Where Every Scroll is a New Adventure
Writer Problems - Blog Posts
Too many writers are using generative 'AI' to make their book covers, so I've written a guide on how to make your own cover for free or cheap without turning to a machine.
If you can't afford to pay an artist, you CAN make your own!
I hope this is a helpful overview that covers the basics and points to some free resources.
Tips for writing flawed but lovable characters.
Flawed characters are the ones we root for, cry over, and remember long after the story ends. But creating a character who’s both imperfect and likable can feel like a tightrope walk.
1. Flaws That Stem From Their Strengths
When a character’s greatest strength is also their Achilles' heel, it creates depth.
Strength: Fiercely loyal.
Flaw: Blind to betrayal or willing to go to dangerous extremes for loved ones.
“She’d burn the whole world down to save her sister—even if it killed her.”
2. Let Their Flaws Cause Problems
Flaws should have consequences—messy, believable ones.
Flaw: Impatience.
Result: They rush into action, ruining carefully laid plans.
“I thought I could handle it myself,” he muttered, staring at the smoking wreckage. “Guess not.”
3. Show Self-Awareness—or Lack Thereof
Characters who know they’re flawed (but struggle to change) are relatable. Characters who don’t realize their flaws can create dramatic tension.
A self-aware flaw: “I know I talk too much. It’s just… silence makes me feel like I’m disappearing.” A blind spot: “What do you mean I always have to be right? I’m just better at solving problems than most people!”
4. Give Them Redeeming Traits
A mix of good and bad keeps characters balanced.
Flaw: They’re manipulative.
Redeeming Trait: They use it to protect vulnerable people.
“Yes, I lied to get him to trust me. But he would’ve died otherwise.”
Readers are more forgiving of flaws when they see the bigger picture.
5. Let Them Grow—But Slowly
Instant redemption feels cheap. Characters should stumble, fail, and backslide before they change.
Early in the story: “I don’t need anyone. I’ve got this.”
Midpoint: “Okay, fine. Maybe I could use some help. But don’t get used to it.”
End: “Thank you. For everything.”
The gradual arc makes their growth feel earned.
6. Make Them Relatable, Not Perfect
Readers connect with characters who feel human—messy emotions, bad decisions, and all.
A bad decision: Skipping their best friend’s wedding because they’re jealous of their happiness.
A messy emotion: Feeling guilty afterward but doubling down to justify their actions.
A vulnerable moment: Finally apologizing, unsure if they’ll be forgiven.
7. Use Humor as a Balancing Act
Humor softens even the most prickly characters.
Flaw: Cynicism.
Humorous side: Making snarky, self-deprecating remarks that reveal their softer side.
“Love? No thanks. I’m allergic to heartbreak—and flowers.”
8. Avoid Overdoing the Flaws
Too many flaws can make a character feel unlikable or overburdened.
Instead of: A character who’s selfish, cruel, cowardly, and rude.
Try: A character who’s selfish but occasionally shows surprising generosity.
“Don’t tell anyone I helped you. I have a reputation to maintain.”
9. Let Them Be Vulnerable
Vulnerability adds layers and makes flaws understandable.
Flaw: They’re cold and distant.
Vulnerability: They’ve been hurt before and are terrified of getting close to anyone again.
“It’s easier this way. If I don’t care about you, then you can’t leave me.”
10. Make Their Flaws Integral to the Plot
When flaws directly impact the story, they feel purposeful rather than tacked on.
Flaw: Their arrogance alienates the people they need.
Plot Impact: When their plan fails, they’re left scrambling because no one will help them.
Flawed but lovable characters are the backbone of compelling stories. They remind us that imperfection is human—and that growth is possible.
I made these as a way to compile all the geographical vocabulary that I thought was useful and interesting for writers. Some descriptors share categories, and some are simplified, but for the most part everything is in its proper place. Not all the words are as useable as others, and some might take tricky wording to pull off, but I hope these prove useful to all you writers out there!
(save the images to zoom in on the pics)
the suffering never ends
Hey, random writing tip: Instead of having something be a ridiculously unlikely coincidence, you can make the thing happen due to who this particular character is as a person. Instead of getting stuck on "there's no logical reason to why that would happen", try to bend it into a case of "something like this would never happen to anybody but this specific fucker." Something that makes your reader chuckle and roll their eyes, going "well of course you would."
Why would the timid shy nerd be at a huge sketchy downtown black market bazaar? Well, she's got this beetle colony she's raising that needs a very specific kind of leaf for nest material, and there only place to get it is this one guy at the bazaar that sells that stuff. Why would the most femininely flamboyant guy ever known just happen to have downright encyclopedic knowledge about professional boxing? Well, there was this one time when he was down bad for this guy who was an aspiring professional boxer...
I know it sounds stupidly obvious when written out like this, but when you're up close to your writing, it's hard to see the forest for the trees. Some time ago I finished reading a book, where the whole plot hinges on character A, who is 100% certain that character B is dead, personally getting up and coming down from the top rooms of a castle, to the gates, at 3 am, to come look at some drunk who claims to be this guy who died 17 years ago. Why would A do that, if he's sure that B is dead?
Because he's a Warrior Guy from a culture of Loyalty And Honour, and hearing that someone's got the audacity to go about claiming to be his long-lost brother in battle, there is no other option than to immediately personally go down there to beat the ever-loving shit out of this guy. Who then turns out to actually be character B, after all.
being a writer leads to a genuinely helpful but also very stupid kind of mindfulness where you'll be having a sobbing breakdown or the worst anxiety attack of your life and think "okay, I really need to pay attention to how this feels. so I can incorporate it into my fanfiction."
I’m noticing an increase in new fic writers on AO3 who…uh…mayy not know how to format their fics correctly..so here is a quick and VERY important tip
Using a random fic of mine as example..
The left example: ✅✅✅
The right example: ❌❌❌
Idk how many times I’ve read a good fic summary and been so excited to read before clicking on it and being met with an ugly wall of text. When I see a huge text brick with zero full line breaks my eyes blur and I just siiiigh bc either I click out immediately or I grin and bear it…it’s insufferable!
If a new character speaks, you need a line break. If you notice a paragraph is becoming too large, go ahead and make a line break and/or maybe reconfigure the paragraph to flow better. I’m not a pro writer or even a huge fic writer but…please…ty…
AI is the final fire in our Library of Alexandria
I apologize if you’ve been asked this question before I’m sure you have, but how do you feel about AI in writing? One of my teachers was “writing” stories using ChatGPT then was bragging about how good they were (they were not good) and said he was going to sell them. To put aside any legal concerns in that, I’m just trying to talk him down from that because, personally, I would not enjoy dream job being taken by AI.
The poor man.
Many magazines have closed their submission portals because people thought they could send in AI-written stories.
For years I would tell people who wanted to be writers that the only way to be a writer was to write your own stories because elves would not come in the night and do it for you.
With AI, drunk plagiaristic elves who cannot actually write and would not know an idea or a sentence if it bit their little elvish arses will actually turn up and write something unpublishable for you. This is not a good thing.
Types Of Writer’s Block (And How To Fix Them)
1. High inspiration, low motivation. You have so many ideas to write, but you just don’t have the motivation to actually get them down, and even if you can make yourself start writing it you’ll often find yourself getting distracted or disengaged in favour of imagining everything playing out
Try just bullet pointing the ideas you have instead of writing them properly, especially if you won’t remember it afterwards if you don’t. At least you’ll have the ideas ready to use when you have the motivation later on
2. Low inspiration, high motivation. You’re all prepared, you’re so pumped to write, you open your document aaaaand… three hours later, that cursor is still blinking at the top of a blank page
RIP pantsers but this is where plotting wins out; refer back to your plans and figure out where to go from here. You can also use your bullet points from the last point if this is applicable
3. No inspiration, no motivation. You don’t have any ideas, you don’t feel like writing, all in all everything is just sucky when you think about it
Make a deal with yourself; usually when I’m feeling this way I can tell myself “Okay, just write anyway for ten minutes and after that, if you really want to stop, you can stop” and then once my ten minutes is up I’ve often found my flow. Just remember that, if you still don’t want to keep writing after your ten minutes is up, don’t keep writing anyway and break your deal - it’ll be harder to make deals with yourself in future if your brain knows you don’t honour them
4. Can’t bridge the gap. When you’re stuck on this one sentence/paragraph that you just don’t know how to progress through. Until you figure it out, productivity has slowed to a halt
Mark it up, bullet point what you want to happen here, then move on. A lot of people don’t know how to keep writing after skipping a part because they don’t know exactly what happened to lead up to this moment - but you have a general idea just like you do for everything else you’re writing, and that’s enough. Just keep it generic and know you can go back to edit later, at the same time as when you’re filling in the blank. It’ll give editing you a clear purpose, if nothing else
5. Perfectionism and self-doubt. You don’t think your writing is perfect first time, so you struggle to accept that it’s anything better than a total failure. Whether or not you’re aware of the fact that this is an unrealistic standard makes no difference
Perfection is stagnant. If you write the perfect story, which would require you to turn a good story into something objective rather than subjective, then after that you’d never write again, because nothing will ever meet that standard again. That or you would only ever write the same kind of stories over and over, never growing or developing as a writer. If you’re looking back on your writing and saying “This is so bad, I hate it”, that’s generally a good thing; it means you’ve grown and improved. Maybe your current writing isn’t bad, if just matched your skill level at the time, and since then you’re able to maintain a higher standard since you’ve learned more about your craft as time went on
Accurate
Naming characters in your books is like:
This is Mischa Ernst Townes III: I made a list of thirty-two possible names and narrowed them down through careful evaluation of which phonetic sounds and letter combinations invoked his energy, which etymologies most emulated the spirit of the character, and which names had connotations or allusions that would foreshadow or contrast his inevitable arc while simultaneously harking back to his history in an interconnected web.
OR
This is Roger Halifax it came to me in a dream.
There is no inbetween.
Is it bad that I really love the half measure idea it's easier to talk about the story sometimes than write it the half measure works with this also it can be used as a way to get out of writers block.
Amazon fucks everyone over again
some of you may recall Neil Clarke's blog post on the deluge of AI-generated spam that has hit Clarkesworld Magazine's submissions queue.
well, Clarkesworld and other short fiction magazines like it are about to get another swift kick in the dick: Amazon is discontinuing their magazine subscription service (and replacing it with a new service that pays creators much, much less). of the very little money made in the short fiction market, most of it was coming from Amazon.
as Clarke points out in his editorial on the subject, "While there are plenty of people happily reading, listening to, and writing short fiction, a very disappointingly small percentage of those same people are actively paying for it."
short fiction is not dead. the existence of subreddits like r/NoSleep and blogs like @writing-prompt-s proves that. if you value these stories and you want to help writers get paid for their work, please consider checking out (and subscribing to) some of the following publications:
Analog Science Fiction and Fact
Apex Magazine
Asimov's Science Fiction
Clarkesworld Magazine
Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine
Fantasy & Science Fiction
Fantasy Magazine
Nightmare Magazine
many of these publications charge less than $5 USD per month for subscriptions, so if you've just dropped Netflix and have an extra $10/month lying around, you can instead support two fiction magazines full of interesting, original, well-written stories.
(feel free to reblog with your own favorite publications!)
"The magic system is never fully explained" yeah that's how life works. Imagine having a story set in modern day America and the characters have several pages of exposition on combustion engines and telecommunication networks before we get to the plot
something I don’t see people bring up a lot when talking about worldbuilding, especially when you’re creating cities, is wind. prevailing winds in many places in the northern hemisphere blow from west -> east, and because industrial production tended to take place in the centre of cities, workers would live downwind of factories while the wealthier classes would live on the other side, away from air pollutants, which is why a lot of cities have a poor east-end and a rich west-end, a spatial configuration that persists in many places that are now post-industrial
and in general the built environment has a durability to it that persists far past the historical moments that produce those configurations. this means that the stated aims of a city via a vis city planning are frequently at odds with the physical layout of the city itself. so if you want to create a city that feels like it has a long history to it, working through its earlier stages of production can help with decisions you make about its layout, and also allow for weird spatial contradictions in a city that has to constantly fight against its own physical history
How different is your second draft from the third draft?
Not much. First to second there's often proper construction work. Second to third draft we're in the territory of "I showed the mss to some friends and I need to fix that thing Janice didn't get in Chapter 5, and the goof that Bill pointed out in Chapter 7 and I probably need to write a new beginning to Chapter 11 because I'm confusing absolutely everyone...."
the fact that none of the night at the museum movies were rated over 50% by critics is a reminder that some ppl don’t know how to have fun. the first two movies were flawless. a night watch guard has to babysit museum displays that come to life, complete w old school villains and endless historical crossovers? incredible concept, incredible execution
Hi Neil, as someone who wants to write and can't bring themselves to write, despite loving writing and wanting to write; how do you write? Is there a magical way to make yourself write? Or is the truth more honest and genuine: that writing is the way to write?
I have half a novel, a deep desire to write, and an inability to make my fingers type the words.
How do I circumvent this? Or, as I suspect, is there truly no shortcut?
There's no shortcut. You polish a chair with your bottom, get through the backache and the bad days and you write it, one word at a time.
Just accidentally typed airport instead of apartment. help me
Or cycling back to trawl through the entire document, to check if one has been consistent in the use of either British or American English. It's the "s" and the "z" and Microsoft Word's lacklustre spell check is out to get us!
writing is just staring at a blank document thinking, “this is the year i revolutionize literature,” while frantically googling synonyms for “walked.”
Sparking Chemistry Between Characters #1
⇢ Emotional Timing ( When One Opens Up and the Other Isn’t Ready, Yet)
There’s something so devastatingly real about when characters miss each other, not physically, but emotionally. One’s finally ready to be honest, to be seen… and the other? Still hiding. Still pretending. That emotional dissonance creates a whole different kind of electricity: one rooted in vulnerability, silence, and the ache of almost.
“I trust you,” she said, voice low, eyes steady. He looked at her, and for a second, he almost said it back. But then his smile cracked, soft and sad, and he looked away like the words were burning holes in his throat.
This isn’t the moment they fall into each other’s arms. This is the moment they could have. And those moments still haunt.
Use this when:
You want slow burn that hurts a little
Your characters are stubborn, scared, or emotionally constipated (bless them)
The closeness builds from not-quite-connecting, until one of them finally breaks
⇢ Silent Support ( When They Don’t Say It, But They Show It)
Sometimes the most romantic thing a character can do is just… be there. No speeches. No dramatic gestures. Just showing up, quiet, consistent, unwavering. The kind of person who notices when your laugh sounds tired.
He didn’t say anything when he found her curled up on the kitchen floor. He just sat next to her, their shoulders barely touching, and slid his hoodie off without a word. A minute later, she was wearing it. Five minutes later, she was breathing again.
This isn’t about grand declarations. It’s about the kind of love that doesn’t demand to be acknowledged. The kind that waits. That steadies. That speaks fluent silence.
Use this when:
You want to show love without “I love you”
You’re building intimacy through actions, not words
Your characters aren’t the touchy-feely, talk-it-out types
⇢ Emotional Whiplash (When Conflict Turns Intimate Too Fast)
This is the classic “We were fighting five seconds ago and now I want to kiss you” moment. Because nothing stirs up feelings like frustration mixed with closeness. When characters clash, especially if there’s emotional history or denial involved, it creates heat. They’re already fired up. Already in each other’s space. Now throw in a little vulnerability and BAM, you’ve got magnetic chaos.
“Why do you care what I do?” she snapped, stepping closer. “Because I...” He bit the word back, jaw tight. His fists clenched at his sides. She stared, breath caught in her throat. “Because I do,” he said finally, quieter this time. “More than I should.”
Enemies to lovers. Friends to what even are we. That line-blurring, heart-pounding tension where the air is thick and the truth almost slips out, that’s where this trope lives (I Love It).
Use this when:
You want chaos, angst, and chemistry all at once
Your characters are in denial and one good argument away from kissing
You want something to break open and then immediately regret it
Realizing you're in writer's block while writing is the worst feeling in the world
Me: I’m going to write backstories for my characters! Alright let’s start with the most fleshed out one-
Also Me: Why... why aren’t the words appearing...
Keyboard go BRRRRRRRRRR
Why can’t my subconscious just tell me the cool stuff it created in my characters directly instead of making figure it out months (if not like a year later)?
Like I only just realized that these two different characters who are both deeply tied to another characters life and how they ended up as who they are, are LITERALLY THE TWO SIDES OF THE SAME COIN!
They are both
Arrogant (one is has been humbled by the character tying them together (Character C))
Geniuses
Incredibly powerful
Easily considered ‘reality benders’
Have dedicated the rest of their life towards Character C
Rich
Famous
Clever manipulators
Wanted to use Character C for personal gain, at least in the beginning
Both of the planned gains from using Character C were/are to become the most powerful being there will ever be
Wanting to control Character C (one still for personal gain and the other to prevent Character C from accidentally/purposely destroying humanity and/or reality)
Among some other differences.
I HAVEN’T NOTICED THIS UNTIL TODAY AND THESE CHARACTERS HAVE EXISTED FOR LIKE 2 YEARS AND HAVE CONSTANTLY PLAGUED MY MIND!
