In Today’s Journal
* Quotes of the Day
* The TNDJ Challenges Report
* On Writing Fiction, and Stereotypes
* What’s in 1440?
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
Quotes of the Day
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” Martin Luther King, Jr. #metoo
The TNDJ Challenges Report
Participating in any challenge is a great way to have fun and grow as a writer.
There is no cost. Feel free to jump in at any time. To do so, email me at harveystanbrough@gmail.com with your results anytime before TNDJ goes live on any Monday.
Bradbury Challenge
The requirement is to write at least one short story or short-short story per week. During the past week, the following writers wrote these new stories:
- Vanessa V. Kilmer “Deep Matter” 3095 Dystopian Syfy
- Christopher Ridge “Nothing to Worry About” 790 Horror/dark humor
- KC Riggs “The Double Doors” 3461 Paranormal
- Dave Taylor “Declined ” 2384 General Fiction
The Stephen King Challenge
The requirement is to average at least 1000 words per day. The words can go into any short or long fiction or both.
- Violet Vincent 5934 words this week
Congratulations to all of these writers.
On Writing Fiction, and Stereotypes
First, whether you like it or not, stereotypes exist. Also whether you like it or not, you recognize people as stereotypes when you first encounter them.
That process is part of our makeup, part of the instinctive ‘threat/no threat’ assessment our reptile brain conducts without our conscious knowledge whenever we encounter something or someone we haven’t encountered before.
Recognizing or assigning stereotypes or stereotypical traits is not judgment or bias or bigotry or any of that. Judgment is a function of the conscious, critical mind.
Judgment (and the accompanying acceptance or rejection, bias, bigotry, etc.) comes into play only after your reptile brain has unconsciously chosen, during that that initial assessment, not to trigger the fight or flight response.
Once you realize you don’t have to fight or flee, your conscious mind kicks in to decide what to do with this new person:
- Are you attracted or repelled?
- If you’re attracted, are you interested enough to want to get to know him or her?
- If so, as you learn more about him or her, does s/he still appeal to you?
- Appall you?
- And so on.
So there’s no judgment in stereotyping someone when you first encounter them. The judgment happens afterward.
Now, to the writing….
If you are true to your characters—meaning if you allow them to reveal who they are naturally as the story that they, not you, are living unfolds all around you—you will also encounter different stereotypes as you write.
That’s how characters first appear, as stereotypes. Just as ‘real’ people do when you first encounter them.
But either way—whether you write into the dark and let the characters and story unfold naturally or plan and plot every step and every word of every character to the nth degree—your readers will still see (hear, smell, etc.) a stereotype when they first encounter your character.
Later, as the story unfolds, the characters will reveal to you and your readers different traits and quirks and aspects of their personality and their psyche. Again, just as happens in ‘real’ life.
So my advice is relax and go with it. If you do that, the more ‘real’ your characters will be because the more they’ll mimic the ‘characters’ you encounter in real life.
I’ll even venture to say you won’t like every character you write. And I don’t mean only the antagonist ‘bad guys.’
I actively like most of my characters, but I’ve written many POV and other lead characters I didn’t like when the story was over.
Of course, I published the stories anyway because whether I like them isn’t the point. Someone out there will like them or find them exciting or revolting or something between those two extremes. And that is the point.
So again, write the characters as they are and leave the judgment to the readers. Readers know what they like or don’t like, and you (and I) don’t have a clue.
What’s in 1440?
I’ve long advocated for 1440, a politically unbiased news and information source. They don’t advocate, they report. So I thought I’d list the following podcast and weekly topic newsletters in case you’d like to explore.
You can listen to the “1440 Explores” podcast at any of these:
Here are the Weekly Topic Newsletters:
All of the above are free. I urge you to try them according to your own interests.
Talk with you again soon.
Of Interest
For more on stereotypes scroll down to “Random Thoughts on Stereotypes”
For Stereotypical Speech Patterns scroll down to “More on Stereotypical Speech Patterns”
All About the Novel Many links to explore.
Dr. Mardy’s Quotes of the Week: When Friendships End
The Numbers
The Journal………………….. 820
Mentorship Words…………….. 0
Total Nonfiction…………………. 820
Writing of
Day 1…… XXXX words. To date………… XXXXX
Fiction for January………………………… XXXX
Fiction for 2026…………………………… XXXX
Nonfiction for January.…………………… 10870
Nonfiction for 2026………………..……… 10870
2026 consumable words………………… 10870
2026 Novels to Date……………………… 0
2026 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2026 Short Stories to Date……………… 0
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………….. 123
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 310
Short story collections……………………. 29