theticklishpear:

Tomorrow is the anniversary of a decision I made to help writers think differently about what they’re writing, to give them one more perspective in a vast sea of other advice- and perspective-givers, but you’ve shown that it wasn’t a waste of time. You’ve stuck with me, and let me share with you what I know; you’ve let me encourage you, and you’ve let me in on a very special part of yourself: your stories and your dreams. Thank you! To celebrate the milestone, here’s your annual round up of what we’ve accomplished this year.

Two-Year Blogaversary masterpost
Three-Year Blogaversary masterpost

We added post series on Creature Companions, Dialogue, Relationships, Space Building, and we’ve picked up the Magic Building series again to talk about practitioner tropes. Night of Asking and the Night of Musing events continued strong, and you all indulged me with the Title Stories meme. The gmail for one-on-one consultations still doles out advice to those in need of longer conversations; the NaNo Chatzy room returned; and you tolerated my 4th State of the Blog(ger) Address. Take a look down this year’s memory lane:

Process:

• Getting Back In the Swing of Things
• Ways To Narrow Down Ideas
• What To Do When Ideas Are Lacking
• Fleshing Out Ideas
• How To Choose Ideas That Last
• Is My Plot Too Full?
• Plotting: Modifying The 10-Point Plot Model For Multiple-Narrator POVs
• Plotting: Staggering Side Plot Climaxes
• Plotting: When Side Characters’ Stories Are More Intriguing
• Retooling A Character To Really Be Something
• Character Arcs: Jerks & Nice Characters
• Character Arcs: Static VS. Dynamic
• Worldbuilding Without Burning Out
• Creating Immersive Worlds
• Texture Building & Building Up An Undeveloped World
• Planning For Happy or Bittersweet Endings
• Secondhand Embarrassment
• Write What You Want To Read And Why It May Or May Not Work
• Thinking Yourself Out Of Corners
• Staying Motivated During Redrafting
• Handling Rejection

Craft:

• Things I Want To See More Of: (part one) (part two)
• Things I Want To See Less Of: (part one) (part two)
• Expanding Plots & Connecting Points
• Characterization Without Cramming
• Describing Familiar Places
• Scare Your Readers
• Writing Third Person Omniscient
• First Person Narration VS. Third Person Limited
• Forming Narrative Voice Outside Of Dialogue
• Multiple-Narrator POV With Limited Numbers Of Narrators
• Telling Stories Over Decades
• Naming Consistent With World
• Naming: Desert Desert & The Dark Mountain
• Determining Time Period
• Translation Convention
• Retelling The Classics
• Showing A Character’s Age In First Person POV
• Villains Hiding In Plain Sight
• Writing Characters From A Group Not Your Own
• Writing Queerplatonic Relationships
• From Fanfiction To Original Fiction

National Novel Planning Month:

• Returning to the second half of a novel
• Notes to make during re-reads
• Setting up a back-up idea
• Listen to your sounding-boards
• NaNo prep for short stories and essays
• Prepping from scratch on short notice

National Novel Writing Month:

• Week One: Never Too Early to Start
• Week Two: Never Too Late to Start
• Week Three: You’ve Been Part of Something Huge
• Week Four: My Hope For You
• Week Five: Meeting More Than Wordcount Goals

Grammar & Publishing:

• Pros and Cons of Pseudonyms
• The Proper Use of En- and Em-dashes
• The Proper Punctuation Of Dialogue
• Querying An Illustrated Story Aimed 8-12

Topical Discussions:

• Places to Learn Culture
• Separating Mythical Creatures With Similar Traits
• Differentiating Types of Magic In Various Races
• What Position Do Centaur Sleep In?
• Non-Harry Potter Wands
• Life On a Water World
• Blending Magic & Technology
• Contraception in Fantasy
• Cultural Ideas Of Record Keeping & History
• Time Travel
• Religion Or Philosophy?
• Combining Disparate Ideas: Western & Fantasy
• Drug Use In the Middle Ages
• Kingdoms Grown From Scratch
• Why Was Harry Potter So Popular?
• Centaur, Dryads, and Merfolk
• Creating Alien Species
• An Exercise In Developing Demigods

Book Recommendations:

• The Horse and His Boy
• The Paper Magician
• The Hangman’s Daughter
• Pear’s Personal Favorites

Encouragement:

• I don’t feel like I have enough experience
• Similar but not the same (x)
• Trust in your ability to grow
• How to celebrate working out a sticky bit
• For all you non-NaNo-ers out there
• Building confidence
• I used to be good…what now?
• Is it wrong to write as much for validation as for pleasure?
• No matter what, you are a writer (aka, Pear got angry)