i.e. breaking eye contact, pointing hooves, showing the bottom of their hooves.
-Linguistics
-Have certain parts of the world developed certain slangs or different sentence structures?
-This is not the same as accents.
-Economics
-Where does how much of all of the money go?
-Technology
-What level of technology is there?
-What was the reason this technology has been developed?
-Most commonly the reason is warfare (real world), but if it's not that, then what necessitated the development of this technology?
-Warfare/Military
-Structure isn't as important unless this is a major theme of your story, or your character has a presence in the military.
-Family Structure
-Average family size.
-Who is the breadwinner in the family? Is there only one?

This is not everything that is part of a world, there are numerous other things. Brainstorm on whatever themes come to mind and decide on a few that seem interesting or you have cool ideas about.

While you want to avoid the "everything and the kitchen sink" mentality (that is to say you want to write ALL of these things into your story with depth and detail), it's still a good idea to give several of these elements—or elements you come up with yourself—some thought, without going into a lot of detail. It will still add to your setting. Just because they aren't part of your story, doesn't mean they aren't part of your world. Just like a character, the world has existed before the story and therefore has stuff that are not related to the story.

And just like a character, don't have a world behave out of character. If you're setting up physical elements and cultural structures, make sure they don't start behaving in different ways on a whim. If they change, there has to be a reason for that.

All of these things (both physical and cultural) can affect the living beings that inhabit the world, whether they are sentient or not. What are some of the things that are more challenging or easier to do under your circumstances? Is travel more difficult because there are a lot of earthquakes? Is finding a career easier because of cutie marks?

What are some of the things that are unique, quirky? Most notably, weather has to be regulated by Pegasi in Equestria. What are some other things that change the way that characters live?

While some of these could be world-level characteristics, try and think about a town or city and how it poses its own challenges and eases, either through physical or cultural consequences.

That's kinda it, really. I hope this has got y'all thinking about certain elements you can add to make your world richer. There are infinite combinations of things you can add to your setting (maybe your world/city has an emphasis on food culture), brainstorm on ideas and pick a few that seem interesting to you and develop those.

And with that, we've gotten to the end of Gem Cutting. I don't have anything to really teach anymore. I'm sure there are many more elements to stories, but I'm not too well-versed in those, so for me, this is the end.

Remember the most important lesson of all; What I've given you are merely guidelines. They will certainly help you along with writing a story, but you should do your own thing if you want to.

I hope these little lessons serve you well in your writing as well as building your story.

Thanks for reading!

5190896

One thing that isn't mentioned here directly is consistency. If you are developing a setting, do not have 1+1= random results, unless the inconsistency itself is consistent.

-Warfare/Military

-Only go into detail on structure etc. if it's a big part of your story. Otherwise giving a semblance of scale or presence will suffice.

As a general good practice, I would apply the "Only go into detail...if it's a big part of your story" to everything. The details of a setting can be glossed over unless one of two things is true. The detail should be highlighted to show unique features in a setting or something is specifically brought up during the story. Say that computers run on orange juice. That had better be expanded a bit unless the entire story is meant to be random.

5191121
Very much true. I guess I missed some things with writing this after midnight :P

I made some additions to the post to add your points, thank you. :>

Bad boys are so attractive. I don't understand why there aren't twelve girls like Medusa chasing after Eiri.

Shaking his head, Eiri lifted a cigarette to his lips and lit it with his other hand. He didn't care about smoking one way or the other, but first, it angered Medusa, and second, why not? Persogenes were immune to the dangers of smoking. What didn't kill him only made him stronger, or so the humans always said.
"Smoking isn't attractive." Medusa stated simply.
Eiri grinned and said breathlessly, exhaling wafts of smoke that blew in her face, "Good."
She sputtered, waving a hand to disperse the smoke, backing away from him. "Ass!"
"No,"--he took another drag from the cigarette--"it's smoke." He chuckled when she shot him a look of reproach. "Don't you have work to do?"
Medusa played with the wide brim of her large straw hat, tilting it to cover one eye. When she turned to Eiri, she choked; a faint but visible smile graced his lips. "What?" She regained her composure and she gave a small twirl. The dress, a short, yellow thing made of a thin fabric, flared out to flash her legs. He could see the silhouette of the gun strapped to her thigh. "Do you like what you see?"
Eiri's smile broadened to a grin. "You look more like Cyclops with that hat."
Medusa whirled around so that her back faced him. The hem of the dress swished about her legs before settling at her mid-calves. "Why do you keep doing this to me?" she asked, her voice wavering.
"You are the one who assumes everything I do is related to an attraction to you."
"But that's because you have to be!" She stomped one white high-heeled shoe against the smooth cement of the sidewalk. "Is it because of that Apate girl? You like her, don't you?!"
Eiri waved a hand in an aloof manner to dismiss the topic, swirls of smoke twirling in the air from the cigarette held between his index and middle finger. "I don't like her. To be honest, I would rather shoot her. Now, get on with your job, or I'll get the urge to shoot you instead."
Medusa puffed out her cheeks and her face grew red. "Oh, I hate you!" She snapped to a stoic expression in a professional manner and sauntered down the sidewalk and around the corner.

Welp. The original post has been updated with a link to a folder where I'll upload Juvenile Quartz's writing.

Read anything at your own risk. If you do and find something particularly delightful, feel free to share.

It is with utmost pleasure that I have an update to this thread, which already has so much invaluable insight from various folks on the art of "STOP WRITING ANGST"

My dear friend and precious monster MrNumbers unwittingly BRAVELY accepted the challenge of reviewing one of Juvenile Quartz's unfinished masterpieces, Genesis.

There are three main reasons why I asked him to do this.

1. People need to understand that pretty much everyone started off writing garbage... and that's super okay!

2. I am so tired of folks trying to assuage me, like the reason I call my teenage writing garbage is because of low self-esteem. No, y'all, it was bad. And that's also super okay. Because I had to crawl through the muck and the filth to get better.

3. It pains me when some fledgling writers look at my garbage and go, "It's not that bad!" NO SWEET SUMMER CHILD PLS NO

So, without further ado, HERE Y'ALL GO. A review of Genesis by MrNumbers.