‘’I have 3 things I’m always thinking about. First is ‘let’s love myself’. Second is ‘let’s not be greedy’. Third one is ‘let’s experience everything with courage’. I thought that I can actually love myself. And not to be too greedy to try my best. Lastly, I am afraid of anything regardless of what it is. I want to break that and experience lots of things.’’
Do an
outline, whatever way works best.
Get yourself out of the word soup and know where the story is headed.
Conflicts
and obstacles. Hurt the protagonist, put things in their way, this keeps
the story interesting. An easy journey makes the story boring and boring is
hard to write.
Change
the POV. Sometimes all it takes to untangle a knotted story is to look at
it through different eyes, be it through the sidekick, the antagonist, a minor
character, whatever.
Know the
characters. You can’t write a story if the characters are strangers to you.
Know their likes, dislikes, fears, and most importantly, their motivation. This makes the path clearer.
Fill in
holes. Writing doesn’t have to be linear; you can always go back and fill in plotholes,
and add content and context.
Have
flashbacks, hallucinations, dream sequences or foreshadowing events. These
stir the story up, deviations from the expected course add a feeling of urgency
and uncertainty to the narrative.
Introduce
a new mystery. If there’s something that just doesn’t add up, a big question mark, the story becomes more
compelling. Beware: this can also cause you to sink further into the mire.
Take
something from your protagonist. A weapon, asset, ally or loved one. Force
him to operate without it, it can reinvigorate a stale story.
Twists
and betrayal. Maybe someone isn’t who they say they are or the protagonist
is betrayed by someone he thought he could trust. This can shake the story up
and get it rolling again.
Secrets. If
someone has a deep, dark secret that they’re forced to lie about, it’s a good
way to stir up some fresh conflict. New lies to cover up the old ones, the
secret being revealed, and all the resulting chaos.
Kill
someone. Make a character death that is productive to the plot, but not “just because”. If done well, it affects
all the characters, stirs up the story and gets it moving.
Ill-advised
character actions. Tension is created when a character we love does
something we hate. Identify the thing the readers don’t want to happen, then
engineer it so it happens worse than they imagined.
Create cliff-hangers. Keep the readers’ attention by putting the characters into new problems and
make them wait for you to write your way out of it. This challenge can really
bring out your creativity.
Raise the
stakes. Make the consequences of failure worse, make the journey harder.
Suddenly the protagonist’s goal is more than he expected, or he has to make an
important choice.
Make the
hero active. You can’t always wait for external influences on the
characters, sometimes you have to make the hero take actions himself. Not
necessarily to be successful, but active
and complicit in the narrative.
Different
threat levels. Make the conflicts on a physical level (“I’m about to be
killed by a demon”), an emotional level (“But that demon was my true love”) and
a philosophical level (“If I’m forced to kill my true love before they kill me,
how can love ever succeed in the face of evil?”).
Figure
out an ending. If you know where the story is going to end, it helps get
the ball rolling towards that end, even if it’s not the same ending that you
actually end up writing.
What if?
What if the hero kills the antagonist now, gets captured, or goes insane? When
you write down different questions like these, the answer to how to continue the
story will present itself.
Start
fresh or skip ahead. Delete the last five thousand words and try again. It’s
terrifying at first, but frees you up for a fresh start to find a proper path. Or
you can skip the part that’s putting you on edge – forget about that fidgety
crap, you can do it later – and write the next scene. Whatever was in-between
will come with time.
Alien: You’re telling me that in times of great distress humans have been known to suddenly gain the strength necessary to lift objects more than a dozen times their own weight?!
Human: Yeah, it’s called “hysterical strength” and it usually happens in life-or-death situations, like when someone gets stuck under a car or something and someone lifts the car to get them out. We can’t really test it though, ‘cause it only happens spontaneously.
Alien: Humans have the ability to tap into untold strength and power and you don’t even know how you do it?
Human: Pretty much, yeah. We think it has something to do with temporary analgesia, so we just don’t feel the pain we should when we pick up a 3000-pound car.
Alien: YOUR PAIN RESPONSE JUST SHUTS OFF?
Human: Yeah, it’s like an adrenaline thing? Do you not have that?
Alien: Fuck you and your entire species of tiny juggernauts.
Did this post just use a dialogue format to trick me into learning science
Had to check this out on wikipedia at least and boy was that a ride
SCIENCE!
Were puny and weak compared to most large mammals but we got several huge advantages not even counting our brains. 1) endurance. 2) incredible healing factor. 3) Hysterical Strength.
Silver does this also, which was probably handy for silverware before antibacterial dish soap was invented.
That’s mentioned in the article as well. They also stated that a copper or silver container can disinfect a pot of water in a few hours. im gonna add a copper vessel to my emergency provisions now. @yourunclejingo you may find this stuff interesting too.
Its almost like our ancestors did shit that made sense even if they didn’t always fully understand why.
Can someone please tell me this was a pair that was trying to do the death spiral that mating birds of prey do, and somehow in the process they ended up stuck on a road sign.
Because if it is, this is definitely one of the funniest “Okay, maybe we WERE a little bit over our head when we started this…” moments.
I doubt it. One of these birds is a juvenile (the top) while the other is an adult (bottom). The juvenile would have no interest in mating.
Honestly when I see hawks doing stupid stuff 9/10 times its a harris hawk—this seriously just looks like one of those stupid hawks time. They are one of the only social raptors, so this leads to some funny things, like
Stacking
The harris hawk argument for stacking is “your back is less Pokey than a cactus so imma use it”
Not even falconers are safe…
They even hold hands
Please, what are you doing harris hawks, learn how to hawk