Week 14: Story Lab

 Week 14 

(Source: Writing)

I was really looking forward to doing the story lab this week! I decided to look into the "Writers Write" option to really browse popular posts and get a sense of the writing community. I noticed in my feedback from my storybook that I didn't describe elements of my stores in as much detail as I should. This gives me an opportunity to look at how other writers styles can help me improve in this aspect. The first example is from the "most popular section" called "106 Ways To Describe Sounds." I particularly enjoyed this article because it was a fun way to show all the different words that can really improve someones writing just by adding it in/replacing it. It was nice looking into the difference between "natural sounds" and onomatopoeia. Since I'm writing such a dramatic story I think adding in these sound words can help make it feel more realistic or interesting. I have so many strong characters that this can really help hone in on a certain altercation with another character or really emphasize personalities for these people. 

Another article I found fun to read on and a great reminder while creating personalities of a lot of my characters was, "123 Ideas For Character Flaws." Sometimes I forget to realize that not every single character is perfect. They have to have something about them to connect with the reader. They often become boring when they have no trait about them that is either relatable or just humanistic. It was interesting reading about character flaws because I didn't realize how many types there were, and what is considered a flaw. I noticed in the examples this article gives, some of them are things like "stubbornness" or "paranoid" which I found so small but still such a strong flaw. These kinds of things definitely resonate with people. The list this post gave had so many words to choose from that were all considered strong flaws that I probably wouldn't have thought about. Some of the words included aren't even bad, but still makes them human. 

The last article that really stuck out to me was "350 Character Traits - A Fabulous Resource for Writers." Like I said earlier, I wanted to use this story lab as an opportunity to create details and really make the scene and characters prominent. While reading this post I noticed that using the character trait can really help shift stories in ways that they should, naturally. I really liked the idea of these characters carrying the story based on who they are. I didn't realize that something simple like that can also create a more humanistic story. It gave a list of words to use that can help define who the character is. These traits make the story stronger because it's more believable as well in a way. These are also feelings people want to feel in relation to how the character feels.