unpretty:

unpretty:

learning from the reblogs of that post that there’s a lot of people out there under the impression that “kill your darlings” means “kill your characters” and that’s the funniest possible interpretation of that phrase

since a couple people sent asks: it means you can’t be precious about your own writing when the time comes to edit. sometimes you will write a really good scene, or a really good line, or a really good description. it will be your new favorite thing you’ve ever written. the kind of thing you want to post on tumblr attributed to “the book i haven’t written yet” because it’s just that good. but when the whole thing is done and you’re reading it over, it just. it doesn’t actually work. it stands out like a sore thumb. it fucks up the pacing, or maybe once you’ve really got a handle on characters you realize it’s ooc. “kill your darlings” is about learning to delete those bits, even though they’re really good, because they’re making the work as a whole worse.

… but a lot of people i know don’t actually delete them because it’s 2023 and you can just cut and paste them into a different document titled “bits” until you write something where they’ll fit. and sometimes it actually does fit in the work, but you tried to put it in the wrong place or in the mouth of the wrong character. but learning that you can put a lot of excellent paragraphs together to make a story that’s worse than the sum of its parts is the important part.

(via natalieironside)

script-a-world:

Research Survey

We’ve been discussing how best to put together a masterpost on research, and realized it would help to know where our audience is as far as research knowledge and techniques. Please feel free to reblog to increase the sample size!

The survey will run until the end of July and then will be closed so we can make use of the results.

Script-A-World's Survey on Worldbuilding Research Methods

Thank you for participating in this information gathering survey. Please complete the following questions to the best of your memory. This i

Google Docs

(via scriptlgbt)

cosette141:

What is the most enjoyable part of the writing process for you?

thinking of an idea *to* write… and getting one!

encountering story problems… but then figuring out story solutions

the actual writing: characters, emotions and dialogue

the actual writing: scene and setting description

worldbuilding

(if you use a type of outline) outlining/planning

EDITING

wait writing is supposed to be enjoyable

other (in the tags!)

See Results

If I forgot an option it’s because I made a poll at 3am again

Please reblog for sample size and tag with your pick or the world may never know

(via yeahwrite)

cmrosens:

Fantasy Castle Thoughts

Wandering around castle ruins on the weekend while thinking about my fantasy WIP had me thinking about more worldbuilding stuff in fantasy (the obvious ones being covered by others, such as, where does the shit go? How do they get water? How do they not poison themselves while answering Qu 1?):

1. That film where they erased the entire town and the castle was sat there for no reason (meant to be Rochester) - look, even if your castle is a strategic fortress in the back of beyond, it will have some kind of nearby settlement. Because: who is building it and how long does it take and where do they all live while they’re constructing it? Where do they go afterwards? How do the garrison get food (easier to grow crops and raise livestock nearby than have vulnerable wagons bringing it in and being ambushed).
2. A lot of castles were not built by locals, because you can’t trust the fucking locals, that’s (usually) why the castle is THERE. If you don’t need a defensive structure you build a manor or a stately home. If you’re building a castle, it’s usually to subdue the population or to defend against the neighbours, but either way, what often happens is that the king or whoever will round up people from his patrimony he knows he’s already whipped into shape and can trust, then force-marches them across country and re-settles them in the area the castle is meant to be. They are the ones who then farm and raise livestock, and push out the locals to do so. Over time, you get some intermingling and after a few gens it’s a very different demographic, but you have a story of settlement going on with tensions bubbling under the surface.
   
   See also: William Rufus wanting to subdue the North of England, forcibly uprooting his tenants in the South of England and making them build and settle in Carlisle, where he built his castle (11thC); the Earl of Lincoln dragging a load of Yorkshire and Lancashire and Lincolnshire men to re-settle his newly bestowed North Welsh lordships, pushing the Welsh into the uplands while the settlers took over the lowlands (12th-13thC).
3. The settlers around castles bring their own forms of folk religion, superstition, folklore, dialect, and naming patterns, which are specific to their original region. These may be very similar to the ones where they’ve been settled. What does that look like? Is the culture of particular villages and settlements a little bit different or maybe strikingly so the closer you get to the castles in your world because of this? What are the issues faced by settlers and by local people, how do they get resolved (or do they)? You’d imagine settlers are favoured in court disputes, but depending on the politics, they may actually be overlooked in efforts to appease the locals, leading to some lords really upsetting the very people they took for granted that they could trust. What’s going on with all this local level stuff?
   
   By the way:: 21stC “my religion is better than yours” is so fucking boring and overdone imo from Western fantasy. Not every fantasy people has to have a US Evangelical approach to faith. Maybe they just don’t care, or as soon as they hear something new they’re like oooh this is interesting let’s incorporate that! And they do. And it’s fine. And that’s a normal attitude to have. That might be a lot more fun, because then you get multiple variations on a theme, which create lots of little layers and nuance to your world, rather than a very one-dimensional impression of “homogeneity” with the danger of slipping into ye olde “X Bad, Y Good” dichotomy.
4. Technology and adapting tech: building castles requires tech, and once you know how long something took to build, you know what the tech was and can work out how it may have developed since then. Also think about how it can be adapted. If you’ve got a world where castles are required because fighting happens, you have a world full of disabled people.
   
   War causes disability.
   Even tournaments were EXCEEDINGLY dangerous. Henry VIII got permanent brain damage at one. Other knights were left paralysed, many died, some were amputees as a result.
   
   People get their legs hacked off due to gangrene from wounds. People get arrows lodged in their spines. People get sick from malnutrition and develop conditions like osteoarthritis, osteoporosis, etc.
   
   Picture this: your lord gets severely injured and may never walk again just by falling from his horse (common). Unfortunately, the castle steps are DESIGNED to be difficult to get up and down, because it’s a defensive structure, and you DO NOT want to make it easy for enemies to just stroll up to the upper levels which are the most defensible. Bear in mind that the majority of a castle is empty space: the ward.
   
   The domestic quarters are built into the walls, usually the inner walls of a concentric castle.
   
   Your lord had an upper floor room. In a castle, space is at a premium. You need all the space on the ground floor and it’s already occupied. What do you do? Well - you remember that pulley system for heaving big tons of dressed stone up to the top of the scaffolding when constructing the tower? Yeah. Yeah you’re going to use that. And if your lord is now permanently disabled and cannot use the stairs, you can work out how to refine that. But right now, you need to get him into bed so the physician can look him over, because if he dies right now this would be terribly politically inconvenient .
   
   Even if this hasn’t happened in your current story right now, if this was the case for the lord or two BEFORE, the equipment may all still be there, and still be in place.

Anyway if you like this, you might like my newsletter and podcast, and the books I write.

CM’s Substack | CM Rosens | Substack

Welcome to Pagham-on-Sea, where I provide arcane knowledge, post fiction and discount news, info on new releases, and all sorts of updates.

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subyss-chan asked:

How would you suggest to wright the overall plot of a drama featuring a family of executioners and torturers in the slice of life genre, with some elements of "teen" drama, but a lot darker. Like, the plot would focus on the relationships between the various members of the executioner household: parent-child, sibling relationships, master-servant relationships and occasionally some romance? How would you recommend structuring the plot?

I would suggest mapping out the plot elements that you want to incorporate into your story, including where, when and how each of the relationships intersect with the action of the plot.

How this works is down to what you want to do with the story, there are infinite variations on how stories can be structured, but here are a few posts I have which break down some common structural approaches:

[HERE] is a post about the three act structure

[HERE] is a post about multiple plots within a narrative arc

[HERE] is a post about the conventional five-point Romance plot

I hope these help!

cmrosens:

Thinking about worldbuilding this weekend.

Things like: basic questions and the way they are answered can imply more about the society in 2 sentences than the author can infodump in 5 pages.

E.g.

Where I’m from, older people don’t ask where you are from if they think you have ties to the area, they ask you who your people are, often phrased as “who do you belong to?”

There is a sense of possession and community in that question, also the implications that your autonomy is contingent on your standing, that you are not an individual in this interaction but they are treating you as an extension or appendage of a group and they need to know the group before they can determine how to progress in your interaction. There is also a deep sense of embedded belonging, that they have assumed you *belong* in some way.

How you understand that question determines how you answer. I would start with my grandparents, not my parents, and if the name doesn’t work I would then go for a geographical point of reference down to the street they were born in, and expand to occupation and work through this with all their siblings and in laws until we hit upon a commonality, and the old lady would nod and beam and understand who I was, and move on.

In fantasy, you can play around with these dynamics to show the reader SO MUCH about the way people understand their position in the world and how important certain things are over others. Like, if occupation was the primary thing, not family name, you would start by explaining your trade, who you apprenticed under, the places you practiced your trade, your position in the guild or union if those exist, whether you belong to those or to an in-world equivalent, who your supervisors are and who they were once apprenticed to, and so on. That can come out organically in a conversation and you can make it humorous or poignant or angry or tense, depending on the context and in-world dynamics.

That’s a lot more fun to read too, because when you establish things like this, later dynamics can be FORESHADOWED by these seemingly basic questions. If you can introduce a dynamic in the background then a conflict character appears, before anything happens and before that character even opens their mouth, the reader is picking up context clues and what they know so far and thinking, UH OH THERE WILL BE TROUBLE HERE

And i think that’s really cool and I wish more people did that I guess

Anonymous asked:

Is it bad to describe to the readers something in media but the media doesn't exist in the world I'm building? I don't mean a character saying that, but in the third person descriptive naration. I set a story in space and I'm describing to the readers that something looks like the transporters from Star Trek (because that was my inspiration). I got a bit of feedback saying this is stupid even if not in character? I have lots of that from multiple sources of media though.

Is it bad to describe to the readers something in media but the media doesn’t exist in the world I’m building?

Not “bad”, per se, but it may not be the most effective way to tell your story.

When you write with a lot of references to other media, you’re building in a lot of assumptions into the story.

Sometimes, this is deliberate. It can be effective in a comedic story, for example, a film like Spaceballs, or the Scary Movie franchise. The references work because they are calling back to stuff that the audience is assumed to be familiar with, and riffing on them.

These references rely on familiarity. And the audience is largely self-selecting, people go to see these films because they are familiar with the source material and want to laugh at the silly jokes that can be pulled out of a self-serious source material.

The other thing is that when you’re developing a secondary world where Star Trek doesn’t exist, but then you’re referencing Star Trek in the narration, that is confusing.

If you mention something in the narration of a story, then the natural assumption is that the thing in question exists in the story. It’s a lot more work to un-Star Trek a story once it’s been Star Treked, than it is to just not mention Star Trek in the first place.

I set a story in space and I’m describing to the readers that something looks like the transporters from Star Trek (because that was my inspiration)

In a ‘serious’ story, this kind of referencing can feel like a joke that’s left hanging. As a reader, I’m not reading a novel to be told 'it was just like that thing in Star Trek’, I’m reading the novel to have you describe the things that exist in the world of your story.

When you use references to other texts as a way of avoiding describing things for yourself, you’re assuming that the reader is familiar with the other texts in question.

If I am a reader who has never seen Star Trek, am I then going to have to put down your book, and go and watch some Star Trek in order to be able to picture the thing in the spaceship? How many times am I going to need to put down your book, and go and find another text so that I can get an understanding of what the things in your story are like?

It might be helpful to check out a few texts that are clearly 'inspired by’ Star Trek but which are their own entities, so that you can see how other people have done this kind of thing, while also not being just a direct parody.

The Orville is a scifi series which is clearly riffing off of a lot of Star Trek stuff, but also develops its own world, societies, aliens, etc

Galaxy Quest is a movie which is about an in-world scifi show as well as an in-world real alien contact

Redshirts by John Scalzi is a novel which metatextually riffs on some of the common tropes in Star Trek, and scifi more broadly

It’s also probably a good idea to think about why you have been using references to other texts to explain things in your story.

If you lack confidence in your ability to describe things, or if you aren’t interested in worldbuilding, you can figure out how to develop these parts of your writing practice so that you don’t have to keep reaching for other people’s work to prop you up.

I hope this helps!

my-cursed-prince asked:

Hi! I have a question about world-building.

In fantasy, do you know that you’re encoding a culture?

I have two main examples.

I have two nations in my fantasy story one is named Arbia and the other is named Vira.

Arbia is a corrupt nation that has a caste system. The lowest caste are slaves that serve the government. Their race is similar to Asian features as well as their names. This is mainly because I think Asian names are cool. They also write in characters. Most of my characters are from the slave caste and it’s about them trying to fight for their freedom.

Vira is a democratic-socialist nation that is highly disturbed by Arbia’s actions. Their government sometimes interferes with Arbia’s government. I haven’t developed yet how far this interference goes. Their race is black, but there are some tribal areas that are of a white race. Vira is pretty accepting of refugees, especially those from Arbia from the lowest caste, and has a lot of programs to help those refugees. It is a requirement that those either directly from the fourth caste (which is the lowest caste) or have fourth caste ancestry to runs these programs. These requirements would be mainly for social programs, such as support groups for alcoholics.

I guess what I’m trying to figure out is how do I determine what is subconscious coding. I’m trying to avoid the ‘white savior’ trope with the Virans. I also am not trying to not code Arbia as Asia too much. I think Asia is really cool, and I don’t want to accidentally disrespect them. I adore all my Arbian characters 😅

Are there some stereotypes to avoid? I’m trying my best to be as respectful as possible—especially in regards to the topic of human trafficking and slavery. A lot of my story revolves around that, and those in the fourth caste taking a stand to their government.

I was thinking in the editing phase that it would be helpful to change minor details about Arbia so that it reads less like Asia and more like a fictitious country. Do you have any ideas or suggestions?

Sorry this is a super loaded ask 😅

Hey: Standard disclaimer! I cannot be the arbiter of whether the story you’re writing is ok or not! I don’t want to be the arbiter of whether the story you’re writing is ok or not!

In fantasy, do you know that you’re encoding a culture?

In fantasy, as in all writing, there is the Stuff that you do On Purpose, and there is the Stuff that you do Because You Operate With a Particular Set Of Assumptions About How the World Works.

Not every Set of Assumptions is

Problematic

But most Sets of Assumptions are not universal, and will mark you as having some kind of ~background.

how do I determine what is subconscious coding

A great deal of self reflection, as well as a lot of research.

Are there some stereotypes to avoid?

Almost certainly.

This is where the research comes in.

Read up on societies similar to the ones that you’re attempting to portray. Read ‘both sides’ of arguments. Read history. Read current events. Read the fiction of people living in that society.

After you’ve done all that you will probably still fuck up, but hopefully you will be able to deal with that graciously if and when it’s pointed out to you.

I was thinking in the editing phase that it would be helpful to change minor details about Arbia so that it reads less like Asia and more like a fictitious country. Do you have any ideas or suggestions?

Asia is not a homogenous region, it is actually many many very different countries that happen to be geographically and culturally linked.

There is probably a more fundamental level of work that needs to be done in developing a coherent fictional society, than changing 'minor details’ in late edits.

I’d suggest checking out blogs like @writingwithcolor and @scripttorture to get a sense of some of the basic starting points for thinking about these kinds of things.

dduane:

kyraneko:

capricorn-0mnikorn:

capricorn-0mnikorn:

myceliorum:

aegipan-omnicorn:

thebibliosphere:

Whgskl. Okay.

PSA to all you fantasy writers because I have just had a truly frustrating twenty minutes talking to someone about this: it’s okay to put mobility aids in your novel and have them just be ordinary.

Like. Super okay.

I don’t give a shit if it’s high fantasy, low fantasy or somewhere between the lovechild of Tolkein meets My Immortal. It’s okay to use mobility devices in your narrative. It’s okay to use the word “wheelchair”. You don’t have to remake the fucking wheel. It’s already been done for you.

And no, it doesn’t detract from the “realism” of your fictional universe in which you get to set the standard for realism. Please don’t try to use that as a reason for not using these things.

There is no reason to lock the disabled people in your narrative into towers because “that’s the way it was”, least of all in your novel about dragons and mermaids and other made up creatures. There is no historical realism here. You are in charge. You get to decide what that means.

Also:

“Depiction of Chinese philosopher Confucius in a wheelchair, dating to ca. 1680. The artist may have been thinking of methods of transport common in his own day.”

“The earliest records of wheeled furniture are an inscription found on a stone slate in China and a child’s bed depicted in a frieze on a Greek vase, both dating between the 6th and 5th century BCE.^[2][3][4][5]The first records of wheeled seats being used for transporting disabled people date to three centuries later in China; the Chinese used early wheelbarrows to move people as well as heavy objects. A distinction between the two functions was not made for another several hundred years, around 525 CE, when images of wheeled chairs made specifically to carry people begin to occur in Chinese art.^[5]”

“In 1655, Stephan Farffler, a 22 year old paraplegic watchmaker, built the world’s first self-propelling chair on a three-wheel chassis using a system of cranks and cogwheels.^[6][3] However, the device had an appearance of a hand bike more than a wheelchair since the design included hand cranks mounted at the front wheel.^[2]

The invalid carriage or Bath chair brought the technology into more common use from around 1760.^[7]

In 1887, wheelchairs (“rolling chairs”) were introduced to Atlantic City so invalid tourists could rent them to enjoy the Boardwalk. Soon, many healthy tourists also rented the decorated “rolling chairs” and servants to push them as a show of decadence and treatment they could never experience at home.^[8]

In 1933 Harry C. Jennings, Sr. and his disabled friend Herbert Everest, both mechanical engineers, invented the first lightweight, steel, folding, portable wheelchair.^[9] Everest had previously broken his back in a mining accident. Everest and Jennings saw the business potential of the invention and went on to become the first mass-market manufacturers of wheelchairs. Their “X-brace” design is still in common use, albeit with updated materials and other improvements. The X-brace idea came to Harry from the men’s folding “camp chairs / stools”, rotated 90 degrees, that Harry and Herbert used in the outdoors and at the mines.^{[citation needed]}

“But Joy, how do I describe this contraption in a fantasy setting that wont make it seem out of place?”

“It was a chair on wheels, which Prince FancyPants McElferson propelled forwards using his arms to direct the motion of the chair.”

“It was a chair on wheels, which Prince EvenFancierPants McElferson used to get about, pushed along by one of his companions or one of his many attending servants.”

“But it’s a high realm magical fantas—”

“It was a floating chair, the hum of magical energy keeping it off the ground casting a faint glow against the cobblestones as {CHARACTER} guided it round with expert ease, gliding back and forth.”

“But it’s a stempunk nov—”

“Unlike other wheelchairs he’d seen before, this one appeared to be self propelling, powered by the gasket of steam at the back, and directed by the use of a rudder like toggle in the front.”

Give. Disabled. Characters. In. Fantasy. Novels. Mobility. Aids.

If you can spend 60 pages telling me the history of your world in innate detail down to the formation of how magical rocks were formed, you can god damn write three lines in passing about a wheelchair.

Signed, your editor who doesn’t have time for this ableist fantasy realm shit.

It’s a chair. With wheels.

If you have chairs (Do people sit on chairs to eat dinner? Write letters? Rest their aching feet?), and you have wheels (Carriages? Chariots? Oxcarts?), then you have zero reasons they can’t be put together.

Also:

[Image description: black and white image [against a red background] of Hephaestus from an archaic, 6th century B.C.E., Greek drinking bowl, sitting in a winged, wheelchair-like chariot, with his smith’s hammer over his shoulder. The image is surrounded by gold dots, and framed in gold, black and white. Description ends]

In case you missed it, that image was originally painted in the 6th Century B.C.E. (That’s 200 years before Alexander the Great).

Sure, that image was painted on the inside bottom of a drinking bowl, and was probably meant .as a joke against one of the Olympian gods (you’d only dare do that if you were drunk), and not a depiction of a mobility aid actually in use. But if some ancient Greek dudebro could imagine a wheelchair, so the physically disabled god can get around, you have no excuse.

While those ancient mystics fascinate my scholarly sensibility, I never found Ezekiel’s vision particularly revelatory for my own spirit. But one recent Shavuot, Ezekiel’s vision split open my own imagination. Hearing those words chanted, I felt a jolt of recognition, an intimate familiarity. I thought: God has wheels!

When I think of God on wheels, I think of the delight I take in my own chair. I sense the holy possibility that my own body knows, the way wheels set me free and open up my spirit. I like to think that God inhabits the particular fusions that mark a body in wheels: the way flesh flows into frame, into tire, into air. This is how the Holy moves through me, in the intricate interplay of muscle and spin, the exhilarating physicality of body and wheel, the rare promise of a wide-open space, the unabashed exhilaration of a dance floor,where wing can finally unfurl.

On wheels, I feel the tenor of the path deep in my sinews and sit bones. I come to know the intimate geography of a place: not just broad brushstrokes of terrain, but the minute fluctuations of topography, the way the wheel flows. When I roll, I pay particular attention to the interstices and intersections: the place where concrete seams together uneasily, the  buckle of tree roots pushing up against asphalt, the bristle of crumbling brick. I have come to believe this awareness reflects a quality of divine attention. Perhaps the divine presence moves through this world with a bone-deep knowledge of every crack and fissure. Perhaps God is particularly present at junctions and unexpected meetings, alert to points of encounter where two things come together.

— Rabbi Julia Watts Besser, “God On Wheels: Disability and Jewish Feminist Theology” (Tikkun Magazine) 

Which anyone who can get access to the full article should read in its entirety, it is beautiful and amazing.

A slight tangent, but:

When I roll, I pay particular attention to the interstices and intersections: the place where concrete seams together uneasily

^^^So much this!^^^

I am convinced, down to the level of my bones – down, even, to the level of my mitochondria – that I became a writer in general, and that my chosen genres are wonder tales and poetry in particular, because I have cerebral palsy. 

Ever since I was a toddler (as soon as I was old enough to not always be carried around), I’ve need to be aware of the spaces between things.

“Can I fit through there?” “Is there anything on the floor that would cause my wheels to get bogged down, or crutch tips to slip?” “If I enter this room, will I have space to turn around and leave?” etc..

All these questions deal with concrete, everyday, manifestations of “The Liminal.” I think that’s why I’ve always been drawn to the fantasy genres, to both write, and read, as my favorite genre. Because so-called “realistic” fiction completely ignores these borderlines, and therefore feels empty and fake to me.

So it’s especially ironic, from my POV, that my favorite genre so often erases people like me from its universes.

Oh, look ye, here! One of my posts from days of yore (Two user name changes ago).

I’d almost forgotten that I wrote this. I still agree with it. So there.

Happy Disability Pride Month!

Have fun finding the in-between spaces (both physical and social).

Also! It doesn’t have to be a wheelchair! It can be a chair with robot legs, a stool with wheels that you drive with a remote control or a magic wand, a trained ostrich or ostrich-like creature if that fits the worldbuilding, a magic carpet, a levitating platform, a levitating egg or bowl that you sit in, a mechanical octopus that carries you cradled in four of its arms while it propels itself on rollerskates with the other four, a magical tree in a wheeled pot whose branches you sit in if you’re a real fancy-ass motherfucker, or a cloak/belt/harness that gives you levitation powers.

Literally the worldbuilding/wonderment possibilities are endless.

…Along these lines (and with mobility devices in mind): can we step back to the Iliad for a moment? …So we can talk just briefly about Hephaestus’s mobility issues, and how he handled them.

(A moment’s pause to put tape on my oldest copy of the Mentor W. H. D. Rouse prose translation, as the cover just fell off in my hand…)

In Book XVIII, things on the battlefield before Troy have gone even further to shit than usual. Patroklos, who borrowed Achilles’ armor to go out and fight when Achilles wouldn’t, is now dead, and Hector’s got Achilles’ armor. So his mom the sea-nymph Thetis goes to see Hephaestus to ask him to please make some new armor for her son.

The god’s in in his workshop when Thetis turns up at his house, and Hephaestus is really busy building automated delivery robots—

…twenty tripods which were to stand around the walls of his room. He put golden wheels under the base of each, that they might run of themselves into any party of the gods and then run home again. They were a miracle! They were nearly done; only the lugs had to be put on, and he was just finishing these and forging the rivets.

So when Thetis comes along, his wife Charis (one of the Graces) goes to meet her and gets her a drink, and then calls back to the workshop, “Husband! Come in here; Thetis wants you!” And after cleaning himself up a little and changing into a fresh tunic—

…he limped out leaning on a thick stick, with a couple of maids to support him. These are made of gold exactly like living girls; they have sense in their heads, they can speak and use their muscles… These bustled along supporting their master, and he stumbled to a chair beside Thetis…

…and then we get into the small talk that precedes the armor-making, so never mind that. But in the meantime: “Look, sir! Droids!”

If the creator(s) of this ancient epic can take the time to invent robots and androids to help a god with a disability deal with the issues of his daily life, then a chair with wheels (or wings, or rockets, or whatever) seriously shouldn’t be too much trouble for the rest of us to go to.

(via johannestevans)