How To Write A Chorister

How to Write a Chorister

Intro

Singing has always been one of my passions--I’ve been in choirs since I was ten years old, so I have a pretty good knowledge of music and music theory! I haven’t seen many posts on how to write a chorister (aka a fancy word for a member of a choir), so I decided to make one myself. Yes, it’s a very self-indulgent post, but hopefully someone finds this somewhat helpful!

Warm up

You know how in movies and other media, people will start singing out of the blue and they're perfectly on pitch and flawless? Yeah, well that’s kind of misleading. A singer will never perform at their best without warming up. They can sing despite that, but their voice will most likely sound strained or weaker than usual, and their vocal range won’t be as wide. Singing warm ups are omitted in most media because it’s inconvenient to show, and I understand that, although I think it would be fun if the process was shown!

Choir warm ups are frequently both vocal and physical. I’ll give you my choir’s as an example. First we loosen up by stretching, paying particular attention to the neck and spine. Other physical exercises are clapping along to a rhythm that the choir director sets, practicing good posture, and doing breathing exercises.

Next comes the fun part: vocal warm up. We usually start with lip trills, “sirens,” and repeated words or vowels/diphthongs. After that, we typically do ascending and descending solfege scales, stretching into the highest parts of our range and down into the lowest parts of our range. And then we’re ready to sing!

Vocal parts

There are four main parts to a choir, which I’ll define as simply as possible:

Soprano: The highest range of voices in a choir

Alto: The second highest range of voices in a choir

Tenors: The second lowest range of voices in a choir

Bass/Baritones: The lowest range of voices in a choir

Some people fall in between these ranges or span more than one, which is normal. Also, the average singer’s vocal range is 2-3 octaves on a piano.

Characteristics of a chorister

Choristers typically have or should have the following traits:

A keen sense of pitch, rhythm, and hearing

Strength in sight reading and in reading musical score

The ability to sing as a group and blend well with other voices

Leadership! Being a leader helps you as well as everyone else

Types of choirs

Choirs usually organize and limit themselves according to voicing and/or age of the singers as well as by the size of group or the type of music they sing. Here are some types:

Mixed choir: A group with changed (usually male) and unchanged voices (usually female or children); the voicing for this group is typically expressed as SATB (soprano, alto, tenor, bass). This is the type of choir I currently sing in!

Equal voice choir: A group for either changed (usually male) voices or unchanged (usually female) voices. Sometimes these choirs are called men's choirs and women's/ladies' choirs. Sometimes they are referred to by their voicing: a TB or TTBB choir and an SA or SSAA choir

A youth choir varies widely in its voicing since adolescence is the time when most male voices transition from the soprano or alto vocal range to the tenor or bass vocal range. For this reason, youth choirs can have any combination of voice parts, including SA, SAB, and SATB

A children’s choir is most typically an equal voice group for pre-pubertal singers. Some children's choirs also include youth and may include changed voices (tenor and bass)

Choirs can also organize themselves by size or repertoire type:

Chorus/choral society/large ensemble: Usually a choir of 40 or more singers and often includes 100+ people. These groups typically sing large works, including operas or oratorios or similar pieces

A chamber choir will never include more than 40 singers and will often be considerably smaller (For example, the chamber choir I’m in has 17 singers.)

Small vocal ensemble/group: Ranges in size from 3 to 12 singers

A cappella choir: Sings only music that has no pitched instrumental accompaniment. A great example is the group Pentatonix (which many choir directors absolutely adore)

Choirs that organize themselves around specific cultural or religious music traditions

How singing in a choir can affect you

You can learn many useful talents from choir, such as:

Learning to work with other people and form bonds with them. The better the members of a choir know each other, the better they will sing together!

Growing more confident in your abilities and improving your musical talents

Singing with like-minded people

Harmonizing to pop songs on the radio

Impressing people in karaoke

How to Write Rivals to Lovers

Credit: https://allwritealright.com/writing-from-enemies-to-lovers-creating-dynamic-relationships/

Intro

I would argue that rivals to lovers is superior over enemies to lovers because it’s less toxic and more satisfying. Typically, it results in a healthier relationship than most enemies-to-lovers relationships because it presents a less dark or drastic reason for them to dislike each other (like killing the other’s loved ones, etc). With rivals to lovers, you get jealousy, pining, banter, tension, and of course, a great payoff!

Establish the characters

First and foremost, you’re going to need to make sure that the rivals have the potential to get along. You need to be very strategic about how you design these characters, since this will determine whether or not the dynamic will work authentically. The characters should be unique individuals, obviously, but you need to build them in such a way that your readers will be able to identify their chemistry.

The two characters should have some similar or complementary traits. They should also have traits that make up for the other’s shortcomings, and they should have struggles and flaws that the other character could help them with--if they could only cooperate. These subtle parallels should give readers the sense that the characters would get along, if not for whatever obstacle warped their opinions of each other in the beginning.

Decide why they dislike each other

There are a number of different reasons that characters could have for disliking each other, but you need to be careful about how you approach this. The characters’ hatred should never be based on things that are unforgivable, and they shouldn’t be allowed to evolve as a result of abuse or trauma. Never romanticize bullying, abuse, or manipulation. With that said, here are plausible backstories for their rivalry:

Competition, also known as the main pillar of this trope. Competition can bring out the worst in people, so if your two characters are both vying for the same goal, they might clash as a result. The great thing about this type of hatred is that it might be accompanied by great respect for their rival, and it also gives you a good similarity between the characters that you can rely on to draw them closer together.

Desires. If these characters want the same thing, then the next thing they want is not to let the other get it. This is closely connected to competition. This sets up an interesting plotline as readers wonder who will achieve their prize first...or who might lose it. More on this later!

Conflict. Being on opposing sides of a conflict, such as a debate or dispute, positions characters to dislike each other regardless of their personalities. Their dislike for each other is based on their moral dedication to their country, faction, or clan, and not on their inherent qualities as people.

Society. They might dislike each other because of their parents, education, or class differences. If characters believe they dislike each other because they were taught to dislike each other, then they will have to work out their own internal struggles individually before they can get along together.

Actually falling in love

The biggest mistake that writers make with this trope is moving through the arc too quickly. Overcoming intense feelings for another person takes time, and it happens in distinct phases. First, the characters need to forgive each other and reconcile with their rivalry. Then, they will likely be friends before they can come anywhere close to falling in love. Rivals to lovers must be slowburn to be effective. Some methods of showing it are below:

Forced proximity/conversation

Reluctant partnership (a personal favorite!)

Physical, emotional, or sexual attraction

Banter or teasing

Staring

Flirting

Remembering small things about the other character

Coming to the thought that maybe the other person isn’t so bad / things might be different if they weren’t rivals

Letting the other person beat them in something

Let the characters evolve

If the characters are going to make things work between them, they cannot simply continue the way things have always been. They must acknowledge where they were wrong, and change themselves for the better. They must confront their beliefs and change their perspective, and above all else, they need to forgive themselves and each other for the time they spent disliking the other.

In many cases, characters will need to redeem themselves before their relationship will work. This is a great opportunity to write a redemption arc for one (or both) of the characters, which can make readers feel even more emotionally attached to the characters.

Climax and conflict

At the heart of every rivals-to-lovers story, there’s something that both characters want--otherwise they wouldn’t be rivals! It sets up a very interesting conflict, due to their changing feelings for each other. Who needs the prize more? Who wants it more? Will one of them yield for the other, or will they forge ahead with selfishness and guilt? Or will they both realize that what they need is something completely different from what they thought they wanted?

This is an excellent time to incorporate a betrayal or forgiveness trope. Rivals to lovers implies high stakes, because there is something that they are fighting for. Show those stakes, and you’ll have both an excellent story and an excellent romance!

Love confessions

Once the characters have overcome the obstacles in the way of their love and come to terms with how they feel, the next step is for them to admit those feelings to each other. How your character decides to approach this decision is going to depend on their personality and their existing relationship with the other person. Make sure the scene carries some emotional weight to it: you want readers to feel like the stakes are high.

Your characters aren’t likely to confess their love without feeling some shred of reciprocity. If they haven’t noticed any indication that the other person likes them back, then they’re probably going to sit on those feelings for a while. Both of the characters can even be doing this at the same time, without realizing that the other person feels the same way (which is both really frustrating and really gratifying for the reader!).

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the-writer-muse

3 years ago

While writing an adaptation of a character who in mythology time used a sword, I'm wondering would it be ineffective to still make them use a sword but a thinner flatter type. Or is it just better to just stick to a knife?

I'm not going to harp on it, but, "mythology time," is a weird way to phrase it. Usually you'd say, "a character who used a sword in myth," or. "in their myths," not, "in mythology time." This is because there is no fixed, "mythic era," in history.

Myths vary, but it's often impossible to pin down a specific moment they come from. The British give us a pair, one example and one counterexample. The myth of Robin Hood is remarkably easy to pin down, because it includes historical figures. It occurs sometime in the 12th century. (Worth noting, the written records regarding Robin Hood first pop up in the 14th century, so it may have been floating around in a oral form for a couple centuries before anyone recorded it, or none of the previous written records survived.) In contrast, it's basically impossible to pin down a specific timeframe for the King Arthur legends, because there's no historical frame of reference. There's a lot of academic study on the subject, but while you can say that Robin Hood is set in the 1190s, you can't say the same for King Arthur.

Mythic characters are a little tricky to work with. By their nature, they have a well established backstory and identity. Messing with that is feasible, but requires some care. It also requires passing familiarity with the myths they appear in.

For example: If you wanted to write a modern incarnation of Hercules, it would ring a bit off to have a character with a warm and loving parents.

Artificially creating a mythic character (for a fantasy setting) is a lot more complicated. This requires you to create a character who left enough of a legacy on their world that they're still a household name millennia later, conveying those stories to the audience, and then also introducing a modern version of that character in the setting, without the entire work being very heavy handed or cliché, is quite difficult, and time consuming.

And, I still haven't talked about your main question, their weapons.

The artifacts of mythic characters often have legacies that, in some cases, outstrip their owners. In spite of being inanimate objects, they're characters, with their own identities, that extend far beyond simply being, "a sword." I'm reminded of multiple starships in different settings named Excalibur, and even, just the name, is evocative.

This is where the real danger is, you're talking an artifact, where the name alone, is (supposed) to be enough to cue the reader in to the significance of the object. (Having said that, I recently had to explain the significance of Gjallarhorn to a friend, so, depending on the object in question your results may vary. There are a lot of mythic artifacts, and not all of them carry the same name recognition.)

If your mythic hero has a sword, chances are it has a name, and probably a legacy of its own. Mythic artifacts in a modern setting may be the original object, or the, "soul," of the artifact in a new object (the rules for this are dictated by the author), but, "downgrading," a mythic artifact is something you probably don't want to do without a lot of careful consideration.

-Starke

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the-writer-muse

3 years ago

what if writers did streams like artists did

writing characters with one eye

i can pretty much guarantee that ↑that↑ is not a heading you see everyday.

now i will not be giving advice on writing cyclopses, (though it may be sort of the same thing) i still hope this will be helpful for some people out there that are looking to provide a more diverse cast to their wip!

i have never ever ever read a book, watch a show movie etc etc that involves a character with one eye. (aside from those badass characters who wear eye patches bc they lost sight in one eye in some badass way)

for context: i am one of many people who was born with microphtalmia, an eye disease that results in one or both eyes develope smaller than normal at birth. i myself was born with a smaller left eye, which resulted in my left eye being removed exactly twenty days after birth.

microphthalmia (along with many other eye diseases) typically leads to being half or fully blind. i lucked out and only lost my left eye which i am so so thankful for.

i would really really love to see more representation for my community in literature, especially so people would come to see that being half blind isn’t as unusual and weird as people make it out to be.

without further ado, i present to you, a list of information, facts, and first hand experiences from yours truly!

i’ve had prosthetic eyes made to fit my eye socket for about fifteen years (i’m 16 lol) (the first 6ish months after the surgery i never had a prosthetic)

in my life i’ve had four different prosthetic eyes made because just like other people, my eye socket grew alongside the rest of me, meaning the prosthetic needed to be made bigger

i’ve had my current prosthetic for four years now, the past ones lasted about 2-3 years at a time. this one will probably last me through the rest of my life unless i need/want a new one

as opposed to most media/assumptions, my prosthetic (along with most prosthetics) is PLASTIC (people always think it’s glass) and only half a circle!!

i’ve had three surgeries related to my eye

i do not have depth perception which makes doing certain things very difficult (estimating distance, how close/far i am from something etc)

driving is not affected too much, i just have to turn my head more than other people. i believe being blind in the right eye might be more difficult, but i couldn’t say

doing my make up is kinda easy, except for eyeliner is a pain in the ASS since most people close their eye to do it on their upper lid, but clearly i can’t close my right eye whilst doing it lol

my family as well as my friends and even myself often forget i have a prosthetic, which sometimes results in awkward/funny situations

i hate walking with people on my right bc i can’t tell where they are unless i’m constantly looking down at my/their feet

i sucked at basketball bc i had such a disadvantage (no depth perception, i could only see half the court, i was constantly turning my head) but professional swimming is much easier for me since it’s not a contact sport and doesn’t really require for me to be paying attention to a million things at once

i rarely have to take my prosthetic out, and if i do, it’s either to clean it, (we do get eye crusties on our prosthetics just like other people do when they have pink eye or sever allergies) it’s bothering me/really dry, or i want to take it out to show/scare people lol

a lot of people don’t realize when i first meet them that it’s fake bc my recent prosthetic is amazing accurate to my real eye. others notice and assume i have a lazy eye since it doesn’t move

for some reason people think i can’t cry out of my left (prosthetic) eye??? i still have a tear duct??? i actually think more tears come out of my left tear duct than my right lol

i am extremely self conscious about it, but i know there are other one-eyed beauties out there who aren’t which is amazing!! i try to live vicariously through them lol

i make sooo many jokes about my eye lol, and i’m usually ok w other people making jokes as long as they aren’t like overly rude/offensive, then i’ll feel a lil bad about my self

people never really made fun of it, but kids in middle school likes to wave things in front of my left eye/on my left side that i couldn’t see which got really annoying after a while

getting custom designed prosthetics are available, but they’re really expensive (so are normal lol) they costs thousands of dollars, just like other prosthetics do

i run into things that are on my left side ALL THE TIME it’s actually kinda funny lolol

i try to hide my left eye/turn more to my left side in photos bc my eyes aren’t always looking in the same direction, which really gets to me

i wear glasses for both protection and bc my right eye is -1.75 lmao but i did used to wear non-prescription glasses purely for safety

i do have contacts to wear during the summer, swim meets etc, for when i don’t want/can’t wear my glasses but need to see. bc of this, i have a second pair of glasses that have no prescription

if doctors/scientists managed to figure out a way to fix microphthalmia (a birth defect), or do a sort of eye transplant, i would not be able to have that done to me because all parts of my left eye have been removed from my body

microphthalmia is NOT the only disease that results in the haver losing sight in one or both eyes!! there are many others, but it is not my place to share any experiences for something i have not experienced!!!

for once i just want to see a clumsy character who has one eye that WASNT a result of some tragic event.

so please please please consider including a character with one working eye in your wip. it would mean the world to myself and all the other members of the community (there’s a lot of us, trust me) plus, i wouldn’t mind starting an acting debut playing a half-blind female protagonist, that would be so dope.

that’s about all i can think of for now! please send an ask or reply to this post if you have any questions, i’m willing to answer any!!! and if you happen to be a member of the one eye club, please add to this post!! that would mean the world to me:)

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How To Write A Chorister