love and music will endure

Alejandra Pizarnik, from The Galloping Hour: French Poems (tr. Patricio Ferrari & Forrest Gander)

Disrupt the reader’s sense of justice. 

This generally means setting a character up to deserve one thing and then giving them the exact opposite. 

Kill a character off before they can achieve their goal. 

Let the bad guy get an extremely important win. 

Set up a coup against a tyrannical king. The coup fails miserably.

Don’t always give characters closure. 

(Excluding the end of the book, obviously)

A beloved friend dies in battle and there’s no time to mourn him.

A random tryst between two main characters is not (or cannot be) brought up again.

A character suddenly loses their job or can otherwise no longer keep up their old routine

Make it the main character’s fault sometimes. 

And not in an “imposter syndrome” way. Make your MC do something bad, and make the blame they shoulder for it heavy and tangible.

MC must choose the lesser of two evils.

MC kills someone they believe to be a bad guy, only to later discover the bad guy was a different person altogether.

Rejection is a powerful tool. 

People generally want to be understood, and if you can make a character think they are Known, and then rip that away from them with a rejection (romantic or platonic) people will empathize with it.

MC is finally accepting the Thing They Must Do/Become, and their love interest decides that that’s not a path they want to be on and breaks up with them

MC makes a decision they believe is right, everyone around them thinks they chose wrong.

MC finds kinship with someone Like Them, at long last, but that person later discovers that there is some inherent aspect of MC that they wholly reject. (Perhaps it was MC’s fault that their family member died, they have important religious differences, or WERE THE BAD GUY ALL ALONG!)

On the flipside, make your main character keep going. 

Push them beyond what they are capable of, and then push them farther. Make them want something so deeply that they are willing to do literally anything to get it. Give them passion and drive and grit and more of that than they have fear.

“But what if my MC is quiet and meek?” Even better. They want something so deeply that every single moment they push themselves toward it is a moment spent outside their comfort zone. What must that do to a person?

Obviously, don’t do all of these things, or the story can begin to feel tedious or overly dramatic, and make sure that every decision you make is informed by your plot first and foremost. 

In the Dream House, Carmen Maria Machado

1) is there a story you’re holding off on writing for some reason?

2) what work of yours, if any, are you the most embarrassed about existing?

3) what order do you write in? front of book to back? chronological? favorite scenes first? something else?

4) favorite character you’ve written

5) character you were most surprised to end up writing

6) something you would go back and change in your writing that it’s too late/complicated to change now

7) when asked, are you embarrassed or enthusiastic to tell people that you write?

8) favorite genre to write

9) what, if anything, do you do for inspiration?

10) write in silence or with background noise? with people or alone?

11) what aspect of your writing do you think has most improved since you started writing?

12) your weaknesses as an author

13) your strengths as an author

14) do you make playlists for your current wips?

15) why did you start writing?

16) are there any characters who haunt you?

17) if you could give your fledgling author self any advice, what would it be?

18) were there any works you read that affected you so much that it influenced your writing style? what were they?

19) when it comes to more complicated narratives, how do you keep track of outlines, characters, development, timeline, ect.?

20) do you write in long sit-down sessions or in little spurts?

21) what do you think when you read over your older work?

22) are there any subjects that make you uncomfortable to write?

23) any obscure life experiences that you feel have helped your writing?

24) have you ever become an expert on something you previously knew nothing about, in order to better a scene or a story?

Individualistic societies

Names are usually based on desirable characteristics and achievements ex - bright, beautiful, kind, brave, strong, etc. This varies depending on what the culture values the most.

- warrior cultures will prefer names highlighting strength, bravery, loyalty, leadership, etc.

-societies focused on wisdom and knowledge will likewise focus on names highlighting brightness, intelligence, perception, etc.

Pluralistic societies

These societies can have longer names that can include place names, community names, tribe names, or particular class/caste names.

For example, the South Indian naming convention includes place name/community name - father/husband name - personal name, in that order though this isn't universal.

The variation also comes in with what the people value.

- Communities that value ancestors and believe they're 'present' and should be honored will typically not replicate ancestor names.

- Communities that value lineage and are patriarchal will use ancestor names often (Leto I Atredies - Leto II Atredies) Houses with grand lineages in the west seem to use the same names repeatedly.

- Religion plays a role too. Religious and conservative societies will incorporate religious messages or names in the convention. For example, John, Noah, Noel - Mohammad, Ibrahim, Aliyah - Ram, Krishna, Shiv, etc.

Sound

Sound is very important, I feel. In my culture, we call it 'dhwani'. It is believed that the vibrations of a sound can influence a person. Could be a factor you may want to consider while naming characters. Like giving stern characters stern-sounding names and soft characters gentle-sounding names.

Different sounds would also highlight the cultural backgrounds of different characters.

Astronomy/Astrology

Some communities will name their children based on their astrological signs or the position of the stars when they're born.

Names without surnames

Communities can have names without surnames. Instead of surnames, they can have titles, place names, a sect or school name. Some communities adopt the name of their teacher instead of their family.

How is it learned and executed?

How is it accessed?

Does it have a will of its own?

Is it restricted in space and time?

What does available magic do?

How does it relate to the character, plot and theme of the book?

What is the cost of magic?

What can it not do?

How long does it last?

Who can use it?

How do others react to it?

Alternatively, reblog with "this url" in the tags and I'll draw that.

hey, that's pretty cool :D thank you i love you you're doing great <3<3

i hit 200 maybe a few days ago? and now that my instrument is back from the shop (for real this time), i can finally carry out this idea that's been haunting me!! you may know from a handful of posts that i'm a musician, and you may also know that i've done a few things for other people's wips (here & here)

to celebrate, i will be randomly selecting 2-4 of my followers (new followers are welcome!!) to compose and perform a piece under one minute based on any wip of yours (this can be one scene in particular or a cool worldbuilding thing or maybe a poem or whatever you want!)

if you'd like to enter, reblog this with the tag #entry !! i'll be closing this in exactly 7 days; good luck! (if you win, i'll contact you via dms)

things to keep in mind:

unfortunately, i can't read minds, and i needs some vibes to be able to do this. this can be anything from "cinematic hand holding scene based on the ship at [link]" to "sea shanties but space" (these are the example recordings)

of course, you're welcome to tell me more details if you have them (the more, the better) !!

Cities - go near water!  freshwater lakes and rivers (rivers especially) are the best places for cities because A) source of water and B) travel and trade is much easier cus you can put your boats like right there.  Basically ever relevant city ever was built on a lake or a river.

for rivers in general - because gravity, rivers run from mountains (forming from melting snow and ice (this is why they get fat in spring–more stuff melting)) to lakes/ocean where they can empty out (and even lakes will have rivers leading out that eventually get to the ocean), which can help when mapping out where those start and end.  rivers are also much thinner and faster in steeper elevations and very slow and wide when the land is flat

mountains - i like to think of what the tectonic plates look like because that’s what makes mountains!  mountains are also never standalone they’re always in mountain ranges (archipelagos are really just underwater mountain ranges babey).  a cool trick I like to do is occasionally separate mountain ranges across continents, because over time the tectonic plates shifted and literally split the range in half.  These mountains are really old tho so they’ve eroded and therefore it makes them smaller and rounder (like the appalachians) as opposed to relatively young mountain ranges like the rocky mountains which have taller and sharper peaks

Another mountain trick: if your mountains run along the ocean, the ocean side of the mountains will get a LOT of rain while the other side will be very dry–almost desert-like, in fact.  think of temperate rainforests in British Columbia vs the drier conditions in the canadian prairies

forests - depends on how warm the area might be.  coniferous forests are found further north (before you hit the tree line, and then it’s only tundra onwards) but as you head south you get leafier trees, and the leaves tend to get larger too

If you think about general elevation too, you’ll have places that might be swampy (wet + lower).  if your world has an ice age like we did, then glaciers may have carved the land, leaving piles of soil in the south that was left when the ice receded and places where the bedrock has been bared north of that (like the Canadian Shield in Canada–the reason we see that is because of the glaciers)

You might also have a land that’s dotted in a shitton of freshwater lakes as well because the meltwater filled the holes that the glaciers scraped out (this is why canada has so many goddamn lakes)

and if the ice age was more recent than it was in our world, then you might not even have the forest re-growth and it could be a lot of open plains

Though, for fantasy, you can make the world operate on entirely different principles:

With that done, the actual topic of city placement can be covered by videos like this:

Or

Once you have your places, if you want help naming them in realistic ways, this video can help:

This one is on architecture, which is definitely a subset of cities:

But for a more relevant practical guide on making settlements realistic:

Here’s a quick guide for making demographics: