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Character Concept Picker – Creating Literary and Video-Game Characters

April 25, 2022

characters, fiction, javascript, narrative, programming, video games, writing

From Narrative Nods to Word Journey, I’ve made a lot of programs that one way or another revolve around words, writing, and fictional worlds. Character Concept Picker is such an app. It’s open-source, free for all, and it can help you come up with ideas for building characters for your next novel or video game.

It all started when, browsing LinkedIn, I discovered an Excel table with some character traits and other characteristics, meant as a guide for creating characters. It was the work of Jacob Conner Harris, a narrative designer.

I messaged him and asked whether he’d be interested in teaming up and creating a little app using the data he’d come up with. He said yes, and Character Concept Picker is the result.

character concept picker — The results generated by Character Concept Picker

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Interested in Story Development Software? Narrative Nods v2 Is Here!

April 19, 2021

Fiction Writing Tips, Programming, Writing

characters, narrative, plot, programming, software

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Many authors, at one point or another, have used what is known as story development software. Free, paid, on Android, on PC, old, new, in some form or iteration you have likely used a program that helps you design your plot, develop your characters, and so on.

Let me guess: You “kind of” liked it, and yet something was missing. Well, that has been exactly my experience, with everything I’d ever tried, and that’s why I decided to create a piece of story development software the way I wanted it to be. Presenting Narrative Nods v2!

Although it shares the same name and basic framework with my Android app with the same name (no longer available), it’s nowhere near the same program. Not only is it much more mature, intelligent, and effective, but it’s also platform-independent. You can use it on Android or iPhone, PC or Mac (or Linux), and overall, on any device using a modern browser.

Let’s take a quick look at its features and where to find it!

*Narrative Nods v2* is a piece of story development software that helps you transform your ideas into coherent, powerful plots

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Inevitable Narrative: How to Detect what Is Necessary in Your Fiction

December 7, 2020

Fiction Writing Tips, Writing

characters, ending, narrative, plot, writing

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Learning how to detect what is necessary in your fiction allows you to write an inevitable narrative. A narrative that is inevitable is structurally solid and leads to a sense-making ending.

Therefore, it should be fairly obvious that learning to see what’s necessary and what’s not when writing is very important. To put it simply, without having an inevitable narrative you will likely have problems with narrative pace as well as a problematic ending.

Moreover, a non inevitable narrative… inevitably creates problems with over-explaining and exposition. The reason? If something that shouldn’t be there actually is, you tend to (sometimes subconsciously) rationalize it with superfluous content.

In this post we’ll take a closer look at inevitable narratives. I’ll show you how to decide what is narratively inevitable and what isn’t, as well as how to structure your narrative in a way that precisely favors its inevitability.

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