Be aware that some of these are cultural, and restricted to certain times and places.

Personally, I enjoy inventing my own body language for the Gryphon Clerks series. The gnomes have a whole language of gestures for conversing in noisy environments (or plotting without being overheard by the dwarves), and they use a lot of the gestures in everyday life. For example, waving your hand past one ear means something like, “I know, but what can you do?”

Originally shared by Writers Write

Possibly useful for research, or covers.

Originally shared by Karen Woodward

10 Sites With Public Domain High Resolution Images

I love high resolution images, especially when they’re public domain. But—at least if you’re me!—they’re not easy to find. Here are 10 sites I love.

Where do you get your photos? Please share! I’m always looking for more photos.

This is a good article about “folding” – compacting your stories down by making every element do more work and connect more closely with the other elements. Rather than have two colourless minor characters, combine them into one more interesting one.

There’s a caveat to this, as to all writing advice. Pushed too far, you can end up with unlikely coincidences about who knows each other, and the reader can get the feeling – as I did from Dracula – that the population of Great Britain is approximately 12 people, given how many coincidental connections there are between them.

I once read a book in which Arthur Conan Doyle strapped his service revolver – which, at that period, would have been about a foot long and weighed several pounds – to his ankle using a necktie, and concealed it under his trouser leg.

I’ve also read multiple books in which revolvers become automatics or vice versa, and likewise with rifles and shotguns (which are often used for the wrong targets).

Originally shared by Karen Conlin

Carolyn Haley, over on Rich Adin’s blog, writes about action scenes.

This is a good list. Especially note number one; I see it often.

Originally shared by Karen Conlin

A list of troubles beginning writers often have, all of which can be helped by solid copy editing.

My mantra when I was a copy editor was “always check everything, even the things you think are right”.

Originally shared by Karen Conlin

There’s “true,” there’s “factual,” and there’s “real.” The best fiction blends these all into a seamless whole.

A very thorough book, clearly laid out, on a topic that I already understood reasonably well, but I still learned a lot by going through it.

Originally shared by Brand Gamblin

I have really searched for an easy, accurate OCR system. Little did I know that Google was just giving it away for free.

I am a big non-fan of the Hero’s Journey, in large part because it’s overused and produces a lot of very similar stories with embedded assumptions that I think it’s past time to question.

This, however, is a form of refresh, and, if not followed as a rigid formula, could potentially give you a useful mythic story structure.

Originally shared by Andy Brokaw

The Hero’s Journey can, of course, star a female lead. That’s not what the Heroine’s Journey is about. The second is about a more “feminine” plot arc than one sees in the first. If I were to develop the journeys anew, I think that I would use the words Physical and Spiritual rather than invoking gender. (Or perhaps Tangible and Intangible?)

Both Journeys can, and should, involve both action and emotion. But is the focus on battling the Empire or coming to personal terms with the Force?

H/t to Troy Campbell​ for pointing me to this article.