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Here's how it goes: You give anyone who needs help something they need, whether it's plot holes, ideas, and whatnot, and in return, you help them with a problem of their own. This isn't strictly in between you and me, although I'm happy to help if you need it.
Queue:
I have ideas and characters and i go to sit down and my mind blanks and my writing is trash, do you know any tips to improve it? I also need some more character ideas.
I try to keep a general timeline of my story before I write them. You can't just start writing without a plot in mind. You also want your ideas to centralize on a theme. For example: if you want some kind of sci-fi setting, will it be a utopia or a dystopia? Are your main characters just meeting or have they been comrades for a long time? Who is your antagonist? Are they a villain, and if they are, what are their motivations? Your characters should be based on the setting: For example, if you have a fantasy setting and magic runs rampant, who will the villain be? Probably a powerful magic user, right? If you want to spice things up a bit, instead of that you can make them someone who tries to get others to turn on each other. In this fantasy setting, your heroes, usually a trio, will all have different abilities. The impulsive and brash one will probably have an affinity for fire magic. Then you don't want the others to be good at fire magic since you're just giving your team only one power that can be used.
I can't actively give you good ideas unless you have a theme. Can you please tell me which genre is it in and a few details? (for example, fantasy magic, or sci-fi dystopian)
I am having problems with figuring out what believable motives there could be for my character to usurp the throne and basically kill the current king. Some background: she is a princess and her family castle was ambushed by said evil king. Her whole family was murdered and she only just escaped. I want a believable motive other than "I want to get revenge" because that is so played out and boring.
Is this a fantasy setting? Maybe the king carries some kind of trophy for his victory, like a family heirloom, and she wants that back. Or maybe the entire system of government is corrupt, and she wants to stop the corruption by becoming the queen.
Yep it's fantasy. Yeah she wants to gain power to overthrow the king and restore the original governmental system. But I need to have a believable motivation. Like what flips the switch on her to make her be like "time for revenge" instead of losing hope and giving up?
Also while I'm here, this character is trying to get in contact with her uncle (the other king who surrender to "evil" king) to try convince him to lead an uprising with her, only to find out he didn't surrender, he was on the evil kings side the whole time. So when she goes to him and reveals her identity (she needs to conceal it when entering the city because there are guards around looking for her) he captures her.
My dilemma is, idk whether to make her just walk into the court and be like "hey lets start an uprising" or have her get employed as a healer and work her way up to get in touch with him without raising suspicion.
The former is tricky because she probably needs to talk to him alone about it and who is gonna let a commoner do that. But then the latter is tricky because 1. how does she plan to get employed as a healer when she doesn't know if they need one (like how does she even go about that) and 2. how does she then get in touch with the king and is it all a bit too much of a complex plan? Like what could make her think of this (what is her reasoning?)
I'm just finding it really difficult to write from her point of view in the novel because I'm not good at the whole "working your way to the top with a concealed identity seeming just like a commoner" kind of thing. Any tips would be appreciated
Maybe the girl has spent a lot of her life just trying to survive, knowing that she alone can't compete with the entire king's forces, but then she finds out about a rebellion group or something?
With the last part, it's hard to say. If the uncle is seen as the 'people' representative and seems like a goodwilled person, then maybe he walks in the streets with commoners to establish the bond of the subjects with the government.
I have characters and and a story with a clear outline of where I want it to go, but i have no idea how to connect the dots, or even how to make the character motives/actions seem 'believable'. any tips?
Your characters need to have clear motivations. It's usually best if your protagonist and antagonist have clear strong motivations that directly clash with each other (i.e, protagonist wants to stay alive, antagonist wants to kill them.) Can I have a few more details, such as the rough plot and character personality description?
I have some character sheets but they’re not finished if that’s ok… The story is set in a pretty secluded town, and every so often a random person (be it a child, adult, etc) suddenly goes missing without a trace. The main character’s brother is the most recent person to vanish and it’s up to her and her friends to (hopefully) bring him, and the rest of the vanished back home. The main “twist” to this world is that many folklore creatures/cryptids, are actually human shapeshifters (idk if this is helpful but I hope it’s ok!).
so the brother goes missing, the girl and friends go on detective spree to find him and uncover a conspiracy? I don't see the problem; it's pretty simple.
I just don’t know how to piece certain plot points and scenes with each other, like, I know how I want scene A and scene B to look and feel like, but I don’t know how to connect them together. I don’t know where the in between goes and stuff, or how to point at key plot points, like for example, if a certain character is spying/stalking the group, I don’t know how to hint or foreshadow it.
Give me an example of what A and B are so I can help you connect them. To point at key plot points, it is a little harder.
You can have the sister and friends to try to find information about the missing people; maybe the sister knows someone else that disappeared, who we'll call Andy, and she also know relatives of them. She confronts Andy's mom.
The mom acts a little off; maybe they react strangely, and say, "What?" when the girl mentions that Andy was Christian and frequently went to church. The girl assumes that Andy's mom either doesn't like the church or that Andy was secretly going to church without his mom knowing. Instead, this is actually because a shapeshifter is posing as Andy's mom and, since they aren't human, can't grasp the concept of religion. So the girl has a false lead; she researches into it more, and maybe she finds out that something strange happened at the church a decade ago, or maybe she doesn't find anything.
You have a ton of these tiny hints; sometimes they lead to nothing, and sometimes the girl comes to false conclusions. Once or twice she might get an actual solid trail but after much progress, she gets stuck and can't get past this one detail, like, if it's a kidnapper, then why have these been happening for more than a hundred years? The solution to this detail, of course, is that there's a whole society, but your readers assume it's some kind of a cult that's lived for generations.
In your spying example, as the characters are moving around, you could casually mention something like:
Danny nodded at Frederick. "It could be that."
Frederick grinned. "Just saying, I'm the best." The elevator dinged and opened, and an orange-haired man stepped in.
You have this orange-haired man, and then you add some more instances of the man in this type of thing. Maybe, to hide the fact that it's always an orange-haired man, you instead have him wear a hat, and say 'a man in a baseball cap.'
Thank you! And as for the scenes, for example: the gang goes to ask Reagan (a person who seems to know a lot more then she poses) for help on their detective spree, and another scene is where after they get into her house, they hear strange noises from the ally next to her house, and find what looks like a homeless teenager, but in the midst of trying to shoo them away, they discover that the person is some kind of shapeshifter (a very distressed/and confused one at that.
Maybe instead of strange noises, they hear someone calling out, possibly in help, and go out to meet them, concerned.