(25 Common Writing Mistakes Writers Make.)

Many of those metaphors tucked inside a single word can be surprising, others picturesque or poetic, and still others are downright entertaining. The metaphors and lively stories behind such words are the kind I love sharing each week on the radio show and podcast “A Way with Words” and in my new book, Friends with Words: Adventures in Languageland.

Here are some of my favorites, specifically selected for writers.

Magazine

Open up the word magazine, and you’ll find it comes into English via Middle French, and ultimately from the Arabic word makhāzin, which means “storehouses.” By the 17th century, magazine meant a place used for the storage of arms and munitions, and by the 18th, the word was applied to a publication that was a “storehouse” of articles on lots of topics. This also explains why the place where a gun’s ammunition is stored goes by the same name.

Lorem ipsum

The gibberish that serves as a placeholder while awaiting your pristine prose comes from a mangled passage of the great Roman orator Cicero. In De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum, or “On the Ends of Good and Evil,” Cicero talks about the value of enduring short-term pain for a lasting payoff—just as we writers must do. Centuries later, some unknown typesetter later took that passage, which starts with dolorem ipsum, or “pain itself,” then scrambled some of the rest and started using it as dummy text, which looked real but ran no risk of being confused with regular text.

The practice was so handy it caught on. (By the way, that family name Cicero? It comes from the Latin word cicer, or “garbanzo bean,” apparently because one of Cicero’s predecessors had a bean-shaped growth on his nose. Latin cicer also found its way into English as garbanzo’s synonym, chickpea.)

Anthology

If your poem is included in an anthology, you can be doubly pleased that it’s part of a literary bouquet. One of the loveliest words in English, anthology in its most literal sense means a “gathering of flowers.” The word comes from Greek anthos, or “flower,” also found in such words as chrysanthemum, or “golden flower,” and anthurium, or “flower with a tail.”

Blurb

If you read the blurbs on the back of a book, you have one Belinda Blurb to thank. Belinda’s not a real person, though. She’s a clever invention by an author who used her as a marketing ploy to promote his latest book. In 1907, humorist Gelett Burgess wrote fake jacket copy for his new book and promoted it at a national gathering of booksellers. The gushing copy praised the contents of the book with breathless hyperbole, and above it all, in giant letters were the words: “YES, this is a ‘BLURB’! All the Other Publishers commit them. Why Shouldn’t We?”

Below that there was a picture of a woman with her hand cupped to the side of her mouth as if shouting, with a caption that read: MISS BELINDA BLURB IN THE ACT OF BLURBING. The effort paid off handsomely, and blurb became lodged in the language of publishing.

Click to continue.

Spam

Wondering why that editor didn’t respond to your query? Or maybe you’re still waiting to hear back from a potential agent. In either case, maybe you should check your spam folder, and while you’re doing so, take a moment to reflect on this word’s amusing origin.

The idea of spam as “junk mail” goes back to a madcap British TV show from 1970 called “Monty Python’s Flying Circus.” In one sketch, a couple goes out to breakfast and asks the short-order cook what’s on offer that day. The cook replies, “Well, there’s egg and bacon. Egg, sausage, and bacon. Egg and Spam. Egg, bacon, and Spam. Egg, bacon, sausage, and Spam. Spam, bacon, sausage, and Spam. Spam, egg, Spam, Spam, bacon, and Spam—” at which point, some Vikings also who happen to be in the restaurant (don’t ask), break into a loud, lusty song about the wonders of spam. (Search for “Monty Python,” “Spam,” and “ridiculous” online and you watch all the silliness and sing along yourself.)

A few years later, after someone mistakenly sent the same email to hundreds of people, the term spam took on the added meaning of something as repetitive and unappetizing as the spam in the comedy sketch.

Cocktail

At the end of a long day of writing, maybe you’re ready for a cocktail. But did you ever wonder how that drink got its name? Etymologists suspect it derives from the fact that the word cocktail originally applied to a horse with a docked tail—that is, with the tail cropped so short the hairs stood up perkily like the tail of a rooster or cock. Unlike thoroughbreds, cocktails were unpedigreed, working horses.

Around the same time, in the early 1800s, mixed drinks were regarded with some disdain because they were adulterated—after all, why dilute perfectly good booze with other ingredients? Over time, people began likening those watered-down beverages to less-than-purebred horses, and the name cocktail stuck.

Banana problem

One last term every writer should have in their vocabulary: banana problem. If you have a banana problem, you’re unsure whether something is finished. Maybe you’ve rewritten the same sentence way too many times when you should have stopped 20 minutes ago or tossed one too many pinches of salt into a perfectly good broth. 

In the tech world, the term banana problem denotes badly written code for terminating a computer process. This handy expression was inspired by the joke about a little kid who insisted, “I know how to spell ‘banana’. I just don’t know when to stop!” 

Check out Martha Barnette’s Friends With Words here:

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(Find other things writers should know.)

Forty years ago, kids rode bicycles in the neighborhood and played outside until suppertime. Today’s youth face a new world, the likes of which previous generations were not forced to navigate. Challenges include issues of isolation, self-esteem, and digital security, all of which have resulted in depression, deep-seated anxiety, and communication setbacks.

As the author of the bestselling Loodor Tales Series, I’ve spent years touring, speaking, and listening to tweens and teens. I gleaned many insights from writing an ongoing book series, curriculum, and education platform that I’d like to share with other writers to help connect with adolescents in an impactful way.

People ask me why I wrote the Loodor Tales Series through the eyes of animals. I needed a vehicle capable of delivering complex topics with a message of positivity, transported through fantasy, yet engineered to carry the next generation forward. Here are 5 things every writer should know about tween and teen mental health.

Any child with access to a phone needs to learn about self-worth, establishing boundaries, and real connection.

The idea for the Loodor Tales Series began on a walk with my then 10-year-old niece. She had always been an outgoing child. Backyard dance recitals and improv skits were frequent. Then, on a fateful afternoon, she told me she worried that she wasn’t enough. She’d never said that before.

One afternoon. One walk. One child. The words stopped me in my tracks and changed the trajectory of my life. Where did the words come from? A phone.

Two things happened next: First, I switched into “not on my watch” mode. I heard myself reciting Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now and Michael Singer’s The Untethered Soul. I even quoted Ayn Rand to reinforce one’s individual value proposition.

I urged my niece to become aware of her thoughts. I told her she could detach from the voice in her mind. I watched her eyes glaze over. That’s when I applied over 20 years in publishing, writing, media, and marketing to develop the Loodor Tales Series: a book series designed to instill self-worth.

I created a fantasy world to provide young readers with the tools to establish boundaries in a real-world seemingly sans of many. I felt strongly that by educating youth about confidence and character, we could change lives. But we needed a trojan horse to deliver the message. Hence, animals. I started the Loodor Tales Series with a barn kitten named Grey. I gave Grey a superpower: a magical voice.

Then I hit the road to speak directly to students at schools. I needed to ensure the stories resonated with different age groups. I interviewed focus groups. The students drove the discussions. They wanted to dive deeper into the “why.” Why did I give Grey, a magical voice? Why did Dawn the Black Widow and her Harrowing Hourglass exist? What did they represent in real life? The students were astute.

Grey was given a magical voice because I suffered from social anxiety growing up. That’s why that walk affected me so deeply. I wanted my niece to know she could become anything—go anywhere—do anything!  Many of the lessons in the series are based on challenges I overcame. This makes it personal to me, which makes it personal to kids.

Tweens and teens are savvy. They respond to transparency and connect to the truth. They prefer authenticity over perfection. These are guiding principles when writing for tweens and teens.

Teens are trying to figure out who they are.

Generations Alpha and Z were born with access to every person, product, and brand—at the touch of their fingertips. Therefore, it is critical that writers assess the consequences of what they publish.

The internet yields unfettered access, and phones provide instant delivery platforms. The result: A generation of future leaders free to see but now unfazed by the world around them.

Following the success of the books, I built the “HOO Are You?” Tour program. Through ongoing tours, I present to general assemblies at schools. Sometimes, I return to engage groups in roundtable discussions. I’ll never forget the first roundtable with a group of high school freshmen.

A very brave 9th grade girl told me she was an “internet child.” She explained that she had been given free rein to explore the internet unsupervised. This resulted in her becoming a muted child. She didn’t speak until later. She has also suffered from other communication setbacks. She attributed these setbacks to texting versus speaking. In describing her access to the internet, she insisted, “I’ve seen a lot. It affects your mental health.”

While on tour, I was also once asked how much of one’s life is truly real versus pretending for social approval. I replied, “That depends on you…who are you?”

Early years form the foundation for values. Values guide tweens and teens in making the most important decision of all: who they are.

Words matter.

The Loodor Tales Series follows Grey on her journey to discover who she is and how she can help others. With her magical voice, Grey’s words can build things or break them. Grey’s words are bound to her, which is apropos.

Words hold the power to change lives. Therein lies their magic… and the responsibility to writers.

In a world of instant content, relentless critics, and anonymous comments, we have regressed in accountability for the long-term effects that words have on today’s youth. Simply put, they matter—as evident by the statistics regarding depression, anxiety, and suicide. Suicide is the second leading cause of death among adolescents.

I’ve spent years speaking to schools. I’ve watched countless middle grade boys plea for help from cyberbullying. I’ve also listened to girls recount the ways they have been encouraged to engage in self-harm on social platforms.

As one high school student stated, “You need the support system. This needs to be a real conversation because it’s really happening.”

Click to continue.

They want and need real conversations.

Inspired by the proven engagement of the school tours, I created a curriculum to further facilitate real conversations and educate today’s youth. By providing lesson plans, reading models, and essay assignments, teachers can use the storylines and character symbolism to bridge conversations around important topics including confidence, mind chatter, and false narrative.

The curriculum also guides students through day-to-day challenges, including bullying, and establishes ways to better communicate with one another. Students practice with reading passages and questions targeting different aspects of testing, providing teachers with an opportunity to demonstrate the level of thinking required for each concept.

This is as real as it gets. It is a gift to shape the minds of future leaders. It is also incumbent upon the content to instruct tweens and teens to lead with integrity, empathy, and kindness.

Writers have the power to remind readers that they can persevere through highs and lows. No mistake is insurmountable or victory a permanent position. As written in The Land of the Trade, “Commit to the journey as much as you commit to the goal.”

They want to know they aren’t alone, but they also want to feel safe.

Teens and tweens create their own network of content based on friend groups, influencers, and providers. These are the sources they choose to follow. However, the word “friend” doesn’t carry the same weight it once did. It carries more, for better or worse.

That’s because every day teenagers run the risk of being filmed in the background of a “friend’s” video, with lifelong ramifications resulting from their digital footprint. Teens and tweens look to social media to connect. Unfortunately, social platforms can lead to more feelings of isolation. They may even result in safety concerns when they reveal a location.

On a recent tour, I asked students in middle schools and high schools for safety tips that we could share with their peers.

“Record a video and save it to your drafts. When you’re away from that location, or with someone that can keep you safe, then you can post it. Always have your location on Life360.” —High School Freshman, 9th grade

“Someone once posted my address in the comments. That’s a safety issue. Cyberbullying is real. Report it.” —High School Freshman, 9th grade

To be clear, these safety issues are not a reflection of my opinion. They reflect the modern world we live in—one where adolescents must remain cognizant at all times of who they are with, what is being recorded, and how it is being shared. Content may also determine what college teenagers attend or future job they secure.

This presents writers with an opportunity to become trusted resources to this special audience. How, might you ask? Rehash the steps provided in this article…

Reinforce self-worth. Teach readers to establish boundaries. Publish the truth. Be personal. Above all, CONNECT, and let tweens and teens know they aren’t alone. In doing so, we have the power to change lives. Perhaps even save them.

Check out Summer Nilsson’s The Land of the Trade here:

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(Other Things Writers Should Know.)

Hancock likely would have been an impoverished country parson if his father hadn’t died young. Instead, he was adopted by his merchant uncle and went on to become the wealthiest man in early America.

Educated at Boston Latin School, after graduating Harvard College he served as his uncle’s assistant in the House of Hancock while he learned the rudiments of trans-Atlantic trade. During two years in Britain, he cultivated commercial ties.

Becoming his uncle’s full partner, he diversified. Developing a network of stores, he trained clerks to become managers, then extended them credit to supply their stores with goods he imported and distributed.

Cornering the Nantucket whale harvest, he built ships that raced the oil to London where oil lamps were replacing smoky, noxious coal. He used the profits to cram his ships with luxury goods to hurry to Boston in time for the lucrative Christmas market.

Beginning 30 years of public service at 26 as the youngest Boston selectman, he became known for his public works projects. During Boston’s bitter-cold winters, he personally provided the city’s elderly and poor with firewood. After a wharf burned with all its shops, he donated Boston’s first fire engine; town elders named it the Hancock.

He expanded the public market, recruited, outfitted, and armed an honor guard and served as its unpaid colonel. He donated funds for books and furnishings for Harvard’s library; he paid to renovate and refurnish a church.

Elected the town’s representative in the provincial legislature, he served on 30 committees, becoming known as a conciliator. As the British Parliament tightened control over colonial trade and imposed customs duties, Hancock organized boycotts and traveled widely to coordinate resistance. When Massachusetts formed a Provincial Congress, he was elected its president.

Click to continue.

When the revolution came on, Hancock’s many contributions to the revolutionary cause included using much of his significant fortune. He donated his best ship and helped to launch and finance the Continental Navy, chairing the Marine Committee. Before the U.S. constitution was ratified in 1788, Hancock was elected president of the Continental Congress for four one-year terms: He arguably could be considered the first President of the United States.

He also became the subject of an unsubstantiated but enduring canard, perpetuated by John Adams —namely, that he wished to be commander of the Continental Army and resented George Washington for being selected for the post. In fact, Hancock suffered so badly from gout that it is unlikely that he would have accepted a position that would require long days on horseback!

In the first version of the Declaration of Independence, Hancock took on great risk as the sole signatory to the document. Affixing his large, flamboyant signature protected the other Founding Fathers, since their capture by British forces would have meant their certain execution.

When the French joined forces with the Americans in 1778, Congress ordered an attack on entrenched British forces in Newport, Rhode Island. Washington chose Hancock, the senior major general of militia, to raise and lead a force of 5,000 to reinforce Continental and French forces.

But the campaign failed—and finger pointing threatened Franco-American relations. Hancock decided to assume the role of diplomat. He and his wife Dorothy deployed dinner-table diplomacy and entertained hundreds of French officers at their Beacon Hill mansion, once cooking 150 turkeys.

In 1780, Hancock was elected the first governor of Massachusetts. He would be re-elected 12 times by landslide votes. After five terms, he retired.

But merchants, taking control of the legislature, raised taxes that fell hardest on frontier farmers, many of them veterans. When many lost their farms at sheriff’s sales, they revolted in Shays’s Rebellion. In what threatened to become a civil war, the Shaysites were routed in a battle on snowshoes. As 4,000 people who faced confiscation of their farms fled the state, Hancock was persuaded to run for governor again, winning by an overwhelming majority. He pardoned the Shaysites—and served as governor the rest of his life!

Hancock was too ill to attend the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787. When Massachusetts’s leaders stalemated at a ratification convention, it was Hancock who finally helped to push the Constitution through to passage. As president of the Convention, he ordered the document argued over “by paragraphs, until every member shall have had an opportunity to express his sentiments.”

A Federalist but a pragmatist, he supported nine “Conciliatory Amendments” that led to the Bill of Rights. He added the 10th, reserving to the states any “powers not expressly delegated to Congress.”

Check out Willard Sterne Randall’s John Hancock here:

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Misconception: Survival Mode Is for Physical Threats

Truth: Survival Mode Is for Any Threat

Any time our brain perceives that we are in danger, it enacts our threat response system. That danger may be physical, mental or emotional. While the mind doesn’t react to threat exactly as body does, it still goes through and displays all the threat responses. For example, consider the flight response in fight or flight. Fleeing a physical threat may look like running. Fleeing a mental threat may look like quickly pushing back away from a table. In my book Fight Write, Round Two, as well as here on the WD Blog, I go over how survival mode impacts our body language. 

Misconception: Fight or Flight

Truth: Right Words. Wrong Order. Plus One.

Because survival mode is commonly called fight or flight, we have this idea that is how the body responds to threat: It fights it or flies from it. Sometimes the word freeze is added to the end of the phrase and that’s good. Freeze is a part of survival mode. But it doesn’t come after flight, and fight certainly doesn’t lead the parade.

Misconception: Freezing Is Cowardly

Truth: Freezing Is Crucial

The freeze response is the first and most crucial link in the chain of three threat responses. At the first sign of danger, everyone freezes. There is both a biological and strategic reason for this. Biologically, while in survival mode, the body seeks to conserve energy. As the threat grows, so does the expenditure of energy. If we all immediately fought every threat, we wouldn’t have energy left for any threat that followed.

Freezing is a strategic response for many reasons. One of those reasons is why you and I exist today. Our ancestors, who lived among predatory animals, froze as a means of staying alive.

When my Viking ancestors, let’s say my ancestral grandmother, was in the woods and heard a bear approaching, she immediately froze. She likely also covered her mouth with her hands and held her breath as a part of that freeze response. This is how that kept her alive:

1. Many predatory animals have eyesight that is keenly attuned to movement. My Viking granny’s freeze response kept her from attracting the bear’s attention.
2. These same predatory animals also have a chase response. They instinctively chase what runs from them. Because Viking granny stayed still, this wild response wasn’t activated.
3. These same animals have keen hearing. Because my amma (Norse for meemaw) was still, the bear didn’t hear her footsteps.
4. Because amma held her breath, her breath didn’t show in the cold and her vocal cords were poised to scream if necessary.
5. Because she covered her mouth, when she resumed breathing, the sound was muffled and the steam from the heat was filtered.

Second, freezing allows us all a moment to assess the situation. The average human brain responds to stimulus in as little as .25 seconds. In that fraction of a second, our brain can determine what we need to do next—or not do as the case may be.

Third, freezing can make us seem dead which can keep us alive. The vagus nerve is a key component in the parasympathetic nervous system, a part of our nervous system that functions without our thinking about it. Sometimes our vagus nerve believes the best way to keep us alive is to make us make us shut down. That can look like a lot of things including us dropping into a fetal position. This is sometimes called a flop response. I was a flopper as a child. If I was startled intensely, my knees buckled and down I went into a heap. I was basically the human version of a fainting goat.

This could have been helpful to me depending on the predator. I would have attracted less attention and, depending on the predator I might have been sniffed and then left alone. This is also a valid response to a human threat. A friend of mine was accosted in her home by an unknown assailant. Her body went limp, as if she had died, and her bladder emptied. She did not pass out. She was very much aware. The would-be rapist, completely shocked, left her home. In that example the freeze response pulled triple duty by also distancing her from the threat and ultimately fighting against it. 

Misconception: Flying Is Running

Truth: Flying Is Distancing

When the brain perceives that freezing isn’t sufficient for safety, it increases the energy level to the flight response. The word flight gives the impression of fleeing quickly. But the essence of the flight response is distance. You are putting distance between you and the threat.

There are many ways to put distance between ourselves and a threat. We can absolutely run. We can also climb beyond reach or settle into an area where the threat can’t fit. Just as well, we can do less active things that distance ourselves from pain. One of those is fawn.

Fawn is sometimes described as its own survival category. The goal of fawning is appeasing the aggressor long enough for the victim to delay or escape pain. To me, those are forms of distancing and therefore a manner of flight. Whatever you do to create distance between you and a threat can be seen as flight mode.

Misconception: Fighting Is Physical

Truth: Fighting Isn’t Always Physical

The final step in the survival chain of events is to address the threat directly and fight it. Fighting is reserved as a last resort as fighting, in the traditional sense, can expend the greatest amount of energy and energy is life. Sometimes, however, addressing the threat doesn’t require a great amount of physical energy. A trigger pull requires very little physical effort. Neither does turning on a computer.

In the modern world, technology is becoming the weapon of choice and that, too, is fighting. Drones can drop bombs. So can photos or videos leaked online! Cyber-intimidation and bullying can be insidious forms of combat. Keep in mind that although psychological combat, such as can take place online or in real life, may not require much physical effort, they can still, however, be incredibly taxing mentally. There is still an expenditure of energy.

Misconception: We All Lean Toward One Survival Response

Truth: We All Do Them All—Usually

Some believe that each of us leans toward a particular response. In other words, some folks are naturally geared toward one mode and go immediately to that response. For example, you might see your warrior character as a fighter who immediately addresses the threat.

The truth is, we all go through all the steps of survival mode. We all freeze, fly, then fight, in that order. Where we differ is where we might get stuck. Previous traumatic experiences can cause us to get caught in one or spend too little time in another step of survival mode. If your character was a POW who had to fight for their life daily while in captivity, they may escalate to the fight response quicker than what is appropriate or safe.

Here’s what that looks like. The POW character is on the street and a car backfires. That character will stop, or freeze, then duck his head and step back, or flee. He then might grab someone near him, cover them protectively, then put a hand out defensively, or fight. Had that character’s freeze response not been impacted by trauma, he might have realized that the sound he heard was a car.

Survival mode is a brilliant function of our brain. What we’ve gone over here barely scratches the surface. Just be aware that when your character is thrown headlong into fight or flight, they will not immediately fight then flee. Biologically and strategically, their body knows that it should go through certain steps in a specific order to provide the best chance of survival. And, you can display each of those steps in a way that is peculiar to your character and best for your story.

Until the next round with FightWrite® on the WD Blog, get blood on your pages. Also, if you are going to the Writer’s Digest Conference in July, and you need some mentoring with your fight scene, please make an appointment with me. We can troubleshoot, brainstorm, or literally walk through your scene to be sure it is exactly what your story needs. I will also be teaching a class on injuries (that includes lots of pictures) as well as a tactical class in which I will take questions from you all regarding fight movement. If you’ve been to my classes before you know they are fun and fill up quick! Sign up now to reserve your spot!

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(5 Things Writers Should Know About Epilepsy.)

My first introduction to autism came 12 years before my son’s diagnosis through a story, through the groundbreaking movie Rain Man. It brought autism into the public consciousness and helped foster early awareness. However, after Christian’s diagnosis, I found myself conflicted. Though the portrayal of Raymond Babbit inspired an emergent level of awe and admiration, it still left me with an overwhelming impression of disability, strangeness, and disconnection.

The overwhelming impression of “disability” and baffling autistic behaviors caused me to recoil when I associated it with my four-year-old son.

Much has changed in the years since. Diagnosis has become more prevalent and refined, awareness has grown, and media representation has expanded. Despite this progress, autism is still widely viewed through a deficit lens. The language we use—of disability, disorder, and dysfunction—reinforces a narrative that reduces autistic individuals to their challenges. It’s time for a new story, one that portrays autistic individuals for all that they are versus all that they are not.

I outline four aspects of autism that can help you see autism through a different lens when writing about an autistic character.

Autism Is an Inherent Part of the Human Condition

We begin with rejecting the notion that autism is an external affliction—a disorder that afflicts people in the way an illness might. I want to explore a more accurate understanding: Autism has always existed as part of the human condition.

Let’s take a look at Sir Isaac Newton, who is believed to have been autistic. Newton’s brilliance was unmatched—but so too were his differences. He was socially isolated, rigid in his routines, intensely focused, highly literal, struggled with social interaction, was exceptionally detail oriented, and had an extraordinary memory. 

Were Newton among us today, he would likely express many of the traits of autistic people: direct, perhaps blunt, enigmatic—descriptors those familiar with autism would immediately recognize. History has erased all of that; what we’re left with is simply one of the greatest minds of all time.

You Must Reject “Normal” to Build an Authentic World

The moment I fully internalized this was during a camping trip with Christian’s scout troop.

I arrived after dark and made my way through the forest to our scout troop’s campsite; two tents glowed with lantern lights. I poked my head under a tent flap, “Do you know where Christian is?” I asked. “We don’t know,” they replied.

Panic began to set in. Every year, I read stories of autistic adolescents who’d gone missing in the mountains. I checked the other tent—also chock full of boys. “Do you know where Christian is?” I asked again. One boy pointed toward the edge of the campsite. “I think he’s in that tent.”

I pulled back the flap and found Christian alone in the center of the dark, empty space. His eyes lit up. “Hey, Dad!” he said with a cracked voice full of relief. I hugged him tightly.

I was angry and disappointed. I expected better—from the boys, and from the leaders. I wanted to confront them. But I didn’t. Something shifted.

Up to that point, we had turned ourselves inside and out trying to make Christian fit into a world that wasn’t built for him. I was done.

Once Christian was asleep, my hurt turned into determination. We didn’t have to worry about what other people thought of Christian. There was no need to fix him—no need to make him fit into some notion of “normal.” Let them have their world—we had ours. We would create all the warmth he needed.

This was the first early realization that rather than try to make Christian fit into a world that wasn’t designed for him, it was better to create a world that is designed for him, and invite others into it (at least those who are willing to come).

Click to continue.

Autistic People Experience the World Very Differently

I once watched a BBC series presented by Chris Packham, an autistic conservationist. The series opened with Packham standing in a forest. He then describes what he sees as an autistic person. Instead of a general view, he sees every detail: every trunk, every branch, individual leaves with slight anomalies of color and shape.

Packham explains that as a naturalist, “seeing everything” is enormously beneficial, but then he explains how processing this quantity of data can become overwhelming. It’s no wonder that to cope with this torrent of sensory and cognitive input, autistic individuals seek solitude, develop a singular focus, or come across as being somewhat self-contained.

As a father, trying to understand how my son experiences the world has been both eye-opening and deeply rewarding.

One key realization was that my son experiences friendships differently than the normal conception of friendship. My wife and I tirelessly attempted to engineer friendships for Christian—with very little success. It was difficult—at times excruciating—to see our son not be accepted, and to be denied the life-affirming experience of friendships. Early on, I focused my pain and disappointment toward others and was left to conclude that few people are capable of befriending individuals with differences.

Looking back, however, I began to realize that the desire for connection seemed somewhat absent in Christian. Despite our continual attempts to draw him into interaction with others, his tendency was to avoid interactions, to wander away from them—physically and mentally. He has always sought solitude, and when he does engage, it is more indirect; it’s a certain kind of communion in which simply being together in the same space (watching TV, going on a hike) punctuated with occasional interactions is what brings him peace.

Once I began to realize this, our interactions became relaxing and enjoyable, rather than fretful. This wouldn’t have happened had I not stepped away from my expectations of what friendship was supposed to look like.

Recognizing and Growing Spectrum Strengths Is the Key to Rebranding Autism

In Rain Man, Raymond Babbit begins to come into view as a person when a waitress spills a box of toothpicks onto the floor. Raymond glances at them and states, “246.” The waitress looks at the remaining (four) toothpicks in the box and confirms that there were originally 250 total. In this moment, the perception of who Raymond was changed. It’s a microcosm of the transformation that happens when the strengths on the autism spectrum come into view.

The challenge, and the reason autistic strengths are hidden, stems largely from communication limitations that impact individuals on the spectrum, to one degree or another, as well as the disinclination (sometimes disinterest) for self-promotion.

Additionally, many of the signature strengths of autism are quieter by nature, such as attention to detail, exceptional memory, analytical thinking, honesty, reliability, and authenticity. In fact, many of these strengths would be easily overlooked, as are the people who possess them. Yet these strong individuals are responsible for most of the innovations that have occurred throughout history.

Seeing strength changes everything. It builds a self-identity anchored in strength.

​Coming full circle, if you had asked me in 2000 whether I wanted my son to grow up like Charlie Babbitt—charismatic, successful—or Raymond, the enigmatic man in the margins, I would have chosen Charlie. Today, I wouldn’t give the person my son has become for anything in the world. In truth, exceptional doesn’t reside in the ordinary. It lives in the extraordinary.

Autism is not a tragedy. It’s not a puzzle to solve. It’s a perspective to understand, a set of strengths to recognize, and a world of potential waiting to be unlocked.

It’s time to rebrand autism.

Check out Clain Udy’s Rebranding Autism here:

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(How Dyslexia Made Me a Better Writer.)

In honor of Purple Day, I’d like to explain a few things about epilepsy that my fellow authors can use when creating characters who have epilepsy.

Triggers vary from person to person.

The most commonly known trigger for seizures is flashing lights. That is a trigger for a lot of people, but only one of many. Sleep deprivation is another common one, as well as exhaustion and stress. My seizures can be triggered by strong emotions, whether positive or negative. Staying emotionally balanced and peaceful is crucial to keeping the seizures at bay. I also get into sensory overload easily, so loud noises, strong smells or tastes, and large crowds can trigger them too.

It’s important to know that many people with epilepsy, including myself, get a warning right before a seizure called an aura. My auras can range from my lips tingling to feeling like I’m floating. It can give me two to five minutes between triggers and the seizure to get somewhere safe and quiet.

There are multiple types of seizures.

When most people think of seizures, usually they have a specific image in mind: Somebody loses consciousness, convulses, and vomits. A large percentage of people with epilepsy do experience these seizures, which are called tonic-clonic seizures, (or grand mal).

Tonic-clonic seizures are generalized, meaning both sides of the brain are involved. There’s a different classification of seizures called focal onset, which means it starts in one specific part of the brain. Depending on the area, some seizures don’t cause loss of consciousness. Absence seizures can look like a blank stare, something others may not pick up on.

I have focal seizures that originate in the temporal lobe and am fully aware and communicative during them. My seizures can look like a panic attack, as most of the symptoms are internal sensations. I often feel confused, have anxiety out of nowhere, and have visual and sensory hallucinations. I also experience repetitive movements like shaking, nodding my head, and licking my lips.

Not every seizure is an emergency.

It’s nearly every day that I deal with seizures, but it’s not every day that the general public witnesses a seizure. What is a part of my day-to-day life, is seen as an emergency to other people. People can get scared and want to call 911. I’m able to explain that I don’t need to go to the hospital, I just need them to be present and talk to me during it.

However, those that can’t talk during their seizures can’t advocate for themselves. In that case, they could end up being billed for an ambulance ride, just for the seizure to already be over by the time they get to the hospital. Most of us carry our emergency medicine with us, and only need to go to the hospital if it doesn’t work.

Finding the right treatment can be a journey.

There are so many options out there for treating epilepsy. The difficult thing is that it’s not always a single medicine that can control all of the seizures, and some medications interact with each other. It’s not a quick process and in my case has never been set in stone. Sometimes one medicine will work wonders at first, and then will become less effective the longer I’m on it.

Thankfully there are options for people whose seizures aren’t controllable by medication alone. Lifestyle changes can make a big difference. I have to prioritize sleep and avoid too much activity and stress. Personally, adding on VNS Therapy has been a game-changer in managing my condition and improving my quality of life.

People with epilepsy often lead a pretty normal life, just with some limitations.

I think most people who have seizures would agree that it’s just one aspect of their life. One major area that it impacts is transportation. It is against the law to drive a car if you’ve had a seizure anywhere from 3 months to a year, depending on the state. So a support system is essential. I’m able to live in a tiny house on my parents’ property, and they check in with me daily and are happy to drive me around. Besides transportation and some medication side effects, I’d consider my day-to-day life fairly normal. While I’m not able to work a 9-5 office job, I do freelance video editing work, social media management, and just recently wrote a book called Pearls: A Memoir on Brain Cancer and Hope.

Now you know enough details about epilepsy to incorporate into your characters and storyline. But you might be asking, why even give your character epilepsy? Seizures are an obstacle that can often derail your plans, something you have no control over, and can add tension to a storyline. Despite this, one thing I’ve learned about people who have epilepsy is that we are resilient. Our own brains knock us down on a daily basis, but we find a way to bounce back and live our lives. Just a few influential authors who were diagnosed with or thought to have epilepsy include: Fyodor Dostoevsky, Charles Dickens, Agatha Christie, Lewis Carroll, and Edgar Allan Poe.

Check out Maggie Bushway’s Pearls here:

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(Think AI Is Bad for Authors? The Worst Is Yet to Come.)

At the outset of my novel-writing, I went on a week-long residential writing retreat in rural Devon, here in the UK, led by two creative writing teachers: one a fiction editor and poet, the other a novelist, actress and activist. My own tastes in fiction tended to the experimental: Jack Kerouac’s James Joyce-inspired ‘spontaneous prose’ novel Visions of Cody had led me to the latter’s monumental Ulysses, and it was this that I was trying, at least, to read as I arrived on the retreat. 

The advice from the second tutor—who I admired enormously—changed the course of my writing life: that I should write a conventional novel before trying to experiment.

Looking back now, I think this advice was based on a profound misconception: that one should train oneself in the ‘classical’ traditions of the form—mastering the intricacies of character, plot, setting, etc.—before embarking on anything more challenging, much as a musician should master their classical chord progressions and scales before even thinking about approaching the jazz repertory. 

What, though, if the experimental is not actually a descendent of the conventional, but is more like a closely related sibling, even a twin? In other words, what if the novel and its unconventional sibling, the anti-novel, are different (but related) forms requiring quite different apprenticeships?

Here are a couple of ways in which this sibling rivalry might play out in the future: things I wish someone had said to my younger self.

Don’t worry too much about producing lifelike characters or settings

The novel no longer needs to begin ‘with an old lady in the corner opposite.’ That was how Virginia Woolf described an encounter with a woman on a London train (in her 1924 essay Character in Fiction). The woman’s character imposed itself so forcefully upon Woolf that she thought it sufficient to make ‘someone begin almost automatically to write a novel about her,’ with Woolf believing that ‘all novels’ begin in this way. A century on and it is unremarkable for the novelist Rachel Cusk to say she is no longer interested in character because it is no longer how living is being done.

A clue to a future trajectory for the novel is provided by the Norwegian author Jon Fosse in his seminal seven-novel sequence Septology. Here, capitalized common names (The Clinic, The Country Inn, The Lane, The Wharf…) are generalized to the extent that ‘we could be anywhere and with anyone’ (as Blake Morrison puts it in the London Review of Books). This nominal verisimilitude also extends to Fosse’s characters: his two protagonists share the same name (Asle), and one of them is married to someone whose name shares the same letters (Ales). It is in this way that Fosse fashions what he calls ‘mystical realism’ but which might simply be called reality. After all, as Virginia Woolf says in the same essay, to be ‘real’ as a character in a novel is not necessarily the same as being ‘lifelike.’

Click to continue.

You can take character and plot straight off-the-peg to dress your protagonist

Much has been written about the theft of creative writers’ intellectual property to ‘train’ generative AI and large language models, less about how the novel itself has always been an appropriative technology. After all, from the moment Don Quixote loses his mind from reading too many tales of chivalry, adopting their plots, characters, and style for his own adventures, the modern novel has always been adept at using, exposing, parodying, and ironizing the conventions of fiction. 

And if artificial intelligence is a misnomer for what is actually ‘applied statistics’ (as the sci-fi writer Ted Chiang said in his Lunch with the FT), then what AI provides is a direct, accelerated route to all that is most commonplace in the form. Rather than an abolishment of character or plot (as explored by E. M. Forster in his Aspects of the Novel), the future novel might use these outputs merely to ‘clothe’ its protagonists, much as Don Quixote adopts the rusting anachronistic armor of the knight errant to usher in a new world.

Conventional novels will, of course, continue to be written and read: There’s still plenty of good music to be written in the key of C Major (as the composer Schönberg is reported to have said). The future of the form will remain, though, with those restless souls who choose to experiment, to push boundaries, to break the mould.

Check out Simon Okotie’s The Future of the Novel here:

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I wanted to write Y2K as a “decades book,” like Chuck Klosterman’s The Nineties or David Halberstam’s The Fifties. Except when I saw people talking about “the Y2K era” on social media, they were talking about both the late 90s and the early 2000s, and sometimes even the mid-2000s. 

(Things Writers Should Know.)

I decided to do what historians call “periodization,” which just means coming up with a name for a time period and deciding exactly when you think it begins and ends. I did this partially based on vibes, but also on actual events — specifically, the dot-com bubble and the housing bubble, with the midpoint being 9/11. However, if you disagree with me on this, I’m willing to at least hear you out. Historians argue about periodization all the time.

Y2K started with the dot-com bubble. 

It’s been largley memoryholed now, but the dot-com bubble was huge: culturally, economically, and in my own life story (the dot-com bubble helped me pay for college, which I explain in more detail in the book). In 1995, a company called Netscape had an incredibly successful initial public offering on the stock market. This showed people that the internet wasn’t just a new invention that allowed you to talk about Xena Warrior Princess with strangers. It was a new frontier where you could get really, really rich.

All of a sudden, there was a huge influx of money into the internet sector. By the late 90s—1997, 1998, 1999—people were striking it rich left and right, often very quickly. The stock market was constantly setting new record highs. There was a sense that, in the coming new millennium, we could all connect peacefully on the internet and we could all get rich as well. 

In 1997, the cover of WIRED magazine predicted that the following 25 years would be characterized by “prosperity, freedom, and a better environment for the whole world.” In 1998, an economist at MIT said, “The US economy likely won’t see a recession for years to come. This expansion will run forever.” This quote sounds crazy now, but that’s how people really thought back then.

Millennials grew up WITH the internet. 

I was born in 1988, which puts me squarely in the center of the millennial cohort (roughly 1982-1996). The first website went live in 1991, when I was three. I saw the internet change and develop. 

In Y2K, I write about the very first time I logged onto the internet, in 1995 when I was seven. In that year, just over a third of Americans even had computers in their homes. I remember where I was when I first used Google, in 1998. Google was one of many search engines, and was not yet the monopoly it is today. 

During middle and high school—from 1999 through around 2004—I spent a lot of time talking to friends on AIM. By the late Y2K Era—when I was finishing high school and going away to college—we were shifting into the era of social media, with MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. And even then, the internet had not been fully integrated into everyone’s daily life through smartphones (the first iPhone went on sale in 2007 and took a few years to become ubiquitous). 

Millennials were the last generation to know a world before the internet, and I think it gives us a unique perspective, especially as technology changes faster and faster.

The Y2K aesthetic isn’t McBling. 

Around 1997 (the year of that WIRED magazine cover), the aesthetics of fashion, consumer goods, and music videos started being influenced by the rise of the internet. Take TLC’s album FanMail. This is an entire CD centered around email and going online! On the cover, the group is photographed in silver body paint so they look like cyborgs, and the album art is decorated with binary code. In the “No Scrubs” video, they’re on a space station in silver outfits and silver eyeshadow. Or look at J. Lo’s video for “If You Had My Love.” She’s being watched on a webcam by users around the world, and she’s in a little white room wearing only sleek white clothing. You also had the popularity of the iMac G3, inflatable furniture, and the Volkswagen New Beetle.

All of these things fall under the general umbrella of “Y2K aesthetic,” which was popular from around 1997-2003. The Y2K aesthetic is futuristic, optimistic, and sleek. It’s been a nostalgia trend for a couple years now, and celebrities like Dua Lipa, Megan Thee Stallion, and Sydney Sweeney have worn Y2K-inspired looks.

Then there’s the McBling aesthetic, which is more 2004-2008. Think Juicy Couture sweatsuits, Von Dutch trucker hats, fake tans, and Louis Vuitton logo bags. It’s very over the top and kind of tacky, but fun. Vogue has noted that this aesthetic has recently started trending as well, with celebrities like Bella Hadid and Ice Spice wearing McBling looks.

Personally, I’m a Y2K girlie, but I love all of it.

TRL was everything. 

It’s hard to imagine in today’s fractured media landscape, but teens across America would gather daily after school to turn on MTV and vote on the top music videos of the day. And because YouTube didn’t exist yet, you couldn’t just watch any music video whenever you felt like it. 

Music videos play a big role in my book, because I love them, and I spent a lot of time watching them in middle and high school. And they taught me a lot about sex, gender, money, fashion, and race. My parents always told me I was rotting my brain with that stuff, but I actually think I learned a lot (and now I wrote a book about it).

It was a horrible time for body image. 

In general, the Y2K Era was extremely anti-feminist. Perhaps the most concrete example of this is the way women and their bodies were treated in the media. Fashion magazines depicted emaciated models without apology. Tabloids routinely mocked celebrities like Nicole Richie and Mariah Carey when they weren’t stick-skinny. All kinds of publications and TV shows promoted diets that were basically starvation diets. 

When body positivity got popular in the 2010s, it was explicitly pushing against these norms that told women they had to harm themselves to be allowed in public. Media—pushed by consumers and by feminist publications like Jezebel—got the message and changed how they talked about women’s bodies. In Y2K, I write about struggling with anorexia and bulimia, and how my disordered eating was a logical response to the larger climate around body image. 

Right now, we seem to be in a revanchist period where “thin is in” again, and I hope my book can stand as a refusal of that. I refuse to go back, and I want to do whatever I can to let other people experiencing eating disorders know that they’re not alone, and that together we can challenge this toxic culture.

The War on terror shaped millennial political consciousness. 

I saw 9/11 happen live on CNN in my 8th grade civics class. Perhaps more importantly, I saw American culture and politics change overnight. Suddenly, torture was a nuanced political issue, and Rage Against the Machine was too controversial for the radio. The Dixie Chicks had their CDs run over by a tractor when they made a mildly critical comment about the invasion of Iraq. I was apolitical at the time, but I found this change shocking. 

A few years later, the Abu Ghraib photos came out. Like a lot of American millennials, I’m still traumatized by those images, and I’m still angry that the acts depicted in them were done, supposedly, in my name.

Archivists made my work possible. 

I couldn’t have written this book without the work of social media archivists like Serena Morris of @shes__underrated, Shaina of @imstuckin.1999, the person behind @flyandfamousblackgirls, the person behind @discontinuedmakeup, the YouTuber VenusStadt, and the entire team behind the Consumer Aesthetics Research Institute. 

Unlike traditional archivists who work within libraries or universities, these archivists do this important and time-consuming work without institutional support. I encourage everyone to financially support their work where possible. Without this work, we can’t have more books like Y2K.

The Y2K era ended with the Great Recession in 2008. 

The Y2K era was characterized by the idea that the 21st century would mean prosperity for all. Politics were over, and we were all just supposed to focus on shopping and pop culture. The Great Recession put a swift end to that. 

Millions of Americans lost their homes, jobs, businesses, and savings. At one point, the national unemployment rate was as high as 10%. Suddenly—for the first time in years—people started asking big questions about politics, and specifically about the economy. The recession and its aftermath set the stage for all kinds of upstart political movements, from Bernie to Trump. Now, everyone talks about capitalism. 

In the Y2K Era, no one even acknowledged that it existed. It was just the world. It was like that David Foster Wallace speech about water.

Check out Colette Shade’s Y2K here:

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(Things Writers Should Know)

A character instantly dropping dead from an insulin overdose sounds dramatic, but it’s also very wrong. And many readers today are savvier about drugs than ever before. They may be recovering from addiction, struggling with diabetes, or a healthcare worker. Or they may have been personally impacted by the growing fentanyl overdose epidemic. 

For these readers, a blatantly inaccurate drug-related scene can ruin an otherwise great story, leading to negative reviews. It also robs them of an emotional-roller coaster while the character struggles, as the drug slowly begins to create trouble.

So, how can you avoid these pitfalls? By simply using the power of real drug facts. These facts not only offer authentic scenes, but enough peril to draw readers from page to page. Prefer a light-hearted scene? A few real facts can have your readers laughing, as they watch a mom hallucinating in the fruit aisle of the grocery store, after taking far too much cough syrup. Real drug facts can also help writers develop characters with complex backstories: the parent whose teen overdosed on left-over pain pills or the recovering heroin addict.

Thankfully, writers don’t need in-depth drug knowledge to successfully develop these realistic scenes. Following these simple, but key, tips will help assure accuracy:

1. Check the Historical Timeline

While it may seem obvious, it’s important to check that the drug or medical device used in your plot had been discovered by the historical time period of your story. Paying attention to details, such as which kind of drugs were available and in what form (pills, injection, etc.) is important. 

A 1630s pilgrim shouldn’t be using a modern-day drug patch for his pain. Instead, swapping that patch for a mustard poultice would suit the historical context. Likewise, a midwife shouldn’t give a shot to ease the labor pain of that pilgrim’s wife. A tea infused with herbal pain remedies would be more realistic. 

This doesn’t mean an historical story can’t lend itself to peril for your character. That mustard plaster may sound boring, but, as a writer, you can take your readers through the emotions of hope, as the healer applies it to the moaning townsman, relief as the man begins to rest, and finally plunging into worry, as the bandages are pulled back to reveal angry, blistering skin from a plaster left on too long. And what about that midwife? She’s young and inexperienced. What if she mixes too strong of a tea, sending the laboring mom into an overdose, even as the baby is born. Now what?

Historical accuracy is also impacted by a number of other variables, including changes in prescribing trends, as new treatments are discovered. These trends impact the products diverted to street drug supplies or available in home medicine cabinets. In addition, drug abuse trends are impacted by the influx of illegal drugs across borders. The recent upsurge of overdose deaths from fentanyl-laced counterfeit pills, such as oxycodone, is a prime example. A scene set in the mid-1990s could realistically involve stolen oxycodone from a medicine cabinet, whereas in a modern scene that oxycodone is more likely illicit and laced with deadly fentanyl. These sad realities readily lend themselves to believable trouble for your character.

2. Learn the Language

Many of us are familiar with the drug-related terminology we heard from friends or in movies while growing up: terms like weed or bong or phrases like chasing the dragon. But like all colloquial phrases, the slang associated with illicit and recreational drug use has greatly changed over the decades. 

For example, getting stoned has morphed into being baked or faded. Having a contemporary character ask a friend for a doobie would be outdated, while asking for a blunt or vape would be more modern. 

Even the language associated with obtaining drugs has evolved. Instead of a whispered exchange on a street corner, your contemporary character could simply send coded emojis via a social media app to order illicit drugs and schedule their delivery. When your character gets a text of a school bus and a chocolate bar, he’ll understand his ecstasy will be delivered to him at the school playground.

3. Verify the Legal Accuracy

Drug-related laws are rapidly changing, offering a wide array of creative scene options. Laws can vary from state to state and even between individual states and the federal level, creating confusion for people, not to mention the risk of potentially inaccurate stories for writers. 

For example, recent changes in some states have led to the legalization of hallucinogenic mushrooms. These mushrooms are under tight control, however, so your character shouldn’t just walk into a drug store to buy them off of the shelves (well, not yet, anyway). In most other states, hallucinogenic mushrooms remain illegal. 

If you want to have some legal fun, your character can buy a large supply of hallucinogenic mushrooms while on vacation, only to be arrested when she flies to her home state, where they are illegal. It’s much like the trouble Brittany Griner found herself in, when cannabis vape cartridges were confiscated from her luggage in Russia, sending her to prison and creating an international drama.

4. Rewrite Instant Death Scenes

This is a Hollywood favorite: A drug is swallowed, followed by the character instantly dropping to the ground in a seizure, foam dripping from his mouth. And while the foam part may be accurate, the instant effect is not. Nor is having his distraught co-character immediately announce his death. Yes, it’s visually entertaining. And completely wrong.

Most of your readers know it takes a bit of time for drugs to work. After all, most of us have suffered headaches, while waiting for a pain pill to work. At the very least, a drug first must be absorbed. Then, it takes a little time for an effect, good or bad. Why risk alienating audiences, when you can take advantage of this knowledge, allowing your screenplay to take readers on a rewarding journey, tensing as their favorite character begins to slur, then stumble, then… fade to black?

Now, that’s a page-turner.

5. Choose the Right Symptoms

Giving your character the wrong drug symptoms (or making up your own) can hurt your credibility. A melatonin overdose won’t cause an adult character to stop breathing. A few extra vitamin capsules won’t cause hallucinations. But there are plenty of interesting real symptoms that will fit your plot, provided you choose the right drug.

If you really want those vitamins to cause hallucinations, instead of creating fake symptoms, a pill mix-up can be your answer. If you’ve sprinkled the bread crumbs well, your character, who stores bottles of vitamins and hallucinogenic mushroom capsules next to each other, can end up in an adventure she wasn’t planning. 

As she makes her coffee, blurry-eyed, and grabs the wrong bottle—downing a few mushroom capsules instead of her vitamins—your readers will be anticipating what will happen during her upcoming morning interview.

6. Verify Overdose Potential

A drug overdose can be woven into your story. With some drugs, your character can even be brought back from the brink of death. Opioids, such as fentanyl, can shut down the ability to breathe, leading to rapid death. The antidote naloxone, if given in time, can undo that breathing effect, allowing your character to survive. 

Some drugs, though, have little or no ability to cause an overdose death. A desperately depressed character that swallows too many melatonin tablets is likely to get very drowsy, but it’s not realistic to open the next scene with the family weeping by her coffin. Melatonin overdoses in children, however, is another story entirely. 

If your character’s child mistakes Mom’s melatonin gummies for candy, the next scene could believably open with the family holding hands bedside, the child on a ventilator in the hospital, the doctor looking somber.

7. Use Reliable Resources

Online resources have made researching drug effects simpler over the decades, although not all information is factual. From newspaper articles to websites, wrong drug information abounds. 

For example, gross inaccuracies were perpetuated online regarding the risk of death from merely touching fentanyl pills. The increased use of artificial intelligence for information searches can amplify this kind of inaccurate information. However, there are numerous reputable drug information sources. 

Drug Package Inserts (also called Prescribing Information) reliably offer insight into possible symptoms and can be searched online by the drug name. Poison Control Centers and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) are great resources for overdose trends. And the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) periodically posts comprehensive updates that detail illicit drug abuse and trafficking trends.

As writers, we’re accustomed to researching pertinent facts and information. Accurately portraying real drug facts should be no different. Applying these seven key tips can help you avoid blatantly unrealistic scenes, while offering a better reader journey. But synthesizing these ideas into authentic scenarios can be a little more difficult. 

Once your scene is complete, consider including beta readers with backgrounds in drug-related fields, such as pharmacy, emergency medicine, addiction, or even forensics, as a valuable step to validate your interpretation, assuring your readers will love every page. 

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(Things Writers Should Know.)

Here are our top 10, in chronological order—extracted from a rich and complicated history, one that is utterly relevant today.

1.) The right to vote was not enshrined in the Constitution as it was originally written; Congress left it to the states to decide who could vote, and when. At the nation’s birth, the majority of Americans of voting age could not legally vote.

2.) Over the years, different groups of Americans—poor people, African Americans, women, Native Americans—had to fight for the right to vote. Sometimes, people would win the right to vote only to lose it later on. This fight continues today.

3.) The Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1870, granted African American men the right to vote. Black men voted by the hundreds of thousands during the period of Reconstruction, electing nearly 2,000 African American officeholders at almost all levels of government. By the end of the 19th century, through violence, intimidation, and restrictive voting laws, nearly all Black people were barred from voting and all Black elected officials swept from office.

4.) Voting rights for all Americans were not secured until nearly 200 years after the birth of the United States—August 8, 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act (VRA), which prohibits racial discrimination in voting. The VRA was among the main accomplishments of the Civil Rights Movement.

5.) The VRA was amended by Congress in 1975 to require voting and election information in multiple languages, not only English—a huge step towards making it possible for millions of Spanish-speaking Americans to participate in elections. Latinos, a diverse group ethnically and politically, are now the second largest voting bloc in the United States.

6.) Over the last 50 years, despite the VRA, opponents of democracy have found ways to limit the expansion of voting rights—including felon disfranchisement laws for nonviolent offenders, Voter ID laws, voter roll purges, extreme partisan gerrymandering, and other schemes meant to limit the number of people, especially poor people and people of color, who participate in elections.

7.) In 2010, in Citizens United v Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations and private organizations could spend unlimited amounts of money on election-related activities, overturning a century of campaign finance restrictions. Since then, a flood of “dark money” has swamped the American electoral process, giving outsize influence to shadowy private donors.

8.) In another landmark decision, in 2013, the Supreme Court decided in Shelby v. Holder that key sections of the Voting Rights Act were unconstitutional—namely, the sections that required states with a history of voting discrimination to obtain “preclearance” from the Justice Department before making any change to voting policies or practices. To many observers, the decision gutted the main purposes of the VRA, and has led to a new wave of discrimination in voting.

9.) Today, one of the main threats to voting rights is disinformation, particularly relating to voter fraud—a concept which underlies a new wave of voting restrictions. Experts consider voter fraud a myth, because it is statistically insignificant (in the words of one analyst, “infinitesimally rare.”)

10.) The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, named for the late, longtime congressman and voting rights champion, seeks to strengthen the provisions of the Voting Rights Act and push back against attempts to shrink the electorate and dilute the voting power of Americans. The House of Representatives has passed versions of this bill twice—in 2021 and 2023—only to see it die in the Senate. It remains a blueprint for democratic reform in America.

Check out Michael Eric Dyson and Marc Favreau’s Represent: The Unfinished Fight for the Vote here:

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