Maggie C's 7 Commandments For Writing Diversity

     White cisheteronormative wealthy able-bodied, neurotypical males; we all know how to write 'em and they're not hard.  They're literally the most vanilla character to write and read about, and yet we keep cranking 'em out like they're Mountain Dew and we're Bros and/or emotional teenagers dealing with their problems by self-medicating with sugary beverages in an effort to not completely destroy themselves while they self-destruct.
     And I get it.  Writing diverse characters is a scary prospect.  It's not as difficult as we make it seem when we talk about it--it's work, yes, but it's not like you're driving screw drivers into your eyeballs in an effort to excise your spleen.  You're writing about a person.  And writing about people is kind of your job, friend.
     I don't pretend to have all the answers.  I'm an eighteen-year-old with no current profession pursuing an education and career in the arts.  What I have to offer are my own life experiences, the research I've done, and fifteen or so years of experience writing fiction.  I'm not perfect, and I can only do so much.
     But diversity in fiction is important to me.  It's supposed to be the goal of an artist to reflect real life, to, as Shakespeare hath proclaimed, "hold as 'twere the mirror up to nature, to show virtue her feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure."
     Modern art doesn't even reflect half of the human experience.  It's white-washed and full of narratives about the wealthy and/or middle class, usually about men trying to succeed and/or get their dicks wet.  When women are included, it's usually as props, or as thin paper creatures that don't really know what they want until a man comes and tells her; when LGBTQ characters are involved, it's usually G, sometimes L, and the entire narrative typically revolves around how difficult it is to be queer, or else they become a stereotypical gag; when a person of color is included, they usually have few speaking lines, or are also stereotypes; when a person with disabilities is included, it's either a cure narrative or an acceptance narrative or a pity-me narrative, and they're usually a stereotype.  By and large, diverse fiction these days is largely made up of stereotypes people pass off as characters to try and reach some sort of quota, and it's not good enough.
     I've been writing fiction featuring diverse protagonists since I was eleven.  I've learned a lot, I've unlearned a lot, I've done a lot of research, I've done a lot of research that negated that research, I've done a lot of researched that negated the negation of that research--and I've come to develop a personal code to write by, compiled here for the first time ever.
     Maggie's Laws of Fiction Diversification:

6.  Thou Shalt Never Assume That You Know Everything: Do Your Research

     Never assume that you're qualified to write a story about someone or something you don't fully understand.  Even if you think you understand it, do some research; trust me, you'll benefit.  Find some surveys, get books out at the library, read articles online, binge relevant tv shows on Netflix, spend hours scanning relevant pages on Wikipedia and eye-guzzling related tropes on tvtropes; the more you can take in, the better equipped you'll be, and the closer to the source these things are, the better.
     Read articles straight people write about the gay experience, sure, that'll help you write relationships between gay and straight people, but always give more credence to first-person reports, because in the end, no one knows something as well as the one who's lived it.  Abled people can totally understand and sympathize with disabled experiences--they just usually don't, and they'll never be as intimately familiar with the teeter-totter of acceptance and resentment, or societal stigma, or the physical/emotional sensations as someone who's lived it.  Any source is valuable, if only because it gives you some idea of how different people see the issue in question, but some are more credible than others.
     And no, that stuff you learned in school about the Civil Rights movement is not enough; I could go on forever about subpar nature of the public school system, but suffice it to say you have an internet, so use it.

5.  Thou Shall Ask Questions; Get Involved

     Routinely ask yourself questions as you write; is this respectful?  Is this accurate?  Does my research support this?  What do other people think?  Is this portrayal stereotypical?  Is this stereotype justifiable, or would people take offense?  Don't be afraid to reach out to people who know what they're talking about and ask questions or contribute to discussion; follow @WeNeedDiverseBooks on Twitter, or keep an eye out for the #DisChat tag, follow authors that frequently discuss life as a marginalized person, and don't be afraid to DM someone from an advice blog or an advocate who welcomes questions (such as myself).

4.  Thou Shall Get Betas

     Okay, so you did a great job, you used your research, you asked questions, that's wonderful; now get Betas that belong to the groups you've casted your characters into.  You protagonist is a black paraplegic?  You should have both black and disabled CPs/Betas, paraplegic if at all possible.  You may not be able to find a beta or CP for every demographic you cover, but the closer you can get, the better--and absolutely do not assume that you don't need this step.  You can do all the research, avoid stereotypes like the plague, and still make a mistake--it could be something simple and stupid, a mistranslation of a language you don't really speak, you used the name of the wrong tribe, you used a term or grammatical structure that only seems offensive to the people to whom it would actually refer.
     There are a lot of things you can get wrong and never realize, and a lot of other people might not realize either--which is why it's important to fix them before your MS goes anywhere near print.  Just because most people won't notice doesn't mean it's okay not to fix it.
     Make sure the right people are betaing your work.

3.  You Will Get It Wrong

     It's inevitable.  No matter how much you rake over that MS with a fine-toothed comb, you're gonna fuck it up somewhere along the line.  It's inevitable.  That's why we have CPs and Betas and Editors and Agents and more Editors and Publishers and more Editors; humans err.  That's kind of our thing, and it's to be expected.
     You're gonna fuck up.  Just like I fucked up the 10 Commandments theme right here right now.  That's life.  Sometimes you screw the pooch.
     Don't let it get to you.  Don't let it scare you.  Every mistake is something to learn from, a lesson you needed but just got a little late, and it's okay.  As long as you don't close yourself off and insist that you're infallible, things will be okay; you'll figure out where you went wrong, apologize to whoever you offended, and get it right the next time.
     Also:  If you've done the research and you did your best, anyone who screams at you for making a mistake isn't worth your time.  Listen to the people who critique your work, but don't bother trying to please everybody because

2.  Someone Will Always Be Offended

     There was that "Trans-Ginger" episode of South Park a while back that stirred up quite a controversy; I knew a lot of trans people who were really pissed off about it, but I also knew some who were really pleased with the way it turned out.  Likewise, I'm sure there were people who were offended by the South Park episode featuring Tourette's, but I personally have found it to be the most accurate depiction on television I've ever seen.
     I've also seen a number of cases where people were offended by someone's story only for it to come out that the experiences of the marginalized character were based off of the experiences of the like-marginalized author.  Actually, that one's not uncommon--I can't tell you how many times I've seen long, drawn-out arguments on Twitter break out because so many people don't want to hear autistic stories written by autistic authors.
     Point is: there's always going to be someone who likes what you write, no matter how terrible, and no matter how factually and emotionally accurate, there will always be someone who takes offense.  You can't let it get to you.  Consider the reactions of your audience, take them into consideration, ask yourself if you could have done better, but if you honestly wouldn't change a thing?  Don't sweat it.
     I, for one, fully expect people to be offended by the way I write characters based off myself.  I certainly won't like it, but I expect it.  That's how the internet often works these days.

1.  Everyone is human

     As I see it, this is the most important thing to remember when writing diversity--no matter who they are, no matter what they look like, no matter where they come from or what their motivations or limitations are, this character you've chosen to create is a human being.  They have thoughts and feelings and hopes and dreams; they are three dimensional, with hobbies and passions and friends and complex relationships with those friends or families and hopes and dreams; they're the best at something, they're the worst at something, they're decent at some stuff, they're bad at other stuff, they have things they do for profit and things they do for others and things they do just because it makes them happy, they have virtues and vices, talking points and flaws.
     Your characters are not just what makes them diverse, and forming their entire arc around that one (or those multiple) thing(s) is a failure on your part as a writer to impart life into your character.
     Before anything and everything else, I make sure that my characters are three dimensional; the rest will follow.  People are people are people are people, and that's what it all comes down to.  You might get things wrong--your research might be from the wrong sources, you might have conflated two groups on accident, you might have played into stereotypes without realizing it, and if that's so, you fix it--if you can--and apologize and learn from that mistake; you make better decisions next time.  But at least you'll know that you created something real.  Maybe not perfect, maybe not fully accurate, maybe not what everyone wanted!  But you didn't steal away anyone's humanity in the process.

0.  Do No Harm

     I don't do stereotypes; I don't half-ass my research; I don't pin "types" into certain categories, and I try my damnedest to make sure that I'm not accidentally demonizing diversity (and since I have a soft spot for writing objectively terrible, immoral, and amoral protagonists, I have my work cut out for me) or giving in to harmful tropes and plots.
     As writers, we have an obligation to be honest and hard-working, well-researched and goodwilled, because artists determine the fate of mankind.  That may seem a little overdramatic, and maybe it is, but who would you say has been most influential to you over the course of your life?  After your parents (for good or for ill) and possibly your siblings or extended kin, it's probably an artist--a writer, a movie-star, a photographer, a director, a comedian.  Artists have immense power in this world--we are the voices children are listening to, we are the modern philosophers.  Science teaches kids the how and the what; we deal with the whys.
     Doctors and psychologists take an oath to Do No Harm, and it's my firm belief that it's our job to do the same.  We can't promise we won't accidentally do harm, but we should strive, at all times, to make sure we aren't making life hard for ourselves, our kith, our kin.
     Art is exceedingly influential, and we should never use that influence for evil.

Coming Back From The Dead

     Gandalf.  Roy Greenhilt.  Harry Potter.  Most of the characters in Homestuck.  Every superhero in the history of ever.  What do they all have in common?
     They're revenants.
     The word "revenant," in case you haven't been paying attention to that hot new movie I probably won't ever see (because as a broke college student I have neither time nor money to go to the theater, and who knows when it'll be on Netflix), means one who has returned from the dead, or seems to be returning from the dead.  All those characters up there?  They're that.
     The writing community can be pretty polarized on whether or not it's acceptable to bring characters back from the dead; if you've been keeping up with my blog, then you've probably realized by now that I'm rarely polarized when it comes to writing, and that I tend to go on a case-by-case basis.
     That being said, there are definitely times you don't want to kill your character, and even more ways to revive them in such a way that will leave your audience clambering for the door.  Talking about how not to kill-and-revive might be a good article for later, but for now I'm going to focus on the positives; the building blocks, if you will.

Note--this article assumes that the period of time passing between death and revival is at least a period of several weeks.


1.  Be Wary of the Revolving Door

     The Revolving Door of Death (also known as the "Death is Cheap" trope, or a Comic Book Death) is a system set up in which characters who die rarely stay dead--in fact, they're more likely to come back than not.  Every god damn superhero in the history of ever is subject to this trope, and if you've ever had a conversation with a superhero nerd you know how little respect a large portion of the audience has for the practice.
     The Revolving Door cheapens death--it makes it just another plot construct, and usually the storyline plays out the same.  The hero dies, everyone mourns them, they make a deal with the devil for the .000007% of their soul they still have left (they die a lot, is what I'm saying), and come back just in the nick of time, saving the day as everyone gasps and is surprised for the three millionth time and maybe the girlfriend comedically tries to beat him up for dying on her, blah blah blah we've all seen it before.
     If your universe is predicated on a Revolving Door system, that's fine, there are ways to make it work--in Homestuck, most of the characters die and come back at least once (instantaneously, even!), and you'll rarely see a fan complain, but that's likely due to the structured nature of the die-and-revive system (see below)--but if death is seen as a normal facet of life which can be easily returned from, then you need to realize that it will not mean as much to kill someone.  You can't try to make the audience cry if one of your characters dies, because they know he's going to come back.  Unless, of course, it's a special case, and it's very very clear that she's never coming back--like with Gwen Stacy in Spiderman.  In this case, a permanent death will pack more of a punch, but the audience may still be wary of the character's return.
   

2.  How Do They Come Back?

     Rules.  Your system of resurrection needs rules. The system in comic books, well-hated as they are (at least in the circles I run in; your mileage may vary), don't seem to have any.  Correct me if I'm wrong of course, I'm not a comic expert, I grew up in a small town that didn't have so much as a proper store, let alone a comic shop, but from what I've read online and the conversations I've held with my compatriots, sometimes people come back from the dead and sometimes they don't and that's that.
     And that's not enough.
     There needs to be a method to the madness.  Is it magic?  Is it science?  Is it some combination of the two?  Did Gods do it, mortals, something greater or lesser than either?  Was it a bacteria, a virus, a special parasite?  Why?  Why did this happen, how did it happen?  What are the rules?  What are the limitations?
     If it's magic, they might need to get into contact with a special, high-level cleric and pay a lot of money, a la Greenhilt, or perhaps undertake a special ritual that can only be performed at a certain place at a certain time after gathering certain items and fighting certain guard creatures.  If it has to do with God or Gods, there should be a damn good reason for the God to listen to your character, and it shouldn't be done without some form of sacrifice.
     If it's science, you should do some research on the modern quest for immortality (trust me, it's amazing.  or maybe terrifying.  again, your mileage will probably vary) to make sure that your science-fiction is in line with current findings--or, if you deviate from modern findings, that you at least have some scientific basis on which to formulate your methodology.
      The less cheap you want death to be, the harder it should be to bring someone back from the dead--the more years, the more studying, the greater magic, the more complex the scientific methods.  If you want death to really be worth something, then you can't pull this trick out of your hat for any old thing; in fact, you can only really use it once before death starts to cheapen.  Once is a miraculous resurrection, twice is a fluke of nature, and at three times it starts to become just another system within the system.
     Structure, sacrifice, and limitation are key in making your system of death-and-revival believable and not-groan-worthy.

3.  Consequences, Consequences, Consequences

      When someone dies, there are consequences.
     People mourn, cry, self-destruct, move on with their lives, start to forget; jobs are lost, objects inherited by survivors, homes sold; bodies moulder, graves are dug, papers are filed.
     When someone dies, there are consequences.  Seems kind of obvious, but it's easy to forget, when you start dipping into the fantasy realm or creating worlds from scratch, that those consequences extend beyond the period of death.
     Legally, there's a precedent that's been set and upheld in America which disallows people from returning from the dead.  At least, at the state level--on a federal level, the nation wants to bring people back from the dead so they can force the families to repay all the support received.  Whether you agree with the rulings or not, there's a lot of legal ramifications you'll want to think through when bringing someone back from the dead--the longer they've been dead (and the more publicly they died) the more hoops they'll have to jump through to rejoin society, if they can even accomplish that at all.
     If you're making up your own world, the legal ramifications may be different, but there's likely to be something in place to make life difficult.  There's also the social repercussions--depending on how long your character has been dead, different people will have different reactions to their return; some will be ecstatic, especially those who worked to make it happen, but others will be less receptive.  People who have moved on may feel as though old wounds are being ripped open, people who have created new lives without them may feel guilty for doing so, or resentful that this person has come back to destroy the new status quo.
     Some of your character's loved ones might be angry at them for dying, or leaving things unsaid, or something else that had to do with their death or life before it.  Some are likely to be frightened--it's not every day you see a dead woman walk, after all.  They might even try to attack, thinking them a zombie, or else assume them to be a hallucination or figment of their imagination.
     Point is: there's a lot of room for things to go wrong.
     Even if your characters are excited about the return of another, the relationships they have will have to be reestablished, and depending on what the consequences of your revenant's return is, it could be difficult.  Certainly, their relationships won't be exactly the same--watching someone die, or even just going through the mourning process, changes things, and there will be periods of your characters' lives that your revenant just didn't exist during.
     Which brings me to the physiological and emotional changes that your character will face.
     Dying is an experience most people don't come back from; the few who do are dead only for a couple minutes at most, and it's a very life-changing, often traumatizing experience.  Unless your method of revival necessitates or facilitates wiping out the revenant's memories of what's happened to them, they'll likely come back changed--the more so if they've spent some time in an afterlife.  They may suffer from PTSD, or feel disconnected and isolated from their friends and family--if they made friends in the afterlife, they may miss them; they may, depending on your system for resurrection, not even feel fully human anymore.  What the effects of resurrection are in your world are totally up to you, but make decisions and stick to them.
   

     Death is tricky; life is even trickier.  Trying to come back to life from the dead--that's a shenanigan right there.  A straight up shenanigan that deserves your total dedication and a sharp eye for nuance and cliches.
     Keep killing it, comrades.  And then revive it, because murder is still illegal in most countries.

Playing Favorites: Parents, Part 3

     On Monday I started a series on Parental Favoritism, and followed up on it on Wednesday--now, late on a Friday night, I'm finishing up the series, at least for the foreseeable future.  Here are the last four words that I currently have on the subject of how to spice up your parental favoritism (sub)plots.

7.  Put the protagonist somewhere in the middle

    People, especially young people but old people, too (and sometimes to far more harmful degrees), have this tendency to polarize the world--there is up and down, there is left and right, there is black and white, there is cold and hot, and there is nothing in between.  This comes from a lot of different places--childhood naiveté, absorbing too many stories with this same black vs. white mentality, a lack of empathy, strict teachings (usually theological) that stress the duology of an Cosmic Good and a Universal Evil in a universe that acts with an inherent morality, etc.
     Now universes with an inherent morality can be very interesting, but only if the universe's morality is the universe's, and not the character's--again, unless your character is some kind of God with special universe-bending powers, they probably shouldn't be the one calling the shots one hundred percent, and their viewpoint shouldn't be the only Absolutely Correct one.
     All that being said, sometimes there exists more than just Favorite and Least Favorite; a lot of kids have more than just one sibling.  If your character exists in a home where favoritism is going on, or is thought to be going on, instead of putting your character on due north or south, maybe place them somewhere more toward center stage--from this vantage, they can comment on the rivalry (if one exists) as they see it, on how the favoritism (if it exists) plays out, and how it affects the rest of the family--while at much less risk than a family Black Sheep, children who are neither favorite nor least favorite are every bit as affected by things like this, and, if they have a good voice and interesting things to say, could provide a fresh perspective on things.

8.  Don't let your kid get hung up on this shit for FOREVER

     If your character had to wash more dishes than their sibling as a kid, they shouldn't still be talking about it when they're thirty.  Unless you want them to come off as whiny, lazy, boring, and entitled, at least.
     Favoritism in a home can cause problems, it's true; some of those problems might last for the rest of the kid's life, or at least have lasting impacts.  But unless the wounds really are so deeply scarred, your little kids are likely to put it behind them sometime after college, if not during--you can't exactly pull the "I'm Mom's Favorite" card when your landlord asks you for rent, so privileged kids leading non-privileged lifestyles will learn pretty quick how bad a job Mommy and Daddy did setting them up in the world, while their baby brother, who always had to wash the dishes and clean the toilets and a million other things, will first of all be overjoyed to no longer be under his parents' thumb, but will second of all have a lot of skills that will serve him later on.
     Even if the wounds are deep, your character may revisit them from time to time, especially during rocky periods in their life, but they're not going to still be obsessing over it by the time they have a family of their own, because there will be more important matters to deal with than the way Mom used to look at you when you brought home C's on your report cards.
     Basically, while it can still be a part of them, don't let it define them.

9.  Let your character realize that their parents aren't actually playing favorites

     Sometimes it's all in your character's head.  Let that be the case sometimes.  Let them figure it out.  Let them deal with the fallout.  Maybe after all those years of thinking they were the least favorite they find out their sister thought she was the least favorite too, and they reconcile--maybe after believing they were the least favorite it turns out they were the favorite, and expected to stand on their own; maybe they thought they were the favorite, but they're only treated so well so they'll shut up and stop bothering their parents.
     Maybe their parents just love them the same amount as all their siblings, but in different ways, and your character is forced to face the fact that the universe actually does not revolve around them, and they can't be the center of it at every waking moment.


     This has been TheSpiderWriter's take on parental favoritism in fiction.  I hope the details provided here have been helpful, and that they serve you going forward.  If you have any thoughts to add or something you'd like to discuss, feel free to drop me a line!

Playing Favorites: Parents, Part 2

     On Monday, I posted an article about parental favoritism, said a bunch of words, and left off with more thoughts about how to spice up your parental favoritism plots stirring in my head.  These are those thoughts.  Please enjoy them.


4.  Have the favorite feel bad about it

     Most of the time in fiction, when a character finds out that they're the favorite they're super smug about it--they lord it over the other characters and do their best to make them as miserable as humanly possible.  OR, the favorite is totally oblivious to the favoritism, and feels neither one way nor the other about it once they do find out--maybe they aren't a dick about it, but they kind of just accept it as the status quo.
     And yeah, that's ONE way to think about it, but there's also another, perhaps more realistic alternative--delicious, delicious guilt.
     Whether it's because they love their siblings and don't want them to feel left out, or because their siblings treat them poorly because of their heightened station in the home, let the character feel bad about their position of privelege, whether they're the protagonist or not.  If they are the protagonist, this is a perfect way to shoehorn in your childhood angst without falling back on the age-old (and so oft poorly done) abuse tropes that clutter every genre in the history of man, and it makes them out to be a more sympathetic character than the Raging Doucheholic many favorites turn out to be.
     If they aren't the protagonist, it can help subvert the sibling rivalry trope and adds a further depth to their relationship and the general dynamic of the home; it makes for a more complex narrative and gives the protagonist more than just straw men to wail against--maybe they still hate them, but even so, at least we're seeing a character in a universe that is not protagonist-centered.
     Which is just another reason why you should

5.  Make the other siblings sympathetic characters

     They don't have to be heroes, and they can even be antagonists, but your protagonist's siblings are people, too; they have hopes and dreams and aspirations, wants and needs and motivations, ones that include your protagonist and ones that don't.  Their world does not revolve around bullying your protagonist for being better/smarter/worse/dumber than them.  I actually have a lot to say about sibling relationships that I won't put here (that's a post for another day), but as far as this article goes, it boils down to; it's (probably) not any of the siblings' faults that they're favored or disfavored.  Maybe your characters don't see it like that, and that's fine, but show that and then show why.
     No matter how antagonistic, let each sibling have something in them that's redeeming--a soft spot for cute things, a special affinity for helpless people, a shocking capacity for generosity, or even just a particularly witty scathing tongue.  Throw the audience a bone and give us a reason to like the favorite or least favorite--better yet, give the protagonist a reason to like or even love their sibling(s)!  Relationships are complicated, and it can be a love-hate thing if you want, but chances are good, after spending so many years together, there are at least some things the little brother likes about his older sister, and vice versa.

6.  Make the impact of the treatment realistic

     A lot of the time in fiction you see kids being treated unequally by their parents, and they either turn out right as roses when they should be dealing with some shit, or they get totally fucked up for years over the smallest of transgressions.
     If your character is their parents' favorite child, they're going to either grow up feeling entitled, because they get whatever they want and never have to work for it, and won't last long in the real world, or they will grow up walking on eggshells in a desperate bid for perfectionism, ever afraid that they could, at any moment, fall from grace.  They could be egotistical and think they're all that, or they could be neurotic about doing things The Right Way so as not to disappoint their dear dear parents.
     If your character grows up as their parents' least favorite child, they're likely to wind up with a lot of self-esteem issues and either pent-up aggression or open resentment, depending on the situation; they're more likely to suffer from depression and less likely to do well in school.  These may be the kids who end up throwing themselves into relationships with much older people later on in life, looking for the parental approval they could never get.
     Of course, these are only a few ways that parental favoritism could affect your characters, and I recommend doing research into how favorites and least favorites turn out, and figuring out how your character would blossom in the station they currently maintain and under whatever form of pleasure/displeasure their parentals dish out.

     Again, this isn't all I have to say, but I'll finish up this series on Friday.  If you have any thoughts on writing parental favoritism, feel free to drop some dialogue in the comment section!

Playing Favorites: Parents, Part 1

     In fiction, it's all too common to see parents play favorites.  This is, to some degree, a reflection of real life--as impartial as we try to be, we all have biases, and sometimes those biases sprinkle down to color what we think of our children.  Whether they try to or not, parents think of all their children in different ways, which doesn't mean that they don't love them equally--it's often equal, just different, much like the children themselves.
     A lot of the time when we see this trope, it's our protagonist who is most affected.  Either they're the favorite (like Thor from Thor) and deserve to be because their siblings are all such prats, or (far more common) they're the least favorite, like Loki, or pretty much any character that has siblings, in which case they either deserve it (usually retroactively) or they don't, which is where most protagonists  seem to end up.
     Nine times out of ten, this is done poorly; everything is painted in stark lines of black and white, the sibling(s) are shitheads, there's no reason why the protagonist should be treated the way they are, and when playing the part of the punching bag, it's either as the abused True Heir (ala Cinderella) or as the kid who has to do chores because God forbid they help out around the house a little.
     An easy solution is to just not bother with the favoritism dynamic, but it can be done well, and completely leaving out the reality of favoritism is like leaving out the reality of all the -isms in life; nice to see, but ultimately dishonest.  You can only run from the truth for so long.
     Anywho. here are 3 ways you can make your favoritism dynamic more interesting.

1.  Let there be subtlety

     In real life, favoritism is most often displayed in the small things.  It's not typically the grand, showy, "My sister got a car for her birthday and I got six months hard labor" that it's often made out to be.  Parents don't try to let their children know if they do have a favorite--they try very hard to hide it, but when it leaks out it's usually in the form of extra praise or admonishment for one party or the other, or they give slightly more lavish gifts to one than to the other--or, yes, maybe they sympathize more with character A's need to get homework done than they do with character B's, so they make character B do character A's chores for a night, or something like that.
     Your character's parents are people, and most people don't try to be mean or unfair "just because."  Which reminds me--

2.  There has to be a reason for the favoritism

     One of the best portrayals of "Least Favorite Child Syndrome" I've seen to date was in a book I read quite some time ago, but whose title I have, unfortunately, forgotten.  The basic plot was that this little girl was an outcast--her siblings were mean, her mother favored them above her, and she was bad at English and art but good at math.  She adopts a puppy at one point but doesn't want her family to know about it, her art teacher tries to help her get extra credit by taking her to the zoo, the dog almost gets eaten by a lion at some point....  The details are kind of hazy.  Like I said, it's been a while.  (If anyone knows the title of this book, let me know so I can cite it, it's a great book and I greatly recommend it)
     But like all children who think themselves unfairly treated, this little girl believes herself to be adopted, and daydreams about her "real family" finding her and stealing her away from her kidnappers in order to give her a better life.  This is, of course, bullshit, and the sister even points out as much while they're looking at old pictures of their mother, because little miss protagonist looks just like Mommy used to, which becomes extremely relevant towards the end of the book, when Miss Protag confronts Mommy Dearest and straight up asks why her sister is the favorite.
     Instead of denying it or telling Miss Protag to go to her room or burn in hell, Mommy Dearest starts to cry.  She admits that she's been playing favorites, and apologizes, and tells Miss Protag exactly why--because Miss Protag is exactly the same as Mommy Dearest was as a child, and Mom has a lot of pent up self-loathing that she's concentrated into the toxic chemical storm she rains down on her youngest child.
     This isn't right by any means, but it was an amazing moment that has (obviously) stuck with me ever since--you never see parents admitting to playing favorites, and you certainly never get to hear the story from their perspective, which means a lot of the time the favoritism is just this thing that happens for no discernible reason rather than something real that is the cause of an effect.
     Maybe your character's parents hate him because he's like them, or love him for the same reason--maybe he's favored or disfavored because he's the more able, or the less, or because he has interests that mesh with/conflict with his parents', or they dislike him because he's an asshole.
     Maybe, if he's the favorite, it's because he works the hardest, and doesn't ask for gifts, and does what he's told, and behaves himself, etc. etc.  Maybe he's earned every facet of that favoritism to such a degree that he doesn't feel he's the favorite even if he is; remember that your character's perceptions of reality will not always be in tune with the actuality of reality.

3.  Explore it from the parents' POV

     As I mentioned above, this, as with most things, is a nuanced issue.  Parents are just people, and all people are flawed; there are different sides to every story, and we have a tendency to focus inordinately on the part of the story that's written by the child--and if we're being honest, children have a pretty bad track record for understanding the way the world works.
     Let the parents tell their side of the story.  Maybe it's a horrible side to the story and they really are assholes, but at least give them the chance to try to make us understand--it could be that their intentions really are noble!  Or that they have no idea what they're doing and it's all just the subconscious effects of reproductive narcissism.  Maybe they don't really have favorites at all, but the sickly child needs more attention than the child who's perfectly healthy, or the problem child gets more attention because the parents feel the need to straighten her out.  A lot of the time, the more capable and trusted a child, the more likely they are to end up on the back burner while parents are distracted--they can have an infinite capacity for love, but they will always have a limited amount of time and energy.
     Maybe the parent is just reacting to the vibes they're getting from their kids--when I was growing up, my mother and my baby brother were upset with each other a good half of the time because my mother and I would go and have "Girls' Nights Out" while he stayed in the trailer park.  My brother might have thought it was a result of favoritism, but every time my mother would spring an unexpected event on us, I would be eager to go and John would insist that he would rather stay home and hang out with his friends.  My mother would argue, John would argue back, my mother would relent and then complain about it in the car (because she wanted to spend time with both of us, and he did this quite often), and then later, when we came home and told him about the movie we'd seen or the park we'd gone to, John would be upset that he "didn't get to go" when I "always did."
     It wasn't a matter of love or affection or favorites; it was just that he chose to use his time differently (and, to be perfectly honest, he had more friends than I did with whom to while his time), and then, being a kid, upon regretting the use of his time, blamed it on the person who had wanted him to use it differently in the first place.
     That rambling anecdote is to say, parenting is hard, and parents deserve the chance to have their stories told, too.
     Whether you explore it from their actual POV or in an honest (or semi-honest or just honest-as-they-see-it) confrontation with a child (or children), or if you write an entire book about it from the parents' perspective, make sure that the parent either sees it as a reasonable way to act, or that they struggle with the guilt of their actions--the Evil Stepmother trope is all well and good in fairytales, but we've stepped well past the battles of Static Good versus Static Evil in the modern age; all things are agathokakological.

     I have more to say, but this post is fairly long, so I think I'll end it here and pick up with number four on Wednesday.  In the meantime, what are your thoughts?  What do you look for in your favoritism subplots?  Are there any particularly good/bad portrayals you've come across recently?  Let us know!

The Coates Curriculum for Creating Characters (And Five Other Ways To Do It Too)

     Recently I had a conversation with one of my friends about our shelved drafts and past WIPs, and she admitted that she has a really hard time writing anything but fanfiction.  She seems to have a good handle on world-building and plot, but she has difficulty creating her own characters, and I know for a fact that she's not the only one.
     Now everyone creates characters differently; everyone has their own process, their own methods for getting under those characters' skins, and character building can be difficult, especially if you're new to writing, or if you've been in the fanfiction trenches for a long time.
     Bu never fear!  TheSpiderWriter is here to help!
     Ultimately, only you can do you, but here are a few methods that I use to get my characters breathing.


1.  Borrow Someone Else's

A)  The Technique

     Notice I said borrow.  Borrow, not steal.  What's the difference?
     The difference is, stealing someone's character is stealing someone's character--you take a vivacious figure, like, Megamind from Megamind, as a random, nonspecific example, and you plop them in your story, change a few details--maybe he's a human instead of an alien!  But he's still got a big head, and mispronounces lots of words, and his parents died saving his life, and he has a crush on that reporter girl, and....yeah.  That's stealing.  You stole Megamind and gave him a different name and some cosmetic surgery; he's still not yours.
     Borrowing is more like taking someone else's character and tracing the outline, then filling it in with different stuff.  You're not trying to put Megamind in your story, just pieces of him--his childish naiveté, perhaps, with a smidgen of angst and a dollop of arrogance.  Then you take these broad strokes and refine them, using the characters around them and the history you make for them to make them new and different and completely your own--Megamind, evil mastermind alien supervillain-turned-hero becomes, I don't know, *vague hand gesture indicating the application of the Fuck It Adjustment* Don Cheezley, a sensitive high schooler hiding the pain of being orphaned beneath a front of arrogance, who, until his parents' death, was homeschooled, and kept largely away from the rest of the world because of his parents' religious beliefs.
     Now that he's in a foster home, and public school, his inner world is dark, labyrinthine, and tumultuous, but the outer world is bright and new and strange.  As he explores the outside world for the first time, he makes friends, enemies, tries his best to survive high school, and makes a few new friends who are out of place in the grand scheme of things, but have a handle on this whole "irl" thing.  With their help he starts learning how to blend in, but also slowly comes to the realization that his parents were cultists, and while they loved him very much, the damage from the things they taught him--and the things they didn't--will be difficult to reverse.
     (That character you can steal.  I have no use for him.  ... yet.)

B)  The Work

     To keep yourself from plagiarizing, and to make sure that this character is breathing (it can be hard to tell with borrowed souls), you have to work hard.  Developing the backstory and making this character stand out on their own is crucial--and it's important that the characters they'll be interacting with aren't all from the same cast this one was taken from, or else you'll just end up with a bland echo chamber of someone else's work.  If this is how you create all your characters, you first of all have a lot of work to do, and second of all, should be taking them from variegated sources.
     You may have to do a lot of writing before you really start writing--when I started the first draft of what would come to be called Captive Stars, I borrowed a couple characters that I had trouble writing as anything but the same characters in an AU--I had to write five or six drafts of the story's start before the character's started to really live their own lives, no longer beholden to the source material from which they'd sprung.  It was only once the sweet baby was snarking at the protagonist and the practical sidekick was romantisizing the world around him that I could call them real, and it was at that point that they really took on a life of their own.
     Ultimately I ended up scrapping those characters completely because the story took a very different turn and they were no longer necessary (such things happen, unfortunately--you may have to do a lot of scrapping along the way to your final draft, my fine friends), but I keep them in my back pocket for a prospective future project--you never know when something you scrap could become useful in the future, after all.
     My point (however much work it's taken to get to it) is that, while this is arguably the easiest route to take, there's still a lot of work you'll need to do, because these characters still need to be yours--no one else's.
   

2.  Frankenstein It

     Another method is to take pieces from multiple characters--whether they are yours or someone else's--and MacGyver them into something useful.  This one is a little bit more difficult to figure out, but so long as you don't let any one character donate too many limbs, it's easier to make this creature your own--when done well, it becomes one of those perfect blends where no one reading the novel can tell where any one trait came from.
     Sticking with the Don Cheezeley example, maybe you want Don's love interest/good friend to be wacky but in touch with reality, and also snarky, so you take the giggly madman do-as-you-like parts of Spongebob Squarepants, the logician parts of Spock, and the sardonic wit of Severus Snape, super glue 'em together, and grin at your monstrosity before it starts speaking in tongues and tries to devour you.
     When you do this, there's a lot of sanding down that needs to happen--you can't have Snape's wit AND his moody demeanor if you're trying to make him do the Spongebob laugh, and the Spongebob's Cloudcuckoolander activities will be greatly reeled in by Spock's logical approach to life--you pick the parts you want, then the rest you discard.  The holes between, or the parts where conflicting traits would ordinarily overlap?  Those you have to fill in for yourself--and again, your backstory and the world around your character will play a vital role in this; no human being develops in a vacuum, and as such characters cannot be completely disconnected from the world they live in.

3.  Base It Off Someone From Real Life

     Basing a character off of someone you know IRL can be tricky--if you make them too similar, you risk offending the person they're built after, and a possible suit for defamation of character or whatever the kids get sued for these days.  When basing a character off of someone from real life, unless the figure in question is a public one, you'll want to be subtle about it being an actual person.  Keep it loose--take what you need and make up the rest, and try not to let the character resemble the person too much--and whatever you do, never, absolutely not once ever, use their real name, or anything close to it.  You don't want to get into that.
     Combining more than one person can help, or you could combine the person with one or more fictional characters--you could Frankenstein from a little bit of everything, if you wanted!
     Again, remember your backstory and supporting cast; they. are. vital.

     The first three all come down to; borrow all you like (borrowing is, ultimately, what we're doing every time we're inspired by something--there's no shame in it) but never take any too much from any one source.
     Now we come to the more difficult parts--the parts where you try to conjure something out of nothing.
     *Cue dramatic music*

4.  From Scratch--Planned

     There are a lot of ways to set about making your own completely "original" character, but it comes down to this:  This is where she is, what she's doing there, where she's been, and what she looks like.  These are the things she likes to do, this is what she wants, why she wants it, and these are the things in her way.
     That's pretty much it.  You can fill out character questionnaires to get a better idea of who your character is, or use random generators to pin it down (I recommend Springhole.net), or just jot stuff down on paper until you feel that your character is fleshed out.  As long as you have the basic questions written out, you have a character,  Making them breathe is a matter of finding their voice, their habits, their manner of speaking--keep a character bible, write down everything you can, search out lists online, watch people as you go about your day.  Think about your character's quirks and habits, the way they walk, talk, dress--write it all down, maybe draw your character, and hope for the best.
     In the end, hoping for the best is all we can do.  Sometimes, a character you create will fall flat.  That's okay, though!  That's why we edit, after all.

5.  From Scratch--Spur Of The Moment

     Sometimes you just need to wing it.  Start out with a name, a general purpose, a smidgen of an idea, and just go.  It's the Improv Method for character creation, basically--you just need to let the information flow, and allow this character to reveal itself over time.
     It seems like a nothing method, but honestly?  It works.  These can sometimes be your best characters; they have the most potential to surprise you, and just like with Improv (can you tell that I just got back from my Improv class?), some of the best things come from surprising yourself.  Hell, a lot of my favorite characters are ones I got to know by going in blind--basically the whole cast of (my shelved WIP) Silhouette were sparse sketches that came alive when I turned them out on their journey, and when I wrote The Snake With Amber Eyes, a little girl named Shelby snuck in from the sidelines and basically stole the story.
      These little guys can be a handful, and the con to this method is that it can leave you stymied in the middle of a scene because you don't have all the information you need for them, or the character can come out inconsistent or not-fully-formed, which is a valid issue.  They can also take the story completely off the rails and leave you reeling, but, as always, it can--and should--be fixed in post.

6.  How I Make My Characters

     >Stares at screen
     >Makes guttural noise
     >Throws up arms
     >Makes pterodactyl noise
 
      The truth is, my methodology for creating characters is wildly inconsistent.  I mix and match from the list above--for some projects, I base characters off of books and movies I've seen, for some I plan them all out beforehand and fill out a million questionnaires, sometimes I sit for hours using random generators to develop a human being, for some I slam real people onto the pages and change their names and give them super powers, and for some, I just straight up wing it.
     Consistencies exist, though--I almost always draw my characters, at least the important ones, so I can get a feel for what they look like, and use their facial features and posing, etc. to reveal aspects of their personalities.  I do a lot of characterizing in my head on the fly--I listen to music that reminds me of the character, connecting it to their life and choices, I fill in the blank spaces of their backstories and envision scenes with them as I go for walks or try to sleep at night.
     Sometimes I tie characters into the zodiac to better pin down their personalities--this character is really emotional and all-or-nothing, so maybe he's a Scorpio, which would also indicate blah blah blah, etc. etc.
     But a lot of the time, I'm making it up as I write, or else sitting up in bed at three in the morning to scribble down notes before I fall asleep and forget them.

     The Coates Curriculum for Creating Characters essentially comes down to this:

1.  Make them breathe.
2.  Keep thinking about them.

     It doesn't matter, ultimately, how it's done, as long as it works for you and produces a character that seems like more than just a puppet on a string or a thinly veiled clone of someone else.  Just keep working at them, pushing them, trying to figure out their insides, and once you think you have it down pat, let them surprise you--even if you've planned everything out perfectly beforehand, if they ask you to deviate from the path, let them do so--you can always scrap it later.
     But you might be pleasantly surprised at how well the character knows themselves--which is to say, probably better than you do.

Two Ways To Add Drama To Your Novel

     Drama is important in your novel--one can argue that without drama, there is no novel.  You can write a book without an antagonist, a series without a singular set of characters, a play without a plot, a novel that's mostly a comedy, but you can't write anything without drama.  Drama is your meat and potatoes.  Maybe comedy or romance or fluff is your desert, and everybody loves them some pumpkin pie (or at least I do.  It's fine if you prefer cherry or apple or whatever.  More pumpkin for me.), but you can't eat that entire pie without a few solid meals in between.  You'd get sick and end up malnourished, and it wouldn't be a pretty sight, I assure you.

     Basically, without tension; stakes; DRAMATICALITY!, your jokes (or fluff, etc) will fall flat, because there will be no reason to care.  Even if your jokes are funny, your characters will have nothing to do, because there won't be any action propelling them to make the mistakes that people find endearing; action is all that drama is.  And without those elements, there's no reason for a novel to exist.  We could just as easily have picked up a joke book, or read some fanfiction and not have bothered with the lackluster story that's been presented to us.

     And if you're not writing a comedy or fluff piece, drama becomes all the more important--in fact, it becomes just about everything.

     There are lots of ways to add drama to your novel, but here are the two big mainstays of fiction.  They form the basis of basically everything your book is about, many times out of one hundred.

     The first thing you do is find out what the character fears most.  Is it snakes?  Commitment?  Flying?  That creepy old dude squatting in the porta-potty down the street?  Pinpoint that fear.  Point out that he's afraid, figure out why he's afraid.

     Then slap him upside the head with that fear; force him to face it head-on, and set the stakes high enough that he has to do it.  Make him the only one qualified to catch snakes to make a special anti-venom for his baby brother, tell him that if he doesn't marry his on-again off-again girlfriend that she'll be deported, shove him into a situation where the only way to find the mystical prince destined to save the world is to bring gift offerings to Porta-John and spend a week living with him in the cramped porta-potty for which he has named himself.

     Then, once he's faced a fear and come out stronger (or weaker) for it--do it again.  And again.  And again.  Repeat ad infinitum, or until your novel is finished.  Whichever comes first.

     The second thing to keep in mind when trying to stir up drama is what your character wants most.  Does she want to be a member of a famous band?  Does she want to go on an amazing adventure?  Marry the girl she's been crushing on for like, forever? To go to college and get an education so she can make her family proud?

     Now give it to her.  Make her work for it--or don't, either can work, depending on how the story is laid out; if the story starts with this sudden blessing bestowed upon her for no reason, that's fine!  It'll make the next step less tragic, if she hasn't done anything to earn it.  But let her have this one.  Let her earn this victory, become that band member, marry that girl, be the Chosen One--and then let her reap the consequences.

     Make them substantial.  Make them horrible and totally unexpected--make her doubt everything she's ever wanted; it's not so great, being a superstar, she finds, and her idols, it turns out, are total assholes; she quickly finds out that she doesn't actually know the girl of her dreams at all, and they're terribly incompatible--perhaps horrifically so; the adventure she wanted involves levels of violence and hardships the books never cover--she forgot that she was never good at gym class and probably should have thought this out a little better; and of course, the degree she wants isn't really the one she wants, and she wonders how she ever thought it was.

     For the best effect, sprinkle these twisted gifts with elements of her worst fears, and laugh as her life spirals down into something she never expected and doesn't quite have the skills to deal with.

     Now force her to find a way out on her own.  Whatever skills she lacks, she has to find a way to gain them, whatever mistakes she's made, she has to find a way out of it, no mysterious saviors, no easy solutions, no (or few) external forces, no Deus Ex Machinas--she got herself into it, and now she has to get herself out.

    And this, comrades, is the very heart of drama.

Dynamic vs. Static Protagonists

     In case you forgot about that one English class where your teacher prattled on about the difference between a Static and Dynamic character, a Dynamic character is one who changes throughout the course of the novel, while a Static character is one that doesn't.
     It's a common misconception that a character has to change throughout the course of a novel in order to be the protagonist of said novel.  While it's always nice to see a character growing or devolving, sometimes it isn't necessary; there's a time and a place for everything, and this is no exception.
     So how do you know which approach is best for your book?

1.  What's your genre?

     Obviously, if your genre is bildungsroman, your protagonist is going to have to change throughout the course of the novel (that's essentially the entire point of a bildungsroman--from the Wikipedia page, "In a Bildungsroman, the goal is maturity, and the protagonist achieves it gradually and with difficulty."), but in an action or thriller, a change in your protagonist is anything but required--sometimes having your character change along the way would get in the way of the storyline, or use up too much time we could be using to see anti-heroes wailing on bad guys.  
     Take a look at anything starring Liam Neeson, or any long-standing, episodic or mostly episodic book series (Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, Encyclopedia Brown, Sherlock Holmes, The Boxcar--Um.  Huh.  Maybe this is a Mystery Thing, too)--not only does having a static protagonist work, but one could argue that having these characters become dynamic could harm the storyline--Taken is successful because Liam Neeson kills human traffickers, not because his character is interesting or particularly compelling (he's not, he's just JustifiableMurderer!Liam Neeson), and the rest are popular because the same person, or group of people, solve mysteries in a manner which always re-establishes the status quo, meaning that, much like most television shows, they can be read in almost any order with very little background in order to be understood.  
     If you can somehow find a way to go against convention when deciding on whether to make your character dynamic or static, by all means, try--just keep in mind that it can be difficult to pull off, especially when the genre hinges upon change.

2.  As they are at the beginning of your story, can your character overcome what's been placed before them?

     Take a look at your protagonist; who are they at the beginning of your novel?  Now take a look at where you plan to have them end up.  Can they, as they are at the inciting incident, tackle the book's climax and come out with the same result that you intend them to achieve?  Are they strong enough, fast enough, smart enough?  Do they lack dedication or willpower?  Or do they possess too much?  Do they need to crash and burn before they can crawl to the finish line you have devised?
     Take a look at two recent icons of the twenty-first century, Harry Potter and Liam  Neeson's Taken character; at the inciting incident of Taken, when the daughter is stolen, Liam Neeson has everything he needs to destroy the bad guys, namely his ass-kicking skills.  However, upon first receiving his admissions letter Harry Potter, young and ignorant to the ways of magic, has none of the skills necessary to win against Voldemort--or even Quirrel.  Thus, Liam Neeson works as a static protagonist, but Harry Potter, unless he was designed to lose, does not.
     If you don't yet know what the outcome of your ending will be, think of what you do know--
what are their goals and obstacles?  What will they need to overcome them?  Who are their friends?  Do their friends change, and must they change in order to keep up?  Or must they fall behind, and allow their friends to leave?
     What about the antagonist?  Can they beat the antagonist as they are?  Does the antagonist change?  Are they meant to defeat or be defeated?  Is nature one of the antagonists?  Usually when a character goes up against nature, the character is forced to change, since it would take an enormous feat of strength to bend nature to one's whims--strength which few protagonists possess.  However, if nature is controlled by a God with which the protagonist might, as they are, be able to strike a deal with, character change may still be unnecessary.

          Whatever suits your novel best, literature has long been littered with protagonists of both the dynamic and static varieties--whatever is best for your novel is ultimately what should be done.  If you're not sure what that best thing is, you can always ask for advice.  If you absolutely cannot find one way or the other, eenie-meenie-mihnie-moe it and seek the advice of your critique partners once it's finished.  Just don't let anyone tell you that either method is inherently wrong.
     Unless you're trying to turn a bildungsroman protagonist into a static character.  I don't think that can be done (but please correct me if im wrong id love to see how that would work).

The Importance of Fanfiction

   The first story I ever wrote was called "The Hecatense Goose;" I was three and could neither read nor write, so my mother wrote it down and it was eventually lost.  I have no idea what the story was about.
     But my second story was a series of scribbles that told a tale of Peter Pan's post-Hook adventures, and my third was a sequel to the then-unfinished Series of Unfortunate Events books.  At the time I did not, of course, know anything about fanfiction or copywright laws, but since then I've done a lot of growing as a writer--yet still fanfiction calls to me.
     It's a polarizing issue.  As a once-B-rated-star of the Megamind fandom, I am very biased in favor of fanfiction, because it's fun, it's flattering (I can't think of anything better than having such a wide fan base that they take inspiration from and write about your world and characters!  How great would that be??  ((Super great is how))), and reading/writing it can help you grow as a writer.
     Here are a few ways it's beneficial to a writer.

     Fanfiction can....


1.  Be great place to start

     At any level of writing skill fanfiction is great practice, but it's especially good for beginners, since it allows you to create stories with pre-established characters in a pre-established world, often in a pre-established style, which gets you comfortable with developing plot, using detail to your advantage, and using correct grammar, spelling, punctuation, and format.
     Once you're comfortable with the writing basics, it's easy to rocket through the ranks, stepping up one rung at a time rather than going in all at once--you start deviating in style, then move the characters from one world to another, and finally start creating OCs (usually either using author inserts or child-of-PC characters at first).  Before you know it, you're creating fanfiction that's only tangentially related to the original story--sometimes barely related at all.
     When writing original content there's a very sharp learning curve--you essentially go from zero to three-sixty in nothing flat, but fanfiction allows you to build at a pace you're comfortable with, without feeling pressured to be your best most original self right off the bat.

2.  Offer a source of feedback

     One great thing about fanfiction is that, at least when published online, it offers you a source of feedback through the fandom.  When you do well, this means instant gratification, which can make you feel amazing, but arguably the more valuable form of feedback comes in the form of constructive criticism and suggestions from the audience.  You learn a lot about spelling and grammar--always useful--and even more about story structure and character development.
     Whether what you're writing is offensive, or just poorly executed, it's always nice to have eyes on your words, people who can tell you when your characterization is inconsistent or when you need to plug a major plothole or if your "super secret" ending/plot twist is visible from a mile away.  And while beta readers and critique partners are great after the fact, feedback from the community usually occurs as you publish each chapter, which allows you to make changes as you go forward rather than having to double back--and by implementing changes as you go forward, you'll remember to implement them in future projects, too.

3.  Be inspiring

     Fanfiction is great even if you don't write it.  Just reading fanfiction can be inspiring, as I mentioned here; good fanfiction makes you want to run out and write a story based on X idea or Y character arc, and bad fanfiction makes you want to write something amazing just to prove to yourself that you can do it.  It's a good idea.  You should do it.

4.  Give you a sense of accomplishment

     Fanfiction is, I find, relatively easy to produce--there's a lot of work that's already been done by the original creator, which means that a lot of your characters don't need descriptions, a lot of places don't need explaining, and a lot of events are already common fandom knowledge--yet there's still a TON of work that goes into making a truly quality fic.  When you finish a fic, or a fic chapter, it feels amazing--when people respond positively, you feel like you're on cloud fucking eleven; it helps with your sense of self and it increases your confidence, and when you feel good about yourself it becomes a lot easier to make progress on the next or concurrent project.
     Progress begets progress, so sometimes it's great to use a little project (like a fanfic oneshot) to jump-start a larger project--like a couple thousand word down payment on your new MS.
     Plus, again, you feel really great, and who doesn't like feeling really great?

5.  Community

     Because the entire basis of fanfiction is that you're writing in a world someone else has created, the people you're trying to reach are already fans of what you're watching/reading, and, as fandom flocks together just like birds of paper feathers, you're not just pitching to individuals but to a ready-made community.
     One of the best ways to become a fully realized member of a fandom community (and through doing so find a place where you belong, people to help you in your quest for perfection, friends to see you through until the end) is to write fanfiction (or make fanart but, while I am very enthusiastic about art, this is not an art blog).  The more obsessive you are about a fandom, the more fanfiction becomes something akin to a need, and the best fillers of those needs are gods on high for a fandom nerd.  If you're fanficcing on the same account where you present your real life persona, it also creates a community that revolves around your work, which can be a great marketing platform when you start launching original content.

6.  Make someone else's day

     You know you have done your job as a writer when someone tells you that you have made their day.  The only thing that even comes close to describing the feeling is "euphoria."  This, like before, creates an increased sense of self, a greater feeling of self-confidence, and a driving desire to continue working.  Writing is an addiction, and like all addictions, the more you do it, the more you want to do it--and the more people agree with your addiction, the better it feels to give in.
     Also...

7.  Fear of disappointing your fans keeps you trucking along at a good speed

     One of the things I have trouble with is meeting my own deadlines.  This is really bad for a writer.  I do, however, do very well at meeting deadlines when someone else is waiting for the update with bated breathe.
     When I was especially absorbed in the fanfiction world, I could pump out several chapters a week in a good month--sometimes several a day, because when you know people are enjoying your work it, again, encourages you to work more, but it also encourages you to work toward not disappointing them.  The last thing you want when you have fans is to lose them.  Worse than just losing them is losing them not to your own incompetence, but to laziness, of all things.  It's definitely an incentive, and if you smarten up and get organized with your attempts to deliver quality content at death-defying speeds (I didn't), you can put the same updating strategies you use with fanfiction on your writing.
     Maybe you have a flow chart, or a friend you can submit chapters to the same way you'd submit to your chosen hosting website--whichever way, organization in one realm of your writing life should definitely lend itself to organization in others, and as they say, an organized life is an organized mind (or something like that), which lends itself to productivity.

8.  No limits, no consequences

     Addendum:  There are no limits in original writing either, and there are some minor consequences to writing (and publishing) bad fanfiction.
     hOWEVER; it's easier to write without limits when you're playing with someone else's characters.  It feels like there's less to lose--you can't screw it up, because the worst thing that happens if you do is you need to write something else, or maybe apologize for a few mistakes.  You're more likely to follow tangents and do silly, seemingly unnecessary things, or kill off or bring back characters at will, playing with the rules when it seems convenient (or refusing to ever play with the rules, whichever isn't your default), which can be goldmines for your creativity.   Just because it's not being used in a "real" project now doesn't mean you won't use it later.
     There are a lot of pressures fanfiction allows you to let go of, which is important practice for when you need to forget about society while you write your magnum opus.  One of the best things you can do for your writing is allow your creativity to run wild, because you can always--and should always--edit later.

     The long and the short of it is, fanfiction is amazing.  Use it as an outlet, use it as practice, use it just for fun--any way you dice it, it's worth whatever time you do--or don't!--want to put into it.

A List of Things People Will Say to you When you Have Tourette's

     I love it when people ask me questions about my disorders.  After all, Tourette's and Fibromyalgia aren't exactly common, and I know how important it is to teach people about such things--if you destroy ignorance today, it could save a life tomorrow.

     So when people work up the courage to ask about how things work or feel, I'm almost always thrilled!  I love teaching, I love learning, and I love open, fearless discussions about the realities of life, peeling back the layers of stigma and ignorance that do nothing but fester when left opaque and undiscussed.  Transparency, in this case, is a good thing.

     But there are certain things that are said to someone with Tourette's that don't fill me with the warm fuzzies, things which are best left unsaid.  While I'm glad that I was able to address some of the things that have been said to me before they reached the ears of anyone else in the same boat, I'd appreciate it if anyone reading this didn't make the same mistake--unless, of course, you put them in the mouths of your characters, in which case it might add a touch of realism to the story.

• "What's that disease you have?  Can I catch it?  Is it safe to drink this?"
   

       Tourette's is NOT a disease.  It's a Syndrome, a disorder, a disability, but it's not a disease or an illness, a virus or bacteria or infection.  It cannot be caught or contracted, and the worst you'll catch if you drink from my water bottle is probably a sore throat.  

  
  

   

• "Have you tried medication?"
  
  

       Yes, actually, I have.  But as I've mentioned in other posts, due to low visibility and nil fatality there aren't any medications designed specifically for Tourette's Syndrome; the best you'll find are seizure medications, many of which can be very cognitively suppressant and/or harmful to your heart.  Clonidine is just about the only medication that does neither, but it's used primarily to treat ADHD, and didn't help me at all.

       The problem with this question is multifaceted; firstly, it implies that neither I, nor my family, nor the myriad of doctors I've been to have ever considered looking into medication.  Unless you're a homeopath, trust me when I say that medication is the first thing you think about when you're diagnosed--sometimes before you're diagnosed!  The better question would be "Does medication work?," the answer to which would be no, most of the time it doesn't.
  
       The second problem with this question is that it implies that medication is necessary.  For something like Tourette's, medication can sometimes help manage tics, yes, and if you have very severe tics or a particularly misunderstanding set of peers it can put you in a much greater sense of comfort.  But because it isn't deadly, there isn't a driving need to use it if you don't want it, and most people who ask this don't really care about the comfort of the afflicted individual--they care more for their own comfort and sense of worldly normalcy.
  
• "Can't they put you in a coma?"

       People have said this to me.  Please, take a second to think about this; human beings have approached me, called me by name, and very openly and genuinely asked me if (or told me that) a medically-induced coma could be a solution.  I honestly don't know where this comes from--what would that solve?  What would it change?  I think it just links back to the prioritizing of one's own comfort above the comfort of the afflicted individual, but to a new kind of extreme--imagine if you started coughing and someone came up and told you that your cough was so annoying that you needed to be locked in a closet for an indefinite period of time.  Yeah.  Not a great feeling.  

• "I wish I had Tourette's!"

      No.  No you don't.  You really, really don't.  You don't want the stares you'll get in public, or the ableist comments from your peers, the cruel nicknames people think are funny, or the way half the population doesn't even believe that what you have is real.  You don't want the loss of bodily autonomy or the mental illnesses that usually come hand-in-hand, and you absolutely do not want to be yelled at by police officers in the driving rain, or teachers who tell you you're lying when you try to explain yourself, or substitutes that were never told about your condition.

       You just really don't want this, so don't act like you do.  I know you mean well, but you clearly have not thought this through.

• "If I had Tourette's I'd swear all the time!"
  
       Well yes, maybe you would.  Or maybe you wouldn't have coprolalia at all, like ninety percent of people with Tourette's Syndrome.
  
       I'm also often asked if I ever swear on purpose and use my Tourette's as an excuse, and the answer is always no.  Yes, I swear, and yeah, having coprolalia has made me pretty callous about it--if I'd continued to care about it after it started I'd be in a pretty bad place, so the best thing for my own mental health was to embrace the practice and take a little control back.
  
       But never once have I used my Tourette's to excuse my own words.  When you have Tourette's, there's a separation that happens in your mind.  You delineate between "Me" and "It;"  Me and It are always battling for control over mouth and body, and you feel the need to protect the Me, to take credit where credit is due.  You learn not to feel pride or shame for what It does, and instead focus your energies on how Me functions.
  
       I cannot control it when It swears at my teachers, but I CAN control it when Me swears at teachers, so Me keeps its mouth shut where applicable; I've had tics that keep me from talking and tics that keep me talking, so when dealing with Tourette's silence is as much a weapon as speech.
  
• "You're just faking."
  
       Also, see; "Tourette's is fake" and "Stop it anyway" and "No you don't" for varying degrees of ableism.
  
       This is one of the worst things you can say to someone with Tourette's--or any disorder, disability, or illness, really. With Tourette's it often connects to the comments above--people are only faking so they can swear, after all, never mind that tons of children are injured by or beat up for tics every day that have nothing to do with cursing.  Tourette's is hell enough without the disbelief that accompanies it.
  
       I've also been told stories about kids that were faking it, like it hurts my case to have someone else screw up--not that I know they screwed up in the first place.  The story I best remember is one in which my sister-in-law's stepfather walked in on some of his students talking about how "awesome" it was they got to swear in class, at which point he told them that if they ever swore in his class again they'd see their comeuppance.
  
       My question, of course, is how does he know they weren't just trying to make the best of a bad situation?  That's kind of the status quo of the disabled.  "Look at this awful thing I have to deal with!" we say, and everyone says "Shut the fuck up you whining loser!"  "Well I guess at least I don't have to do gym anymore," we mumble, curling up into a ball.

• "You don't know what it's like to lose control of your life!"
  
  
       Of all the things that people have said to me over the years, I think this one is probably the one that pissed me off the most.  A girl I had known for years turned to me in the lunch line and said this to my face.  
  
       No, I don't know what it's like to lose control of your life.  I mean, I can't control what my arms and legs do, I never know what my mouth is going to do next, my emotions might as well be tied to the movements of the Earth around the sun and the moon around the Earth, I had to give up almost half my personality in response to and in order to cope with my disorders, and for two years I had to give up my personal passions because it was too exhausting to try to juggle Tourette's, Fibro, and plays, but yeah, no, I have no idea what it's like to lose control over my life.  None whatsoever.
  
       Never fucking say this to anyone with a disorder.  Never.  
  
  
  
  
       So there's a list of a few things people might say to you when you have Tourette's.  If any of my fellow Tiquers have anything they'd like to add or share, or if anyone has any questions, feel free to comment!   I'd love to hear your stories and answer your questions.
  
       If there's anything you've thought about saying to someone you know or any questions you've thought about asking, and you aren't 100% certain that it's appropriate to ask them, don't be afraid to send me a message instead, especially if the two of you aren't that close, and I'll try to be gentle with you no matter the outcome.  I'm not trying to dissuade you from sating your curiosity, but I am trying to protect other Tiquers from the damages of thoughtlessness and ignorance.  

Writing Game: Seven Minutes In (Writing) Heaven

     This is a little writing game designed to get your mind working and the juices flowing.  You can use it as a warm-up for before you start the brunt of the day's writing, or as a pass-time when you've got down-time and want to keep your writing skills sharp.  Whatever you want to use it for, here's how to play Seven Minutes In (Writing) Heaven.
   
Note:  Closet neither included nor required

What You'll Need:

3 containers of a reasonable size
Paper
At least one die
Writing materials
A stop watch or other time-telling device

Set-Up:

1.  Get all your things together in one place (always useful)
2.  Tear your pieces of paper into small slips
3.  Separate your slips into three piles
4.  Take the first pile; on these slips of paper, write the names of all the characters you might be using.  In the second pile, write down a number of locations, real, fictional, inside, outside--whatever you can think of.  In the third pile, write out a number of events or conflicts that you might want to use.
5.  Put each pile into a separate pile; shake and mix liberally

Game Play:

1.  Roll your dice.
2.  Whatever number you come up with, that's the number of characters to pick from the first container
3.  Pick one slip from each of the remaining containers
4.  Set your timer/observe the clock; you now have exactly seven minutes to write a short story using the criteria you've gathered.  With any luck, you'll produce something you can use either as a scene in a story, or at least learn a little bit more about your characters, their motivations, and relationships.