OUUROBOROS

Hallo, everyone! I'm sorry for being a lazy blogger this month. I decided today to write another informational post, for anyone looking to publish an ebook themselves. I've already finished my formatting ebooks post - check it here!

This post isn't very long. But I found it a little confusing to know what to do when I needed ISBNs, so this should help save other people the trouble.
Note - ISBNs are quite expensive, you'll need around £120 for a block of 10. Get saving! I cleaned the house every week for a couple of months, as well as cleaned the car. However, it's good to have them.

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What is an ISBN?
 It is an international standard book number. It's a unique number for your publication that identifies it, and is used in marketing/selling. Your book essentially gets registered on a big old database as your book, so it's quite a useful thing to have. It also makes it feel a little more official!

As to how to get an ISBN - you have to go to your country/region's ISBN agency.  A google search will help you find yours easily. The one for the UK is Nielsen. Therefore, this is the one that I used.

You need to download the application form, print it out, complete it, scan it and then email it to their address they provide (Click on 'services for new publishers' and you'll get the information, as well as links to the form.) Alternatively you can post it to their address.

The service from this company was really great. I'd managed to make a little mistake in my form, and they immediately emailed me and we sorted it out. It does take a little while to come through, however, so be prepared!

Also, another thing to note. If you're self publishing, on the form where it asks for the publisher of the book, you can either put your own name or make up your own 'publishing company' name - I chose Baytree Publishing. I suppose this can be done for superficial reasons;  so people don't at first glance write your book off as vanity published, but it's not necessary. I did it because it felt official and proper to have a 'real' publishing name ♥‿♥. You will have to register one of the ISBNs to your book when you apply, and provide a sample title page and title page verso - the site has a clear explanation of this, you can essentially mock one up in Word or Open Office (for poor people like me :> )

You will get a paper booklet in the post with a list of your ISBNs, and space for you to assign the rest of them to your future publications. You will need to register these on their site at some point, but it doesn't seem to need to be done immediately.

So, it's not actually that hard! Even so, be sure to do it in plenty of time before you intend to publish your book.

I'm afraid I'm not sure how other countries are different to the UK, but I imagine they're pretty similar.

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As far as book-writing goes, the reason number three isn't published yet is that I'm still working on 8 - Original Sin. I felt as though I didn't characterise quite correctly in it, so I'm tweaking it, and I won't publish until I am 100% happy with it.

I am also really pleased with how 4-6 has gone - I've also received a really good review on Amazon.com for it! Five stars ;__; Thank you, reviewer! It was rather flattering. So far, I've only had five star reviews on my stories (touch-wood.) This pleases me.

It's the long-awaited how-to-format-your-ebook post! First, I've got some explaining to do. I just received my ISBN numbers in the post; so my first set of shorts will be available on Amazon any day from now! Exciting ♡

So, you ask, as an aspiring author who's feeling entrepreneurial and adventurous enough to set out on their own - how do I make an ebook??
Or, more likely, I have tried to make an ebook and it looks horrible on whatever-ebook-reader-I-have, please help??

For reference, I have a kindle paperwhite. My ebook looks fine here, and from the looks of it on amazon's own emulators, it will be fine on other models too. I don't know how it will look on other devices.

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The first thing you must do is formatting. It's boring to the max, but suck it up. You already (hopefully) went over your story a ton of times, so what's one more? One thing that I have learned from my gap year is that writers spend a hell of a lot of time going over their work to make sure it's perfect.
Here is what you have to do, if you want to do this how I did. Tried and tested, works a charm!

First, your story must be in a Microsoft Word .doc file format. If you have saved it in any other format - .txt, .odf - change it.
Then, open in Microsoft Word.

Remember, an ebook is different to a regular book. It has no pagebreaks, not even for new chapters. Because every ebook reader model displays things differently, even if you think a pagebreak looks good on your reader it won't be the same on others. You should get doing pagebreaks out of your head right away - it should all be one document, single spaced, though you can get away with a double linebreak between chapters or titles/subheadings. No more than that. Really. So, if you've been merrily starting each chapter on a different page to the one before, go and take that out. Yes, I had to do this.

The first thing you should do, perhaps, is write the title section. You know how a book always has a little bit at the front that contains the copyright and makes sure everyone knows you didn't make fun of real people with your book? You get to write that!
This is mine. You can write something similar, if you like. It's also the only part of my book that is centered. Don't bother centering chapter titles, it doesn't look so great on the ebook reader.


Click on the picture to see a larger version. ♡ I also added a table of contents.

Now you've got the important part sorted, it's time to get onto the actual formatting. Note, my subheadings here are already formatted. Before you format, all your document should look like regular text.
To help you, if you have the latest edition of Word, you should click this button here:

You'll see a variety of symbols pop up on your page. It'll look somewhat like this:

¶ means a paragraph, or single linebreak. You may also see a character that looks like an arrow pointing to the right too, similar to this: →. This shows an indent.  You want to remove all of these. Every single one. Yes, it looks nice in the word document to have indents for paragraphs, but it looks ugly on the ebook reader because the linebreaks themselves are slightly indented on there - just like a real book. This part's the boring bit, and it may sound weird. But it needs to be done. The final thing that needs to be done is formatting your headings, and/or subheadings. You don't just change the sizes for these - you have to change the styling.

This is done by paying attention to the styles bar in word.

You can edit these styles as much as you like by right-clicking and choosing modify. But the trick is, to be consistent! I only used three styles when making my ebook. The first was only for the title. Then, I had another for chapter titles/other headers. The third one was for the quotes that I have beneath each chapter title.

Why can't I just change the font size? I hear you ask. Because without styles, ebooks aren't happy with double spacing. I tried SO HARD to get double spaces below my chapter titles, my quotes, just to separate them from the main block of text a little. It wouldn't work. Styling was the only way to beat this. So, on the modify panel, I made my header styles have extra space above and below. The circled buttons edit this space.



Once you have accomplished all this, save your document. You're mostly done!

The next thing you will need is to download mobipocket, to get your ebook converted to the .prc file Amazon requires.

You can download mobipocket from here. ♡ Follow the installation instructions, and it's fairly self explanatory from there. Choose 'Import from Existing File' and then 'MS Word Document'. You can then upload your cover, add author and publishing information, and once you're satisfied you should click 'Build'. The resulting .prc file can then be dragged straight into your kindle's 'documents' folder, and is ready to read!

Congratulations - you're done! ♥‿♥ Hopefully without stress like me.

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My dad is currently destroying our house in order to fix it, and the noise is drilling through my head wtf. Cannot hear myself think any more. I'll work on a post about actually publishing an ebook next, because now you've got one you probably want to publish it. I also want to write about my gap year itself - why I chose the self-publishing and ebook routes, and why I think it's been worth it. Screw £9000 uni fees, at least for one year.

But, seeing as my first ebook is being published imminently, expect one about that first! I'll now have to think of creative ways to get people to download, whoops. I am terrible at this.

A continuation of my previous post. Have some more interesting words! I enjoy all of these, and recommend using them with unadulterated abandon.

♥Avarice - greed.
♥Bellicose - aggressive, hostile. Currently being chucked around by the media in relation to North Korea.
♥Bleb - learned this one in Biology! It's a little bubble.
♥Cirrous - resembling slender tentacles or filaments.
♥Fescennine - extremely rude. Therefore, a stronger version of agrestic.
♥Finnimbrun - a trifle, a trinket.
♥Harbinger - a herald, a forewarning.
♥Jejune - childish.
♥Masticate - no, nothing like that! It means 'to chew'.
♥Mesonoxian - related to midnight.
♥Nacreous - relating to mother-of-pearl, pearlescent.
♥Otiose - without a practical purpose.
♥Pejorist - someone who reckons the world is going down the drain. Me, then. 
♥Perspicacious - being very perceptive.
♥Requiem - a mourning song, a funeral song.
♥Sidereal - relating to stars.

I will get around to uploading all the Harry Potter photos soon! It's just there are a lot of them and effort, but! What I really wanted to say (and should have said before) was that Quantum Entanglement is completely finished and now I'm on the final short! It's been renamed 'Spidermusings', which is at once apt and a casual abuse of the english language.
It's also so nearly done. It's been a lot of fun too - it's from the point of view of a particularly nasty and unreliable narrator; and getting into his head has been pretty interesting. However there is now about one more thought-track to write and I cannot find the motivation to do so. Never mind that this is the last story in the collection that I have left to write, it's the culmination of almost a year's work.
I'm so damn useless.

However; my next update will probably be that I've finished the collection! Which is really rather exciting - I'll have to edit/copyedit, and I'll finally be able to read the whole thing in the order it was intended. Then, I can somehow learn how to make it an ebook and publish it.
Which is a really scary thought.

I also drew this picture of Lilia, because gas masks are awesome.
For those who are interested, the lines by this were originally drawn by hand. Then I scanned it into Photoshop and utilised the 'multiply' setting on the layer, so that I could colour below it. Then, I continued detailing over the top. I'm quite proud of this one! ♥‿♥

Today, I'm going to talk about two things. First, a piece of software that's been helping my writing no end, and next a little bit about my work with birds for those who are interested.

The software is called Darkroom, and it's free to download. What it is, is a writing environment with no distractions. This is excellent for me and my kindred spirits, the notorious procrastinators of this world. Microsoft Word or Open Office can be distracting because of all the buttons, the options, the fact that the start bar with Firefox is still there... you get the idea! When you open Darkroom you'll see a completely black screen. When you type, it will be in green. I was skeptical at first, because I thought this combination would hurt my eyes, but it doesn't in any way. It's easy to get sucked into writing with this, and my productivity has probably increased ten-fold by using it. If you can't see distractions, it takes much more effort to be distracted!
The only downside is that formatting, such as adding italics, has to be done in a Word/Open Office document. I paste my work into Open Office and made necessary edits there at the end of the day. Darkroom saves as you go so it's pretty hard to lose work, and even if you close the program and opt not to save it to a .txt file, when you next open it your work will still be there.

You can download Darkroom here!

But next, I thought I'd talk a little about my work.



If you follow me on Twitter, you'll know that I work with various animals - in particular, corvids, and in particular Eurasian jays. These are some of them! Washington in the top-left and bottom-right, and Lisbon in the other pictures.
They live in a huge outdoor aviary with options for hiding inside or sheltering from rain, and I help run studies on their behaviour. They're so much fun to work with - every single bird has a different personality, and I love them all! It doesn't help that they're so cute.
Some will fly down to sit on my hand or take worms from me, others prefer me to toss them up for them to catch. Jeru, or Jerusalem, is particularly nifty at that. My personal favourite is Lima, the vainest bird - he loves the sound of his own voice, and sings whenever he sees me. Because it's breeding season, the birds have also started to talk. They can repeat all kinds of noises - so far I've had ambulance sirens, wolf-whistles repeated back to me, 'oy-oy-oy', 'hello... hello... hello...' and 'Liiima, Liiima'. I know for a fact that one bird can say extremely rude things, but I haven't had chance to hear him yet as he lives in another aviary. Jeru also makes a downright maniacal laughing sound, which is funny because she's the smallest and cutest bird.
She also has a habit of doing a poo every time she sees me, before flying over for worms. I take it as a sign of love.

And they are incredibly clever. As in, I knew corvids were clever (that's the crow family), but I didn't think they were this clever. Observing them is a real privilege. And after working with them since October, they've started to trust me. This job just makes me incredibly happy. ♥‿♥

I've met so many people from different places through it, as well as different animals. Oliver the fox, Russell the crow, a magpie and a wagtail and a wild jay who hangs around outside the aviaries. Scrub jays, rooks and jackdaws as well as my favourite Eurasian jays.
And that's about it! It's great because the welfare of the birds is taken into account all the time, one hundred percent, and they're all so happy. The best part is when they sit in their pairs on the branches and puff themselves up. 'I love you this much!'

♥

Tomorrow I'm off to the Harry Potter studios, which I'm incredibly excited for! Harry Potter was just about my entire childhood, and was what made me want to be a writer. So, I'll blog about that pretty soon, and include lots of pictures for once. :>

Sort of promised in my earlier 'Assorted Writing Tips' post, I finally got around to creating this! Some of the things I do to make well-developed, non-Mary-Sue characters. At least, I'm pretty sure they aren't Mary Sues! Everyone who reads my material tells me they aren't when I ask and I have a set of friends who are brutally honest about everything,  so I'm taking that as a I-actually-do-pretty-well-at-character-dev.
I've been writing for a long time! Since I was eight, I wanted to be an author. And, just like everyone, I've made some unintentionally horrible characters. Characters that make me cringe now! 'How did I ever think this was a good idea, reading this is painful' kind of cringing.
I've also made some intentionally horrible characters as jokes, see Fuschia Jones.
So, here we go. ~

First, an incredibly useful resource. It's the Mary Sue Litmus test, found here! It's also pretty fun to do - I put most of my characters through it to procrastinate on stuff.
I suppose what is needed now is a definition of Mary Sue. If you already know, skip this section~

A Mary Sue is, quite simply, a perfect character - and sadly, they are rampant. Especially amongst younger writers - including younger me!
They are born out of author favouritism. A Mary Sue is, normally, without flaw - if any are present, it only serves to make the character more appealing to the audience or really detracts nothing from their overall character. An example is Bella Swan from Twilight - her only real flaw is 'clumsiness'. All this does is make her more attractive to Edward Cullen (another Mary Sue) who feels as though he has to protect her even more.
In fact, why not use Bella and Edward's whole characters as the definition of Mary Sue? Meyer's vampires are also the definition of a Mary-Sue species. They get all the strengths of most vampires - super fast, super strong, perfect predators, immortal - and none of the weaknesses (turning to ash in the sun.) For an already overpowered species like a vampire, this was always the great equaliser. But Meyer's vampires can also elect to drink only animal blood, allowing them to be unequivocal good guys and never really have to toe grey moral boundaries!

A Mary-Sue character gets everything. They always win. They are often the most beautiful and may even lament their beauty 'as a curse' (presenting something that isn't a flaw as a flaw, common tell-tale), or refuse to accept compliments as a forced show of modesty. They are the best at everything, or get extremely good at things very quickly without much effort. Nothing really goes wrong for them, at least, nothing drastic (though another tell-tale is them having an extremely tragic past and either dwelling on it constantly to force pity, or being completely unaffected by it.) They save the day more than any of the other characters combined, their abilities make them extremely overpowered in their respective world. Often the character will be a blatant self-insert of the author, who wishes they were as great as this character. In short, they are EXCRUCIATINGLY ANNOYING.

We don't want to be writing any of those.

A well developed character is one you can imagine as a real person. Riddled with imperfections and flaws, but real. Don't be scared to write outside of the good/evil box - not everything is black and white. Characters can make questionable decisions, suffer from flawed logic, frantically try to justify themselves even when there is no justification - or simply revel in the fact that there is no justification. Just because they're a flawed, terrible person, it doesn't mean they are a bad character. They can be an extremely well-developed character, warts and all, and even if you would never be friends with them in real life it shouldn't stop you appreciating them as a character.

So, focus on imperfection.
Not every character has to be perfectly beautiful! I already focused in my writing tips post on not being cliche about your descriptions, and cliche descriptions are a hallmark of the Sue.
Exploit the flaws.
Exploit them to the maximum! Yes, each character has good points - determination, courage, intelligence, kindness - but flaws are so much more interesting. Is your character a coward who only redeems himself after a valiant struggle to be brave? Or do they fail? Does the flaw overwhelm them? Don't be scared to have a character lose!
Or, are they a brave character who loses their nerve at a vital moment, and fails?
Are they arrogant and cocky? Do they hide away their emotions behind a mask of indifference, only to have it crumble and them despair? Do they recover from this, or not? Are they manipulative little shits who get tangled in their own web of lies? Do they have a big mouth?
And if so - why do they have a big mouth?

Why is your character they way they are? This is perhaps the most important question of all! WHY is your character as they are, and how is this motivating their current actions and desires?
I cannot stand characters who have no motivation for what they are doing in stories!  We don't do things for no reason at all. I especially resent characters who are evil 'just because.'
Why?
To create three-dimensional, realistic characters, you have to understand real humans. I never write a character who is 100%, 50%, even 10% me. But a lot of them will have an aspect of myself, one that I understand and can apply to them. Some of them have aspects of my friends or family, or other people I know.
For example. (Using characters from my upcoming trilogy, the Light Age)
Hoy is a loud-mouth. He's obnoxious, he bigs himself up, sometimes tries to put others down. He exaggerates his own achievements, acts all tough. His big mouth gets him into a whole heap of bother when he picks fights with the wrong person or winds up having to actually walk the talk. Because underneath it all, Hoy is a massive coward, and cannot follow through on his boasts.
The reason he has a big mouth and tries to act tough is that he is fundamentally ashamed of his cowardice.
His father was extremely disappointed in him. He wanted his son to be strong and tough, but Hoy simply was not. Even after the death of his father Hoy values people based on courage and strength - qualities he doesn't really possess for himself. So he acts like it, he puffs himself up and struts around, tries to make everyone see him as brave and strong so that maybe he himself can believe it.
He just wants his father to be proud.
That's his motivation. That's the reason why he is the way he is.

(Yes, Hoy ultimately overcomes his cowardice. Even though it's the hardest thing in the world for him to do. Never let it be said that my characters always meet bad ends or fail!)

On the other hand, Rosita.
She's the 'big bad' of the series, the military dictator who rose to power on the back of a wave of lies. Extremely intelligent, genius-level intelligent - and arrogant as hell.
Her intelligence bred arrogance, in this case. She was light-years ahead of her peers, and ultimately came to see them as beneath her. She values people based on intelligence, and sees herself as worth more than everyone else. And once you put yourself above others, you can be cruel to them without feeling a shred of guilt.
You see it as your right - and ultimately, via a long and complicated series of events that I won't explain here, she comes to see power as her right too.
She wasn't always bad - in fact, she sees herself as being one hundred percent in the right. She was always a grey character, a grey-area. Her parents were industrialists who instilled in her the belief that personal profit meant more than anything else - the world's a shark-fight, biggest fish win. If not her, then someone else. As a rather high-functioning sociopath, she is only able to care about herself. And this vanity and narcissm, plus her intelligence-generated-arrogance, led her to do terrible things to other people for personal gain.
She doesn't see anything wrong with it. I was going for a WW2-holocaust type theme here - once you see someone as beneath you, you can do the most terrible things to them. It's almost sad - she could have done extraordinary things for the good of all, but circumstance and her upbringing and the way her mind was wired shaped her into a selfish little madam. It could have been different.
But in the end, for all her intellect, Rosita's arrogance is her downfall.

You see? It's so much more interesting to have fundamentally flawed characters, rather than super-talented-super-pretty-super-modest-always-the-hero characters. The only way you could have a super-talented-super-pretty character is if they were not super-modest. If you're very good at many things and extremely pretty to boot, you are probably not going to be modest. It's more likely that you are going to be an arrogant little so-and-so.

This is another thing that upsets me. Inconsistent or unrealistic characterisation.
If your character is big-mouthed and bolshy and dishes out verbal retribution to others, it's likely that this won't always be justified. Sometimes they're going to be mean, say things that go too far or are undeserved. Otherwise they aren't really big-mouthed, they're just overly righteous.
Think about real people, and how real people really are!  We're all complicated, and we're all individual. Try thinking about yourself, and all the facets of your personality. You know yourself better than anyone else. Why are you the way you are? What happened to you to make you this way? What are you doing now? What is the reason you are doing this?

So, in short - ask questions! Ask lots of questions! Questions are good.  ♥‿♥
And never be afraid to write a character who isn't the 'norm'. They don't have to be beautiful - they could be rather unattractive. And that's okay.
Maybe that unattractive character could be pretty hung up over it? Maybe they apply tons of make-up to feel beautiful - is that really so abnormal in today's image-obsessed society? Maybe they act as though they don't care, but really do? Or maybe, they genuinely do not care. Looks are just not important to this character, and they aren't going to go out of their way to look any better.

Limitless possibilities! Just have fun with them! ♥‿♥
If you aren't having fun, why are you writing in the first place?

Whoops, this post was longer than intended. I'll think of more things to post soon! ~
I hope it was useful.

Perhaps I'm a bit odd, but as a writer words excite me. ;> Especially interesting, or unusual words. I've always had a bit of a love-affair with the English language, and finding weird words is a bit of a hobby. In lieu of anything important, I decided to post my favourites. These words all need more love! Some are long, some sound funny, but all are fabulous. And hey, maybe you'll learn something new!

♥Amalgam - A mixture, union or combination of ideas.
♥Abyssopelagic - relating to the very bottom of the sea.
♥Agrestic - rude or aggressive.
♥Bumbershoot - an alternative word for an umbrella.
♥Cathartic - a release of emotion.
♥Confabulate - to chat with someone.
♥Corpulent - a polite way of saying 'extremely fat'.
♥Floccinaucinihilipilification - to describe something as worthless.
♥Flummery - nonsense, empty compliments.
♥Hobbledehoy - a clumsy youth.
♥Icythyophagous - something that feeds on fish.
♥Kakistocracy - a government controlled by the least qualified citizens (literally the UK) ♥Lackadaisical - lazy, in a dreamy way. Like me :>
♥Quixotism - idealism without regard to practicality.
♥Saccharine - cloyingly, overpoweringly sweet.
♥Sesquipedalian - long winded, ponderous.
♥Shenanigans - mischief, silly behaviour.
♥Syzygy - when three celestial bodies are aligned. No idea when you'd need this, it made the list for having a ridiculously cool spelling. I challenge you to get it into your next piece of writing. I also challenge you to say it aloud without having it sound like a sneeze.
♥Tatterdemalion - a raggedy person.
♥Xanthochroic - pale.
♥Zenith - the highest point reached by an object, or the point in the sky directly above you.

Oh! And if anyone follows my twitter, you'll know about Oliver. He's the fox that appeared at my work with the birds over Christmas, and he is completely unafraid of humans! He sits maybe five metres away from where I am in the aviary with the birds, and watches me. When I watch him back, it doesn't bother him at all. At first I thought he might be injured or sick, but he's not - he looks absolutely beautiful. We put out food for our tame crow Russell, and he's been helping himself :> And he is so cute!I managed to snap this photo of him while I was inside the aviary. It's taken on a video camera so the quality isn't all that good (had to zoom in a lot) but here he is! Isn't he just darling?

(Alternate title: an assortment of irritants that you should very definitely avoid)
Hello, there :> I thought about doing this post for a while, and I've finally got around to it. This can either be viewed as a list of personal grievances with things people do when they write, or a list of tips to help do it better! Make of it what you will.
Also, pretty much everyone ever will have made these mistakes. I have, and I still do, and then I normally slap myself upside the head when I realise my sins.

1. Remedial grammar.
Because it's the number one thing that people do wrong, and seeing it done wrong is a little upsetting. Observe and remember: Alice's crash course in grammar.

It's: short for 'it is', or 'it has'. (It's really annoying when people use apostrophes incorrectly)
Its: possessive, belonging to it (A leopard can't change its spots)

There = Indicates location. (There you are! Over there!)
Their = possessive, belonging to them. (It's their cake)
They're = short for they are. (They're eating my cake :( )

Your – possessive, belonging to you. (It's your cake)
You're – short for you are. (You're talking absolute flummery today)


2. Description, and over-description
Over-description is, quite possibly, one of my biggest pet peeves. Some description is fine, of course, otherwise your story would be pretty bland. So make it interesting, don't use clichés - be imaginative. The hallmark of the beginner writer is poor description, or over-description. Looking over my old writing from the age of twelve (a dark time for most people, to be fair) I can see that I was just as guilty.

You do not have to describe every little thing. You especially don't need to take two paragraphs to describe a character, particularly a main one. It's not necessary. No one cares precisely how tall they are, exactly what clothes they're wearing, or how poetically you can describe their eyes. Yes, description is fun to write, but be honest with yourself - you can give a character an introductory description in one line, and then you can slip the rest in throughout the story. You can do it imaginatively, too! No more reeling off all their attributes (read: stuff people don't care much about) one after another in a long and boring list.
(This wonderful example has been donated to my blog by my friend Dominic, as apparently my joke description wasn't funny enough. Read and weep. Enter Fuschia Moonclaw Garnet Naruto Maw-Sit-Sit Raven Never Smiles Smith-Jones)

She strolled through the spacious, sixty-seven-roomed mansion complete with thirty nine bedrooms, all of which with ensuites, seventeen bathrooms and a multi-disciplinary swimming pool. The walls were still drying, having had a fresh coat of magnolia just that very morning; allowing the rooms to be as airy and spacious as she liked.
Her shoes, cherry red with extremely long heels, click-clacked across the mosaic-tiled floor, reminding her of an evolutionarily beautiful business woman that she'd seen on her thirty-seven inch plasma screen TV when she had been a blonde, curly haired, chubby eight year old girl.
She deposited herself on one of the nearby seats; a beautiful sculpture of white leather that would have cost her a pretty penny had it not just fallen out of the sky one day; providing her with the comfort and security that a man had never been able to bestow upon her.
Yes, she supposed, it was unfortunate that she was as unlucky as she was. But with the white leather seats and fresh-smell of magnolia paint, she could not be sad. Not today. Sadness never ended well for her. 
"Oh, Chives!" She cooed, careful so as to not smudge her freshly applied elephant-tusk-red lipstick.

(Fuschia Moonclaw Garnet Naruto Maw-Sit-Sit Raven Never Smiles Smith-Jones is, of course, meant to make total sense at all times. Anyone who doesn't like her character is obviously just jealous of how perfect she is, or is racist against Munchkin Princesses. Or wants to usurp her throne. But she doesn't mind because she's so humble and kind to everyone. Gosh, I wish I was as awesome as her.)

Of course, instead of this tripe, you could do something different for their introductory description. Have them catch sight of themselves in a shop window or mirror; note a mass of scruffy blonde hair and a pale and peaky face staring back. Later on you can slip extra bits in - polished fingernails, chapped lips, high cheekbones, a Roman nose. Whatever takes your fancy. Zero in on one or two of their features at a time, don't try and do it all at once. Focusing on a flaw of the character is a good way to go about it - a crooked nose that looks like it might have once been broken, wonky teeth, or anything else. It makes it human. Why focus on perfection, when imperfection is so much more real and fun?

There are some exceptions to what I've said above, of course. Description is fine when it contributes to creating an atmosphere, or is central to the plot.

Outfit description – if the character is putting on a one-time outfit that is particularly special (a lavish ballgown, for example, to go to a party that is important to the story) then you can describe that from their point of view. You just don't need to do it for every little thing they wear.
Character description – you -can- get away with longer descriptions of other characters from the point of view of your narrating character. Normally you should keep it brief - 'the other girl was tall and stocky, with a shock of ginger hair and a nasty grin' but if the character is particularly unusual, go deeper. I say this because one of the characters in my shorts is a human-like robot, and her description is from the point of view of the psychologist who will study her development. Because the robot is not human and is completely alien to May, she gives a much more in-depth description of her. I comment on her factory-smooth skin, skin a single blemish or mark - and how she makes May's own skin crawl. She's real and yet not real, flawless and yet horribly, uncannily imperfect - all at the same time. Deep in the uncanny valley, this one ;>

Anyway, getting back to it. Here's a checklist of what to avoid during descriptions.

Overlong descriptions, especially of main characters, are pointless. One sentence should do, with other bits slipped in throughout the story (ie, in conversation with others 'you're a scrawny little squit, aren't you?')
Focus on the flaws that make them human, rather than how beautiful they are. A broken nose, bitten nails, wonky teeth – all make your descriptions more alive!
Don't use poetic terms all the time, especially not cliché ones. No hair falling like waterfalls, no eyes described as gemstones. Every fool with a notebook and pen does that, and it's at once cliché and Mary-Sue-ish. (more on Mary-Sues in my upcoming character development post! Stay tuned!)
Don't be afraid to let the reader's mind fill in the gaps! It's better to paint a picture in their subconscious rather than just tell them your character has 'raven locks' and 'azure orbs for eyes'.


2.5. Using -ly words
I know, more angsting over description. But this deserved its own point. Observe, if you will. Fuschia returns.

"Chives!" Fuschia said frustratedly, "Do hurry up!"
"Yes, madam," Chives said happily, quickly passing Fuschia her drink. Fuschia sipped it boredly, relaxing on her chair. There really was so little to do, she thought sadly, for a Munchkin Princess who had just valiantly claimed her rightful throne. 

Grating, right? The flow is awful, and it reeks of amateur. The fact is, you don't need -ly words to describe verbs. The verbs describe themselves! Instead of having 'said loudly' you can have 'shouted' 'yelled'. Instead of 'yelled crossly' you can have 'snapped'. These verbs don't need extra, unnecessary description! You can use them occasionally (she said, quite calmly) but do your best to keep them down.

Oh, and for the love of God don't start making up -ly words. If you're using 'boredly' as a description, then there is no hope for you. I have a raging hate-affair with overuse of -ly words, especially those that were pulled out of thin air. The English language is vast and there are so many words to choose from – please don't bastardise it without good reason?


3. 'Favourite' words
I am absolutely guilty of this, I find it all the time when I edit my work! People often do this subconsciously, but it really needs to be corrected.

'Fuschia was so very tired. She'd had a very long day and her tiredness was starting to take its toll. It was very difficult not to drag her feet on the cobblestones as she walked. She had never been so tired before. Munchkin Princesses weren't used to being so very tired'.

Okay, that's an exaggeration, but you get the idea. Here the overused words were 'tired' and 'very', but they can be anything. Beautiful, hell, shadows, night... you just need to get the thesaurus out and swap some of them out for other words! It really affects the flow of the story, which is something I'm big on. The 'flow' of a piece of writing is really important because it can change the whole atmosphere of it – it can be dreamy, bitter, angry, regretful, tired-out. It's like painting colours, with words! It's art. Sometimes a single word can ruin the feeling you're trying to create, so you should choose another that fits.

'Fuschia was completely drained. She'd had such a long day, and her tiredness was starting to take its toll. It was difficult not to drag her feet on the cobblestones as she walked. She had never experienced anything like this before - Munchkin Princesses were hardly used to exhaustion.'

Still about Fuschia, but at least it reads better.


4. Edit, edit, edit!
Once you've done writing something, read it aloud to yourself to get a feel of the flow. You'll be amazed how many sentences don't work, are too long, interrupt the rhythm of the writing. You can leave it for a few days before going back to edit it, so that it's not quite so fresh in your brain and the flaws will be easier to spot.

Oh, and you will be needing to edit it. Nothing you write is finished the first time you write it, and if you think so you are wrong.
Out of interest, pretty much all my stories get at least five rounds of edits over a period of time before I call them done (it's why they take so damn long) and even then I'll keep going back and changing things.
Get other people to read it and edit it for you, too! And get them to be brutally honest. Unless you hear the ugly truth over a beautiful lie, how will you ever improve?


And I think that brings us to the end, for now! I have so many more pet peeves - misuse of commas is a big one, as is inconsistent characterisation, but I'll get to those another day.
I hope this post helped, at least a little! :> It took me quite a while to type up, so it had better. (;