Evil Writer on Vacation

Hi, everyone! I'm on vacation. That means I have tons of ideas but too much stuff planned for the next two weeks to write them down. I did finish a massive writing project last week, though. Maybe I can pretend that's why I'm not writing anything. Riding the wind of success, etc.

Me: vacation; you: eagerly awaiting the next actual content post on Write Evil. 

In the mean time, why not check out my Tumblr (automatic post queue!) or my Writing board on Pinterest?

Top 5 Tips for Brainstorming (With Downloads!)

Brainstorming. We all do it.

If you don’t do it, you probably have some kind of secret idea generator in your brain. I, for one, welcome our brainstorming robot overlords. But if you’re like the rest of us and sometimes you just have no idea what to write about or how to write about it, don’t give up. Here are my favorite 5 ways to brainstorm.

Kill Writer's Block with Fish Bowl of Prompts

I came across this great tool floating around the internet. It's beautifully minimalist and straight to the point. Fish Bowl of Prompts offers one thing and one thing only: creative prompts.

This is the site's only page. It offers a cute description of a room with a fish bowl full of writing prompts sitting on a table and a bare-bones prompt. Click the "...Or something" button to get a new prompt.

Fish Bowl supposedly has "hundreds upon hundreds" of prompts, stylized as "small slips of paper". I haven't spent enough time clicking to find out if this is true or not, but there are certainly a lot of them. They range from the mundane and romantic-- "You should make something about... a coffee date!"-- to the slightly weird-- "...extraterrestrials!" and "...giant robots!" The prompts are short-- usually just a single word or short phrase. But they can be surprisingly evocative of tons of great ideas.

What do you think? Have you seen any tools like Fish Bowl of Prompts? What about other prompt generators or writer's block killers? Share them in the comments!

The 3 Biggest Lies Your Inner Editor is Telling You

All writers are naturally insecure about their work. I know I am. We all have out hang-ups about our diction, our mechanics, our themes and plots. We're worried that what we're writing about might be overworked-- or worse, overdone. Visions of rejection letters dance in our heads.

Sound like you? If so, then I'm here to tell you that your inner editor-- the little voice in your head that yells at you to get the red pen and the thesaurus-- is probably lying to you in ways you don't even know about.

The Ultimate Guide to College Note-Taking

College will be starting up again in August for those of us who have become slaves to the system and taken out more loans than we know what to do with. Since we're paying ungodly amounts of money to be there, we might as well get something out of it.

Ask any college student and they'll tell you that taking notes is important. Actually, you probably won't even have to ask. They'll just sort of start talking about it if you spend enough time approaching their event horizon. Most full-time college students have fallen so far into the singularity (i.e., homework) that they have no time to think about anything else. They physically cannot comprehend anything but school. Especially if it's finals week. Even light cannot escape. Approach with extreme caution.

"Yeah, I just got out of my 8 a.m. Llama Breeding class."

The Best Name Generators for Writers

If you're anything like me, you have trouble naming your characters, towns, magical creatures, legendary weapons, talking cars... et cetera. Sometimes it seems like all the good names are already taken. Some names are just too iconic to use anything that sounds similar-- Harry Potter, Bilbo Baggins, Jim Kirk. These are some of the best name generators I've come across.

Write Evil is Now on Tumblr

I'm killing it with social networking nowadays. Follow write-evil on Tumblr for all the fun stuff that doesn't make it to this blog, links to my current writing projects, and writing resources and tips.

My Top Six Fiction Villains

A recent discussion with a group of friends led me to think about what makes the perfect villain. 

Villains, evil dudes, big bads, bad guys, baddies. Whatever you call them, they're usually antagonists. I say usually because one of the first pieces advice I ever received about writing them was to have them act as though they're the protagonist in their own story. Villains don't think of themselves as villains. They don't even think of themselves as antagonists. They are living their own lives (metaphorically); the "protagonist" of the main story is probably not the protagonist of the villain's story. 

Perfect villains, for me, have a few criteria. Their actions are usually unambiguously 'bad' or immoral (but not within their own moral code). They have to want the opposite of what the protagonist wants. And they have to have reasons-- but not justifications-- for being evil.