Percy Shelley doodling while helping his wife edit the draft of her first novel, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818):

    The idea for the story was devised in mid-June 1816. The draft shown here was written between August and December 1816, and it was revised until April 1817. The book was published January 1st 1818 when Mary was 20-years-old. She was only 18 when she conceived the story, as her 19th birthday was on August 30th 1816.

    Source: The Shelley-Godwin Archive online

    helpful-writing-tips

    if you write a strong character, let them fail.

    if you write a selfless hero, let them get mad at people.

    if you write a cold-hearted villain, make them cry.

    if you write a brokenhearted victim, let them smile again.

    if you write a bold leader, make them seek guidance.

    if you write a confident genius, make them be wrong, or get stumped once in a while.

    if you write a fighter or a warrior, let them lose a battle, but let them win the war.

    if you write a character who loses everything, let them find something.

    if you write a reluctant hero, give them a reason to fight.

    credit:@aj-eddy

    dearwriters

    I love this advice! Subverting a character trait is a great way to really get into the emotional core of a character and see what makes them tick and what makes them change!

    “[T]he luminous and shocking beauty of the everyday is something I try to remain alert to, if only as an antidote to the chronic cynicism and disenchantment that seems to surround everything, these days. It tells me that, despite how debased or corrupt we are told humanity is and how degraded the world has become, it just keeps on being beautiful. It can’t help it.”

    — Nick Cave, in Faith, Hope and Carnage

    In April of 1943, Saint-Exupéry shoved his Little Prince manuscripts and drawings in a brown paper bag, handing it to his friend Silvia Hamilton — “I’d like to give you something splendid,” he told her, “but this is all I have.” — and departed for Algiers as a military pilot with the Free French Air Force. He was eight years over the age limit for pilots in such squadrons, so he petitioned relentlessly for exemption until it was finally granted by General Dwight Eisenhower.

    On July 31, 1944, he left on a reconnaissance mission, never to return. He was 44 years old when he perished — a biographical detail that lends eerie poignancy to the fact that, perched atop his little planet, the Little Prince watched the sun set exactly 44 times.