Hello Lovelies!!! I hope you liked the first part and that at least one person found it helpful in anyway, even if just for a giggle. Enjoy more kittens and random jams!
Character Names
- The struggle is real. I have seriously spent literal weeks agonizing over a stupid name for a character. Legit have lost sleep over this, and it's so silly. Also, when I first started writing I found myself wanting to use the same name over and over again for my OC's.
Things I do:
- If I'm struggling to come up with a name for a character I honestly just go to babynames.com and will either search by meaning or origin (like Japanese, English, Irish etc...) or if I don't have a particular meaning or origin I want I'll pick a letter and search. Though I may have to stop using this website because I was on there when I was trying to come up with a character name for one of my HunterXHunter stories and legit saw BigMac as a name, like no joke. Me thinks I need a new baby name site.
- There are tons of random name generators, there was a super awesome steampunk one I used to use and it would even give you fun titles. This one: http://oobleck.org/steam/ there are billions of random name generators which is always cool to use. Though if it's for my main OC I tend to have a ton of redo's because I'm almost never satisfied.
- Google Translate and I are best frenemies. So, if you read my original fiction (on my old XxDarkSuccubusxX account) The School of the Lost and the School of the Forsaken (they'll possibly be making an appearance on this account at some point) you possibly noticed I made up some gods and all of their names resemble what they are a god of in some way. I often use google translate to some random language (usually latin) and search a meaning. (example: I typed in dark it gave me several different words umbra (shade, shadow, darkness, dark obscurity, ghost) and hence the God Umbra was born.) Also, if I can't find an exact word I like I'll find a cool word and kind of mold it or change to sound more like a name.
Avoiding Errors
- We're all human, we all make mistakes. I've read countless published books and on occasion find a misspelled word or grammatical error, it happens to everyone (even me) but there are things we can do to reduce errors.
o Spellcheck – If you write in word, it will spell check and will even catch some grammatical issues like misplaced commas etc... (super handy, I always recommend writing in word or something that has spell check in it to help catch mistakes)
o Proofread- I cannot stress this enough. I always read through everything I post, at least once and I ALWAYS catch silly little mistakes, like when I had one train of thought at the beginning of a sentence, then changed it and the sentence gets all wonky and then I'm like what on earth was I doing here hahaha I'll also find other silly things where a word won't be spelled wrong it will have just been replaced with a word spelled similarly. And guess what, sometimes I still mess up and even after I post a story I'll find an error and then yell at myself haha. (A suggestion if you feel you always have a lot of errors that you overlook by reading through (because hey our brains do autocorrect a lot...it's a real thing) I suggest reading it backwards...yeah that sounds weird, I know, start at the bottom of the document and read it backwards you'll probably catch more of the mistakes that you wouldn't have noticed otherwise because your brain doesn't autocorrect (as much) when you're reading backwards.... I dunno why... science?? Biology? Unicorns???)
o Phone a friend- If you feel your proofreading skills are meh, and you have a friend in your life that you can comfortably share your writing with ask them to read it over, more than likely they'll find more errors than you because you wrote the story (or whatever you're writing) so you know how it SHOULD go so your brain cheats sometimes.
o Just keep writing- This sounds silly, but the point I'm getting at here, is the more you write, the better you'll get and the more you'll get a sense of your writing strengths and weaknesses. Practice makes perfect after all ^-^
Expanding Vocabulary and Using Synonyms
I feel like these two kind of go hand in hand a little. The more expansive your vocabulary is the more synonyms you'll know and can avoid repetition in your story...especially with dialogue...this one annoys me... a lot... like I'll see stories where any time any one says anything its "blah blah blah" So and So said. "Blah blah" So and so two said. Now there's nothing wrong with using said or says (whatever tense you're writing in) however, I do have problems if there are ten different dialogue paragraphs and EVERY single one uses said or says. There are SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO many different words you can use to convey people speaking. Think of their tone are they shouting, yelling, screaming, crying, laughing, whispering etc... also handy little tidbit if they're REPLYING you can use: replies/replied, responds/responded, answers/answered. If they're asking a question you can use: Asks/Asked, Questions/Questioned, Inquires/Inquired, Ponders/Pondered. Possibilities are endless.
I also feel like I see repetition in feelings, like mad/sad/glad (I was going to say happy but rhyming is fun)
General synonyms for mad: livid, scathing, irate, angry, fuming, furious, (and like a billion more)
General synonyms for sad: depressed, morose, gloomy, miserable, dejected (and like a billion more)
General synonyms for glad: happy, jovial, bright, cheerful, gleeful, content (and like a billion more)
Tip: If you use Microsoft word and you find there is a word you overuse a lot try right clicking on it and you'll see a tab in the popup bar that says synonyms with a little arrow if you hover over it, it'll show you some words that are synonymous to that word. If you don't write in word, here is a handy link to synonym.com to help you out.
Link: http://www.synonym.com/
I hope this was helpful to at least one person. If there are any specific things you'd like me to go over please feel free to comment or message me directly ^-^
Photo: My son!! Finnegan "Finny" also sometimes goes by Finnardo DeCatrio....yeah....
Video- "Last Resort" By Papa Roach.... honestly this is my all time favorite song ever haha
YOU ARE READING
Writing Tips
Non-FictionSo I had a series of writing tips on my old account XxDarkSuccubusxX, but when I closed down my old account I lost it, and cannot find it on my computer now. This is just going to be some helpful tips for beginners. Hopefully it can help some people...
