Character Traits and cues

Character traits help the reader learn more about your characters and connect with them on a personal level. Traits can also help a reader understand why the character does certain things throughout the book.

Cues work the same way, except they help let the reader know what is going on inside the characters head and can actually work in with the traits by showing the traits in action. for example, your character trait may be shy and you have put your character in a situation where they have to ask someone a question. They can show they are shy by rubbing the back of their neck. 

In this blog post, I am going to list the different categories of character traits, talk about the different cues and what they can signal and then finish it off with a list of Character traits. There are thousands out there so I will only list a few.

Types of character traits

• Values, morals and beliefs
• Phyical and emotional
• Personality

Some cues and what they could indicate

• Being tired, Restless, Breathing rapidly, Sweating, Trouble concentrating (Anxiety)
• Pacing, Fidgetting, Swaying, Wandering (Nervous)
• Avoidance, Changes in mood, (PTSD)
• Unable to concentrate, Tired, Unhappy, Lacking confidence, Loss of appetite (Depression)

Different character traits. (Rember characters need good and bad traits)

1. Humble
3. Leader
4. Loyal
5. Selfish
6. Hard-working
7. Independent
8. Honest
9. Poor
10. Neat
11. Messy
12. Mischievous
13. Tireless
14. Patriotic
15. Dreamer
16. Quiet
17. Shy
18. Bright
19. Respectful
20. Mature
21. Untrustworthy
22. Calm
23. Rough
24. Neglectful

There you have it, I hope this helped in some way. Let me know what you think your biggest trait is. 

How to write a good villain

 "A villain is just a victim whose story hasn't been told." -Chris Colfer

Writing a villain seems like hard work. You want to make them believable but also want the reader to relate to them in some way. Sometimes the villain isn't who you would expect either.

No matter which way you decide to have your villain swing, you need to have some sort of idea on how to write them well because character development is critical to either making or breaking a story.

There are different types of Antagonists in fiction, and working out which your villain is should be the first step.

 

The main five are:

1. The malevolent villain- A villain motivated by Malice, hunger for power or other negative impulses
2. The ally- antagonist- Friend or ally who betrays or makes a bad choice and becomes an opponent
3. The interfering authority- Uses or abuses power to impede character progress towards the end goal.
4. The force of nature- An opponent that creatures challenges without any motivation
5. The inner saboteur- Internal opposition like addiction 

When writing a villain, you need to remember certain things.

• Good and bad traits: Every villain isnt all that bad they have positive characteristics too, so don't forget to write them as such. 
• Motive: Everything we do in life comes from a reason, even if we don't realise it. What is your villains' justification for being this way and doing what they are?
• Villains are real people: what happened in their past to make them this way? creating a back story can be really helpful to understand them better. {my favourite way to do this is to write a flashback on a separate document on the part of their past that really made them like they are; this helps me be able to refer back to the list when I'm writing bits for the villain because I know why they are like that}
• Put yourself in their shoes: what would you do in this situation and why?
• Play into the reader's feelings: It sounds mean, and that's because it is. Play into your readers' emotions by making them believable. Everyone has gone through hardship in life at some point and in some form, so play into that.
• Weakness: Everyone has a weakness; what are your villains?
• Character and story development: How does the villain develop over time? How does the villain make the story progress? How does the villain make the main characters develop and grow?

I don't think you can plan every little detail out, but hopefully, this helped you. Let me know what you're the main tip is for writing a villain or what your favourite type of villain is. 

World building- The easy way.

Worldbuilding is one of those things that aren't essential but can be very helpful if you are a fantasy writer or like me and you struggle to describe places from looking at photos on the internet because you have never been there.

When I created my world, I had no idea what I needed to know or how to even put it together; I looked at templates, blogs, youtube videos and I spent hours on something that was an utter failure; But it doesn't have to be that hard, in fact, it can be quite easy to make your own world if you have the right information and sadly just like everything everyone has their own ways and ideas on how to world build which can make it difficult.

When I was doing my research, I found so many apps to create your world on; I personally never tried any of them, but I have heard many good things about them.

In the end, I took to Pinterest to help, and I am glad I did. I found a pin that was liked to a website that came in handy. http://www.writerswrite.co.za/world-building-for-every-genre-the-ultimate-setting-list/ It had an amazing picture that was very helpful in getting a rough idea of what I needed to know.

Some of the things you will need to know about your world are:

• World name
• Weather conditions
• Era/ time
• Laws, crimes and punishments
• Events
• Mode of transport
• Important buildings and structures
• Accommodation
• Currency
• Wildlife/animals
• Family dynamics
• Careers and education
• Religion and magic
• Politics
• Social structure
• Economics
• Science and technology
• Setting/location
• Culture and society

Questions to ask yourself to make It a bit easier 

• Where is the story located? 
• Who are the inhabitants? 
• What social differences exist between them?
• What historical events happened that shaped this world
• What type of technology does this world have
• What is the standard of living
• Does magic exist?

There is so much that goes into world building and so many different resources out that not only to help but also stating that you need to know different information. Worldbuilding isnt one size fits all, and you can have a world that's as complicated or as simple as you like, and you can always add onto it as you are writing and realize you need more information.

I have One world that covers any book I could ever dream of writing, and it's straightforward. I just added dimensions for the different supernatural species and portals to move from one world to the next.

I hope this was at least a little bit helps to get you started on your world.

Is there anything else that's a must-have in your world-building? Let me know down in the comments.

Ways to not loose any work

 The worst feeling in the world is you are halfway through a chapter or a book and your computer crashes, you didn't save the last four thousand words, and now you have to rewrite it all over again, or god forbid your laptop dies, and you can't get any of your books back, all those months spent writing for nothing. 

This has happened to me more times than I can count, tears are shred, and sometimes I never rewrite that book again. Because of this, over the years, I have made a system to make sure I never lose any of my hard work, and I am going to let you in on how I make sure not to lose any of my work.

I thought after years of my laptop going flat or completely dying on me while I was writing that I had it completely under wraps on what to do to best protect my writing. Still, during Camp NaNoWriMo 2021, I found out how wrong I was when three times throughout the thirty days, my wifi glitched out as well as google docs. Google docs refused to save my work because I was writing so fast it couldn't keep up. My wifi would glitch right as it tried to, so it would come up with an error message, one that if you dismissed it would refresh the page, but you couldn't even copy and paste any of the words before they disappeared; it was a writer's worst nightmare.

That was the real reason I decided to make this blog post because when I went searching for ways around it, It in the past and even now, I could only find one other blog post touching on this topic which really surprised me; I don't know if I was using the wrong search terms or what but whatever it was I knew I needed to let you guys in on how I protect my work.

So now, let's get down to the real answer on how to protect your work as much as possible as to not lose any words.

The answer comes in many different stages, from the saving process to the backing upstage.

The backing up stage I have completely figured out, it sounds extreme, and it can be, but since doing this, I haven't lost any of my books.

I invested in a hard drive, and I make sure after every writing session my book gets backed up to that, so if my laptop was to die, I have my work not only saved but easy to put onto my new laptop when I get one.

I also back up to google docs/google drive; that way, I can work on my books on the go as well as when my laptop blows up and not have to wait ages or lose motivation.

Now the saving process is a bit harder because you never know when you will lose work, and if you were to save your work after each word,, you oud get nothing done, that's why I thought google docs was the good place to write because it automatically backs up your work.

Now I automatically manually save my work whenever I stop writing, if that's because I am thinking of what needs to happen next or whatever the reason I stop is. There are plenty of websites you can write on that will save your writing for you, but after my experience with google docs, I don't trust it. I will also copy and paste any work I have just done onto a note pad on my laptop and save that, so if something was to happen, I have a backup.

Sadly no way is foolproof, and I know I will still lose work, but I try and do everything I can to prevent that.

How do you save your work? let me know in the comments

30 unique character names

Sometimes we have a book idea come to us but no matter how hard and long you look you can never find the perfect name for your character. In the past, I have done a blog post on A list of character names but sometimes when you can't find the perfect name it's because your character is demanding either an uncommon or Unique name.

In this blog post, I will be going over strange character names and what they mean.

Boy names:

1. Cormoc-impure son
2. Amos-to carry; borne by God
3. Zaire-"the river that swallows all rivers"
4. Valentino-"strong"
5. Talon-"large claw pf a bird of prey"
6. Koa-"brave, bold, fearless"
7. Beckett-"beehive, bee cottage"
8. Aera-“strength of a lion.”
9. Arsenio- “strength”
10. Axl- “father of peace”

Girl names:

1. Xylenna- name meaning unknown but also means Thanks
2. Nikolina-"victor of the people"
3. Brigitta- "exalted one"
4. Clementine- "Merciful"
5. Effie- "well-spoken"
6. Arwen- "muse"
7. Caitríona- "pure"
8. Allegra- "joyful, lively"
9. Isolde-"ice, battle"
10. Thais- "beloved, bandage"

Names that could be unisex:

1. Abendrot- "The colour of the sky while the sun is setting"
2. Ali - "Elevated or champion"
3. Avery - "Elf king."
4. Azure - "Bright blue"
5. Aeonian- "eternal, everlasting"
6. Nohea-"Beautiful"
7. Armani-"Warrior"
8. Lennox-"with many elm trees"
9. Tatum-"cheerful bringer of joy"
10. Baylor-"one who delivers goods"

How to organize your book files

Over the course of this blog, I'm sure you have gathered for each book. I have so many documents to go along with it, it can get so overwhelming trying to find where all my documents are relating to my book, so I thought I would let you guys in on how I organize my book work.

For this, I will be showing you how I do it on google docs, but I have the exact same system in place on my laptop and external hard drive. I have covered some things up because it exposes the name of the books that I am not yet ready to announce.

I have four folders, one not relating to my books and then three relating to them. 

One holds all the books I haven't started to write yet and is just a pile of documents with the idea for the book that I will eventually expand on.

The next set of folders is my working folder. This folder holds all the books I am currently writing. Within this folder is a folder for each project. Some folders hold more documents than others. Within these folders, they will hold the book outline, Book bible if I have one for that book. The document holding the draft of the novel, any information I need to remember and parts for the books that I write the ending or something that I am not up to yet. 

The other just holds the final copy of all my finished work, the synopsis and any publishing information I need.

By doing it this way, I can easily decide which project I want to work on and open the folder and have everything I could possibly need to work on the book without getting distracted looking for files relating to the book.

Building an author platform

Having a platform as a writer makes writing not only easier to keep in touch with your readers but promoting any work you are doing as well; getting the word out there about your book no matter if you are an self published author or been published by a big name company.
 
You see authors like Stephen king, J.K. Rowling and Stephanie Meyer still using twitter to promote and keep up to date on there readers and with the writing world always changing it can be hard to stay up to date on it and not fall behind.
 
Some of my biggest tips are as followed to help you build your author platform to the best of your ability and remember to always use resources available to you. 
 

1. )  Know your target audience.

 
This goes without saying but if you don’t know who your readers are you cant efficiently interact with them. If your target audience is teens then you will need to use social media platforms to reach them like Tiktok, Instagram and YouTube but if your target audience is say middle aged men and woman then you should look into twitter and Facebook etc.
 

2. ) Connect offline {if you can}

 
With the pandemic this one can be harder to accomplish but I do know some conventions are still on so its just a matter of research on your part to see what you can get involved with.  In person writing groups can be an amazing way to meet other writers in your area and make life long friendships and contacts that can help spread the word about you. Conventions are also another way to stay active in the community.
 

3. ) Consistency

 
It is very easy to get lost now on social media if you are not consistent. What ever platform you decide to work with as an author platform you need to really stick to a schedule so your readers know when to check for your posts as well as not missing a day if you can. If you choose a platform like twitter you should be writing tweets daily and not just one but many. I personally try for at least five posts spread out through my day to reach people in different time zones.
 

4. ) Get out there

 
If you run a blog as a way to reach your audience think about writing guest posts on other writing related blogs. Reach out to fellow writers and both of you can write a blog post and upload it to your blogs so that you are using your readers to spread the word and love to other writers.
 
Doing interviews or going on someones podcast is also a good way to get out there and bring in new readers.
 

5. ) Contacts

 
Everyone you know is a contact. By talking to friends and family sometimes even neighbors or people you meet you can boost word of mouth and not only get them to read your work but they are more likely to spread the word to there friends and people they know which immediately boosts how many people know about you.
 
I had a three hour layover back in 2019 and got to talking to a mother and daughter and found out that the genre I actually write in is the genre the daughter likes to read and it all started because I was working on my book while waiting and my mum got talking and told this ladies mother about my work which just goes to show how far words can go.
 

6. ) Twitter

 
While Twitter can be hard to stay connected to the younger audience it is a valuable resource for writers to meet other writers. There are so many hashtags on Twitter that writers are active in daily and following that it is quite handy to use to make more contacts and friends as well as get help when you are stuck with writing itself.