Dragon Writing Prompts

Updated every day of Nano. You may need to scroll down to see today’s prompt.

I had a last minute NaNo inspiration that will help me. I tend to skip over description. So for each day of NaNo month I’ll send out a prompt to focus your attention on something you might not ordinarily notice in whatever scene you’re working on. The intent is not to generate great prose but to force you to expand your vision of what’s going on around and inside your characters.

Write at least one paragraph for the day’s prompt:

Today’s prompt:

7. In the next conversation, describe something the character is doing as they speak each line of dialogue.

Previous prompts:

1. Describe your point of view (POV) character’s current emotional state and how it affects him or her from head to toe.
2. Describe the shoes of the next character that walks into the scene and what they remind the POV character of.
3. Describe the weather (or environment if weather isn’t relevant to your story) in the scene you’re writing right now. Involve all 5 senses.
4. Relate something in your current scene to a toy from your POV character’s childhood.
5. The current situation to your POV character is [fill in an animal]. Extend the metaphor. What in the situation are the teeth? Why is something like the breath? How does it relate to the sound the character makes? (And whatever else you can come up with. Use all five senses!)
6. It starts raining (or stops raining). Describe the emotions *and* memories this evokes in your POV character.

NOTE: Don’t link to this post! Blogsome includes the day in the URL and I’ll be updating the date as I add each item to keep it at the top of the blog throughout November. If you’d like a link, use the post at Blogspot: A month of NaNo prompts.

(Scroll down for today’s prompts.)

• You know how sometimes an idea will pop into your head while you’re writing something else? It’s an obvious idea and you know you’ll remember it so you slog through the scene and by the end you’ve forgotten what it was?

 

• You know how sometimes you’ll hover over the keyboard, debating which choice to make and you just can’t decide what would work best?

One of the Nanoers at our local kick off party mentioned a technique in Weekend Novelist called:

Writing Down the Page

(I can’t find a description on line so either she misremembered its name or no one else found it nifty, but I’m finding it useful! If anyone knows what it’s called, please let me know!)

It’s a way to capture fleeting ideas and get you writing instead of hovering.

If you use this for your whole NaNo (which I’m doing), you’ll end up with a flowing collection of ideas. Which is a great way to send your internal editor on vacation since you may not be writing complete sentences and you’re deliberately including a range of ideas some of which you know you’ll eventually eliminate.

The important part is: don’t write paragraphs. Hit carriage return after each sentence or snatch of an idea. It’s going to look more like a poem, a long list, than a novel. It’s a free flowing brainstorm. You can put an extra carriage return when you start a new idea and label it with some bold text.

Sometimes a fairly cohesive scene will flow out. (Mine is conforming to scenes and chapters.) Often it will be snatches of dialog. Bits of description. Questions for you to answer. Or half a dozen possibilities of what a character might do and why.

So if you’re stuck, don’t ponder. Write down the problem. Explore it right there in your Nano. Brainstorm a list of possibilities. If an idea for a scene comes up while you’re doing that, write it down right where you are. (You can mark it with xxx to remind yourself to move it and expand it later.)

---

What I’ve done with it so far is, at the beginning of each chapter, I explore the character’s desires (wants, objectives, goals). Each scene will have a goal (getting the demon nest rooted out, for example) as well as the character’s greater goal of the novel hovering over them.

Then I explore obstacles (conflicts) I can throw in their way. (I tend to be too nice to my characters! Deliberately brainstorming obstacles keeps me focused on a story’s engine: overcoming difficulties!) Each of these obstacles creates an evolving set of minigoals for the character to achieve (getting away from the annoying coworker, getting shoes that don’t have a broken heel, for example).

Then I write down possible responses to the obstacles and how the character can reveal more of who he is, reveal more of what’s going on in the story, in what he chooses to do and the way he chooses to do it. It helps remind me of the tree I’m writing about rather than getting lost in the foliage of a few thousand individual leaves.

I’m finding it much easier to throw problems and obstacles at a character when I don’t (yet) need to write the scene that gets them out of it!

October 31 at midnight, NaNoWriMo begins!

National Novel Writing Month is a time when people all over the world withdraw from life to crank out a 50,000 word novel in one month.

At first it seems insane and impossible. After doing it a few times, it’s really not so bad! :-)

Everything you need to know about it is at the NaNoWriMo website.

I’ll be posting prompts that are usable for Nano (or other writing) throughout the month. (If anyone wants to drop me a “Hi!”or add me as a buddy, I’m JFetteroll (so original, I’m always JFetteroll!) at the NaNo website.)

In the forums are online and face-to-face support. (Check out the regional boards to see if there are writing groups near you.) There are word wars (to see who can churn out the most words within a certain time) and prompts and people to help if you get stuck either emotionally, logically or factoidally.

And most people do get stuck around week 2, at the 15,000 word mark. Expect to hit that wall. At that point you’ve let your characters run rampant setting up their relationships and you suddenly realize you’ve written 15,000 words of crap and you’ve pushed the characters as far as you can go and alphabetizing your spices would be a much better use of your time. Every novelist hits that point. What separates the failed novelists from the successful ones is that the successful ones keep going. :-)

If you think you don’t have time, I found this week’s posting at the NaNo website inspiring :-) Cylithria Dubois — what a great fantasy name! — wrote her last novel while part of a forward observation team stationed in Iraq: Cylithria Dubois, Marine Corps novelist

Some tips:

✓ Don’t worry about quality. Your goal is quantity not quality. Send your internal editor on vacation. This month there’s no such thing as bad writing. (Or it’s all bad! Whatever mindset keeps the words flowing for you.) Note: No one will read it. Bots at the website count your words to see if you’ve gotten at least 50,000.

✓ Don’t worry about getting the beginning right. Jump into the middle of the story. Write the end first. Write the middle first. Doesn’t matter!

✓ Don’t worry about going in order. If you get stumped, or another scene is begging to be written, jump ahead. (As you find out more about your characters, you’ll know how to fill those jumps in — which might be after NaNo.)

✓ Don’t worry about finishing the story. The goal is 50,000 words of a single work (eg, not a bunch of short stories). It doesn’t have to be a complete novel. It’s a way to get you started. (Novels are closer to 100,000 words, though it depends on the genre.)

You can plan as much or as little as you want, but no actual writing before November 1. Some people like an outline. Some people don’t want to know where their characters are taking them. Whatever works for you.

Happy writing!

Do your fingers pause over the keyboard as you try to decide what to write next? Do minutes pass where words could have been pouring out and the cursor is still blinking in place like a caution light at 2AM?

Do you need five thousand words today to catch up and you know most of the day will be spent with your fingers in hover mode?

Then try Dr. Wicked.

Put in your word count and the time you want to spend and click Write. You’ll get a box to type in. If you stop writing for more than a few seconds, there will be … Consequences. What consequences? You get to decide what level:

• Gentle Mode: A certain amount of time after you stop writing, a box will pop up, gently reminding you to continue writing.
• Normal Mode: If you persistently avoid writing, you will be played a most unpleasant sound. The sound will stop if and only if you continue to write.
• Kamikaze Mode: Keep Writing or Your Work Will Unwrite Itself

Watch a demo on YouTube :-)

When you’re done, remember to copy and paste from the box. (If you try to navigate away, a reminder will pop up.)

Great for NaNo crunch time as well as daily writing exercises. You can set it for 10 minutes to 2 hours.

While’s she’s too easy to poke fun at, I was fascinated by the following quote by Sarah Palin that was in response to her apparent confusion over Africa being a continent or country.

“My concern has been the atrocities there in Darfur and the relevance to me with that issue as we spoke about Africa and some of the countries there that were kind of the people succumbing to the dictators and the corruption of some collapsed governments on the continent, the relevance was Alaska’s investment in Darfur with some of our permanent fund dollars.”

And, she concluded, “never, ever did I talk about, well, gee, is it a country or a continent, I just don’t know about this issue.”

Dick Cavett remarked in the NY Times, “It’s admittedly a rare gift to produce a paragraph in which whole clumps of words could be removed without noticeably affecting the sense, if any.”

I think she was just doing verbal NaNo. But, even if she was, no matter how badly you write during NaNo, know that you can write better and have a better command of the English language than someone who was 8.5 million votes and a heart attack away from the presidency.

And when you have a few minutes after you’ve completed your day’s words for NaNo, there’s the Sarah Palin baby name generator where you find out what your name would have been if you’d been born to Sarah Palin whose kids are named Track, Willow, Trig, Bristol, and Piper.

I’m Lock Pepper Palin.

More lists? Yes, more lists! I got up a late and stumbled across this.

(5000+ words. I was trying to do 2000 a day but couldn’t quite make it last night as my characters bumble into each other, trying to get sparks to fly and illuminate some secrets they aren’t revealing to me yet.)

These are from the NaNo forums somewhere. If you’re doing NaNo, use the first on your next page. Each time you start a page, use the next in line. Do that through out the book. Feel free to adjust as needed (add words, change tenses). (Of course, you can cut them up and draw from a bowl if you wish.)

If you’re not doing NaNo, begin at the top and incorporate as many into your writing piece as you can.

If you haven’t already…
Ten Types of Awesome.
the wind’s will
We’re without magic.
It’s getting awfully cold.
Don’t. You. DARE.
Stop That
if this is all
Uproar.
if all that matters is
make it through the past
walls falling down
of your dreams
if you want to
Did you try…?
In Triumph.
It’ll be- wait…
the reason is I don’t know why
That’s Classified!
it’s at least
in feeble hands
What are you gonna do?
hold still!
it all go wrong
Hang on for your death
so distracting
go forth
a matter of pride
Who stands before me
Unknown wisps
the dead dying
What’s right is wrong.
I’d rather be
not a reason
because you can’t.
wimps and posers
just take forever
a glimpse into the future
Invisible or alone?
refusing to lie down
I hope, but I know
if you’ve never
I fall apart
You’re the only one.
a new day
died happy
What you’ve never needed
If you can, don’t.
WHAT was I thinking?
don’t think of a pink elephant.
if you want to
scare yourself.
make it or not.
to live forever, die.
empty mess
anything at all
let go and hang
stop only me
rocks fall, everyone dies.
we’re not dragging the dragons.
Heck does that.
into the death
what a to do to die.
son of a marigold
anytime I want. Really.
eternity of metamorphosis
everything adds up to nothing
meek and bold
alone, the bold
I can’t be you now.
At a loss for speech- not words.
one more outburst
go around again
Magic believes in you.
strong against yourself.
parade of trees
What you never wanted
live up to nothing
Hang on loose
you’re still kissing him.
you can’t always count on me
To be young, nervous breakdown.
Soul over heart
Dead again?
creature of light
walk on me.
leave my dreams behind
ensue a rebellion
The land’s a survivor
wheel of strength
fight for wrong
let it die
unneeded puzzle piece
Gunning for Truth
stay whole, bleed the soul
his memory now
broken, not dead.
Incredible isn’t.
smile against it all
Ignorance for hope
stop, turn, take.
everything away- I’ll hurt it.
each other, alone.
God doesn’t decide this.
take me for everything
alive in here
no is for those
oh yeah, HUGE success.
to save me, face me
all together, all alone
whatever you don’t.
tomorrow is yesterday now
what you must, you can’t
thunder from the trees
ask your questions now
gift, not competition
waste your precious
happy kick in the nuts,
seven stories in
the question- but.
uphill downhill sick
breathe for me
stay calm and PANIC!!!
none able to tell
when your all isn’t enough
hold my soul
figure it later
light fears darkness
nothing’s gonna change
the darkest light.
watch this time
As we knew it
rest is wrong.
I Will Rise Again.
When the spindle wheel turns
dying, not dead
I know a place where we can hide out.
You don’t have to know the truth if you believe it.
This tiny voice in my head starts to sing.
Came along one day…
Looks a mile to my feet.
When I open my eyes I’m still taken by surprise.
You don’t have to know the truth if you believe it.
Some people want to be heroes, others have to be asked.
My Body was not moving on it’s own after all
inside mountains
nothing to say to each other
just take it!
Because it is my birthday!
Not close enough.
It’s not peanut butter.
Just talk yourself up.
Try and stop me.
I’m just saying…
He knew there was a reason why he hated snow

Random words to spark your NaNo or other writing.

Most of these came from 15 Minute Ficlets, a site for writing fiction in 15 minutes using word and picture prompts. The site is no longer active, but there are other, similar sites around. (The rest came from 15 Minute Fic, though the words weren’t quite as good.)

I like to think of these words as lenses. The word has colored how your character views his or her world and they’re seeing or feeling or remembering something about the current scene you’re writing that relates to the word. Unlike words randomly chosen from the dictionary, these have more flexible definitions. Feel free to play with word forms and tenses. They’re supposed to spark creativity, not chain it :-)

I’ve divided them up into chunks of 8 if you’d like to spread them out over the next 30 days, but feel free to use them however you want. (Hmm, if each word sparks about 208 words, there would be your NaNo! :-)

farewell
discovery
deluge
renewal
fool
explosive
heritage
screen

thunderous
mystic
lovely
moon
mediocre
open
peppermint
anxiety

exhausted
brisk
knave
electric
congratulations
misled
sophisticated
gateway

ambition
envy
premature
memory
catastrophe
blush
hold
transition

addiction
scorch
rescue
piercing
independence
fight
honor
discord

mockery
impatience
justice
fatigue
gloomy
reunion
unexpected
absent

nurture
unknown
blessed
rushed
congeal
youth
sin
growl

gratitude
overwhelmed
whispered
routine
kaleidoscope
resolute
scared
gluttony

festive
tidy
feast
tired
silence
chocolate
flood
connected

thick
odious
legacy
jubilant
acceptance
glisten
fever
anticipation

pinnacle
fretful
linked
sentimental
savory
vacant
inside
tail

deaf
zaftig
young
xenophobic
wondering
mother
tattered
challenge

transformation
missing
searching
karma
gourmet
juvenile
undeniable
limp

vitriol
contagious
discombobulated
quest
strike
translation
anguish
true

complicated
interrupted
giving
painful
freeze
stretched
consumed
mimic

complete
elegy
haunted
deserted
jealous
oblivious
frustration
natural

harvest
empty
falter
extra
abstract
capricious
pause
pawn

devotion
impression
bathtub
bloody
redeem
aggravation
father
replacement

drenched
tender
noisy
practical
incomplete
evasive
disaster
solid

deeper
abandoned
spring
collection
quirky
competition
misdirection
unusual

intoxicating
disguise
submission
examination
flaky
obsession
chilling
tweak

perfection
marvel
nostalgic
cookie
snow
forgetful
surrender
chicken

broken
gathering
dream
forgiveness
unfinished
late
humorous
form

conclusion
dust
alias
match
bright
abomination
slowly
question

salvation
prison
vacation
desire
loss
expectation
sign
shiver

fantasy
baby
light
apology
uncomfortable
happy
bridge
essential

relief
daze
frantic
bathe
sink
disconnected
training
impose

burrow
sketch
unforgiven
vanquish
flair
wave
blue
spell

bear
refine
hassle
fire
wait
engrave
leech
unbidden

hang
guilty
bank
quirk
blatant
honey
destroy
messenger

It’s coming! Midnight next Friday, is the beginning of National Novel Writing Month: November 1 to November 30.

What is it? It’s a month when people all over the world set aside time to churn out bad novels ;-)

The goal is to have at least 50,000 words by midnight November 30. Since you must write fast — 1667 words per day — there isn’t time for editing or perfecting or even worrying over whether it’s good or not. And that’s the whole point! One of the biggest obstacles to writing is running commentary from our internal editors on how bad something sounds and how trite it is.

For NaNoWriMo you send your internal editor on vacation. It’s not allowed to contact you at all. While the editor is away you let the ideas flow out of your fingers. There will be a lot of bad ideas! But mixed in will be some good ideas, even great ideas that would have been blocked by the critical voice of the editor.

The novel doesn’t need to be complete. (Most commercial fiction is between 75,000 and 100,000 words.) It doesn’t need to flow. You can leave scenes that aren’t working incomplete to move onto another scene that’s trying to get out.

No one will read it. You’ll upload your final document to the automated counting bots at NaNoWriMo and they will count your words. If you have 50,000 words or more, you win! Win what? Win the satisfaction of being one of the elite who has completed a novel :-) And a nifty downloadable certificate that says you won.

My daughter Kat (now 17) and I have done it four times. And while insane, it’s also a lot of fun and rewarding too. How long does it take? Basically it depends how long you give it! Most people are doing this while holding jobs or going to school and can only write in the evening or on weekends. Kat and I give it all day and have found it consumes whatever amount of time you give it. ;-)

While you can’t begin writing until November 1, you can plan as much as you want. I’ve done it 4 times without a plan. An idea comes to me the week before or sometimes the day before and I just let it take me where it will. Some like to know where they’re headed. Some like the adventure to unfold. Which is better depends on what you find works for you :-)

Most areas (even in other countries) have local groups that meet occasionally throughout the month for writing and moral support. They’re listed in the Regional Lounges section of the forums at the NaNoWriMo website:

There’s also lots of online support in the forums, tricks and tips, word challenges, even places to ask obscure questions (like, for example, whether someone could carry $1 million in $1 bills.)

Here’s a list of upcoming writing challenges posted at the NaNoWriMo website. On that page there are also “Thoughts on publishing” and “Tips on rewriting.”

Did your NaNo novel finish the month titled “NaNo 2007″? Except for my first NaNo which was always called Flight, the other two were named at the last moment before I uploaded. If you still need a title, here’s some title naming strategies.

• Use the name of a character, place or significant object
• Name plus some element from the story
• Phrase from the novel
• Line uttered by a character
• Play on words (common in the mystery genre, often indicates a lighter tone) (Tea and Curses, No Time or Treason)
• Play on a recognizable title (War and Pieces, Withering Heights)
• There’s a good brainstorming process to use at Write a Good Book Title and Greatly Increase the Marketability of Your Book!.

  The author suggests writing a paragraph description of your book. From that paragraph list all the nouns and verbs. Then for 5 minutes make combinations of the two. Don’t worry if some don’t make sense together! If you don’t like any of the combinations together, then spend 5 minutes brainstorming words related to your nouns and verbs then repeat making combinations. When you find a verb and noun pair you like, then spend 5 minutes brainstorming phrases using that pair of words.

• Alter phrases, epigrams, cliches, aphorisms, idioms: Cliche Web and CLICHÉS: AVOID THEM LIKE THE PLAGUE
• Use phrases from Shakespeare, Bible, and Nursery rhymes:

  A short Shakespeare list
  A longer Shakespeare list
  More extensive list (with links to sources)
  Several thousand (with links to sources)
  Probably the most extensive (listed by play)

  Bible
  Old Testament extensive (Bartlett’s)
  New Testament extensive (Bartlett’s)

  I want Bartleby’s results to be better displayed, but there’s a wealth of searchable books there (Bartlett’s Quotations, Columbia Encyclopedia, Brewer’s Phrase and Fable, Bullfinch’s Mythology, author’s works in the public domain and loads more.) (The books have nicer formatting. It’s just the engine that searches all the books that returns some ugly results.)

• Be inspired by titles in your genre. The most likely part of your book to be changed by an editor is the title. Readers expect genre titles to conform to a certain feel, that is The Elemental Fire Queen of Goronji probably isn’t a mystery. ;-) Here’s some lists of books:
  

  Fairy tales
  Fantasy novels
  Science fiction
  Horror
  Fictional (not fiction!) books
  Best sellers

  Also try Amazon. Type in some key words from your book and see what Search turns up.

• And finally, here’s a Fantasy Novel Title Generator. You can generate from 1 to 50 titles at a time. Here’s some examples:
  

  Child’s Discord
  Desert of the Shining Stone
  Eladian’s Lady
  Dalisrte’s Emerald
  Demon’s Discord
  Heart, Autumn and Stone
  Hirorte’s Winter
  Mistress of Pride
  Secret Hero of Enijil
  Spell Sea of Ortanor
  Spirit Citadel of Redudiel
  Storm’s Fate
  The Destiny of Quainill
  The Elven Master
  The Faerie Demon
  The Fire of the Citadel
  The Illusion of Hirotanor
  The Iron Faerie
  The Trisimene Winter
  The Legend of Reduldas
  The Night of the Spirit
  The Pillana Master
  The Prophecy of Pilmene
  The Orbar Wizard The Repetidian Sun
  The Rogue and the Master
  The Rune Ruby
  Unholy Heart of Egibar
  Valdiriel’s Spirit
  Winter and Prophecy

Seventh Sanctum has a wealth of information for writers and oodles of generators of all sorts. Need a less cliche vampire character? A sword of power? A god or goddess? Legend? Name for a gadet or dark ritual or disease or corporation? They’ve got them and lots lots more.

One is the Writing Challenge Generator. These ideas can be used to drive a story or you can pull out pieces as plot ninjas for a story or your NaNoWriMo project. You can generate 1-10 challenges at a time, with a complexity of 1-5 elements in each (or a random amount). Here are 10 randomly generated writing challenges:

• The story must have a jackal at the beginning. The story must involve an idol in it. A character is optomistic throughout most of the story. During the story, a character is attacked.

• The story must have a drum appear in the middle. A character becomes joyous during the story.
• The story is set during a funeral. The story takes place ten years in the past. The story must involve some musical pipes at the end. A character is lustful throughout most of the story.
• The story ends during a war. During the story, there is a need to ask directions. A character will read someone’s diary.
• The story starts during a riot.
• The story must have a chipmunk at the end. The story must involve a bracelet in it.
• A character will eat a meal, but the action goes terribly wrong. A character becomes enraged during the story. The story must have a barracuda at the end. The story must involve a magical grimoire in it. The story takes place in the late evening.
• A character attacks someone. A character is negative throughout most of the story. During the story, a character becomes pregnant.
• The story ends in a sunken ship. During the story, there is an explosion. A character opens a door, and they aren’t happy with it. During the story, a character finds a pleasant surprise.
• The story ends during a holiday ceremony. The story takes place in the winter. The story must have an elephant at the end. The story must involve a formal outfit in it.

A plot ninja is a person, place, thing, idea that you drop into your plot when you get stuck. Started on the NaNoWriMo forums from the suggestion that every NaNo book should include a ninja jumping out of a wardrobe, they’ve expanded to be anything that pops into someone’s head.

These come from the Take a Prompt, Leave a Prompt folder at the forums.

Cut them up and put them in a bowl to draw out a random idea when you get stuck. If you’re not doing NaNoWriMo, pull out and idea and start writing. When you get stuck, pull out another.

• start your writing with a description of wet feet
• Dreams
• crumpled clothing
• a llama
• pink post-it notes
• three uneaten oranges..
• overhearing a conversation of a tourist and a local
• a pet curled up in a chair
• tumbleweed
• some moldy cheese
• a disgruntled landlord
• an antique quilt
• a picture of a gorgeous man
• an unusual locket
• an unusually detailed, oft-repeated doodle
• a Rubik’s cube
• Your MC gets a headache
• frosted strawberry pop tarts
• old ugly wallpaper on a grandparent’s bedroom wall
• a Halloween bucket full of candy wrappers, with one piece of candy still left at the bottom
• A water proof safe, Full of water, left in the middle of the desert
• a pair of gangly teenagers with braces, making out
• a mannequin
• a battered dart board
• a homemade birdhouse hanging from a street sign
• a one-eyed chicken
• a slimy slug trail
• Finding a stranger in your bathtub
• Getting caught in the rain
• A child with a pink ice cream
• The couple in the apartment next to you having an argument about a mysterious person called ‘Phil’
• the sound of a prom dress being thrown away
• A notorious thief finds a baby in a boat on the Thames
• An unopened love letter from twenty years ago
• A broken doll
• A handful of sugared violets
• An angel on a park bench
• And a duke box
• a soggy cardboard box that has sat out in the rain all night
• a perfectly round rock with an X drawn across it in crayon
• Three people from the same office thrown together under canvas for one night. It’s raining. There’s no booze. There’s only two sleeping bags
• one woman who sits next to you on the bus with her ipod turned so loud you can hear Christmas Carols, and it’s still November
• A motorcyclist zooming by, wearing a helmet cam and a microphone
• two people walking down the street wearing a horse costume
• a piece of broken, dusty yellow-orange glass
• a camera with everything intact except the film, which is melted
• a row of empty seats with one in the middle occupied. Then another person comes along and takes a seat right next to that person, instead of an empty one further down
• a book in a foreign language with the covers ripped off, found in a public place
• a necklace with the cord snapped, beads bouncing every which way on a tile floor
• A lone operator working by herself all night in a deserted building
• A homemade lasagna falling as the cook is knocked over by a large Rhodesian Ridgeback (breed of dog)
• One very expensive hairless cat (cannot remember the breed) being held for ransom
• 2 people dressed up for Halloween — one as Santa Claus, the other as the Easter Bunny
• A pet dog with a phobia of anything smaller than him!
• a chewed up pen in the parking lot (you decide whether it still works or not)
• a book in a foreign language with the covers ripped off, found in a public place
• a cell phone that fell into a toilet
• weapons, elements of battle
• The sound of sobbing coming from the attic
• someone finding out there is no water coming out of the tap on a given day (while they wanted to take a shower, for example)
• Several strands of hair stuck together with sticky tape
• Highlighters that have run out, but smell nice
• A cracked, glass statue
• a candy bar wrapper
• a broken timepiece
• a teddy bear with (detachable) bunny ears
• a puddle of water on the floor
• a penguin where it doesn’t belong (say, in a house)
• A painting of a snowboarder, with a dinosaur hidden within the background
• a goldfish swimming in the toilet
• A palm tree oasis in the middle of the desert
• an old Underwood typewriter with the ribbon stuck somewhere between black and red
• a three legged cat, (you decide how he lost his leg, or if we even know)
• a bloody razor blade found in a public restroom
• A smell which reminds your MC of their mother’s home cooking
• A dusty trilby lying abandoned on the pavement, and no one else around
• A frog that squeezes under a gap in the door when it’s raining
• A wallet filled with money in an empty car park
• a purse - shaped necklace that can open and close
• a lighted train rushing by at twilight
• a pizza delivery guy delivering a pre-paid pizza to the wrong address
• a pair of mismatched flip flops
• a set of four spoons, all bent out of shape
• a maroon moose that sings Christmas carols. (can be a stuffed moose, if you like)
• the landscape of Cocoa Puffs…go nuts
• the moon as a consolation prize
• a broken doll
• Mindscape
• A doll missing one of its limbs
• The dog barks at midnight
• A shoe impression was left in the tomato
• A platinum ring found in the bottom of a bargain bin in a music store
• three rusty lug-nuts
• an old gas lamppost
• a throbbing headache
• a thrift store shopping spree
• a dollar bill with writing on it
• pumpkin pie
• An ornate clock on a wall
• the futility of sweeping potato chips off the side of a mountain
• A paperclip lost in the septic tank
• a half-finished crossword left on the train, that must be returned
• a cold, clear mountain stream
• a Chinese pagoda
• a shovel stuck into a mound of dirt
• a mislabeled lollipop–it’s a flavor you don’t like or weren’t expecting
• a plastic green dinosaur whose head is a staple remover
• A pangolin
• A moderately rainy day
• A flamethrower
• Miniature Robots
• three old batteries and a change purse
• an unexpected strip of duct tape
• a strangely addictive song
• a purple permanent marker
• a barrel of monkeys
• a field full of talking flowers
• Three glow-in-the-dark Troll dolls
• Whenever I think of Paris, I think of..
• Fur-dyed poodles! (either pink or blue or green… I’ll leave that up to you)
• a forgotten sock
• watching TV from a safe position behind the sofa
• a Mysterious Stranger (abbreviated sometimes to AMS)
• a strange cloud formation
• the sound of a baby crying, or laughing
• a facial expression completely at odds with what a character is saying
• an extreme temperature change, you decide how or why
• a dead body, killed with that shovel (the traveling shovel of death)
• a case of identify theft
• the feeling you get when you are in the house on your own, and you could almost swear that there is someone behind you, and it gives you a weird burst of speed, and you run into the next room, slamming the door
  1,000 baby turtles gone missing
• An egg that cracks open and nothing is inside
• A horse named Albert with OCD
• A girl named Doug
• A one hundred on a test that you paid the teacher to get
• The smell of the keyboard
• Ten chickens that have no idea that they are chickens
• ginger beer
• a fight/action scene at a zoo
• the last leaf on a tree
• Dwarf tossing
• a rescued turtle
• a British phone booth found anywhere except the UK
• three gold star stickers
• a mallard duck
• A cape
• a pitcher of eggnog
• a pair of mismatched curtains
• an experience that fills the MC with both joy and fear
• a dozen cigarette ends floating in a wine glass
• a man wearing fingerless gloves
• a dead shark
• a house with peppermint-themed interior decor
• a villain who loves pie
• a broken computer on a doorstep
• a trophy tarnished with age
• a ceiling full of mold
• a cry for forgiveness
• twenty ancient unopened jars of apricot jam
• a blue stuffed elephant named Trunky
• your MC suddenly finds him/herself in possession of a prized racehorse
• A very wet dog on the couch
• A cozy fire on the hearth
• a Dixieland jazz band
• A funeral where everybody’s laughing and cheering about how the deceased will not be missed
• A black kitten named Matt
• a broken wine glass
• a repair bill
• a half empty Coca-Cola
• an old grandfather clock set to the wrong time
• the making of a salad
• a very old bloodhound
• hot peppermint tea with little mini biscotti from a boxful bought at Shoprite
• two blue ballet shoes and a claddagh ring (which have a relation to one another, a tied significance)
• a pair of fairy wings
• a stove timer that always adds five minutes onto the time inputted
• an unjust accusation
• the scent of freshly baked bread
• the taste of a lie
• a red haired girl with one blue and one green eye
• an ingrown toenail
• squirrels in the attic
• A flower pot getting thrown off a roof
• a dog kennel that washes up on shore
• a TV show involving robots
• a river without any fish
• a baby with colic
• the number 7
• a roaring fire
• a burning bush
• a dead rose in a vase
• a frozen pond with the ice broken in the center
• An impromptu dancing lesson
• A parakeet that can only say, “Schpedoinkle!”
• A single glove found lying on the sidewalk
• A car catching on fire
• a white tank top
• ceramic dwarves
• blue highlighted hair
• a nightgown in a washing machine
• a cat sitting on feet
• the ending of a video game
• multi-hue eyed girl!
• an illicit affair
• A horse named Albert
• A purple spotted toad
• A grandmother who thinks that she is a fish
• needing badly to go to the bathroom in the middle of a meeting
• a plastic carnation painted green with nail polish
• A red wedding dress
• Afternoon nap when it’s raining outside
• A purse filled with brown leaves
• Tangles headphone cables
• The salt cap falling off while salting a dish, and all the salt falling in
• A train ride
• Getting pizza for the mixed herb packets
• Playing cards all night
• another character’s perspective
• voices in the attic
• “I can’t sit still.”
• an over-enthusiastic nude photographer
• a pair of papier mâché clawed hands
• a midnight snowfall
• a selection of brightly coloured boxes in an empty room/house
• a light-up, plug-in, green gnome
• a well-preserved dinosaur skeleton
• a missing iguana
• gypsy dancing bears
• your character’s reaction to running over something on the road
• someone wearing mismatched socks
• a niggling memory that you can ALMOST remember, but not quite
• “Of course I’m fine. I’m more than fine. Who wouldn’t be with someone like you landing on me??”
• a messed up judicial system causing an arrest and detainment in jail
• fine, realistic costume jewelry
• a rickety, creaking white gate that gives someone away
• a spy who catches a bad cold at just the wrong time
• A hair ribbon flying with the wind
• a nearly-empty jar of peanut butter
• No two snowflakes are alike
• the lifetime of a $5 bill
• A toad under a rock
• a fake potted plant
• a vast array of staples
• an umbrella left in the park on a sunny day
• a strange light in the sky
• a sudden burst of laughter
• a knife with a dull, nicked blade
• Mug shot, toe tag and broken bridge
• blowing up an air mattress with a hair dryer
• a car stuck in mud
• A cat lying in the sunlight
• Odd eyes
• An unpainted dollhouse
• The last book in a series
• A dusty globe of Saturn
• The sound of thinking
• a consistent beeping noise
• a nightmare about a horse
• an earthquake
• celebration of a feast
• performing a ritual
• MC must taste chocolate, cacao, or similar substance
• a music box that won’t open
• glass figurines
• a plastic lizard
• purple nail polish

Need some plotting help for your NaNo or other project?

Teresa Nielsen Hayden, editor at Tor Books, gave a lecture on “Stupid Plotting Tricks” at the Viable Paradise Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop. Part of the lecture was way to use the cliches from the evil overlord lists: The Evil Overlord Devises a Plot From her lecture:

Start with some principles:

• A plot doesn’t have to be new. It just has to be new to the reader.
• In fact, it doesn’t even have to be new to the reader. It just has to get past him. (It helps if the story’s moving fast and there’s lots of other interesting stuff going on.)
• A plot device that’s been used a thousand times may be a cliche, but it’s also a trick that works. That’s why it keeps getting used.
• Several half-baked ideas can often be combined into one fully-cooked one.
• If you have one plot presented three ways, you have three plots. If you have three plots presented one way, you have one plot. (I stole this principle from Jim Macdonald’s lecture on how to really generate plots, which is much better than my lecture on stupid plot tricks.)
• Steal from the best.
• Looked at from this angle, the Internet’s various lovingly-compiled cliche lists are a treasury of useful plot devices. The instructions that follow are one way to use them.

And she goes on to describe generating numbers to pick ideas from the list but in the paragraph below that is a little tiny “here” that will generate some for you. Here’s some generated ones:

---

Advice for the Evil Overlord:

If my Legions of Terror are defeated in a battle, I will quietly withdraw and regroup instead of launching a haphazard mission to assassinate the hero.

Advice for the Hero:

I will never allow fashion sense to prevent me from carrying whatever is useful or needful for the Heroic Struggle.

Advice for the Bad Auxiliary Character (Evil Overlord’s Wicked but Beautiful Daughter):

If you have siblings, do not trust them. They’ll only use you shamelessly. Of course if they’re stupid enough to trust you, use them shamelessly.

Advice for the Good Auxiliary Character (Innocent Bystander):

Do not split up to search for the monster.

Further Evil (Advice on Ultimate Weapons/Spells):

I will also refrain from using the Ultimate Weapon for simply offing the Hero. If it’s really the UW, the Hero’s efforts will come to naught anyway.

Murphy’s Laws of Combat:

• The most delicate component will be dropped.
• Success occurs when no one is looking; failure occurs when the General is watching.
• Everything goes wrong at once.

---

Also funny, but not included in her generator are “Things We Learned at the Movies”. Here’s the full list that’s she’s drawing from Evil Overlord Lists (including Murphy’s Laws of Combat and Things We Learned at the Movies).

Cut up the following words and put them in a bowl. For NaNo writers, when you get stuck, pull out one of the words and use that in the next sentence you write. If they don’t make sense, edit them out later. :-) The point is to get your thoughts moving. (Though it’s really cool when a random word sparks a neat idea.)

If you’re not doing NaNo, include one random word in each sentence you write for the next 10 to 15 minutes.

ensorcled
bear hug
scandal
natural
flimsy
arresting tale
fuschia
volcano
superfluous
juniper
clone
absorb
emerald
weeping
tumble weed
brown sugar
thief
obscure
overprotective
serene
rivalry
tradition
black satin
lace
destroyed
caprice
emblazon
bash
dysfunctional
aflame
requiem
kookie
fried
awesome
unruly
apathetic
flit
hidden
damnation
frosted
holiday
nightsong
resistant
flying dagger
out cast
heirloom rose
crunch
ridiculous
entropy
improvise
babble
condemn
wimple
dead of night
plot
lucky
doomed
magenta jewel
spring frost
evil spirit
jabberwocky
seasoned
core
plunder
recognition
pride
ambitious
skeleton crew
glamorous
lifeless
oppression
religious
plead
humorous
superficial
gourmet
nobility
stargaze
sandy
mook
scorch
cream
machete
blackberry
wake
slumber
attitude
black ink
train station
era
abandoned
tower
grandiose
avoid
mercurial
manitcore
vestige
silver wing
guardian
dominant
disguise

Interview a character or characters from your NaNo novel or from a stalled piece with characters you liked.

It can be a group interview with questions each character answers. It can be an interview with a single character. I’ve done interviews with characters who are plucked from the current situation they’re in. I’ve done interviews with characters after they’ve died who reflect back on the period the story takes place in. I’ve done interviews with characters immediately following the action of the story.

Ask them about their motivations. Ask them the questions you need the answers to. Your characters will tell you things that you didn’t even know about them! You will hear where motivations are weak that need punched up.

Here are some ideas:

• How do you feel about [another character]?
• What are your thoughts on the events that led up to the crisis?
• Why did you feel you needed to [whatever event triggered a turning point in the book]?
• If there is one thing you could have changed, what would it be?
• Why do you hate your sister?
• Tell me about the time you ended up in jail. How did that come about?
• You recently received a death threat. How seriously are you taking this?
• Looking back on the situation, what would you have done differently?
• Are you pleased with the way the situation is being/was handled?
• If you could kill someone with impunity, who would it be?

Some things we’ve learned from past NaNos:

From me: It’s okay to leave scenes unfinished. The linear one-thing-at-a-time part of me is rankled but it needs to shut up so I can write. If a scene isn’t working, it’s okay to move onto another. Sometimes later scenes can help finish out a previous scene. But it’s okay if you don’t go back right now. NaNoWriMo doesn’t mean it’s a complete first draft. Some people don’t even finish their books. The goal is just 50,000 words.

It’s okay to call characters and places xxx. ;-) I never had to resort to that before but I have several characters who get mentioned and might play bigger roles but I don’t know enough about them yet to give them good names. So for now they’re xxx.

I like discovering things about my characters. I’ve found myself saying “I didn’t know you had a sister who worshipped you. I didn’t know you had a talent for cooking. I didn’t know you burned out your own magical powers to destroy them.”

From Kat: “Drop frogs and zombies with pink ray guns on people.” (Which more generally can be translated into let wild things happen and see what happens :-)

Making up quirks can create more problems for the characters — which takes more words to take care of. For instance I had two characters walking through the woods so I gave one a really bad sense of direction.

Eating and food are great padding.

Anyone else have NaNo tips from previous attempts?

NaNoWriMo starts today!

Since your novel can go anywhere and doesn’t necessarily need to make sense at this point, use the following phrases to drive your next scene (or scenes).

Or use them in a 10-15 minute writing piece. If a phrase sparks a great idea but you can’t get the phrase in, go with the idea :-) Their purpose is to spark ideas not chain you down.

accident of fate
broken rules
callous depravity
delicately invisible
endangered heaven
fake maps
gold daze
hair ball
intended fear
just a sip
kitty corner
lacy lattice
mammoth bones
naked killer
ocean of storms
paint brush
quick cash
rain bows
saffron wonders
tangle wood
unlikely trendy places
vesper dawn
warm fuzzies
excel saga
yesterday’s news
zircon vortex

National Novel Writing Month begins November 1! (Next Thursday.)

If you haven’t heard about NaNoWriMo before, all across the world, people set aside the month of November to try to write a 50,000 word novel in one month. Just 30 days. (Most people participating have jobs or go to school so those are not excuses!)

Yes, it’s insane but it’s also a lot of fun :-)

What’s the point? Well, for one thing, to prove to yourself you can do it. For another, to get the experience of writing without editing. That second thing is the most powerful for me: learning to write without asking yourself if it’s good or not. As Chris Baty has said:

The key to NaNoWriMo success is to lower your expectations from ‘best seller’ to ‘would not make someone vomit.’ — Chris Baty

The goal is to produce words. Not great prose. Just words. You can plan ahead of time, think up a plot, but no actual writing of the novel until November 1.

My daughter Kat (16) and I have done it (and completed it! often with minutes to spare ;-) 3 times now and are planning to do it again.

I’ve done it twice with ideas I came up with the night before. Last year I had a handful of random characters about a week before.

Considering the novel I was working on before NaNoWriMo (for ::: cough ::: 20 years) was just 100,000 words of notes, it truly amazed me that a novel could flow out (okay struggle out somedays ;-) of me without a great deal of planning. :-)

The biggest thing separating people from their artistic ambitions is not a lack of talent. It’s the lack of a deadline. — Chris Baty

You don’t have to finish the novel. You just need to produce at least 50,000 words of the novel. No one reads what you’ve written. When you’re done, you upload the file and a machine counts the words. (Apparently it’s very generous about what it considers a word.) If it counts at least 50,000, you win!

What do you win? The satisfaction of having written a novel! :-) (And also a downloadable certificate you can print out and hang on your refrigerator.)

There are several people who have gone on to complete and polish their NaNoWriMo projects and gotten them published. So you never know!

Writing can be more fun if you stop trying to get it perfect on the first go-round. You can get it perfect in the rewrite. The first draft is all about making wonderful messes. — Chris Baty

To produce 50,000 words by the end of November, the minimum you need to write is 1700 words per day. That doesn’t give you much padding for the days the words aren’t flowing and for little things like Thanksgiving, so setting a goal of 2000 words a day gives some generous padding.

Chris Baty, who began the insanity, says in his “No Plot, No Problem” book that it takes most people 1.5 - 2 hours a day. The truth is that it takes as much time as you give it. If you give it all day, it takes all day. (Which it does for Kat and me ;-)

NaNoWriMo has a website (above) with lots of tips and a massive message board with a huge number of tips and ideas and lots and lots of support from people who are also putting themselves through the torture. (There are folders where people are giving away plots and characters for the taking :-) There are regional “write-ins” where NaNoWriMoers gather in coffee shops and Pizza Huts to write together to encourage each other.

If you want to participate, go to the website and register. I think you don’t have to register until you’re ready to upload but if you do register you can post on the boards.

I’ll be posting tips and such throughout the month (that can also be used as stand alone writing prompts).

Like the Fantasy Novelists Exam and Grand list of overused science fiction clichés and The Grand List of Console Role Playing Game Cliches here is:

The Not-So-Grand List of Overused Fantasy Clichés
by Teresa Dietzinger (and contributors)

“Inspired by John Van Sickle’s Grand list of Overused Science Fiction Clichés, which is a writer’s guide to ideas and plot devices in Science Fiction which might have been a good idea at one point but, to quote Van Sickle, “have become hackneyed from overuse by the unimaginative,” unquote. I have sought to create a similar list for ideas and plot devices pertaining specifically to the Fantasy genre, (although I have decided I will not rate the cliches or try to categorize them. Suffice to say, this is simply a list of characterizations, ideas, and plot elements which have a tendency to crop up in Fantasy Fiction on a continual basis.)”

Overused Settings and Storylines

1. THE Fantasy Cliché - Hero starts off as a farm boy/servant/shepherd etc., has his family killed (which turns out not to be his actual family), and, through a process of self-realization and learning, becomes the all-powerful prophesied hero.
2. A brave hero steals from the rich and gives to the poor.
3. A brave hero steals from the rich and keeps it for himself.
4. A brave hero incites a slave revolt just by defeating an opponent or opponents in a feat of gladiatorial combat.
5. A brave hero incites a revolution by foiling a single well-attended public execution.
6. The old sage helping the hero develop his skills so he can defeat the bad guys:
   • is killed by the bad guys before the hero’s eyes, thus inciting the hero to try even harder to defeat them.
     OR
   • turns out to be an an even worse bad guy who is only using the hero as a pawn against his rivals (and who plans to get rid of the hero once he’s served his purpose of defeating said rivals.)
7. A band of heroes travels to various and sundry distant lands searching for the pieces to a key or to a device which will help them defeat the bad guys. After months of continuous trials and tribulations, they finally succeed in finding it and assembling it together, only to have it stolen from them by the bad guys who were smart enough to sit on their arses and wait for the heroes to do all the hard work for them. (Suckers!)
8. A hero/heroine is called upon to take the place of a recently kidnapped member of royalty to whom they bear a conveniently uncanny resemblance.
   (Corollary: No matter how different the impostor might be in terms of background and personality, he/she will have no trouble impersonating the member of royalty. For some reason, their resemblance will be even MORE uncanny if the person they’re impersonating is of the opposite gender. (This is known as The Makoto Effect).
9. A pantheon of gods gets together and decides to play “chess” (or Risk, or Monopoly or whatever) with human beings as tokens.
10. It has been prophesied that a certain baby born with a certain birthmark is destined to destroy the villain when it grows up. Said baby is then whisked away to the forest to safety where it is raised to strapping young adulthood by:
    • wolves
    • little folk
    • fairies
    • a curmudgeonly, yet endearing old hermit.
      OR
    • the baby is placed in a basket and sent floating down a river where it’s found and raised to strapping young adulthood by:
    • a female member of the villain’s family
    • a kindly, old, childless peasant couple
11. The hero’s best friend is a member of the alien/magical race currently oppressing humanity, thereby making him and his friend the target of racism and prejudice.
12. An immortal being falls in love with a mortal and elects to give up his/her immortality so the two of them can live together.
13. The story takes place in an advanced society where spaceships and high technology reign, but where people inexplicably dress in costume from ancient eras (Roman togas, medieval gowns and armor, 18th century coats and cravats, etc.)
14. A fortuneteller:
    • tells the hero that something awful will happen, and sometimes, even how to prevent it, but the hero disregards the advice,
    • a decision he later comes to regret.
    • tells the hero that something awful will happen and despite the elaborate steps the hero takes to prevent this awful thing from happening, it happens anyway.
    • will give the hero a prophecy that’s deliberately vague and convoluted, knowing full well that it will cause him to follow a certain course of action (which the fortuneteller secretly wants him to pursue.)
15. A marriage is arranged between a prince and a princess, for political purposes. Both the prince and princess refuse the match but are later sent on a journey/adventure together, during the course of which they fall in love and eventually come to wonder how they could ever have refused the marriage in the first place.
16. The plot revolves around the fact that the villain is after a certain piece of jewelry that the hero owns. (Usually some kind of pendant that possesses some magical power.)
17. An individual from the 20th century, (a Connecticut Yankee, an Astronaut, an Annoyingly Cute Kid from the Cosby Show) travels back in time to King Arthur’s Court where he/she finds everyone able to speak perfectly intelligible English and where he/she is able to wow the locals by:
    • performing music that is contemporary to the date the movie/TV show was made
      OR
    • by showing off high-tech 20th century doodads like safety pins, firearms, skateboards, and snacks.
18. A hero/heroine visits a museum or an archeological dig where they get bonked on the head and find themselves waking up in the past. While there, the hero/heroine experiences a grand adventure, at the end of which, they get bonked on the head again. When they wake up this time, they find themselves back home in the future, with the impression in their mind that their grand adventure was all a dream. HOWEVER (in a farm-fresh, Rod Serling-esque plot twist), they soon stumble upon something at the museum/archeological dig (a scene from an ancient cave painting featuring their portrait, or a suit of armor with a bullet hole in it), which convinces them that maybe they weren’t dreaming after all.
19. Poor/low social class Hero falls madly in love with princess/high social class girl. Princess/high social class girl’s overly protective father finds out and attempts to kill hero but is:
    • swayed by the girl at the last possible moment
    • robbed of killing the hero by sheer chance
    • the girl gets in the way and he accidentally stabs her instead. (Oops!)
20. Girl is held captive by evil dragon who finds her entertaining, thus saving her from becoming crispy fried.
21. Hero finally gets a chance to beat arch-rival senseless, only to find that arch-rival has become insane/impoverished/lonely/dejected and generally not worth beating…
22. Evil Dragon turns good and befriends heroes, just in time for the “savior” of the heroes to come and kill it dead bug.
23. Talking magical object utterly bamboozles hero, in a world where talking magical objects are completely the norm.
24. Hero finds magical weapon, and is told never to use it, ever. Hero accidentally uses weapon when hero, trusty sidekick (probably either the tone deaf bard or the honorable thief), or lover is in mortal peril.
25. Hero sets off on a quest to find something or someone, only to find at the end he had it/them with him the whole time. (D’oh!)
26. Heroine falls in love with guy A, then out of love with guy A and into love with guy B. Guy B dies, Distraught Heroine marries guy A. Theme of unrequited/thwarted love.
27. Evil Emperor’s beautiful daughter falls in love with the hero.
28. Evil Emperor’s homely daughter feels compassion for his captives and sets them all free.
29. Hero/Heroine is trying to learn a new move/spell/secret at the beginning of film/episode, but has failed at every attempt. Somehow (be it the power of love, truth or the ol’ chestnut- faith in ones abilities) said Hero/Heroine manages to pull it off and defeat the creature/villain who could only be killed by that one move/spell/secret.
30. Evil doers with multi uber awesome powers always come unstuck when a newbie hero/heroine turns up with one super lame attack all powered by (you guessed it) LOVE! (Known as the Pretty Sammy effect.)

Overused Characterizations

1. The princess in the story is:
   • a damsel in distress who constantly needs rescuing.
   • a selfish snob who sees the error of her ways after mingling with the hero and the “common people” for a while.
   • a tomboy who prefers trousers to skirts and who constantly has to tell the hero she can take care of herself (even if it’s bloody well obvious she can’t).
2. A friar or clergyman is lecherous, has a potty mouth, or is in any other way notoriously worldly.
3. A bounty hunter/mercenary hired by the villains to dispatch the hero, turns out to be more interested in honor and/or the thrill of the fight than in the money.
4. A plucky street urchin who befriends the good guys is eventually discovered to be an agent (albeit perhaps, a reluctant one) for the bad guys.
5. The heroes encounter an all-female race which:
   • are Amazons or warriors, with no evidence of any agricultural activity within the community, means of commerce, construction, or craftspeople.
   • are young, big-hootered and beautiful. And, with the exception perhaps of a council of elders, there isn’t a single old, fat, or ugly amazon in the bunch.
   • are led by a queen or ruler who is in the prime of her life, strikingly beautiful, and who invariably falls head over heels in love with the hero.
6. A lute-toting bard who tags along with the heroes:
   • is useless as a fighter or as much of anything else.
   • promises to “sing great songs” about the heroes after their adventures have ended.
   • is almost completely lacking in any real musical talent whatsoever.
     AND
   • in rare cases, gets himself into trouble with a lady or with her family (”You spoony bard!”)
7. Creatures that are half-man/half-animal always look more animal than man. Creatures that are half-woman/half animal, always look more woman than animal and almost always wear little (or no) clothing and have extremely large breasts.
8. The evil wizard is played by either Jack Palance or Christopher Lee.
9. The hero has an American accent. The rest of the cast have English accents.
10. Blonde princesses are good, brunette/dark-haired princesses are evil.
11. Evil emperors:
    • crave wealth, money and power
    • dress in robes or armor, or a combination of both and tend to cover up every inch of their bodies even if the temperature is 98 degrees outside.
    • sometimes have an attraction to the heroine or to the hero’s girlfriend.
12. Evil empresses:
    • crave wealth, money and power
    • dress in leather, bikinis, or a combination of both, and tend to dress scantily even if the temperature is 20 degrees below zero outside.
    • ALWAYS have an attraction to the hero (and sometimes to the heroine or to the hero’s girlfriend.)
13. The best fighters are always men. The best healers/white magic users are always women. (I’ve seen many a console RPG guilty of this one.) #14
14. The sword the hero is carrying has a blade made of pure light energy which goes VOOOM! whenever he swings it.
15. A villain who is particularly vain or pretty receives a scar or burn on his/her face, courtesy of the hero. Said villain then dons a mask (usually) and spends a good chunk of the rest of the story sulking in a dark place, plotting his/her revenge.
16. As a child, the hero:
    • trains hard to be a great warrior/mage/etc., though no one believes he/she can do it.
    • is destined to be a great warrior/mage/etc., and refuses to train because he/she finds it a waste of time.
17. The hero of the story is:
    • incredibly arrogant and cocky, but can never back it up.
    • a coward who does nothing until the very end, when he gets over his fear to do one thing that accomplishes his mission, eventually being declared a hero for that one deed.
    • a great warrior, except when he is drunk, (and he is almost always drunk).
18. A member of the group who is a child will be ignored and/or mistreated by the others, even if he/she is smarter than all the other group members combined.
19. The hero is always either a really gorgeous guy (enabling him to capture the hearts of all the girls) or an atrociously ugly guy (enabling him to capture the hearts of all the girls, albeit through pity, his inferiority complex, and the lack of love he’s received from everyone.)
20. Clergymen who are affiliated with any kind of established church appear noble and serene, but inside are actually pompous, hypocritical, or secretly in league with the forces of evil. (Japanese RPGs are ESPECIALLY guilty of this one.)
21. Clergymen who are NOT affiliated with any kind of established church and who are instead wandering monks and friars appear to be rude, hard-drinking, and worldly, but inside secretly have a heart of gold and are disposed to give help to the hero whenever he needs it (as well as be on hand to marry the hero to his sweetheart at the end of the movie/story.) #22
22. The larger and more titanic the size of the heroine’s breasts, the less likely they are to impede her ability to fight, run, flip backwards several times, etc.
23. The cool, anti-hero type vampire hunter with superhuman strength turns out to be (in another brilliantly original, Serling-esque plot twist) a vampire (or half-vampire) themselves.
24. A hero is boastful, claiming nobody is better than him. As a result more people who are able to defeat him show up in the story/series. (That’s what you get for tempting the fates).
25. If the character in the original book is female, a warrior, detests men with a passion, and a cold-hearted villainess, in the movie she’ll be a bratty little plot device who falls in love with every male she comes in contact with.
26. A Barbarian appears in the story.
    • If it’s female, it will dress in a skimpy, bust-enhancing, leather costume, carry around a big sword, and will frequently insist that the only man she’ll marry is one who can defeat her in a fair contest. Despite how tough she might be, she’ll scream like a schoolgirl every time she encounters a rat in a dungeon.
    • If it’s a male, it will dress in a leather thong and a headband (and not much else), carry around a big sword, and will, in most cases, sport a thick Austrian accent. Will have a tendency, when surprised or when rushing into battle, to shout epithets involving the names of extremely masculine-sounding gods. (”By CROM, I will defeat you!!!!”)
27. The comic relief is:
    • A cowardly yet amiable thief/pickpocket.
    • A cute (sometimes wise-cracking) animal who seems pretty annoying and useless except during those rare times when a situation calls for filching dungeon keys or for heroically sacrificing oneself in an attempt to distract the villain.
    • A tone-deaf bard. (see aforementioned comments concerning bards above).
    • A pair of lovable droids with clashing, Odd Couple-esque personalities.
    • Any animated character whose VA is Robin Williams, Dom DeLuise or Gilbert Gottfried.
    • An inept, out-of-shape, out-of-his-league, self-declared “hero” who tags along with the real heroes in the hopes of experiencing a grand adventure, (and who usually winds up instead being a pain in the ass, being eventually compromised by the villain, or just plain mucking up everyone’s plans.) In rare cases, his/her ineptitude will result in his/her performing an action which, through sheer luck, will result in causing a setback for the villain (oftentimes by causing his accidental destruction).
    • Usually completely unnecessary.
28. A dragon appears in the story. Said dragon is possessed of a sentient mind and the ability to converse in human languages fluently, (a seemingly meaningless talent for it to have, considering all the dragon wants to do with his life is to find an enormous hoard of treasure, plop his big, scaly ass down on top of it and sleep for all eternity, waking only to shoo away/eat the occasional armored knight, hobbit, or callow teen-aged hero which might come round to try and claim it).
29. Fairies (the 6 inch tall kind) are usually:
    • scantily dressed and female
    • cute beyond all reason,
    • extremely hot-tempered
    • jealously attracted to the Hero. (The fact that he’s 300 times bigger than she is and that the two of them have no hope of engaging in normal intimate relations does not appear to shake her resolve to love him one bit.)
30. Villains dress in dark or sinister colors such as black and blood red.
31. Wizards wear tall pointed hats and robes embroidered with moons and stars.
32. Any character you see within the story that has a western name either has it spelt differently or is a secondary character who bears no importance whatsoever. All other proper nouns (names and places) will be completely foreign and hard to pronounce.
33. Evil people always sound more evil and deadly with a British accent (unless it’s Dick Van Dyke)
34. Orphans become heroes.
35. Stepmothers are evil.
36. Villainous or dark characters are the way they are because of a tragic occurrence in their pasts.
37. The heroine/hero is always so beautiful that everyone falls in love with him/her.

Story Events and Plot Devices

1. A wedding takes place where the phrase “And if there’s anyone present who can see why these two shouldn’t be joined in marriage, speak now or forever hold your peace,” is followed by a scene in which nobody holds their peace. (Corollary: It is a Universal Rule of Fantasy that the hero and his buddies, when attempting to stop a wedding between the hero’s love interest and the villain, MUST choose the particular moment after that phrase is uttered, to launch their attack, even if waiting to do so puts them at a strategic disadvantage.)
2. The all-powerful wizard/seemingly unbeatable enemy turns out to be a mischievous child or a dinky old man behind a curtain.
3. The villain’s fortress starts to crumble around our heroes the moment he is defeated, leaving our heroes just barely enough time to escape before it collapses.
4. The overly friendly (or, in some cases, vaguely menacing) bishop or church official turns out to actually be at the head of the evil cult.
5. The hero runs into a competent swordswoman:
   • whose great skill with the sword is matched only by the great size of her hooters
     AND WHO
   • engages him in battle (at first)
   • sleeps with him (later on)
   • sacrifices her life for him (at the end)
6. Secondary characters who are killed in the first season of the TV series or movie are brought back to life in the sequel/next season for the flimsiest of reasons, because they were popular OR because the writers/producers of the show are too gutless to risk offending soccer moms by killing off sympathetic characters (and showing kids that, yes, sometimes evil actually wins.)
7. The hero and his girlfriend who, although looked like they were headed down the aisle at the end of the first movie or season of the TV series are inexplicably separated or estranged at the beginning of the sequel/next season.
8. One of the good guys falls in love with and becomes engaged to a character with no background and no previous presence in the storyline. Said character will invariably:
   • (if it’s a female) get kidnapped by the bad guys, forcing the good guys to rally around the groom and help him go save her.
   • turn out to be a spy or operative for the Bad Guys.
   • turn out to be a criminal or con-artist who wants to scam the heroes out of an important item or out of their pocket change.
     In any event, the mysterious fiance turns out to be a one-shot character who, at the end of the book/episode:
   • dies
   • gets thrown in prison
   • is discovered to be already married to somebody else.
   • decides they want to get to hitched to an old flame instead of to the good guy/gal she/he’s engaged to.
   • just plain up and leaves for no damn good reason.
9. A virgin, slated for sacrifice, is rendered unsuitable for sacrificial purposes thanks to a plot contrivance which conveniently places her and the hero alone in the same area just long enough for them to have an intimate encounter.
10. The villain turns out to be the hero’s long-lost father/ brother/ uncle’s cousin’s sister’s best friend’s former roommate, etc.
11. The hero inexplicably chooses to ride off into the sunset alone or with his buddies rather than stay behind with the hot princess he just rescued and help her rule her kingdom.
12. The hero(es) extricate themselves from a hopelessly tricky situation by simply cutting a rope holding a chandelier. (Making sure it’s the right rope first, of course, ala Robin Hood: Men in Tights.)
13. All it takes to defeat the villain is a good dousing with a bucket of cold water. (The Sci-Fi equivalent to this Fantasy plot device would be the all-powerful superweapon that’s about to destroy the world being disabled by simply pulling a plug from a wall outlet.)
14. The villain charges towards the hero, intending to strike him down while his back in turned, but is prevented from doing do by a weapon shot/thrown by the hero’s friend or ally, who just happened to conveniently arrive at that very moment.
15. A princess rescues the hero from jail by:
    • drugging the guard(s) drinks.
    • pretending to trip and exposing her shapely legs, thereby distracting the guard(s) long enough for the hero to reach out from between the bars of his cell and klonk him/them unconscious.
16. An executioner or a priest performing a human sacrifice is stopped from doing his job at the last second by a hero who manages to pull off a one-in-a-million, defies-all-known-laws-of-reason-and-physics shot with a ranged weapon.
17. A catapult successfully shoots a hero over the castle battlements where he lands safely on the other side in a pile of straw, instead of ending up as a stain on the wall or with his insides spilled on the cobblestones of the courtyard pavement.
18. The hero from the future goes back in time and uses the old “Hey, what’s that over there?” trick to elude the villains, and it works because said villains come from an era in history when men were less-media savvy and more prone to believe in the sincerity of everything told to them by other people.
19. The hero from the future goes back in time and uses the old “Hey, what’s that over there?” trick to elude the villains, and it DOESN’T work because, let’s face it, that old trick has been around since the days the first cavemen walked the earth. (Only then it was known as “Lookout ! There’s a velociraptor headed straight for us!” Needless to say, it didn’t work very well THEN, either…)
20. An obnoxiously cute little creature that’s following the heroes around sacrifices it’s life for them, and at the end of the story, gets resurrected somehow. (This is usually much to the chagrin of the viewers/readers, most of whom had hated that annoying little turd from the moment it first appeared in the story and had cheered loudly when they thought it had been dispatched.)
21. Modern (sometimes painfully modern) jokes/clichés/conventions of society, etc. are used for comedic effect.
22. Archaic weapons are used improperly. (Or misused because it looks cool.) i.e.: A hero blocks his enemy’s downstroke while crouched on the ground with his back to him, a ninja catches an arrow or stops a swinging sword with his bare hands, etc.
23. Weapons are used which could never really work in reality the way they do in the story/series. (Not without slicing the user’s fingers off. CHAKRAM *Cough!*)
24. The most powerful member of the group (usually a wizard) refuses to use his powers unless absolutely necessary, even when doing so would have saved the group a month’s journey or prevented the death of one or more of its members.
25. The most powerful member of the group leaves at the most crucial moment and comes back to find that the group completely screwed everything up because he/she was gone.
26. When two members of sparring kingdoms travel together, they:
    • (if they’re of the same sex) become best of friends and decide to work together to unite their kingdoms.
    • (if they’re of the opposite sex) become lovers and decide to marry and have children to unite their kingdoms.
27. When a hero has a dark past/secret, it is known by:
    • the hero’s parent(s)/sibling(s)/guardian(s) who took care of him since he was a child. This person reveals the secret to the hero just before he dies, leaving the hero with no one to answer the many questions this revelation brought up.
      AND
    • the villain, who is connected to the past/secret in some way.
28. The heroes seek the help of a legendary warrior. Upon finding him, they discover him to be a washed-up, aged, curmudgeon-y old drunk who can barely stand up much less save the day.
29. When dealing with the heroes, the villain will always forgo the simple, straightforward option of crushing them utterly and instead, inexplicably choose to deploy his weakest weapons/minions against them first, thus allowing the heroes ample opportunity to build up their strength to the point where they become a bona fide threat.
30. (Corollary from Rule #2 above) If the villain looks monstrous, ferocious or intimidating, it’s true form will turn out to be weak, almost comical. If the villain is normal, puny-looking, or handsome, it’s true form will turn out to be towering and monstrous.
31. Comrades-in-arms who fall in battle are mourned by the heroes for a grand total of about three seconds and then callously forgotten about for the rest of the story.
32. Characters are able to perform or witness acts of tremendous violence, (mutilations, explosions, decapitations, massacres, etc.,) without ever suffering any negative mental repercussions in the form of nightmares, neuroses, psychosis, post-traumatic stress disorder, or anything else of that nature.
33. The hero shoots an arrow, the tip of which the camera follows right until it enters the forehead of its victim. (a’la Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, LOTR, etc.)
34. All it takes to make a miraculous recovery from a mortal injury is having an extreme will to live. (Or by having a soulmate/wise old friend/mysterious person with magical healing powers who will play a large role in the up-coming plotline to destroy the villain help you.)
35. The villain commits a cruel act that’s over-the-top in it’s senselessness (i.e. killing a messenger who brings bad news, crushing a canary or killing a cherished pet) for no other reason than to show just how evil he truly is.
36. The Evil Emperor imprisons the hero’s girlfriend, dresses her like a skank, offers her all the power and possessions her heart desires, and then is genuinely mystified when she fails to fall for him.
37. The Evil Empress imprisons the hero, dresses like a skank, offers him her beautiful, voluptuous body to do with as he pleases, and then is genuinely mystified when he fails to fall for her. (As are all the men reading/watching the story…)
38. Even though all the odds are stacked against him, the (average-minded) hero somehow manages to outwit the (brilliant) villain, simply because the hero is a) on the side of good or b) has someone else doing all the thinking for him or c) when about to die, uses the power of love and life to lift himself up one final time, which is just enough to kill the villain.
39. Scantily-clad and hatless heroes and heroines are able to walk for miles outdoors under a blazing sun without even the slightest hint of a sunburn or skin damage afterwards.
40. A story or episode features characters from competing and wildly differing religious belief systems (i.e. biblical figures, figures from Greek and Roman myths) interacting with each other seamlessly and apparently without any theological conflicts.
41. The story features a character employing some kind of a love potion. This usually turns out to be a Really Bad Idea because:
    • Love potions being used by people with good intentions (who wish to have certain members of the heroes’ party fall in love with certain other members, ) invariably wind up being drunk by people they were not intended for,
      AND
    • Love potions being used by the villain/villainess (to win over one of the hero characters) are annoyingly susceptible to being broken by that pesky ol’ Power of True Love Thing.
42. The heroes fight their way to the villain’s inner sanctum to find the villain, dressed in somber colors, playing creepy music on a pipe organ.
43. A character who is killed off is brought back in the lamest way possible by having the same actor who portrayed them play the deceased character’s twin, secret love child, alternate persona from another universe, etc.
44. Have I mentioned either the “Villain employs the hero’s evil twin or lookalike impostor against the hero” or the “Hero and Villain switch bodies and the hero’s companions don’t find out until it’s almost too late” clichés yet?
45. The last day of the year when the magical keyhole to the magical secret passage is able to appear in the side of the mountain, is, by sheer coincidence, the very same day the heroes arrive with the key.
46. Male characters who are kept in dungeons for several days exhibit no signs of beard growth, even though they may have been chained to a wall and thus, unable to shave themselves. (Same goes for scantily-clad female characters and leg and armpit hair growth.)
47. Characters absolutely cannot change their clothes or get them dirty unless, of course, it is story related. Addendum: No matter how many times the hero’s clothes are
    burned, bloodied, stained, torn, slashed, or otherwise mutilated, by the end of the episode/chapter, the clothes will be as good as new.
48. Right before the villain is about to be killed by the hero, he pleads for his life. Naturally, the hero takes pity on the villain and spares him, provided he vows to give up his evil ways. (Which he almost never DOES)
49. The hero will arrive at the last possible second to defeat the dark lord and save everybody.
50. Grand viziers are ALWAYS evil. Same goes for high priests. Something in the job description probably.
51. If the storyline features a joust or martial arts tournament, the heroes will wind up entering it (and winning it, in spite of it having been fixed by the villains.)
52. When the hero wins a contest set up by the villain, he will be denied his prize and/or thrown into jail. (Example: Japanese Final Fantasy 2)
53. Gunpowder hasn’t been invented. (Have you ever noticed how many fantasy stories are set in worlds where nobody has developed gunpowder?)
54. Magic and technology advance unequally. Magical worlds usually possess ancient and medieval technology. Likewise, in technological worlds, magic tends to play a secondary role at best.
55. The Dark Lord inspires such terror that no one dares to speak of him by name (at least aloud.)
56. Any person a main character marries (if they’re not a main character themselves) is toast. You can count the time they have left to live in seconds. (Corollary: If two people have sex in a non-hentai anime, one or both of them will be dead by the final frame.)
57. The forces of good reside in beautiful lands, while lands belonging to the forces of evil are unattractive. (The science-fictional equivalent of this cliché is that benevolent civilizations dwell on beautiful planets, while the planets of malevolent cultures are unattractive.)
58. The existence of magicians who can easily raze or bypass castle walls doesn’t render traditional castles obsolete.
59. Societies are traditional monarchies and traditional aristocracies.
60. Royal families include evil relatives who scheme to steal or who have stolen the throne from the rightful rulers, their heirs, or both.
61. The hero/heroine will find the code to something or other and spend a long time trying to break it, only to find out it was a simple password that didn’t deserve the time it took to break, but bears significant importance to the plot.
62. The story is actually an allegory of some real period which occurred in history (ie: Nazi Germany, Renaissance-Era Venice, Communist Russia, etc.) with characters who are thinly disguised versions of real historical figures.
63. The villain of a “barbarian fantasy”/sword-and-sorcery story/movie maintains a harem of scantily-clad slave girls.
64. A villain raping a female hero = a tragic, criminal act which inspires vengeance. A hero raping a female villain = the female villain falls head over heels in love with the hero and spends the rest of the story trying to win him over.
65. Our world is connected to other dimensions through portals and linking rooms. (Corollary: In fantasy worlds, teleportation is usually based on magical not scientific principles and is used [mostly] as a cheap device to quickly get characters to the next plot point.)
66. Heroes from our world visit other dimensions and thwart the schemes of resident Evil Overlords. (Corollary to above: Heroes from our world who find themselves in other dimensions usually have at least one member of their party who’s seen or read a lot of fantasy stories and who believes themselves savvy as to how their new world actually works.)
67. Heroes and villains from other dimensions visit our world and decide to turn it into a battlefield for their final conflict (which usually results in the near destruction of our world. Fortunately, the otherworldly visitors usually have the ability to undo the damage they’ve caused by turning back time or by casting a clean-up spell.)
68. People who travel into dimensions which are vastly different from their own suffer very little in the way of culture shock, even if the place they came from was a small medieval dirt-hut village and the world they traveled to is an advanced, futuristic, neon-sign and machine-filled cityscape.
69. In contrast to villains, who often dress in dark or sinister colors, heroes frequently dress in bright but sensible colors.
70. Monarchies are hereditary. With the possible exception of religious hierarchies, elective monarchies do not exist.
71. Popular monarchies do not exist. The titles of monarchs are linked to their states instead of their peoples. Likewise, monarchs are regarded as governing well-defined states rather than peoples.
72. Survivors of a postmodern apocalypse (or people from a futuristic society who crash-land on a primitive world) will revert to a primitive way of life and start speaking like cavemen. (Alternatively, they’ll speak normally but selectively mangle the pronunciation of common terms and place names for no good reason other than to prove how “changed” they are.) Items and inventions from the ancient (modern) past will often be treated like sacred relics. (Nuclear missiles will be held in especially high regard and worshipped as sacred totems. At least until they blow up.)
73. On a post-holocaust Earth, the inhabitants adopt magic instead of science and technology. (Corollary: Commonly on post-holocaust Earths, magic is rationalized as being based on psionics.)
74. Magic is actually a form of science that has never been systematized in our world.
75. Fantasy cultures are frequently derived from northern Europe.
76. Fantasy cultures in Japanese RPG’s are also frequently derived from northern Europe (but will have at least one village filled with Asian architecture where everyone looks and dresses Japanese. This village is where all the ninjas, martial arts training monks, and cool ronin samurai warriors live.)
77. Magic is passed through bloodlines. (This can create castes within magic-user communities where “purebloods” think themselves better than “half-breeds” or “mixed-bloods”.)
78. If a hero has an identical twin or clone, it will invariably turn out to be evil.
79. If a villain has an identical twin or clone, it will usually also turn out to be evil. (This is especially true if the villain is killed off at the end of one season, and the producers of the show don’t want to hire a brand new actor to fill up the “villain” slot in the cast for the next season.)
80. In the rare event that a character’s identical twin or clone isn’t evil, they’ll usually turn out to be a polar opposite of that character in terms of personality. (This is often done for comedic effect, with the result sometimes being that the character’s friends and cohorts come to like the twin even more than they like the character, and are sad to see the twin go…)
81. It is not unusual for all members of a hero’s family to look exactly like the hero. (Even female members will do so it’s not unusual for the hero’s grandmother to look just like the hero himself wearing a bad granny wig.) Identical cousins are really common, as are identical ancestors or descendants, who look like the hero even down to the way they style their hair!
82. During the final, climactic fight of the first book/season of a series, a hero will inadvertently discover a power they have that is very scary and that no one else has.
83. The lands of the hero are suffering a horrible drought that ends the moment the villain is killed.
84. Somehow or another, no matter how many dangerous fights the heroes get themselves into, they are never hurt or scarred. If they are hurt and scarred they will quickly heal it themselves or it (amazingly) will disappear in the next chapter/episode.
85. Somehow or another the villain ALWAYS comes back, even if the heroes witness him being killed with their own eyes.
86. A villain who starts working along with the hero/heroine will always earn their trust, even after all the times the villain almost killed them.
87. There seems to always be a mysterious tavern…

Van Helsing Rules
Here’s a special subset of clichés I like to call the Van Helsing Rules, named after the infamous vampire movie which employed nearly every hackneyed monster movie cliché in the book and which shattered nearly every law of physics and reason…

• Van Helsing Rule #1: All anti-hero types must dress in black, have mysterious pasts, a gruff demeanor, and the ability to crack witty remarks during the heat of battle. No matter how competent they are, or how many people they manage to save, they’ll always find themselves hated by the public and mistrusted by their superiors.
• Van Helsing Rule #2: If the cool anti-hero gets paired with a sidekick, it’ll most likely be a kooky comic-relief gadgeteer who, inexplicably, winds up getting laid more often than he does. Corollary : It is NEVER right when the kooky comic relief gadgeteer winds up getting laid more often than the cool anti-hero. Especially if the cool anti-hero happens to be played by Hugh Jackman.
• Van Helsing Rule #3: Lower-ranking clergy NEVER take the whole “obeying the ten commandments” and “celibacy” thing very seriously. (In spite of this, they are almost always more trustworthy and compassionate than the Vatican higher-ups…)
• Van Helsing Rule #4: Cool anti-heroes love their hats and will do anything to keep from losing them.
• Van Helsing Rule #5: The cooler-looking and “seemingly-more-likely-to-go-out-of-control-and-kill-the-person-wielding-it-than-the-person-it’s-aimed-at” a weapon is, the better it works.
• Van Helsing Rule #6: All crossbows basically behave like machine guns with arrows.
• Van Helsing Rule #7: High heels and a tight corset are considered acceptable vampire-hunting garb.
• Van Helsing Rule #8: Powerful supervillains like to keep their friends close, their enemies closer and the one object which is capable of saving the hero and contributing to their own demise in a lightly guarded room located within their own fortress.
• Van Helsing Rule #9: All unknown viscous fluids are dangerous and should be avoided at all costs.
• Van Helsing Rule #10: In Eastern Europe, the full moon occurs approximately once every four days.
• Van Helsing Rule #11: You need never keep track of where you’re going in a desperate pitched battle, because ALL you need to do is swing on a rope and/or crash through a window and you’ll automatically find yourself at the one place you needed to go to next.
• Van Helsing Rule #12: The stroke of midnight can, if the plot calls for it, go on for twenty minutes or more.
• Van Helsing Rule #13: Female characters who fall in love with the cool anti-hero are invariably doomed. (The fact that they were able to kick ass and survive high falls, beatings and monster attacks for the first 98% of the movie is irrelevant. All it will take to dispatch them at the end is a simple stab wound.)
• Van Helsing Rule #14: Cool, creepy art direction and millions of dollars of special effects cannot make up for a script conceived and written by a severely impaired tube worm…

While conflict makes the story run, before conflict your character needs a passionate yearning to be conflicted about.

Brainstorm some passionate yearnings. Don’t worry if they’re cliche. It’s the passion your character will bring to that yearning that will set it apart. (The yearning for a husband or wife has certainly fueled plenty of stories!)

After you’re done brainstorming, pick your favorite yearnings then brainstorm some reasons why your character wants that. Make it personal and make them want it passionately.

Here’s some examples if you’re having trouble getting started:

• To protect a brother. Why? Younger or older? How and why is the brother in danger? What did he do? What events made the siblings especially close?
• To be the first to Mars. Why? To achieve something no one else has? Passionate love of Star Trek? Return home?
• To win the dragon riding tournament. Why? Why dragons? Why this particular tournament? To prove something to someone or self? To honor an ancestor or mentor? To prove something to the dragon(s)?
• To end the war. Why? Ancestral home is threatened? Brother is on the other side and it’s only a matter of time before character will have to kill him? The cost to loved ones has been too high?
• To find peace and quiet. Why? Stressful life? Surrounded by grasping people? Surrounded by idiots?
• To regain family treasure. Why? Awaken inherited powers? Crush the power of the rival who stole it? Rebuild family that was destroyed?

Look over your list and circle your favorites. Keep asking why for the ones that intrigue you to gain greater depth for the characters and the problem and the world.

Pick your very favorite. Brainstorm a list of 25 obstacles to place between the character and their yearning. (The first few that come out will probably be cliche. That’s okay. Sometimes you need to run the tap first until the water is clear :-) The conflict can be personal (fear, being handicapped, family opposes) or external (aliens invade, it rains).

This could be the foundation for your NaNoWriMo project coming up in November. Choose one or a few of the yearnings and conflicts that feel like they could be in the same story. Put them together to see what happens.

Randy Ingermanson at The Snowflake Method of Writing a Novel suggests three steps to help get a handle on your novel’s (or story’s) structure. I prefer writing first and then figuring out what the book is about when it’s done ;-)

But his techniques could work well when you’ve completed a story and are heading into the editing phase.

Step 1: Write a one-sentence summary of your story. For one thing he says this will serve as a ten-second selling tool, a hook to sell your story to an editor. But it’s also a good way to get a handle on what your story is about to help you focus on what to cut and what to expand on as you’re rewriting.

Some hints on what makes a good sentence:

• Shorter is better. Try for fewer than 15 words.
• No character names, please! Better to say “a handicapped trapeze artist” than “Jane Doe”.
• Tie together the big picture and the personal picture. Which character has the most to lose in this story? Now tell me what he or she wants to win.
• Read the one-line blurbs on the New York Times Bestseller list to learn how to do this. Writing a one-sentence description is an art form.

Step 2: Expand the sentence into a full paragraph. He suggests one sentence to give the backdrop and story setup. Then a sentence for each turning point. [He calls them disasters.] And one sentence to tell the ending.

Step 3: Then for each character write a one page summary sheet. He suggests:

• The character’s name
• A one-sentence summary of the character’s storyline
• The character’s motivation (what does he/she want abstractly?) [Someone suggested using the word yearn. What does the character yearn for?]
• The character’s goal (what does he/she want concretely?)
• The character’s conflict (what prevents him/her from reaching this goal?)
• The character’s epiphany (what will he/she learn, how will he/she change?)
• A one-paragraph summary of the character’s storyline

This may give you more insight into your story and you may realize you need to rewrite your one sentence summary or your paragraph. That’s a good thing! As he says “it means your characters are teaching you things about your story.”

If you’re doing this before you write it’s okay to go back and change your descriptions as the story evolves. In fact expect to.

This idea comes from Holly Lisle’s website, a successful fantasy writer, who has a some excellent essays on writing. In Quick Plot, she walks you through the process of coming up with the essential characters, essential problem, brainstorming scenes of a novel when you need to turn one out immediately.

“Here’s the scenario. You find yourself in a situation where you have to do a book in a hurry. Could be you got a letter back from an editor or agent telling you that, while they can’t use the book you submitted, they would like to see your next project. Could be you took on more contracts than you have time to complete. Could be you forgot about a pending deadline, or put it off because Real Life intruded in a big way.
In any case, now you’re faced with a book that must be done to a professional level in a severely limited amount of time, and, for real fun, let’s say that you don’t even have any idea yet what the book is going to be about. Maybe you know most of the characters, if it’s a book in a continuing series. Maybe the whole thing is just a vague, nebulous blur in your mind — you sort of know what you’d like it to be about, but beyond that, you’re in the dark.

Maybe you haven’t a clue. You are as blank as the page in front of you. Maybe you simply have never been able to plot out a novel in advance and would like to try it.

No matter what your situation, don’t panic. This workshop will teach you how to create plots out of thin air, with nothing but work, and more work, and maybe a bit of work after that. Sound fun? Well, actually, it is.”

An entire Book in a week?

Well, not when you first start, probably!

BIW, is a Yahoo group that “gathers” on the first full week of each month to encourage writers to write as fast as they can without editing. Prior to that week you post your page goal for the week. (Minimum is 10 pages. A page is 250 words.) And then every day during the week you check in with the list, posting how many pages you’ve written. This is to encourage you to meet your goal as well as encourage others on the list throughout the week.

And then each month, up your page goal to push yourself to the point where you can’t possibly have time to go back to edit what you’ve written during the week. You can work on anything you want: story, article, book, as long as it’s a first draft rather than something to revise.

“No editing, no going back over what’s been written. Write, write, write. What is important is getting the words down, creating a first draft. Editing and revising comes later. Allow yourself to write quickly and without worry. Get your ideas down first.”

BIW challenges start Monday at 8AM Eastern and ends the following Monday at 8AM. (This month it starts August 6.) (They request a $3 Paypal donation for new members.) The dates are scheduled a year in advance and are listed at the website:

“The first YEAR I participated, I did NOT ever make my goal. But I kept trying. For some folks, it takes a while to let go of that need to edit. It takes time to feel free to just sit down and write JUNK. But when you finally hit it, it’s awesome. And the point (for me) is this: Quantity is what develops quality. If you only write a page a week, because you’re worried about how it reads, then you have so much less of a mind to dig in for those nuggets of gold. If you can free yourself up to write as many pages as you physically can, you will have a huge source of work to dive into and cull from. And out of that, over time comes pages and pages of great writing!”

— Candie Moonshower, long time BIW member and published author

When your novel gets to the saggy middle, that’s the time to drop in some random colorful characters! This was posted by Fenix on the National Novel Writing Month forums for 2005.

---

Found some stuff online…

I [Fenix] found a list of possible side stories online, many different sites, decided to put them into categories that I thought would work best:

Outcast:

• Is on a personal quest for vengeance.
• Is paranoid and over-protective of the town that cast him out.
• Cannot stop complaining, and will complain to anyone near them but knows key information hidden among the complaints.
• Is an outcast in the community for no good reason.
• has a valuable treasure but does not know who to turn to and trust for the sale
• Fears being alone because of a recent incident.
• Is heavily in debt and is fleeing/hiding from creditors.
• Is a fan (to the point of fanaticism) of a spectator sport of the time (jousting, cockfighting, bearbaiting, whatever) and has gotten into gambling/stalking trouble.
• Fears he’s being watched and is looking for someone who he can trust to recover a valuable object buried nearby

Trader:

• NPC has invented a new piece of equipment and is looking for a test subject.
• Wants PCs to ‘lend’ him the main plot item after they retrieve it, before they hand it over to the main plot instigator. The motivation could be pure (i.e. item needed to lift a deadly curse) or nefarious (i.e. item used to raise an army of undead).
• Sells rare and unusual spells.
• Sells magical equipment that looks fake or non-magical.
• Has a craving for rare herbs and spices that unknown to the PCs are used to create a powerful narcotic.
• NPC is a merchant looking to open trade with other races and spot a non-human PC.
• Is looking for a business partner.
• Is a pacifist who tries to convert the party to the ways of non-violence.
• Wants the PCs to promote her business by wearing or using her product prominently whenever possible (fashionable cloaks, very tasty trail rations, a specific musical instrument, etc.).
• Is an artist trying to sell his works.
• Is collecting parlor games from across the lands.
• Acts as a local guide to the PCs.
• Desperately needs an item only available through the Black Market.
• Acts as a representative for the Black Market.
• Sells rice cakes with magic rings inside.
• Is a wandering amateur chef looking for new recipes and ingredients.
• Is a pacifist who tries to convert the party to the ways of non-violence.
• Is a writer trying to sell his works.
• Tries to pass off lousy equipment as magical.

Wanted man:

• Is in disguise (for reasons real or imaginary).
• Has had an operation to change his/her race, but still manifests cultural mannerisms of his/her original race.
• Is an outcast for forgotten crimes
• A ‘wanted man’ sought by a particular non-human good race (i.e. Elves, Halflings, Dwarves, etc.) for some past misdeed or misunderstanding.
• Has a racial enemy or is banned from racially dominant areas.
• Is deadly terrified of shadows. He’ll only meet with the PCs in places completely devoid of shadows.
• Was recently injured in a random attack and seeks his attackers for revenge.
• Is a vigilante who kills in cold blood convinced that the ends (i.e. eliminating a criminal element) justify the means (using excessive force, killing hostages, etc.).
• Has been falsely accused and has just posted bail and is now looking for proof of his innocence.
• Is trying to ditch the city guards, who are chasing him for a minor crime.
• Is a skilled amateur gambler looking to break into the pros or find the ‘big game’.
• Greedy — always demands first dibs and/or larger shares when dividing treasure troves based on exaggerated contributions to the party’s success.

Secretive guy:

• Has been given a task by his boss and his boss would punish him if it was known he was ‘wasting time’ with the PCs.
• Wants the PCs to ‘accidentally retrieve’ an item while they are investigating clues.
• Is searching for a lost family heirloom — the heirloom may not have any value other than sentiment.
• Is on a secret military mission.
• Is a worshipper of a death god(dess) or a necromancer who wishes to serve as a mortician of the city but needs documents proving his/her good intentions/standing.
• Is secretly recruiting for the military or a special guild.
• Knows of ‘lots of great adventures’ that are, unfortunately, all dead ends.
• Is quiet, brooding, and short tempered due to medical problems.
• Is an informant for the local thieves’ guild with nothing to report and is ready to make something up.
• Is tainted in some way and tries at all costs to keep the taint a secret.
• Is a failed adventurer with much emotional baggage who seeks to sabotage other adventurers.
• Is a binge drinker who tends to get in trouble due to violent, drunken bouts.
• Is trying to find out how to join a certain secret cult.Is a failed adventurer with much emotional baggage who seeks to sabotage other adventurers.