Ideas

The Gods

Write your own story with this concept.

The Sword

Write a story for this picture.

Should I write?

Alpha and Beta Readers

An alpha reader or beta reader is a non-professional reader who reads a written work,  with the intent of looking over the material to find and improve elements such as grammar and spelling, as well as suggestions to improve the story, its characters, or its setting. It is typically done before the story is released for public consumption. They are not proofreaders or editors, but they can serve in that context. I always ask my alpha and beta readers specific questions. It is important to tell your alpha readers and beta readers what you want to know. And where you need help. It also makes it clear for the reader themself. I ask my alpha readers more In-depth questions and my beta readers more if they liked what they have read.

Things I will always ask my alpha readers are:

• Plot holes
• Continuity
• Characterization
• Underdeveloped plot/subplots or characters
• Originality of ideas
• Pacing
• Story structure
• Spelling and grammar

Clarity. Do you understand what is going on? Can you picture the setting and the characters in your head? Can you see where everyone is in relationship to each other?  Was the fight scene confusing? Is my word choice obscure?

Impact. Do you like these characters? Are you frustrated with them? Do you love them? Are you afraid? Is this intense? Are you bored? Do you wish you could stop reading? Do you feel like you’re there with the characters? Was the ending satisfying or did I drop the ball?

Believability.  How are my characters’ reactions? Does my fight scene feel real? Does this fit together and make sense?

Interest.  Does this fascinate you the way it fascinates me?  Are you hooked?  Is this too much detail or not enough?

---

Things I aske my beta readers:

• What bores you
• What confuses you
• What don’t you believe
• What’s cool? (So I don’t accidentally “fix” it.)

 

Currently I am working on my FanFiction Predator: The way of the sword, and I hope to post it soon. After that I am going to start with The werewolf of Bed burg on Wattpad.

Diversity in characters?

I know this is quite a bit of a controversial topic, but I would still like to express my opinion on this.

Personally, I have no issue with diversity and sometimes it can even be important, but I don’t like diversity for the sake of having diversity.
The reason why not is because most of the time it creates unrelatable, boring, shallow and very stereotypical characters.

For me this is the most important thing:

• The character fits in the story that you are trying to create. Are you writing a story that is played in 16th century England, it would be strange to have a society that is very diverse and just as acceptable as we are now in the 21st century.
• Don’t make only stereotypical characters. Sometimes you see people trying to ad minorities to stories just for having minorities in the story. Most of the time the characters just get boring or are very stereotypical.
• Don’t replace characters. Sometimes you see people replacing male characters with female characters and say hey this is the new [insert name characters]. Never mind that it first was a guy. Now it is a girl. Why not just make a new character with his or her own story, that is way more interesting.
• Make sure that diversity in your characters is not only superficial charctarristic like gender, race and sexualty. People are just way more complex than that

You also have to take in count writers personal experience. Don’t make everything a white issue, like only white writers does this (I have heard a lot that white writers never make diverse characters). Every writer is sometimes guilty of not expanding their character pool. I have grown up in a very diverse society, the change that I will write in my stories more diverse characters is bigger than when you have grown up with no diversity at all.

Sometimes i have been guilty of doing this, that I sometimes quickly make mixed race characters (I’m mixed race) sometimes even in stories where that would be strange.

The most important thing for writers to strive for is to create interesting characters that make the story complete.