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Nothing is more frustrating for writers than facing a blank page and not having the slightest idea what to write about. This struggle is real for all kinds of writers: novelists, short story writers, poets, and even bloggers.

While some may be quick to write it off (pardon the pun) as writer's block, professional writers believe in the importance of pushing past the wall and writing-sometimes, just anything. So how do you overcome the blank page?

How Do You Get Ideas for Short Stories?

Short stories usually range from 2,000 words to about 8,000 words, with longer ones reaching as many as 20,000 words. When done well, writers can even make money writing short stories.

This means that whatever idea you come up with for a short story, you need to be able to tell it succinctly.

Professional writers recommend keeping an idea notebook, so each time you think of something, even the barest wisp of an idea, you can jot it down and return to it later.

For example, if you jot down an observation on a train, of a ragged looking man carrying a small paper bag, you might brainstorm what he could be carrying in the bag. Or, you might try asking, "What if...?"

Asking the question "What if" helps trigger your brain to think of something that isn't happening at the moment: it helps you imagine an alternate reality. In this case, you might ask:

What if... this man was really a millionaire in disguise? Why is he dressed as a beggar?

What if... this man was just laid off and going home to a sick wife with his last penny spent on a loaf of bread for her?

What if... this man used to be a legendary businessman who just went bankrupt? How did he lose his money? What is he doing now?

See how one idea can trigger many more?

But sometimes, even the notes you've taken may not give you much to work with. Perhaps you are too close to them to be able to conjure up interesting images. In times like these, writing prompts come in really handy.

Short Story Prompts

If you want to write a short story and are having trouble coming up with ideas, why not try some of these short story prompts?

Science Fiction Short Story Prompts

Comedy Short Story Prompts

Fantasy Short Story Prompts

Mystery Short Story Prompts

Romance Short Story Prompts

How Can I Start Writing?

From this list of short story prompts, choose two of your favorite genres, and pick one story prompt from each genre that appeals to you.

You can also check out our list of creative writing prompts for some added inspiration, so you can keep those ideas (and your ink) flowing!
Have you ever written a short story? Tell us about it in the comments below!
If you enjoyed this post, then you might also like:

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40 Short Story Prompts You Can Write in a Day - TCK Publishing

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Nothing is more frustrating for writers than facing a blank page and not having the slightest idea what to write about. This struggle is real for all kinds of writers: novelists, short story writers, poets, and even bloggers.

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5 Essential Elements for Writing a Good Short Story

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5 Essential Elements for Writing a Good Short Story

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Have you always wanted to write a short story, but do you have no idea where to begin?

You came to the right place. Last month, I published a new book ' How to Write a Short Story '. In the book, I show you a step-by-step process to successfully write and publish short stories. From developing an idea to attracting readers online.

But what's the quickest way to get it right? What are the essential elements to get your story right? These following are the most important elements to creating a strong and compelling story.

"Fiction lets us try different mental states and experience other minds in action." - Lisa Zunshine

When you write a short story, your short story will usually fit into a genre. In addition, you're dealing with themes fitting to your story, based on issues and values you hold dear.

First, you must determine what it is you want to say. What bothers you? What do you find intriguing? What do you hold dear or believe strongly in? You have to find one or several themes. However, one theme is usually the best decision when it comes to short stories. It gives you the space to explore and not confuse your readers with other ideas. Try to make one main point.

Approach your themes in an authentic way and don't be afraid to pour your heart out, if you wrap it in beautiful prose. Hide your messages thoroughly, but leave clues to the reader, it's like magic. Bring your experience into your writing.

In terms of determining a genre, I'd like to suggest to ask yourself what genres you like reading yourself. Have a look at your bookshelf. What genres are you unfamiliar with but curious about? Perhaps you find yourself in a totally new universe and bursting with story ideas!

You can use genre tropes to describe certain common recurring motives, tactics, images, language or even clichés of a particular genre. In terms of Fantasy, 'the hero is orphaned' and 'you follow the Hero's Journey', are common tropes. However, don't be a slave to the common tropes. You need to be a chef, not a cook. A chef comes up with something new and is inventive. A cook follows recipes. Create your own dish and serve it as a delicious short story. Off to work!

Read the full article:

"Plot is no more than footprints left in the snow after your characters have run by on their way to incredible destinations. Plot is observed after the fact rather than before. It cannot precede action. It is the chart that remains when an action is through. That is all plot ever should be. It is human desire to let run, running, and reaching a goal. It cannot be mechanical. It can only be dynamic." - Ray Bradbury

I like to view plotting a short story as setting up chapters for a manual to achieve a desired outcome. But some people never open the manual and just try out different stuff to reach the same result. It's up to you!

It depends on what type of writer you are. If you are an outliner or plotter, this part is right up your alley. Knowing what you want to achieve with your story and how your character moves from point A to B can make the actual writing so much easier.

However, some writers like to write 'as they go'. These writers are known as pantsers or discovery writers.

Personally, I think it's good to have a clear view of the message you want to bring across with your story and what your endgame is. About 75% of the time, I work like this with my short stories. So I outline the entire story.

In your story, you make promises to your reader, usually at the beginning. You want twists and turns but you don't want to disappoint the reader by turning the story into something different by the end. At the end of your story, you want to make sure you fulfill the promises you made to the reader.

"A plot is the purposeful progression of events. Such events must be logically connected, each being the outgrowth of the preceding and all leading up to the final climax. I stress the words events because you can have a purposeful progression of ideas, or of conversations, without action. But a novel is a story about human beings in action." - Ayn Rand

How do I plot my short stories?

I start with my story idea and build a premise

Then I think of some promises I'd like to make

I think about what insights I want my main character(s) to have at the end

I come up with a route my character(s) have to walk on to reach that end

I think of ways to make that route as interesting as possible to my readers and create a sequence of events

I map out the route in scenes and create bullet points of important character moments, clues, insights, and progression in the story

Read the full article:

"You begin with action that is compelling enough to draw us in, make us want to know more. Background is where you let us see and know who these people are, how they've come to be together, what was going on before the opening of the story. Then you develop these people, so that we learn what they care most about. The plot - the drama, the actions, the tension - will grow out of that. You move them along until everything comes together in the climax, after which things are different for the main characters, different in some real way. And then there is the ending: what is our sense of who these people are now, what are they left with, what happened, and what did it mean?" - Anne Lamott

Every story is built around some form of logic, whether it's explicit or not. Stories follow story arcs, which in turn closely follow the story's plot.

The most typical way to structure a story is to divide it into three acts:

Act 1: Introduction. Here's where you introduce your readers to your characters and establish your story setting and tone. Your protagonist is usually called to action here. Here you make some promises to your reader as to where the story leads to.

Act 2: Confrontation. The protagonist and his or her allies face some complications as they are moving along. Often things get worse for them and they need to find ways to tip the scale.

Act 3: Resolution. Which is what your main character tries to do in the last act. He or she is actually doing something to tip the balance, face trials, solve problems. As a writer, you have to build towards a satisfying conclusion here that is living up to the promises you've made early on in the story.

For a short story, this is always my go-to structure. It's simple, effective, and it has been in use ever since stories were written down.

Read the full article:

"What does your character want, what is his dream, what shape has it, and how expressed? Given expression, this is the dynamo of his life, and your life, then, as Creator." - Ray Bradbury

Who are your characters? What motivates them? What do they want and why?

These questions are not to be taken lightly. Even if you have a great idea for a story, with an intriguing plot, if your characters are flat - or worse: not interesting - your story falters. Don't fail at characters, fail on other things, but not your characters.

What elements make up for an interesting character?

Competence. If you have characters who aren't very competent (yet), it raises the tension. If he/she tries hard at becoming competent, your readers will cheer them on. Have someone people can root for.

Proactivity (or motivation). Kurt Vonnegut famously said: "a character must want something, even if it's just a glass of water." If your protagonist isn't proactive (or forced into being proactive by another character), your story isn't moving forward. What's at stake?

Development. Ideally, your characters are different at the end of your story in comparison to who they were at the beginning. What lesson do they need to learn?

Conflict. Who or what gets in the way of your main character? What hurdles do they need to overcome to get from point A to B? Conflict between characters creates progress in a story.

Flaws. Flawed characters are likable, but it's imperative that you make them overcome some of their flaws. No one is perfect. Plus it may remind your reader of themselves. It may inspire them to grow just like your character. After all, stories grant us a way to see life through a different lens and learn something about ourselves and our place in the world.

Read the full article:

"Dialogue is more like a movie than it is like real life, since it should be more dramatic." - Anne Lamott

I love this quote by Anne Lamott. Dialogue should be dramatic.

Dialogue can move a story forward, it creates interaction with your characters and above all, conflict. Dialogue done well is better than good narrative.

Fantasy author Brandon Sanderson uses the MICRO rules for writing good dialogue:

Motive: Let the motivations of your characters seep through what they say.

Individuality: Write dialogue in such a way so you can tell the characters apart.

Conflict: Good dialogue has its own innate conflict in it.

Realism: How realistic do you want your writing to be? Make a decision.

Objective: Why do the characters say something? What is their aim?

Read your dialogue out loud. Does it sound right? Do people talk that way? Reading your words out loud is always a good way to self-edit.

Use the correct interpunction. I never studied writing or English. One of the best things to do when you want to learn to write is to read a lot. You don't have to reinvent the wheel.

One of my friends (who happens to be an editor) made it very clear: make complete sentences. Often in 'real-life' we abbreviate and shorten. We're lazy. But our dialogue writing shouldn't be.

Just write down dialogue as people say it in real life, right? No. Don't punish your reader. People like clear and complete sentences.

Read the full article:

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The 5 Essential Elements For Writing a Good Short Story

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Have you always wanted to write a short story, but do you have no idea where to begin? You came to the right place. Last month, I published a new book ' How to Write a Short Story '. In the book, I show you a step-by-step process to successfully write and publish short stories.

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"Plot is like creating an illusion." - Brandon Sanderson

In his lectures, Brandon Sanderson often touches upon plotting for novel writing. If you're interested to dive in, please see his Youtube lecture:

As an illusionist, you have to hide your foreshadowing, but you do have to give a sense of PROGRESS. That's is the most important part of plotting. The second most important part is PROMISES. Learn to make promises early in your story and fulfill them in an (unexpected) satisfying way throughout the story. Especially at the end.

As an author, you have control of your story. In terms of plot, that means you have control over:

Pacing (time)

The promise(s) you make

Great (character) moments

The sequence of events

What's happening to your character(s)

Your plot determines how your short story is paced and what promises your story is making to the reader.

Since you have limited space in a short, try to have one main plot and no more than 1-3 subplots or goals.

As said in the introduction, every writer has a different relationship with plotting. Stephen King dislikes plotting: "I distrust plot for two reasons: first, because our lives are largely plotless, even when you add in all our reasonable precautions and careful planning; and second, because I believe plotting and the spontaneity of real creation aren't compatible."

Again, it's up to you. I get what King is saying. He's excited about figuring out where his characters lead him. He finds his plot after the fact.

Personally, I think it's good to have a clear view of the message you want to bring across with your story and what your endgame is. About 75% of the time, I work like this with my short stories.

An example of a fully plotted short story of mine:

The other 25% results in stories without a preconceived ending. Writing these can be fun too.

An example of a short story of mine without a preconceived ending:

So: experiment, see what works for you. There is no one correct way to write a story. Articles like this serve to keep you on track when you're lost in writing your story.

Want to learn how to write a short story from coming up with your ideas to publishing them? Get my new all covering guide on Amazon.

"The development of relationships creates plot." - Anne Lamott

First of all, in what ways can you draw readers in?

Main characters you like and care about

Great interaction

Interesting premise

Banter

Exciting promises

Wonderful world building

...

Can you think of more reasons? These can be really helpful in designing your story.

Find out what each character cares most about in the world because then you will have discovered what's at stake. Find a way to express this discovery in action, and then let your people set about finding or holding onto or defending whatever it is. But something must be at stake or you will have no tension and your readers will not tum the pages. - Anne Lamott

Characters, relationships, and growth. Those three elements to me are the most important to create an interesting plot. Build a premise and play around with these elements to create your plot.

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"Plot is like creating an illusion." - Brandon Sanderson In his lectures, Brandon Sanderson often touches upon plotting for novel writing. If you're interested to dive in, please see his Youtube lecture: As an illusionist, you have to hide your foreshadowing, but you do have to give a sense of PROGRESS.

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Ken Liu's incredible story "Paper Menagerie" just became the first work of fiction to win all three of SF's major awards: the Hugo, the Nebula and the World Fantasy Award. And we're proud to be able to reprint the whole story, right here at io9. Here's your chance to find out what all the excitement is about, and discover one of science fiction's fastest rising stars.

"Paper Menagerie"

by Ken Liu

One of my earliest memories starts with me sobbing. I refused to be soothed no matter what Mom and Dad tried.

Dad gave up and left the bedroom, but Mom took me into the kitchen and sat me down at the breakfast table.

" Kan, kan," she said, as she pulled a sheet of wrapping paper from on top of the fridge. For years, Mom carefully sliced open the wrappings around Christmas gifts and saved them on top of the fridge in a thick stack.

She set the paper down, plain side facing up, and began to fold it. I stopped crying and watched her, curious.

She turned the paper over and folded it again. She pleated, packed, tucked, rolled, and twisted until the paper disappeared between her cupped hands. Then she lifted the folded-up paper packet to her mouth and blew into it, like a balloon.

" Kan," she said. " Laohu." She put her hands down on the table and let go.

A little paper tiger stood on the table, the size of two fists placed together. The skin of the tiger was the pattern on the wrapping paper, white background with red candy canes and green Christmas trees.

I reached out to Mom's creation. Its tail twitched, and it pounced playfully at my finger. " Rawrr-sa," it growled, the sound somewhere between a cat and rustling newspapers.

I laughed, startled, and stroked its back with an index finger. The paper tiger vibrated under my finger, purring.

" Zhe jiao zhezhi," Mom said. This is called origami.

I didn't know this at the time, but Mom's kind was special. She breathed into them so that they shared her breath, and thus moved with her life. This was her magic.

#

Dad had picked Mom out of a catalog.

One time, when I was in high school, I asked Dad about the details. He was trying to get me to speak to Mom again.

He had signed up for the introduction service back in the spring of 1973. Flipping through the pages steadily, he had spent no more than a few seconds on each page until he saw the picture of Mom.

I've never seen this picture. Dad described it: Mom was sitting in a chair, her side to the camera, wearing a tight green silk cheongsam. Her head was turned to the camera so that her long black hair was draped artfully over her chest and shoulder. She looked out at him with the eyes of a calm child.

"That was the last page of the catalog I saw," he said.

The catalog said she was eighteen, loved to dance, and spoke good English because she was from Hong Kong. None of these facts turned out to be true.

He wrote to her, and the company passed their messages back and forth. Finally, he flew to Hong Kong to meet her.

"The people at the company had been writing her responses. She didn't know any English other than 'hello' and 'goodbye.'"

What kind of woman puts herself into a catalog so that she can be bought? The high school me thought I knew so much about everything. Contempt felt good, like wine.

Instead of storming into the office to demand his money back, he paid a waitress at the hotel restaurant to translate for them.

"She would look at me, her eyes halfway between scared and hopeful, while I spoke. And when the girl began translating what I said, she'd start to smile slowly."

He flew back to Connecticut and began to apply for the papers for her to come to him. I was born a year later, in the Year of the Tiger.

#

At my request, Mom also made a goat, a deer, and a water buffalo out of wrapping paper. They would run around the living room while Laohu chased after them, growling. When he caught them he would press down until the air went out of them and they became just flat, folded-up pieces of paper. I would then have to blow into them to re-inflate them so they could run around some more.

Sometimes, the animals got into trouble. Once, the water buffalo jumped into a dish of soy sauce on the table at dinner. (He wanted to wallow, like a real water buffalo.) I picked him out quickly but the capillary action had already pulled the dark liquid high up into his legs. The sauce-softened legs would not hold him up, and he collapsed onto the table. I dried him out in the sun, but his legs became crooked after that, and he ran around with a limp. Mom eventually wrapped his legs in saran wrap so that he could wallow to his heart's content (just not in soy sauce).

Also, Laohu liked to pounce at sparrows when he and I played in the backyard. But one time, a cornered bird struck back in desperation and tore his ear. He whimpered and winced as I held him and Mom patched his ear together with tape. He avoided birds after that.

And then one day, I saw a TV documentary about sharks and asked Mom for one of my own. She made the shark, but he flapped about on the table unhappily. I filled the sink with water, and put him in. He swam around and around happily. However, after a while he became soggy and translucent, and slowly sank to the bottom, the folds coming undone. I reached in to rescue him, and all I ended up with was a wet piece of paper.

Laohu put his front paws together at the edge of the sink and rested his head on them. Ears drooping, he made a low growl in his throat that made me feel guilty.

Mom made a new shark for me, this time out of tin foil. The shark lived happily in a large goldfish bowl. Laohu and I liked to sit next to the bowl to watch the tin foil shark chasing the goldfish, Laohu sticking his face up against the bowl on the other side so that I saw his eyes, magnified to the size of coffee cups, staring at me from across the bowl.

#

When I was ten, we moved to a new house across town. Two of the women neighbors came by to welcome us. Dad served them drinks and then apologized for having to run off to the utility company to straighten out the prior owner's bills. "Make yourselves at home. My wife doesn't speak much English, so don't think she's being rude for not talking to you."

While I read in the dining room, Mom unpacked in the kitchen. The neighbors conversed in the living room, not trying to be particularly quiet.

"He seems like a normal enough man. Why did he do that?"

"Something about the mixing never seems right. The child looks unfinished. Slanty eyes, white face. A little monster."

"Do you think he can speak English?"

The women hushed. After a while they came into the dining room.

"Hello there! What's your name?"

"Jack," I said.

"That doesn't sound very Chinesey."

Mom came into the dining room then. She smiled at the women. The three of them stood in a triangle around me, smiling and nodding at each other, with nothing to say, until Dad came back.

#

Mark, one of the neighborhood boys, came over with his Star Wars action figures. Obi-Wan Kenobi's lightsaber lit up and he could swing his arms and say, in a tinny voice, "Use the Force!" I didn't think the figure looked much like the real Obi-Wan at all.

Together, we watched him repeat this performance five times on the coffee table. "Can he do anything else?" I asked.

Mark was annoyed by my question. "Look at all the details," he said.

I looked at the details. I wasn't sure what I was supposed to say.

Mark was disappointed by my response. "Show me your toys."

I didn't have any toys except my paper menagerie. I brought Laohu out from my bedroom. By then he was very worn, patched all over with tape and glue, evidence of the years of repairs Mom and I had done on him. He was no longer as nimble and sure-footed as before. I sat him down on the coffee table. I could hear the skittering steps of the other animals behind in the hallway, timidly peeking into the living room.

" Xiao laohu," I said, and stopped. I switched to English. "This is Tiger." Cautiously, Laohu strode up and purred at Mark, sniffing his hands.

Mark examined the Christmas-wrap pattern of Laohu's skin. "That doesn't look like a tiger at all. Your Mom makes toys for you from trash?"

I had never thought of Laohu as trash. But looking at him now, he was really just a piece of wrapping paper.

Mark pushed Obi-Wan's head again. The lightsaber flashed; he moved his arms up and down. "Use the Force!"

Laohu turned and pounced, knocking the plastic figure off the table. It hit the floor and broke, and Obi-Wan's head rolled under the couch. " Rawwww," Laohu laughed. I joined him.

Mark punched me, hard. "This was very expensive! You can't even find it in the stores now. It probably cost more than what your dad paid for your mom!"

I stumbled and fell to the floor. Laohu growled and leapt at Mark's face.

Mark screamed, more out of fear and surprise than pain. Laohu was only made of paper, after all.

Mark grabbed Laohu and his snarl was choked off as Mark crumpled him in his hand and tore him in half. He balled up the two pieces of paper and threw them at me. "Here's your stupid cheap Chinese garbage."

After Mark left, I spent a long time trying, without success, to tape together the pieces, smooth out the paper, and follow the creases to refold Laohu. Slowly, the other animals came into the living room and gathered around us, me and the torn wrapping paper that used to be Laohu.

#

My fight with Mark didn't end there. Mark was popular at school. I never want to think again about the two weeks that followed.

I came home that Friday at the end of the two weeks. " Xuexiao hao ma?" Mom asked. I said nothing and went to the bathroom. I looked into the mirror. I look nothing like her, nothing.

At dinner I asked Dad, "Do I have a chink face?"

Dad put down his chopsticks. Even though I had never told him what happened in school, he seemed to understand. He closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "No, you don't."

Mom looked at Dad, not understanding. She looked back at me. " Sha jiao chink?"

"English," I said. "Speak English."

She tried. "What happen?"

I pushed the chopsticks and the bowl before me away: stir-fried green peppers with five-spice beef. "We should eat American food."

Dad tried to reason. "A lot of families cook Chinese sometimes."

"We are not other families." I looked at him. Other families don't have moms who don't belong.

He looked away. And then he put a hand on Mom's shoulder. "I'll get you a cookbook."

Mom turned to me. " Bu haochi?"

"English," I said, raising my voice. "Speak English."

Mom reached out to touch my forehead, feeling for my temperature. " Fashao la?"

I brushed her hand away. "I'm fine. Speak English!" I was shouting.

"Speak English to him," Dad said to Mom. "You knew this was going to happen some day. What did you expect?"

Mom dropped her hands to her side. She sat, looking from Dad to me, and back to Dad again. She tried to speak, stopped, and tried again, and stopped again.

"You have to," Dad said. "I've been too easy on you. Jack needs to fit in."

Mom looked at him. "If I say 'love,' I feel here." She pointed to her lips. "If I say ' ai,' I feel here." She put her hand over her heart.

Dad shook his head. "You are in America."

Mom hunched down in her seat, looking like the water buffalo when Laohu used to pounce on him and squeeze the air of life out of him.

"And I want some real toys."

#

Dad bought me a full set of Star Wars action figures. I gave the Obi-Wan Kenobi to Mark.

I packed the paper menagerie in a large shoebox and put it under the bed.

The next morning, the animals had escaped and took over their old favorite spots in my room. I caught them all and put them back into the shoebox, taping the lid shut. But the animals made so much noise in the box that I finally shoved it into the corner of the attic as far away from my room as possible.

If Mom spoke to me in Chinese, I refused to answer her. After a while, she tried to use more English. But her accent and broken sentences embarrassed me. I tried to correct her. Eventually, she stopped speaking altogether if I were around.

Mom began to mime things if she needed to let me know something. She tried to hug me the way she saw American mothers did on TV. I thought her movements exaggerated, uncertain, ridiculous, graceless. She saw that I was annoyed, and stopped.

"You shouldn't treat your mother that way," Dad said. But he couldn't look me in the eyes as he said it. Deep in his heart, he must have realized that it was a mistake to have tried to take a Chinese peasant girl and expect her to fit in the suburbs of Connecticut.

Mom learned to cook American style. I played video games and studied French.

Every once in a while, I would see her at the kitchen table studying the plain side of a sheet of wrapping paper. Later a new paper animal would appear on my nightstand and try to cuddle up to me. I caught them, squeezed them until the air went out of them, and then stuffed them away in the box in the attic.

Mom finally stopped making the animals when I was in high school. By then her English was much better, but I was already at that age when I wasn't interested in what she had to say whatever language she used.

Sometimes, when I came home and saw her tiny body busily moving about in the kitchen, singing a song in Chinese to herself, it was hard for me to believe that she gave birth to me. We had nothing in common. She might as well be from the moon. I would hurry on to my room, where I could continue my all-American pursuit of happiness.

#

Dad and I stood, one on each side of Mom, lying on the hospital bed. She was not yet even forty, but she looked much older.

For years she had refused to go to the doctor for the pain inside her that she said was no big deal. By the time an ambulance finally carried her in, the cancer had spread far beyond the limits of surgery.

My mind was not in the room. It was the middle of the on-campus recruiting season, and I was focused on resumes, transcripts, and strategically constructed interview schedules. I schemed about how to lie to the corporate recruiters most effectively so that they'll offer to buy me. I understood intellectually that it was terrible to think about this while your mother lay dying. But that understanding didn't mean I could change how I felt.

She was conscious. Dad held her left hand with both of his own. He leaned down to kiss her forehead. He seemed weak and old in a way that startled me. I realized that I knew almost as little about Dad as I did about Mom.

Mom smiled at him. "I'm fine."

She turned to me, still smiling. "I know you have to go back to school." Her voice was very weak and it was difficult to hear her over the hum of the machines hooked up to her. "Go. Don't worry about me. This is not a big deal. Just do well in school."

I reached out to touch her hand, because I thought that was what I was supposed to do. I was relieved. I was already thinking about the flight back, and the bright California sunshine.

She whispered something to Dad. He nodded and left the room.

"Jack, if - " she was caught up in a fit of coughing, and could not speak for some time. "If I don't make it, don't be too sad and hurt your health. Focus on your life. Just keep that box you have in the attic with you, and every year, at Qingming, just take it out and think about me. I'll be with you always."

Qingming was the Chinese Festival for the Dead. When I was very young, Mom used to write a letter on Qingming to her dead parents back in China, telling them the good news about the past year of her life in America. She would read the letter out loud to me, and if I made a comment about something, she would write it down in the letter too. Then she would fold the letter into a paper crane, and release it, facing west. We would then watch, as the crane flapped its crisp wings on its long journey west, towards the Pacific, towards China, towards the graves of Mom's family.

It had been many years since I last did that with her.

"I don't know anything about the Chinese calendar," I said. "Just rest, Mom. "

"Just keep the box with you and open it once in a while. Just open - " she began to cough again.

"It's okay, Mom." I stroked her arm awkwardly.

" Haizi, mama ai ni - " Her cough took over again. An image from years ago flashed into my memory: Mom saying ai and then putting her hand over her heart.

"Alright, Mom. Stop talking."

Dad came back, and I said that I needed to get to the airport early because I didn't want to miss my flight.

She died when my plane was somewhere over Nevada.

#

Dad aged rapidly after Mom died. The house was too big for him and had to be sold. My girlfriend Susan and I went to help him pack and clean the place.

Susan found the shoebox in the attic. The paper menagerie, hidden in the uninsulated darkness of the attic for so long, had become brittle and the bright wrapping paper patterns had faded.

"I've never seen origami like this," Susan said. "Your Mom was an amazing artist."

The paper animals did not move. Perhaps whatever magic had animated them stopped when Mom died. Or perhaps I had only imagined that these paper constructions were once alive. The memory of children could not be trusted.

#

It was the first weekend in April, two years after Mom's death. Susan was out of town on one of her endless trips as a management consultant and I was home, lazily flipping through the TV channels.

I paused at a documentary about sharks. Suddenly I saw, in my mind, Mom's hands, as they folded and refolded tin foil to make a shark for me, while Laohu and I watched.

A rustle. I looked up and saw that a ball of wrapping paper and torn tape was on the floor next to the bookshelf. I walked over to pick it up for the trash.

The ball of paper shifted, unfurled itself, and I saw that it was Laohu, who I hadn't thought about in a very long time. " Rawrr-sa." Mom must have put him back together after I had given up.

He was smaller than I remembered. Or maybe it was just that back then my fists were smaller.

Susan had put the paper animals around our apartment as decoration. She probably left Laohu in a pretty hidden corner because he looked so shabby.

I sat down on the floor, and reached out a finger. Laohu's tail twitched, and he pounced playfully. I laughed, stroking his back. Laohu purred under my hand.

"How've you been, old buddy?"

Laohu stopped playing. He got up, jumped with feline grace into my lap, and proceeded to unfold himself.

In my lap was a square of creased wrapping paper, the plain side up. It was filled with dense Chinese characters. I had never learned to read Chinese, but I knew the characters for son, and they were at the top, where you'd expect them in a letter addressed to you, written in Mom's awkward, childish handwriting.

I went to the computer to check the Internet. Today was Qingming.

#

I took the letter with me downtown, where I knew the Chinese tour buses stopped. I stopped every tourist, asking, " Nin hui du zhongwen ma?" Can you read Chinese? I hadn't spoken Chinese in so long that I wasn't sure if they understood.

A young woman agreed to help. We sat down on a bench together, and she read the letter to me aloud. The language that I had tried to forget for years came back, and I felt the words sinking into me, through my skin, through my bones, until they squeezed tight around my heart.

#
We haven't talked in a long time. You are so angry when I try to touch you that I'm afraid. And I think maybe this pain I feel all the time now is something serious. So I decided to write to you. I'm going to write in the paper animals I made for you that you used to like so much.
The animals will stop moving when I stop breathing. But if I write to you with all my heart, I'll leave a little of myself behind on this paper, in these words. Then, if you think of me on Qingming, when the spirits of the departed are allowed to visit their families, you'll make the parts of myself I leave behind come alive too. The creatures I made for you will again leap and run and pounce, and maybe you'll get to see these words then.
Because I have to write with all my heart, I need to write to you in Chinese. All this time I still haven't told you the story of my life. When you were little, I always thought I'd tell you the story when you were older, so you could understand. But somehow that chance never came up.
I was born in 1957, in Sigulu Village, Hebei Province. Your grandparents were both from very poor peasant families with few relatives. Only a few years after I was born, the Great Famines struck China, during which thirty million people died. The first memory I have was waking up to see my mother eating dirt so that she could fill her belly and leave the last bit of flour for me.

Things got better after that. Sigulu is famous for its zhezhi papercraft, and my mother taught me how to make paper animals and give them life. This was practical magic in the life of the village. We made paper birds to chase grasshoppers away from the fields, and paper tigers to keep away the mice. For Chinese New Year my friends and I made red paper dragons. I'll never forget the sight of all those little dragons zooming across the sky overhead, holding up strings of exploding firecrackers to scare away all the bad memories of the past year. You would have loved it.
Then came the Cultural Revolution in 1966. Neighbor turned on neighbor, and brother against brother. Someone remembered that my mother's brother, my uncle, had left for Hong Kong back in 1946, and became a merchant there. Having a relative in Hong Kong meant we were spies and enemies of the people, and we had to be struggled against in every way. Your poor grandmother - she couldn't take the abuse and threw herself down a well. Then some boys with hunting muskets dragged your grandfather away one day into the woods, and he never came back. There I was, a ten-year-old orphan. The only relative I had in the world was my uncle in Hong Kong. I snuck away one night and climbed onto a freight train going south. Down in Guangdong Province a few days later, some men caught me stealing food from a field. When they heard that I was trying to get to Hong Kong, they laughed. "It's your lucky day. Our trade is to bring girls to Hong Kong." They hid me in the bottom of a truck along with other girls, and smuggled us across the border. We were taken to a basement and told to stand up and look healthy and intelligent for the buyers. Families paid the warehouse a fee and came by to look us over and select one of us to "adopt." The Chin family picked me to take care of their two boys. I got up every morning at four to prepare breakfast. I fed and bathed the boys. I shopped for food. I did the laundry and swept the floors. I followed the boys around and did their bidding. At night I was locked into a cupboard in the kitchen to sleep. If I was slow or did anything wrong I was beaten. If the boys did anything wrong I was beaten. If I was caught trying to learn English I was beaten. "Why do you want to learn English?" Mr. Chin asked. "You want to go to the police? We'll tell the police that you are a mainlander illegally in Hong Kong. They'd love to have you in their prison." Six years I lived like this. One day, an old woman who sold fish to me in the morning market pulled me aside. "I know girls like you. How old are you now, sixteen? One day, the man who owns you will get drunk, and he'll look at you and pull you to him and you can't stop him. The wife will find out, and then you will think you really have gone to hell. You have to get out of this life. I know someone who can help." She told me about American men who wanted Asian wives. If I can cook, clean, and take care of my American husband, he'll give me a good life. It was the only hope I had. And that was how I got into the catalog with all those lies and met your father. It is not a very romantic story, but it is my story. In the suburbs of Connecticut, I was lonely. Your father was kind and gentle with me, and I was very grateful to him. But no one understood me, and I understood nothing. But then you were born! I was so happy when I looked into your face and saw shades of my mother, my father, and myself. I had lost my entire family, all of Sigulu, everything I ever knew and loved. But there you were, and your face was proof that they were real. I hadn't made them up.
Now I had someone to talk to. I would teach you my language, and we could together remake a small piece of everything that I loved and lost. When you said your first words to me, in Chinese that had the same accent as my mother and me, I cried for hours. When I made the first zhezhi animals for you, and you laughed, I felt there were no worries in the world.
You grew up a little, and now you could even help your father and I talk to each other. I was really at home now. I finally found a good life. I wished my parents could be here, so that I could cook for them, and give them a good life too. But my parents were no longer around. You know what the Chinese think is the saddest feeling in the world? It's for a child to finally grow the desire to take care of his parents, only to realize that they were long gone. Son, I know that you do not like your Chinese eyes, which are my eyes. I know that you do not like your Chinese hair, which is my hair. But can you understand how much joy your very existence brought to me? And can you understand how it felt when you stopped talking to me and won't let me talk to you in Chinese? I felt I was losing everything all over again. Why won't you talk to me, son? The pain makes it hard to write.
#

The young woman handed the paper back to me. I could not bear to look into her face.

Without looking up, I asked for her help in tracing out the character for ai on the paper below Mom's letter. I wrote the character again and again on the paper, intertwining my pen strokes with her words.

The young woman reached out and put a hand on my shoulder. Then she got up and left, leaving me alone with my mother.

Following the creases, I refolded the paper back into Laohu. I cradled him in the crook of my arm, and as he purred, we began the walk home.
Copyright (c) 2011 Ken Liu, first published in THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION, Mar/Apr. 2011.

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Read Ken Liu's amazing story that swept the Hugo, Nebula and World Fantasy Awards

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Ken Liu's incredible story "Paper Menagerie" just became the first work of fiction to win all three of SF's major awards: the Hugo, the Nebula and the World Fantasy Award. And we're proud to be able to reprint the whole story, right here at io9.

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How to Write a Synopsis

Synopses can vary depending on the intended audience and type of work. Most of the time, you should write your synopsis after you've finished writing or developing your work, because then you can create the most accurate summary. In general, it should do these major things:

1. Begin with a hook-something interesting to grab the audience's interest

2. Give a clear summary of what the work is about

3. Introduce major characters (protagonist, antagonist, notable supporting characters)

4. Outline major plot points

5. Introduce the setting (time and/or place)

6. Identify a major conflict or turning point

7. Highlight the genre, tone, and/or style of the work

8. Give an idea of the work's significance or why it matters

The length of a synopsis can vary. If you're writing it for a website or as a summary for the audience, you may only need a paragraph. But, as mentioned, if you've written a book and need a synopsis for a publisher, for instance, then it should be longer and provide a fuller overview of the piece, including the plot from start to finish.

When to use a Synopsis

Really, anytime you write or create a lengthy work, you should write a synopsis. It lets people know what a piece is about without them having to watch or read the whole thing, which they often do to decide whether or not something is of interest. Furthermore, it can also be very useful for researchers because a synopsis allows them to see whether or not something is relevant or important to their own work. For that reason, a synopsis can save time for audiences and professionals alike.

Basically, when your work is going to be available to other people, and it's longer than someone can read or watch in a few minutes, you should write a synopsis! Most books, films, and TV shows will also release a synopsis before the work officially comes out to build anticipation for its release. Obviously those synopses are still available afterwards, as well.

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When & How to Write a Synopsis | LiteraryTerms.net

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Synopses can vary depending on the intended audience and type of work. Most of the time, you should write your synopsis after you've finished writing or developing your work, because then you can create the most accurate summary.

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The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas - On the Inspiration Behind the Book

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Status:

Listening To:

By Kristin Nelson & Angie Hodapp
Your opening pages might be in trouble if... #7) Your novel opens with pages of backstory or exposition instead of a scene created to kick off your novel.
In the thousands and thousands of opening pages we've read over the years, we've discovered three problematic openers that fit this bill:

1. Opening with a sentence or two of a scene, but then shifting into pages of backstory or exposition.

2. Opening with a sentence or two of exposition or backstory, followed by the start of an actual scene.

3. Opening with heavy exposition, backstory, or world building that goes on for pages without anchoring the reader to a character situated in the story's narrative time and place.

This type of opening becomes a problem when authors feel the need to fully explain their world before officially beginning the story-they're afraid that readers will be lost without all the background information. A good intention, but a master writer knows how to layer in her world building and backstory at the same time she is introducing her characters, setting, and whatever situational conflict will launch the story's momentum.

When I come across a submission like this, I'll skip ahead to see where-or if-the story actually begins; however, I'm already on notice. This type of false start makes it that much harder for the writer to win me back. You don't want an agent looking for a reason to say no.

Angie here! Let's look at some examples.

Opening with a sentence or two of a scene, but then shifting into pages of backstory or exposition.

Marge stood, stretched her aching back, and leaned her shovel against the wall of the pit. The six other archeologists on her team squatted over their assigned areas of the site, still engrossed in their excavations. Marge surveyed their work and gave a satisfied nod. They'd made great progress today. Marge and her team had flown to Egypt six weeks prior. The university had finally managed to secure the funding for this dig, despite the dean's oft-repeated assurances that the archeology department would never approve the sum Marge had requested. But over the summer, some anonymous donor had stepped forward and written a big, fat check. Marge couldn't guess who the donor was, but she was too excited to care. She started calling her team and making travel arrangements...

This type of opening is often crafted by writers who've learned that it's a best practice to start in scene. So they do. But the siren song of expository backstory is still too alluring, and they can't resist. To see if you've fallen prey, check for past-perfect verbs in your opening scene ( had managed, had requested, had stepped forward). If you see some, then-RED ALERT!-you've probably slipped into backstory.

Let's look at another example:

Opening with a sentence or two of exposition or backstory, followed by the start of an actual scene.

Marge had learned two things during her seventeen years as a university professor. The first was never to take no for an answer, especially when it came from the dean during a conversation about funding. The second was never to question the motives of an anonymous donor who wanted to send you and your whole team to Egypt for three months on an exclusive dig. She was right about the first, but wrong about the second. She was about to find out just how wrong.
Marge stood, stretched her aching back, and leaned her shovel against the wall of the pit. The six other archeologists on her team squatted over their assigned areas of the site, still engrossed in their excavations... you know the rest.

This type of opening is often crafted by writers who want to provide an immediate insight into character before showing us that character in setting, motion, or conflict. Also note the prophetic "she was about to find out just how wrong." As far as hooks go, this kind always feels a little too on-the-nose, like the writer is saying, Hey, isn't that portentous and enticing? Most times, authors need to work a little harder than that to plant the hook that will keep readers genuinely intrigued.

To avoid this type of opening, recognize the difference between scene and exposition/backstory. Practice writing solely in scene. Only then, go back and layer in your exposition/backstory with subtle strokes that are relevant to the current scene.

Kristin here: Of course, like all the examples we've given in this article series, any opening can work in the hands of a master writer. My client Sherry Thomas is renowned for her ability to pull this off. Read the opening of her debut novel Private Arrangements to see how she breaks this rule but still manages to get away with it. Her masterful writing sweeps the reader away!

Creative Commons Photo Credit: Angie Harms

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Status: Listening To: By Kristin Nelson & Angie Hodapp Your opening pages might be in trouble if... #7) Your novel opens with pages of backstory or exposition instead of a scene created to kick off your novel.

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Why Does Your Story Need a Controlling Idea?

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Robert McKee explains why sooner or later you're going to need to grasp your story's controlling idea.

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Hollins Multicultural Women's Contest DUE Nov 12th

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Hollins Multicultural Women's Contest DUE Nov 12th

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Mission Statement Gravel is a multicultural literary magazine that works to create an inclusive environment and focuses on issues related to race, ethnicity, national identity, disability, regionalism, economics, religion, sexual orientation, and gender identity.

Sponsored by Hollins University, the Gravel Creative Writing Contest recognizes students for excellence in multicultural literature. Young women in rising 11 - 12 grades are encouraged to submit work for review by members of Gravel's editorial board.

How to apply?

You're invited to submit to the Gravel Creative Writing Contest at Hollins University. We encourage submission of a creative piece of writing that relates to the mission of Gravel. You may submit work in any genre, including hybrid and experimental work. Please limit your submission to seven pages.
Submit your application
Deadline to apply
November 12, 2019
Three winners will be selected to receive:

$5,000 renewable scholarship to Hollins awarded through the Creative Talent Scholarship program

Publication in Gravel

Private on-campus visit sponsored by the Office of Admission which will include the opportunity to read their work at the Gravel Launch Event, an overnight with a Gravel board member, and class visitation curated to represent the English concentration in multicultural literature at Hollins

Questions?

Submit questions about the contest or your submission to huadm@hollins.edu.

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"Gravel" Creative Writing Contest - Hollins

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Mission Statement Gravel is a multicultural literary magazine that works to create an inclusive environment and focuses on issues related to race, ethnicity, national identity, disability, regionalism, economics, religion, sexual orientation, and gender identity. Sponsored by Hollins University, the Gravel Creative Writing Contest recognizes students for excellence in multicultural literature....

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Our free weekly e-newsletter provides links to the newest online content from Poets & Writers Magazine, plus highlights from our blogs, writing contest deadlines, job listings, and more.

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Founded in 1970, Poets & Writers is the nation's largest nonprofit organization serving creative writers. Our mission is to foster the professional development of poets

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Madman, Architect, Carpenter, Judge by Betsy Flowers

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Madman, Architect, Carpenter, Judge by Betsy Flowers

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by Betty S. Flowers
Professor of English and
Director of the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library

"What's the hardest part of writing?" I ask on the first day of class.

"Getting started," someone offers, groaning.

"No, it's not getting started," a voice in the back of the room corrects. "It's keeping on once you do get started. I can always write a sentence or two-but then I get stuck."

"I don't know. I am writing along, and all of a sudden I realize how awful it is, and I tear it up. Then I start over again, and after two sentences, the same thing happens."

"Let me suggest something which might help," I say. Turning to the board, I write four words: "madman," "architect," "carpenter," "judge."

Then I explain:

"What happens when you get stuck is that two competing energies are locked horn to horn, pushing against each other. One is the energy of what I'll call your 'madman.' He is full of ideas, writes crazily and perhaps rather sloppily, gets carried away by enthusiasm or anger, and if really let loose, could turn out ten pages an hour.

"The second is a kind of critical energy-what I'll call the 'judge.' He's been educated and knows a sentence fragment when he sees one. He peers over your shoulder and says, 'That's trash!' with such authority that the madman loses his crazy confidence and shrivels up. You know the judge is right-after all, he speaks with the voice of your most imperious English teacher. But for all his sharpness of eye, he can't create anything.

"So you're stuck. Every time your madman starts to write, your judge pounces on him.

"Of course this is to over-dramatize the writing process-but not entirely. Writing is so complex, involves so many skills of heart, mind and eye, that sitting down to a fresh sheet of paper can sometime seem
like 'the hardest work among those not impossible,' as Yeats put it.

Whatever joy there is in the writing process can come only when the energies are flowing freely-when you're not stuck.

"And the trick to not getting stuck involves separating the energies. If you let the judge with his intimidating carping come too close to the madman and his playful, creative energies, the ideas which form the basis for your writing will never have a chance to surface. But you can't simply throw out the judge. The subjective personal outpourings of your madman must be balanced by the objective, impersonal vision of the educated critic within you. Writing is not just self-expression; it is communication as well.

"So start by promising your judge that you'll get around to asking his opinion, but not now. And then let the madman energy flow. Find what interests you in the topic, the question or emotion that it raises in you, and respond as you might to a friend-or an enemy. Talk on paper, page after page, and don't stop to judge or correct sentences. Then, after a set amount of time, perhaps, stop and gather the paper up and wait a day.

"The next morning, ask your 'architect' to enter. She will read the wild scribblings saved from the night before and pick out maybe a tenth of the jottings as relevant or interesting. (You can see immediately that the architect is not sentimental about what the madman wrote; she is not going to save every crumb for posterity.) Her job is simply to select large chunks of material and to arrange them in a pattern that might form an argument. The thinking here is large, organizational, paragraph level thinking-the architect doesn't worry about sentence structure.

"No, the sentence structure is left for the 'carpenter' who enters after the essay has been hewn into large chunks of related ideas. The carpenter nails these ideas together in a logical sequence, making sure each sentence is clearly written, contributes to the argument of the paragraph, and leads logically and gracefully to the next sentence. When the carpenter finishes, the essay should be smooth and watertight.

"And then the judge comes around to inspect. Punctuation, spelling, grammar, tone-all the details which result in a polished essay become important only in this last stage. These details are not the concern of the madman who's come up with them, or the architect who's organized them, or the carpenter who's nailed the ideas together, sentence by sentence. Save details for the judge."

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Madman, Architect, Carpenter, Judge: Roles and the Writing Proces

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by Betty S. Flowers Professor of English and Director of the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library "What's the hardest part of writing?" I ask on the first day of class. "Getting started," someone offers, groaning. "No, it's not getting started," a voice in the back of the room corrects.

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Roald Dahl interview and short film - Pebble Mill at One 1982

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Stephen King on writing; why he never uses a notebook and other tips from the top!

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Satirical Article on Describing Ethnicity 

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Satirical Article on Describing Ethnicity 

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1. He looked at her longingly, as he imagined her exotic, mashed potato skin laying gently against his.

2. She took off his shirt, his skin glistening in the sun like a glazed doughnut. The glaze part, not the doughnut part.

3. His eyes looked like eyes because they were eye-shaped, not almonds.

4. Mr. Darcy soon drew the attention of the room by his fine, tall-person, handsome features, and his crust of a Shepherd's pie complexion.

5. "What's your name?" he asked. "Mary," she replied as the strap of her dress slipped off her marzipan shoulder.

6. She didn't know it yet but the girl of her dreams had just walked in. Her eyes were radiant and her skin glowed with mozzarella undertones.

7. She was beautiful, elegant. Like a tall clear glass filled with raw pasta.

8. His body had the color and shape of raw ground beef.

9. He traced his fingers along her supple, cauliflower skin.

10. She stepped out of the car and and was delighted by the cool summer breeze that brushed against her legs. She had been sitting in the sun earlier and welcomed the relief of this fresh air on her mayonnaise legs.

11. She had brown, wiry hair and skin that can only be described as the color of the inside of an apple. The mushy ones not the cool, crisp ones.

12. She dove into the ocean, the blue waves enveloping her tapioca skin.

13. She was transfixed by the gleam of his uncooked chicken breast skin. So raw, so lumpy.

14. His bones were as brittle as a vanilla wafer.

15. Her beauty was indescribable, which means she's white.

16. For the first time in his life, he found himself imagining a future together with someone. He was embarrassed to tell her this but he had never really been in love with the women he had dated. "Well who would play me in this rom-com of your life?" she teasingly inquired. "You have such beautiful olive skin," he crooned, "so you can be a person of color or racially ambiguous in the book but definitely a white woman in the movie."

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If White Characters Were Described Like People Of Color In Literature

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1. He looked at her longingly, as he imagined her exotic, mashed potato skin laying gently against his. 2. She took off his shirt, his skin glistening in the sun like a glazed doughnut. The glaze part, not the doughnut part. 3. His eyes looked like eyes because they were eye-shaped, not almonds.

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Writing with Color: Description Guide - Words for Skin Tone
We discussed the issues describing People of Color by means of food in of this guide, which brought rise to even more questions, mostly along the lines of "So, if food's not an option, what can I use?" Well, I was just getting to that!

This final portion focuses on describing skin tone, with photo and passage examples provided throughout. I hope to cover everything from the use of straight-forward description to the more creatively-inclined, keeping in mind the questions we've received on this topic.

So let's get to it.
S T A N D A R D D E S C R I P T I O N
B a s i c C o l o r s

Pictured above: Black, Brown, Beige, White, Pink.

This is a perfectly fine description that, while not providing the most detail, works well and will never become cliché.

Describing characters' skin as simply brown or beige works on its own, though it's not particularly telling just from the range in brown alone.

C o m p l e x C o l o r s
These are more rarely used words that actually "mean" their color.
As some of these are on the "rare" side, sliding in a definition of the word within the sentence itself may help readers who are unfamiliar with the term visualize the color without seeking a dictionary.
"He was tall and slim, his skin a russet, reddish-brown."
Comparisons to familiar colors or visuals are also helpful:
"His skin was an ochre color, much like the mellow-brown light that bathed the forest." M o d i f i e r s
Modifiers, often adjectives, make partial changes to a word.The following words are descriptors in reference to skin tone.
Some of these have multiple meanings, so you'll want to look into those to determine what other associations a word might have.

Pictured above: Umber, Sepia, Ochre, Russet, Terra-cotta, Gold, Tawny, Taupe, Khaki, Fawn.

D a r k - D e e p - R i c h - C o o l
Rich Black, Dark brown, Warm beige, Pale pink... If you're looking to get more specific than "brown," modifiers narrow down shade further.

Keep in mind that these modifiers are not exactly colors.

As an already brown-skinned person, I get tan from a lot of sun and resultingly become a darker, deeper brown. I turn a pale, more yellow-brown in the winter.

While best used in combination with a color, I suppose words like "tan" "fair" and "light" do work alone; just note that tan is less likely to be taken for "naturally tan" and much more likely a tanned White person.

Calling someone "dark" as description on its own is offensive to some and also ambiguous. (See: Describing Skin as Dark)

U n d e r t o n e s
Undertones are the colors beneath the skin, seeing as skin isn't just one even color but has more subdued tones within the dominating palette.

"A dazzling smile revealed the bronze glow at her cheeks."
"He always looked as if he'd ran a mile, a Standard Description Passage "Farah's skin, always fawn

1. Here the state of skin also gives insight on character.

2. Note my use of "fawn" in regards to multiple meaning and association. While fawn is a color, it's also a small, timid deer, which describes this very traumatized character of mine perfectly.

, had burned and freckled under the summer's sun. Even at the cusp of autumn, an uneven C R E A T I V E D E S C R I P T I O N
tan clung to her skin like burrs. So unlike the smooth, red-brown ochre of her mother, which the sun had richened to a blessing." N A T U R AL S E T T I N G S - S K Y

constant tinge of pink under his tawny skin."

Now before you run off to compare your heroine's skin to the harvest moon or a cliff side, think about the associations to your words.

When I think cliff, I think of jagged, perilous, rough. I hear sand and picture grainy, yet smooth. Calm. mellow.

So consider your character and what you see fit to compare them to.

Also consider whose perspective you're describing them from. Someone describing a person they revere or admire may have a more pleasant, loftier description than someone who can't stand the person.

"Her face was like the fire-gold glow of dawn, lifting my gaze, drawing me in." "She had a sandy complexion, smooth and tawny."
Even creative descriptions tend to draw help from your standard words.
F L O W E R S

Mentioning the undertones within a character's skin is an even more precise way to denote skin tone.

As shown, there's a difference between say, brown skin with warm orange-red undertones (Kelly Rowland) and brown skin with cool, jewel undertones (Rutina Wesley).

It was a bit difficult to find flowers to my liking that didn't have a 20 character name or wasn't called something like "chocolate silk" so these are the finalists.

You'll definitely want to avoid purple-prose here.

Also be aware of flowers that most might've never heard of. Roses are easy, as most know the look and coloring(s) of this plant. But Western coneflowers? Calla lilies? Maybe not so much.

"He entered the cottage in a huff, cheeks a blushing brown like the flowers Nana planted right under my window. Hazel Fay she called them, was it?" A S S O R T E D P L A N T S & N A T U R E
W a r m - M e d i u m - T a n

These ones are kinda odd. Perhaps because I've never seen these in comparison to skin tone, With the exception of amber.

At least they're common enough that most may have an idea what you're talking about at the mention of "pinecone."

I suggest reading out your sentences aloud to get a better feel of how it'll sounds.

"Auburn hair swept past pointed ears, set around a face like an acorn both in shape and shade."

1. I pictured some tree-dwelling being or person from a fantasy world in this example, which makes the comparison more appropriate.

2. I don't suggest using a comparison just "cuz you can" but actually being thoughtful about what you're comparing your character to and how it applies to your character and/or setting.

W O O D

F a i r - L i g h t - P a l e

Wood can be an iffy description for skin tone. Not only due to several of them having "foody" terminology within their names, but again, associations.

Some people would prefer not to compare/be compared to wood at all, so get opinions, try it aloud, and make sure it's appropriate to the character if you do use it.

"The old warlock's skin was a deep shade of mahogany, his stare serious and firm as it held mine." M E T A L S

-From my story "Where Summer Ends" featured in Strange Little Girls

Copper skin, brass-colored skin, golden skin...

I've even heard variations of these used before by comparison to an object of the same properties/coloring, such as penny for copper.

These also work well with modifiers.

"The dress of fine white silks popped against the deep bronze of her skin." G E M S T O N E S - M I N E R A LS

Though I use standard descriptions of skin tone more in my writing, at the same time I'm no stranger to creative descriptions, and do enjoy the occasional artsy detail of a character.

These are trickier to use. As with some complex colors, the writer will have to get us to understand what most of these look like.

If you use these, or any more rare description, consider if it actually "fits" the book or scene.

Even if you're able to get us to picture what "rutile" looks like, why are you using this description as opposed to something else? Have that answer for yourself.

Whether compared to night-cast rivers or day's first light...I actually enjoy seeing Characters of Colors dressed in artful detail.
P H Y S I C A L D E S C R I P T I ON

1. Physical character description can be more than skin tone.

2. Show us hair, eyes, noses, mouth, hands...body posture, body shape, skin texture... though not necessarily all of those nor at once.

3. Describing features also helps indicate race, especially if your character has some traits common within the race they are, such as afro hair to a Black character.

4. How comprehensive you decide to get is up to you. I wouldn't overdo it and get specific to every mole and birthmark. Noting defining characteristics is good, though, like slightly spaced front teeth, curls that stay flopping in their face, hands freckled with sunspots...

G E N E R A L T I P S

Get Creative On Your Own: Obviously, I couldn't cover every proper color or comparison in which has been "approved" to use for your characters' skin color, so it's up to you to use discretion when seeking other ways and shades to describe skin tone.
Skin Tone Resources
Writing & Description Guides
Skin Color May Not Be Enough: Describing skin tone isn't always enough to indicate someone's ethnicity. As timeless cases with readers equating brown to "dark white" or something, more indicators of race may be needed.

PSA: Don't use "Colored." Based on some asks we've received using this word, I'd like to say that unless you or your character is a racist grandmama from the 1960s, do not call People of Color "colored" please.

Not Sure Where to Start? You really can't go wrong using basic colors for your skin descriptions. It's actually what many people prefer and works best for most writing. Personally, I tend to describe my characters using a combo of basic colors + modifiers, with mentions of undertones at times. I do like to veer into more creative descriptions on occasion.

Want some alternatives to "skin" or "skin color"? Try: Appearance, blend, blush, cast, coloring, complexion, flush, glow, hue, overtone, palette, pigmentation, rinse, shade, sheen, spectrum, tinge, tint, tone, undertone, value, wash.

I've read loads of descriptions in my day of white characters and their "smooth rose-tinged ivory skin", while the PoC, if there, are reduced to something from a candy bowl or a Starbucks drink, so to actually read of PoC described in lavish detail can be somewhat of a treat.

Still, be mindful when you get creative with your character descriptions. Too many frills can become purple-prose-like, so do what feels right for your writing when and where.

Not every character or scene warrants a creative description, either. Especially if they're not even a secondary character.

Using a combination of color descriptions from standard to creative is probably a better method than straight creative. But again, do what's good for your tale.

Pictured above: Harvest Moon -Twilight, Fall/Autumn Leaves, Clay, Desert/Sahara, Sunlight - Sunrise - Sunset - Afterglow - Dawn- Day- Daybreak, Field - Prairie - Wheat, Mountain/Cliff, Beach/Sand/Straw/Hay.

Pictured above: Calla lilies, Western Coneflower, Hazel Fay, Hibiscus, Freesia, Rose

Pictured above: Cattails, Seashell, Driftwood, Pinecone, Acorn, Amber

Pictured above: Mahogany, Walnut, Chestnut, Golden Oak, Ash

Pictured above: Platinum, Copper, Brass, Gold, Bronze

Pictured above: Onyx, Obsidian, Sard, Topaz, Carnelian, Smoky Quartz, Rutile, Pyrite, Citrine, Gypsum

"His skin reminded her of the topaz ring her father wore at his finger, a gleaming stone of brown, mellow facades."

I tried to be as comprehensive as possible with this guide, but if you have a question regarding describing skin color that hasn't been answered within part I or II of this guide, or have more questions after reading this post, feel free to ask!

~ Mod Colette

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Writing with Color: Description Guide - Words for Skin Tone We discussed the issues describing People of Color by means of food in of this guide, which brought rise to even more questions, mostly along the lines of "So, if food's not an option, what can I use?"