You have a world. A universe. A setting. Good! Describe what happens in it normally - describe your main character(s)’s daily life. Now, what would destabilize this routine completely? If many things could, write them all down. Pick your favourite idea(s). Plots are born from change: everything was going normally… until it wasn’t.
Make a list with all the goals/motivations of your main characters.
Can the plot revolve around your characters going after these goals?
Which goals are more important? Focus on those.
Are different characters’ goals in conflict with each other? Conflict is usually what propels a story forward.
What could go wrong in your character’s pursuit of their goal? Make it go wrong.
If you don’t know your characters’ goals, go back to the drawing board; they probably need more development.
If there’s not enough conflict of different motivations, make a new character who creates conflict!
How do you want your main character to have changed by the end of the story? Do you want them to be less selfish? To have come to terms with a part of themself? To have learned something new? Write down ideas that could accomplish this change.
If you can’t think of any way your character could be changed (read: improved) by the end of the story, go back to the drawing board. They might be “too perfect”.
Notes:
The change that triggers your plot can be anything. It doesn’t have to be the start of an epic war that will bring forth the apocalypse, it can be your character meeting a new person who shakes things up in their life, or anything you want!
Motivations can be anything. It doesn’t have to be something grand - if your character’s motivation is to just live a quiet life, you can still come up with a plot that will get in the way of that goal!
Character development can be anything, as well - you don’t need a cliché moral to the story; your character doesn’t even need to change in a good way, if that’s not what you want for your story!
This is what I’ve found works for me, but if you try it and it doesn’t, or if it sounds way too sententious and strict for you - that’s okay! Take it with a grain of salt! Maybe you think your characters are just fine and don’t need more developing even in the situations in which I recommended you “go back to the drawing board”, or maybe you have better ways of coming up with a plot. That’s fine, the writing process can be very personal!
In 2008, archaeologists discovered fragments of flutes carved from vulture and mammoth bones at a Stone Age cave site in southern Germany called Hohle Fels. They were carved and played by Homo sapiens. These flutes are ancient, dating back 42,000 to 43,000 years, making them the oldest flutes in the world.
The oldest Homo sapiens flutes, that is. There is at least one flute made by a Neanderthal that is older. Found at a Neanderthal campsite at Divje Babe in northwestern Slovenia, the Neanderthal flute is estimated to be over 43,000 years old and perhaps as much as 80,000 years old.
The video above features Ljuben Dimkaroski, who plays trumpet for the Ljubljana Opera Orchestra, and who helped archaeologists figure out how to play the prehistoric flute. Don’t worry! He is playing a clay replica, not the original.
God, the sound of this went right through me, right to my soul, and tugged.
The spiritualist in me is having a field day right now. This is fantastic.
That’s the coolest thing I’ve ever seen in my life
It’s actually impossible to measure how many fucks a corvid give because there is no device sensitive enough to register such a tiny amount.
science/animal side of tumblr… explain to me the birb thing
Tail Pulling is a behavior noted in many corvids. The practical application is to create a distraction that will allow the birb to make off with the target’s food. Imagine being in the lunch room and a large fellow has a Twinkie you covet. You can’t just take it from him because he’ll defend his Twinkie. But if you thwap him on the back of his neck and then dash around to snag the Twinkie while he investigates, you stand a decent chance of enjoying spongey goodness. This is basically that in birb form.
Except corvids don’t only do this as a distraction. Sometimes they seem to just being doing it to mess with other animals/birbs. But to use my lunch room analogy, there are times you might thwap someone sneakily on the back of the neck just for amusement. Primates exhibit behavior that appears to be just be annoying other animals for amusement. Given how intelligent crows are, its not unlikely that this is a manifestation of an innate desire to just fuck with someone else for the fun of it. Such as this from the link above:
THANK YOU FOR THE BIRB KNOWLEDGE
BECAUSE IT IS FUN
This speaks to me on a molecular level.
birbs just wanna have fun
Sorry to hijack a little, but to put it bluntly, corvids are also pretty BALSY. They are more than prepared to harass other huge birds of prey which could deal them a lot of damage. There’s plenty of cases of corvids ‘riding’ other birds as well. It’s often to harass the larger bird out of the area, but as @red3blog said, they quite often (in layman’s terms) enjoy fucking shit up for fun.
‘Where the hell is the seatbelt on this thing?’
I mean they deserve a medal for having such huge bird balls imo
“The Path Less Traveled” Tarot Spread. For when you’re facing a new and unknown path, or you’re feeling unsure of where your current path will lead you.
1. What does my current (or future) path look like?
2. How will I know when I’ve found the correct path?
3. Where will my current path take me next?
4. What is the major lesson I will learn from walking this path?
5 & 6: Two obstacles I must overcome on my current (or future) path
7 & 8: Two new skills I will acquire from overcoming these obstacles
—
Please do not repost. Feel free to reblog/use in your personal readings! This spread is available for paid readings in my Etsy shop
apparently an extremely high proportion of cia agents are mormons which is terrifying
Yo WTF
Excuse me….. is this a thing?
basically Mormons make perfect recruits bc they’re typically disciplined, patriotic, and obedient with very few vices and experience working in foreign countries and speaking foreign languages. just google “mormon cia” and you’ll find a bunch of people talking about it.
i should add that it’s not just the cia - apparently the fbi and nsa are chock-full of them too
I mean, they’re basically the Air Force
i thought the usaf was more evangelical - there’s a reason colorado springs had so many megachurches after all
I’ve always heard that the Air Force is super religious and that the Mormons are a huge force within it
It’s been waning in recent years, but they historically have had a death grip on the Boy Scouts too.
I'm Coral. This is a blog of kitties, stars, landscapes, architecture/design, social justice, feminism, and other such things that either break my heart or make me go, "aww!"
Say hey :3
