It occurs to me that failure to properly worldbuild an SFFnal story is – sometimes, though not always – less reflective of a writer’s creative ability than it is a consequence of their real-world privilege. The concept of culture as something with multiple facets, that can be experienced from different perspectives and which – crucially – has consequences beyond the obvious is learned rather than innate, and if, in your own life, you’ve never stopped to consider (for instance) how class differences impact access to basic necessities, or the problem of social mobility, then that’s going to influence how you craft, or fail to craft, those elements in your narratives. Because while, in stories set in the present day, you can either compensate with research or write wholly within familiar contexts, in an invented setting, it’s going to be harder to hide the gaps in your knowledge.
And so we get stories whose cultures are founded on stereotypes: Noble Elves vs the Barbarian Orcs, an endless parade of faux-medieval Europes, and dystopias built around a single, reductive premise with no effort made to explore its wider consequences. This last seems especially troublesome to me, given that dystopias are, generally speaking, meant to be the sort of stories that understand class and subversion – but when written by someone who’s never considered that their own society operates on more than one level, that nuance may well be lost. The point of worldbuilding is to create new worlds, but they’re always going to be influenced by how we view our own.
I also think about these fantasy and science-fiction worlds. These authors – usually American – trying to describe some ~*~exotic market~*~ or ~*~bustling spaceship port~*~ with words they’ve read in other people’s books. Think about how they falteringly describe those markets: “They had lots of spices and some colorful rugs.”
(But is it bright turmeric and cumin, cut with flour, glowing yellow in glass jars to attract the tourists? Is it the cinnamon and star anise of the Christmas market, the paper cup of mulled cider? Where are we supposed to be, again?)
But these authors copy-paste the rising and falling call of the muezzin and the air heavy with foreign spices and the hungry children with flies in their eyes – maybe even take a beautiful woman with her face veiled out of the box, or some exotic songbirds – and think “Nailed it.” Check out this exotic worldbuilding – we’ve really traveled here! Look: colorful silks and barbarians. Is this a good story, or what!
And it’s splendidly, laughingly obvious that they’ve never seen a street sign in Arabic, never walked through a North African market at nightfall, couldn’t tell silk from satin if their life depended on it, and that they don’t even know their own local songbirds, let alone how to identify an exotic one. Armchair tourists, copying and pasting the TripAdvisor reviews of other tourists, coloring half the people green, and calling it worldbuilding: oh deary me.
Then there’s the realism of research. Knowing where goods and products and knowledge came from. If your elves are eating chocolate they’d better have contact with the Aztecs. Don’t put poison ivy in England. Your medieval faux-European story had better justify itself if people are wearing cotton and eating potatoes and tomatoes.
(Pictured: someone whose civilization has apparently had contact with the indigenous peoples of the Americas. So THAT’s what all of that “into the west” stuff is about… elves seeking out new sources of carbohydrates!)
Don’t even get me started on science realism in science fiction; I am personally plagued by every written fictional description of viruses AND I’M JUST LIKE
So the Western SF/F canon swallows itself endlessly, a snake chasing its tail. It’s fun, but the tiresome bits get recycled, because people think that’s what forests and markets and ships are really like.
“That’s not realistic in this setting,” we scoff when someone wants a disabled princess or a lady king or – gasp! – a black woman in their literature.
But most of this shit is so unrealistic, say people like me, rolling their eyes politely: “What spices were they, precisely? They’re wearing silk, are they? Are you sure of that? Are you absolutely sure? And then the virus killed everybody, did it? In seven minutes? much wow.”
So it sounds like I’m going “don’t write about markets unless you’ve been to a market” or “don’t write unless you have a really expensive education” or “don’t write.
But of course – this isn’t fair. Who am I to demand that people be well-traveled? Most people cannot afford to. And those who do travel rarely pay attention. They are expecting foreign spices and children with flies in their eyes, and they come back and regurgitate them.
(The spices were cardamom and cinnamon, you silly fool, and the children in your hometown are hungrier. The songbird was a woodlark, and the only exotic thing there was you.)
You don’t have to actually travel. You just have to care. As you type that someone is eating a potato you have to ask “where did they get the potato?” and as you type that someone is ugly you have to ask “why are they ugly?” and if you’re going to write about a prairie, look it up on Google Maps and sit with it for a while until you’ve got your own words for it.
People know the difference between waving your hands dismissively, using other people’s words because you don’t think it’s important, and when genuinely caring, especially when you’re touching something they love. You’ll fuck up, but people will usually forgive fuck-ups if you were being honest and wondering and respectful.
It’s the difference between the standard Western method of travel – showing up sneeringly in someone else’s house and expecting to be hailed as a savior, to be served by the unimportant natives – and the kind of travel where OH MY GOD WAS THAT ONE OF YOUR MAGPIES? THAT’S WHAT YOUR MAGPIES LOOK LIKE? ARE YOU KIDDING ME RIGHT NOW? OH MY GOD THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING. GUYS. HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT THEIR MAGPIES?
Because wherever you go in this universe, you are going to somebody’s home. Tread lightly, because you tread as a guest. If you fail to lovingly respect your beggar woman and lowly engineer because they’re more “boring” than your hero – well, you’ve just described what kind of person you are, and it’s not the sort that comes to my dinner parties.
Whether you are learning, or traveling, or writing, you have to care and you have to care about getting it right. You can be tongue-tied and broken-hearted and fundamentally lost. My favorite people usually are. But you have to care about the magpies and the trade routes and the cardamom. You’ll have to bring me with you, or you’ll lose me. (Believe me, I have so many wonderful places to be.)
So I don’t ask that authors be perfect in their worldbuilding. I only ask that they try, and take my hand, and believe that this place they have created is important and worthy and full of the most interesting things, and worthy of thought and care, because all places are.
(Alternate title: Things I Can Say About That Article Written By That Creative Writing Ex-MFA Teacher Guy Now That I’ve Read It And Gotten So Angry It’s Like My Urethra Is Filled With Bees.) Okay, …
“Yep. There I am. Already angry. I’m so angry, I’m actually just peeing bees. If you’re wondering where all these bees came from? I have peed them into the world.” Why writing and reading is more and less than you might think it is and it is beautiful.
Remember that letter? The one that made so many people angry? Here’s Chuck Wendig with a response. If you haven’t been on his blog before, beware the language.
“Your reading requires a serious commitment, not a commitment to serious books.”
Chuck Wendig’s response is beautiful and important, but I almost recommend not reading the original article that inspired it because it is so offensive and ill-informed that I puked in my mouth a little. My deepest, most sincere apologies to everyone who ever had that man as a “teacher.”
StyleWriter 4 is fantastic. It’s an add-on for Microsoft word and has a 14-day trial period. It goes through your text, picks out “glue words”, misspellings, long sentences, homonyms, passive tense, shows your reading grade level, and more.
Editminion *FREE* checks for adverbs, weak words, passive voice, cliches, and homonyms among other things.
Pro Writing Aid is another online editor. It is mostly free, but offers more features if you pay.
AutoCrit offers free analysis for under 500 words, otherwise you have to pay for more text and more editing features.
Paper Rater offers a free service for editing, but it is designed for essays.
Formatting Checklist: This follows the general guide of formatting a manuscript in Microsoft word. However, some literary agents and editors have their own requirements.
Under the paragraph option, change the special indentation to first line at .5″. Change to document to double spaced.
There should be no spaces between paragraphs.
When showing a scene break, center # on a blank line.
Font should be easy to read. Courier New and Times New Roman are preferred at size 12.
All margins should be 1″.
Start chapters on a new page and put the chapter title 1/3 down the page. Write the chapter like so: CHAPTER ONE – CHAPTER TITLE. Press return 4 – 6 times before starting the text of the chapter.
For the header, put YOUR NAME/BOOK TITLE/PAGE NUMBER in the upper right-hand corner. Start this header on the first page of the first chapter.
The cover page of your manuscript should have your name, word count, and contact information in the upper left-hand corner.
The title on the cover page should be in all caps. Your name should be underneath in all caps. If you use a pen name, write YOUR REAL NAME (WRITING AS PEN NAME).
At the end of the manuscript, start a new page and write END.
Self-Editing Checklist:
Spelling:
If you are using Microsoft word for your word processor, use the spell check. After that, go through the manuscript line by line to make sure everything is spelled right. You may have used “form” instead of “from” and skipped it because Microsoft word did not see it as misspelled.
Printing out your work or viewing it in another way (such as a pdf on an ereader) helps find these mistakes.
Beta readers can find what you missed as well.
Use editing software to check homonyms or look up a list of homonyms and find them in your document using ctrl + f. Check these words to make sure you used the right spelling.
Grammar and Style:
First use Microsoft word’s grammar checker, but be aware that it is not always right. Check grammar girl if you are unsure.
For dialogue, you can always pick up a professionally published book and look at how the dialogue tags are used, where commas are placed, and when other punctuation is used.
If you’re in school and your English teacher isn’t too busy, have them take a look at it.
Look out for prepositions. Most of the time, you can omit these words and the sentence will still make sense. Beginner writers use a lot of these in their writing and it slows the flow.
Check for adverbs. You’d be surprised at how many you use in your writing, sometimes up to five a page. Using a few in narration is okay, but only a few. Delete adverbs you find, especially those that end in “-ly”, and rewrite the sentences in necessary.
Delete gerunds and forms of “to be” if writing in past tense. Instead of “were running”, write “ran”.
Check subject-verb agreement.
Use correct dialogue tags. People don’t bark their words. They shout.
Two digit numbers should be written as words (twenty-seven) while numbers with more than two digits should be written with numbers (123).
Avoid passive verbs.
Vary sentence length.
Show with the five senses rather than telling.
Most of the time, you can delete the word “that”.
Avoid using “unique” or “significant” words too often.
Consistency:
Make sure all your font is the same size and type.
Make sure you have no plot holes. Use the comment feature in Microsoft Word to track these plots.
Make sure your time line is consistent.
The tone should fit the scene.
There should be one POV per scene. Unless you’re a brilliant writer and can pull off third person omniscient.
Verb tense should be consistent.
Keep track of the details you release of people, places, and things. The reader will remember if in one chapter you say your protagonist has blue eyes and in another you say green.
Pacing:
The whole book should flow in and out of fast paced scenes to keep your reader interested and slow scenes to give them a break.
The middle should not “sag”.
Sentences should flow smoothly.
Plot:
Keep track of all your plots and sub-plots. Readers will remember them.
Is the initial problem at the beginning of the manuscript?
There should be at least one antagonist. This does no have to be a person.
Is there enough conflict?
There should be a resolution.
All scenes should have something to do with plot.
The climax should be the most exciting part.
Character:
The protagonist should change by the end of the book.
Make sure all characters who come in contact with one another have some kind of relationship, whether good or bad.
Characters must have motivation for everything.
The protagonist must want something right from the start of the conflict.
The protagonist needs to be captivating. The readers wants to root for the protagonist. This does not mean the protagonist needs to be likable all the time.
The readers likes to relate to characters. Make sure your characters are diverse enough that readers can identify with one.
Know who your protagonist is. The main character is not always the same. For example, Nick in The Great Gatsby is the main character, but Jay Gatsby is the protagonist. This is important to know while writing your query letter.
If you can delete a minor character from a scene and nothing changes, then delete that character.
Sometimes you can make two minor characters one without losing any essential parts of the story. If you can, do this.
All characters react and act.
Each character has his or her own life.
Dialogue:
Dialogue should be believable. Read it out loud.
Don’t go overboard with phonetic spelling if a character has an accent.
Dialogue should be informal and natural. It does not have to be grammatically correct.
Prose:
Avoid purple prose. I’ve never met anyone with “emerald eyes” or “hair of fire” (except for the Flame Princess).
Don’t use too many adjectives.
Avoid cliches.
Other:
Don’t info dump. Pace information through dialogue and narration.
The first sentence should spark interest, or at least the first three. If it does, the first paragraph should be the same. And the first 250 words. The goal is to get the reader past the first page.
Let your story rest. When you’re ready to edit, start at the end. Writers tend to get lazy at the end of their story whether they are writing it for the first time or revising it after revising the rest of the story.
Make sure your manuscript is within range for your genre’s word count.
Looking back over old fanfiction that I still have on my hard drive, because I’ve never actually cleaned out my hard drive…
…it is fabulously bad. Worse than most fanfiction written by a thirteen-year-old girl bad. fanficrants bad. That bad. Oh look, I seem to be posting them here. Please mock.
Digimon: Miyako/Yolei has a crush on Ken and no sense of punctation:
“And,well,I’ll understand if you don’t want to,but,um,would you like to meet me in the park tomorrow morning? I..I hope you can guess who this message is from. If you can’t here’s my number.” Yolei listened to the voice recite some numbers. “So who is it?” Hawkmon asked “It’s not Davis,it’s not TK,and it’s not Cody.” “Izzy? You do like him,maybe he likes you too.” “We’re just friends. Anyway,I know who it is,it’s Ken.” “Really? How did you know? So you’re gonna meet him?” “Of course!” Yolei pretended to yawn. “I’m going to bed.” “But it’s nowhere near your bedtime.” “The sooner I go to bed,the sooner I’ll wake up next morning and the sooner I’ll be able to see Ken!”
June/Jun considers her life:
I only have two friends in the whole world. I do know some girls in my class,but they don’t hang out with me often. My first best friend is Jim. I met him ages and ages ago,at a concert. We always hung out,and talked. Then I moved schools,and didn’t see him for a while. But then,amazingly,I saw him again. He’s grown really cute. I pretended to Davis that I didn’t really know him as well as I did. I don’t know why. Perhaps it was because I was terrified that he’d tell Jim about Matt,and Jim wouldn’t like me. But anyway,we’re friends again. In fact,he’s coming over in a few minutes. My other friend isn’t even around anymore. He died in a car crash,ages ago. I can still remember the fun times him and me and Jim had. Like theme parks and the cinema. I can still remember how I met him…
*Flashback*
He was a genius,and everyone liked him. Once he stayed in the detention room,to clean up. And I happened to be the only one there. (for not handing in my homework four days in a row.) Anyway,I was whistling casully,and he rolled his eyes. “Would you please stop whistling?” “But I don’t want to.” “Well,I want to.” “I’ll tell the teacher if you don’t!” “Go ahead. My name’s Jun Motomiya and I’m in year four.” “Are you Davis Motomiya’s sister? I remember seeing him play football.” “Yeah.” “Right.” “Hey,did anyone tell you you’re sort of cute?” I asked
Things get romantic:
“Oh,Matt,I love you!” “I love you too.” “They make such a cute couple!” “I’ll get a picture of this!” “Hey Tai,what’s up? You look a little…down.” Tai sighed. He couldn’t stand it anymore. Matt and Sora’s wedding. His two best friends. Everyone thought he’d be so happy. But he just wasn’t. He wasn’t needed by his friends anymore….and he’d always been needed. “It’s just not fair…” he thought to himself. Sora chatted to Mimi about fashion designing. Tai remembered this was the same girl who he’d played football with. The girl who disliked fashion. They’d all changed so much. “We’ve all changed too much.” Tai thought to himself. “Sora and Matt grew apart from me,and closer to each other…”
Sweet little Sora reveals her true nature, possibly
“Give me your dinner money!” “No way! Why do you always have to be so mean to everyone? All the time you are!” “Gimme it!” The younger Sora reached out her hand,and snatched the younger girl’s wallet. She tipped out 20p. “Man,are you so poor you don’t even have a quid?” She reached inside the wallet,and took out a photo. “Give me that back!” the girl sobbed. “It’s a picture of my dad.” “Oh,really?” Sora picked it up,and threw it into a bush. The girl ran to retrive it. “I’m telling miss of you,Sora!” she cried. “I’m scared!”
I believe this particular one actually warned for OOC:
“Tai!” I called in the Digital World. “Tai! Being mad at Ken and me won’t help.”
Matt showed up. He ran to Tai. “It’s okay,I heard what happened. You okay,man?”
Davis,Yolei,Kari and their Digimon were next. I looked at Yolei. She nodded,and opened her mouth about to say something,then Joe,TK,Izzy and Mimi came out and fell on them. “Ouch…”
Then Cody showed up. Tai told them all very quickly exactly what was going on,all that I hadn’t said. “And I’m going to destroy you!” Tai screamed at Ken. I put my hand on his shoulder. “Tai,screaming isn’t going to do anything.”
Cody looked around nerveously. So did Yolei. She didn’t want to fight…
“Tai.” Ken gulped. “I’m sorry…”
“Well that’s no use!” Tai ran at him and rugby tackled him to the ground. He lashed out,while Ken was too scared to move.
Me,Yolei and Davis ran at him and pulled him off. “Tai Kamiya,get a hold of yourself!” Yolei yelled. “Tai,calm down!” Davis said. I stared at my best friend,then jumped forward and pulled Tai away.
Some Pokemon visit my school, in script format. Again, thirteen years old…
ME: *has come down after them* What’re you all doing down there?! It’s lunch time!
*a little while later,we are sitting in the dining hall*
TRACEY: *exmaines his food* Rubbery pizza,ice cold chips,mushy peas,tasteless sponge and lumpy custard.
ASH: Yeah,great isn’t it?
BROCK: If I didn’t know better,I’d swear that the cheese on this pizza was my yellow rubber melted down.
ME: *chewing the pizza* Hurry up an’ eat,englissh nest…
No excuse really, is there?
Eloise Midgen was a Hufflepuff, y’know:
Eloise Midgen was a Hufflepuff girl. She had Hufflepuff friends,like Susan Bones and Catherine Whitby. She hung around in the Hufflepuff common room,and slept in her Hufflepuff dorm.
She was not a unusual girl,despite being a witch. She looked perfectly normal-light brown hair,blueish eyes,and incredibly annoying acne. She’d once tried to curse it off,with disasterous results. Her nose was still off-centre,giving her another thing to be self-consious about.
And today,she thought,had been a really rotten day.
In 2001 I wrote something stupid called ‘The Harry Potter Epilogue”. Wow. Believe it or not, I was slightly wrong in my predictions:
Harry I’m not telling…
Ron Ron went evil,nearly killed Harry and Hermione and became Voldemort’s best friend. Except he didn’t.
Hermione Hermione failed all her exams,couldn’t join the ministrey and was depressed for the rest of her life. Just kidding…
Hagrid Hagrid sold rocket parts to various countrys,using bits of Blast-Ended Skrewt.
Sirius Sirius got his name cleared,took Harry to live with him,and knocked down Azkaban *crosses fingers*
Lupin Is cured of being a werewolf *also crosses fingers*
Dumbledore Dumbledore became evil,tried to kill everybody and joined the Death Eaters. Then again,maybe not…
The Twins They started Weasely’s Wizard Wheezes,and it’s going well,except the shop explodes a lot.
The Troll Got a part in a low-budget horror movie
Fluffy Fluffy met a pink three-headed dog and they had some three-headed puppies.
Voldemort Voldemort…ummm…I’ll leave it up to you!
Wormtail Wormtail went on a mission for Voldemort,and accidently got eaten by Sirius when he was living in a cave. All together now: ‘Yayy…”
The Sorting Hat Met a beautiful sun hat,got married and became a solicitor.
Rita Skeeter Rita Skeeter met her worst enemy…bug spray.
Snape Snape forgot all about potions and opened Simply Snape’s School Of Super-Duper Flower Arranging and Ballet Dancing
Draco Draco became a world-famous pop-star. He also dyed his hair red,and decided to join Gryffindor because death-eating wasn’t for him. (He was also yelled at by everyone when he made fun of the name)
Trelawny,Parvati and Lavender Opened up their own fortune-telling Muggle hotline. It was closed when little kids became tramatised because of Trelawny predicting their horrible deaths,having them kicking the bucket in various different ways,including drowing,beheading,hanging,stabbing,jumping into firery bottomless pits,etc.etc.
The Durselys Were labelled by the neighbours as ‘the abnormal lot’. They were so shocked,horrified,depressed and mad,that they spent the rest of their life in St Mungo’s Hospital For Magical Maladies.
(It was meant to be a joke. An unfunny one.)
I think that’s all I and everyone else can take for today.
UNTITLED JACK/MARTHA
Have been working on and off on a Jack/Martha fic. I love those two. Not entirely sure if it will ever see the light of day, though. It was set across about, oh, a thousand or so years (from after Last of the Timelords to Jack’s time as The Face Of Boe) so I suppose it’s at least ambitious.
THE GINGERBREAD HOUSE
This one will probably never be finished, largely because I’ve forgotten what it was supposed to be about. Mickey was in it, and his grandmother, and his adventures in Pete’s World, but that’s as far as I’m getting.It might have been a Mickey/Jackie fic, come to think of it.
FAIRYTALES
What happened to Adam after being abandoned on Earth. May actually some day be finished: it was written before Torchwood even started, but featured Torchwood, and managed to come out mostly still canon-compatable.
THE ONE ABOUT MICKEY’S FATHER
Got about halfway through this one. Mickey’s father goes looking for him after the events of Doomsday.
FIVE PEOPLE AND/OR GROUPS OF PEOPLE WHO SHOULD HAVE BEEN COMPANIONS
I think I started this one after Series Two. However, since then there’s been so many people who would have been awesome companions that I might have to change it to ‘twenty people’.
Star Wars
UNTITLED PRE-TPM FIC
This one, if it ever gets written (and I reckon it might, at some point) was going to be Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan tracking down a child-killer on Coruscant. Might be actually good, might not.
Crossovers
I plan to write something crossing over all my fandoms, just to see how that turns out.
I sort of want a new layout for this journal but I like the original one too much. If only I could just tweak it it’d be perfect…
