Advice

I don’t think writers realize that “strong female character” means “well written female character” and not just “female character who punches stuff and shoots stuff”

Using the appropriate vocabulary in your novel

It is very important that the language in your novel reflects the time and place in which the story is set.

For example, my story is set in Italy. My characters would never “ride shotgun”, a term coined in US in the early 1900s referring to riding alongside the driver with a shotgun to gun bandits. 

Do your research! A free tool that I found to be very useful is Ngram Viewer. 

You can type any word and see when it started appearing in books. For example…one of my characters was going to say “gazillion” (I write YA) in 1994. Was “gazillion” used back then?

And the answer is…YES! It started trending in 1988 and was quite popular in 1994.

Enjoy ^_^

write for the audience you want, not the one you’re afraid of

I’m so confused but I don’t know why I expected anything else

Your back has been aching for weeks now, every movement sending jolts of pain through your nerves. This morning as you slowly and gingerly get out of bed, you can feel your whole back throbbing. Though you want to sleep longer, you know you have to make something to eat, as there isn’t really anyone else around to do it. Hesitantly, you press your hand to your back, swallowing thickly as you find your skin incredibly hot to the touch, noting some swelling as well.

Deciding on a nice cold shower, you shakily stand and begin hobbling to the bathroom. After barely five steps, your vision suddenly whites with agony. Screaming out, you fall to your hands and knees, clutching at the floor with a white knuckled grip. There’s a sickening ripping sound, followed by a few wet thumps, and you feel something hot and wet splatter all over you. 

You’re still in pain, but there’s some relief now, as if a pressure has been released. Shakily you lift your head, eyes widening in horror at the display of gore that now covers the room. You just barely register something soaked in blood, arching out to the side from your back, before you pass out, the ordeal simply too much for you to handle.

Seizure First Aid. 

Learn it. Share it. Know it. Use it. 

Bruh

So me and my friends were out playing pokemon go and we had to literally stop the car and turn around because we may have found the fanciest McDonald’s I’ve ever seen in my life

A MANSION

And the inside is actually beautiful??????

Like there were live plants and I felt like I was walking into an upscale hotel??

It also had a second fancy entrance???

Not only that but there was like a secret upstairs that’s apparently open usually, but it was too late for us to go up too (I’m deffo gonna go back and check that out because come on)

Like what is she hiding 

But yeah I think I found either the most cursed or fanciest McDonalds in America

Also!

It was a pokestop!

I laughed way too hard at this

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Many of you may know that I keep youtube playlists of language samples, and I thought it was about time to compile them all into one post. They contain pretty much anything where you can hear the language clearly – music, dialogues, tutorials, movie trailers, readings, etc. I’ll probably add more in the future. Hope someone finds them useful!

afrikaans

ainu

akkadian

albanian

american sign language (ASL)

amharic

angolan portuguese

arabic

aramaic

aranese

armenian

aromanian

assamese

asturian

aymara

azerbaijani

bashkir

basque

bavarian

belarusian

belizean creole

bengali

berbice creole dutch

biblical (classical) hebrew

bosnian

brazilian portuguese

breton

british sign language

bulgarian

canadian french

cantonese

cape verdean creole

catalan

chechen

cherokee

chickasaw

coptic

cornish

corsican

cree

crimean tatar

croatian

crow

czech

danish

dogri

dutch

early modern english

egyptian

emilian-romagnol

esperanto

estonian

etruscan

faroese

fijian

finnish

flemish

french

french sign language (LSF)

frisian

fula (fulani, fulah, peul)

galician

gallo

garifuna

georgian

gottscheerish

greek

greenlandic

griko

gujarati

gullah

guyanese creole

haitian creole

hawaiian

hawaiian pidgin

hebrew

hiberno-english (irish english)

hindi

hindko

hittite

hungarian

icelandic

indonesian

irish

italian

jamaican patois

japanese

javanese

kannada

karelian

kashmiri

kazakh

khmer

kinyarwanda

konkani

korean

kristang

kurdish

kyrgyz

ladino

lakota

latin

latin american spanish

lebanese arabic

lemko

lithuanian

livonian

lombard

louisiana french

luganda

luo

luxembourgish

macedonian

malagasy

malay

malayalam

maltese

mandarin

maori

mariupol greek

martinique creole

mayan (general)

meitei (manipuri)

mirandese

mongolian

mossi

nahuatl

neapolitan

nheengatu (língua geral amazônica)

norwegian

nuosu (yi)

odia

ojibwe

okinawan

old english

old french

old norse

old welsh

pashto

pennsylvania german

persian

piedmontese

polari

polish

punjabi

rajasthani

rioplatense spanish

romani (general)

romanian

romansh

russian

ryukyuan

saint lucian creole

salish

sami (general)

samoan

santali

saraiki

scots

scottish gaelic

serbian

shanghainese (hu dialect, wu chinese)

shona

sicilian

silesian

sindhi

slovak

slovene

soga

somali

sumerian

swabian

swahili

swedish

swiss german

tagalog

tahitian

taíno

tajik

tamazight (general)

tamil

tatar

telugu

texas german

thai

tibetan

tlingit

tocharian

tokelauan

tongan

totonac

trinidadian french creole

tuareg

turkish

turkmen

ukrainian

urdu

uzbek

venetian

vietnamese

vurës

welsh

wolof

yiddish

zaza (zazaki)

zulu

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YES

like….not 2 get into this really but..freedom of speech means that the government can’t tell you what you can and can’t say. freedom of speech does not protect you from the social/private repercussions of your actions