Stephanie Writes

Religion is a massive part of your World Building. Like Religion in our own world, Religion in fictional worlds are controversial, varied and are a huge part of our society. Put simply; your world is dependent on the complexity of your Religion to indicate how your people act, what their morals are and basically how they live. Interconnectivity is a big part of World Building, and Religion is connected to everything in this case. So when crafting a religion, you have to take into account the territory you beliefs hold, the amount of time it has been around, the economy, political influences and geography of your land. From those small building blocks, you can craft a religion which is complex and something that could be unique to your world.

The Basics of Crafting a Religion

To start yourself off in building your Religion you need to ask yourself the following questions, and your Religion must answer them:

   - Where do we go when we die?

   - How was life created?

   - What morals should your people live by?

These questions are the basics of crafting your Religion and by answering these provide your world with a basic feeling of spirituality that is important for civilizations. However, no all these questions have to be answered for you to form a religion. Maybe only one or two questions are answered. This gives your religion unique qualities and if you have many religions in your world a variety.

Variation on Religion

In order for your Religion to seem realistic in your world, you must provide a variation in beliefs and reasons behind such an occurrence. If your Religion is the most dominant one on a continent, you have to consider how it became that way. One way a particular belief becomes popular is through absorbing other smaller religions. They take their gods or moral rules and change them to fit their narrative. This would definitely create different beliefs and interpretations inside your Religion.

The way your Religion can also become popular is that it should have gain and loss element to it. How much does a worshiper gain from following that Religion and how much do they lose. By deciding that your then can determine how realistic the popularity our Religion would be.

There are other factors that must be considered when creating a religion which how much territory or land your Religion dominates or is in, the number of followers and the age of it. If your Religion has more territory, followers and is quite an old variation and different interpretation will be inevitable. However, if your Religion is young and has a small following, they would be more agreement.

Interconnectivity

Like every element of world building religion is connected and effects everything in your fictional world. The complexity and uniqueness of your fictional Religion depends on how much it links to the different aspects of your society. If your Religion is very intertwined in the society from the economy to culture, you will then make a world that feels realistic in its depth and complexity. The way to do this is to consider a few different aspects in your society and ask yourself how your Religion would affect this societal structure.

To show the culture your Religion promotes is to show how the beliefs would affect people in day to day life. How does your Religion change their weekly routine? What kind of relationship do they have with the gods? Is it a sibling or a parental-like relationship?

You will also have to ask yourself how it would affect the economy. If your Religion has a heavy influence on the military, the most popular job would be a soldier, a lot of money would put into that industry. Which leads nicely into the effects Religion has on politics. This depends on the type of Religion as there are different influences they would have. If your Religion is monotheistic, you would have more centralized power. With a more united front, your monotheistic Religion would have a lot of influences over politics often deciding your leaders. However, if your Religion is polytheistic, it would definitely would not have centralized power as you would different factions for each aspect of your Religion therefore not having a united front. This concept would cause less power of the political landscape.

Another aspect you would have to consider is the geography of your world. For example, if your civilization rely on a large river to survive you people would naturally worship the river and may even have a river god!

Extra Notes

You’re in a goofy chase scene and it’s the 60s

It’s the 80s and you and your crush are trying to convince yourselves and the world you’re straight. No one’s convinced

Someone you just met convinced you to go on a roadtrip with them because you have nothing to loose. But you can’t help but to think that something’s following you and the radio knows

sometimes people just won’t like your work, and that’s okay. it doesn’t mean your work sucks, it doesn’t mean you suck, and it doesn’t mean they’re tasteless or a bad person for not liking something you made. sometimes people just don’t like things for whatever reason.

It also went towards medicine and taking care of pirates who got injured, and  compensation for those who lost limbs. Disabled pirates generally were accommodated on their ships, and not kicked off: there was one captain (whose name I forgot to write down but can look up if anyone’s interested) who couldn’t use his hands. 

The point that i’m getting at here is 

18th Century Pirates Had Universal Healthcare and Disability Benefits

·Write to your comfort level. Meaning: give yourself a break when you need it and push yourself when you’re feeling motivated.

·Seek out sources of motivation. There are very few times when motivation hits me out of nowhere. Read a good book. Watch a good movie. Write down your goals.

·Find your space. Coffee shop. Library. Your room with the music blasting and the TV playing your favorite show. Find whatever gets you in the right headspace.

·Your first draft is just the first draft. Too many writers stress out about the first draft and they forget it’s just the first step in completing your novel. You can add to it, build from it, or toss it away completely.

·You will be rejected. Even if you write the next big hit, you’ll be rejected. Read the reviews for some of your favorite books—I guarantee someone HATED it. Not everyone will like your work, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad.

·Write advice isn’t for everyone. There’s no one-size-fits-all plan for writers. Pick and choose advice that works for you, ignore what doesn’t. Not everything will relate directly to you and your style of writing.

·It’s okay to stay in. Want a night to yourself so you can write? Don’t be afraid to cancel your plans and focus on your writing hobby. You don’t have to feel guilty about wanting to work on your writing.

·Let ideas settle. It’s tempting to jump right in to a new writing idea, but let things settle for a bit. Brainstorm. See what comes next. An idea needs to have legs and it needs to take your story somewhere. Let it grow.

·Outlines aren’t set in stone. Be flexible with your outlines. Plan if you need to, but allow yourself to explore new ideas. Let your story go in an unexpected direction.

(And why I stopped querying my novel.)

As some of you know, I was querying Iron From Fire on and off from March through May, and I recently decided to quit, despite it being overall a good story written in what one editor described as ‘on par’ for the genre.

And I think it’s important to talk about the process I went through, because my ill preparation hurt my mental health a lot, and you all deserve to know how to avoid the same fate.

First, this is the general process of querying, in case anyone is unfamiliar:

You finish the manuscript. And I mean finish it. Beta rounds, line edits, formatting, the whole nine yards.

You write the query letter. This includes a blurb meant to draw the agent in, a paragraph with stats and the names of a couple contemporary books that resemble yours, and a short bio about your previous book-related experience.

You send the query letter to a bunch of agents. A positive request rate right now is somewhere around 6 or 7%, which means if you have a stellar manuscript then 7% of the agents you query will want to read more of it to see if they’re willing to represent you.

You receive a mixture of rejections and requests, with a lot of silence in between. Most rejections are form rejections so you have no idea why they didn’t like your manuscript. Some requests turn into delayed form rejections. Everything hurts.

You either get an agent who signs you or you decide to quit. If you have a book you think will sell and are having positive responses from agents, the general rule of thumb is to keep querying until you’ve sent a letter to every agent you’d be interested in working with. This can mean anywhere from 30 to 130 agents.

Putting the rest under the cut.

Keep reading for:

Why I quit.

The things I learned from querying.

What I would have done differently if I’d known better.

[While this has some rather personal mental health things, please feel free to reblog it so other writers can learn from my experience!]

Martha Wells, Books of the Raksura. Shapeshifting gargoyle-dragon-lizard people in a matriarchal society. About finding a new home and a new family. Really evocative world building that hints at much older civilizations in a luxuriant setting.

NK Jemisin, The Broken Earth series. Post-apocalyptic setting. People of color actively dismantling systems of oppression. People of color being justifiably angry at what has been done. People of color being powerful. A black woman as the main character and multiple queer characters. She won THREE Best Novel Hugos for this series.

NK Jemisin, The Inheritance Trilogy. An empire has imprisoned and enslaved multiple gods, and is using them to further their oppressive systems. The mixed race female protagonist helps them find liberation. Some polyamory and non-binary themes.

Aliette de Bodard, Dominion of the Fallen series. “Dark Gothic fantasies set in a ruined turn-of-the-century Paris devastated by a magical war.” Fallen angels, Asian dragons, Viet culture, and queer PoC in positions of power. Her website has lots of free fiction as well. Special mention to The Tea Master and the Detective, a Sherlock Holmes retelling where Sherlock is a WoC and Watson is a sentient spaceship.

Fran Wilde, The Bone Cycle. Beautiful worldbuilding, tradition, (mis)information, climate change. This series is so gorgeous I have deliberately not finished reading it yet, because I am saving the last few chapters of the final book for when I’m going through a rough patch and need something lovely to escape into.

Amal El-Mohtar, Seasons of Glass and Iron. Fairy tale heroines going “nah, fuck this nonsense, we’re making our own story”. Amal mostly writes poetry and short fiction, and all of it is beautifully lyrical. Her words are so beautiful they make me angry.

Charlie Jane Anders, All the Birds in the Sky. It blends several genres in one, and honestly you are better off reading it than reading any summary I could make about it.

And so many, many, many more in the fantasy/sci-fi/horror genres. Ursula Vernon/T. Kingfisher, Alyssa Wong, Ken Liu, Rebecca Roanhorse, Seanan McGuire/Mira Grant, Daniel José Older, RF Kuang, Nnedi Okorafor, Jeannette Ng, Ann Leckie, Ted Chiang, Mary Robinette Kowal, Ruthanna Emrys, Louise Erdrich, Elizabeth Bear, Saladin Ahmed, Nisi Shawl…

If you can’t afford them, that’s okay, you have options:

Make sure to check them out at your local library.

Don’t want to go to the library, or don’t have a means to do so regularly? Ebooks! Overdrive/Libby is your friend–you just need to get a library card and then you can borrow ebooks through their ever-growing database.  You can even recommend books to them–authors will get a sale if the library buys the book! They also have a growing audiobook supply, and you can recommend those to your library as well.

Libby has a phone app that is perfectly functional, so if you don’t have a dedicated e-reader but own a smartphone, you can get your books that way too.

Do you prefer short fiction? So many of these authors have stuff available online, be it on their website or on zines. A brief search will supply you with more fiction by non-white-dudes than you know what to do with.

tl;dr:

Nalo Hopkinson - Brown Girl in the Ring. Dystopian afropunk Canadian novel that won the Locus Award and John W. Campbell

Helene Wecker - The Golem and the Jinni. Urban fantasy 19th century New York book about a Jewish Golem named Chava and a, I believe, Syrian Jinni named Ahmad that talk about their day to day lives as well as figuring out what it means to be inhuman and how each character uses empathy (or lack thereof) because of their ages. One of my favourite Urban Fantasy books.

Octavia Butler - Kindred. Kinda science fiction/fantasy-like? We studied this in my Topics in Race and Gender class and I fell in love with it. Dana, a woman living in the 1970s (or somewhere around there) finds out she can time travel and she travels back to the 19th century where she meets some of her enslaved ancestors. This is a very graphic book and deals with themes of rape, slavery, abuse, torture, etc.

J.M. Frey - The Untold Tale. Forsyth Turn is not a hero. Lordling of Turn Hall and Lysse Chipping, yes. Spymaster for the king, certainly. But hero? That’s his older brother’s job, and Kintyre Turn is nothing if not legendary. However, when a raid on the kingdom’s worst criminal results in the rescue of a bafflingly blunt woman, oddly named and even more oddly mannered, Forsyth finds his quaint, sedentary life is turned on its head. Dragged reluctantly into a quest he never expected, and fighting villains that even his brother has never managed to best, Forsyth is forced to confront his own self-shame and the demons that come with always being second-best. And, more than that, when he finally realizes where Lucy came from and why she’s here, he’ll be forced to question not only his place in the world, but the very meaning of his own existence.

I know J.M. Frey (she is the friend of one of my mentors) and her fiction is work that I greatly appreciate. She’s also Canadian and just…all around awesome.

Kai Ashante Wilson - Sorcerer of the Wildeeps. Since leaving his homeland, the earthbound demigod Demane has been labeled a sorcerer. With his ancestors’ artifacts in hand, the Sorcerer follows the Captain, a beautiful man with song for a voice and hair that drinks the sunlight. The two of them are the descendants of the gods who abandoned the Earth for Heaven, and they will need all the gifts those divine ancestors left to them to keep their caravan brothers alive. The one safe road between the northern oasis and southern kingdom is stalked by a necromantic terror. Demane may have to master his wild powers and trade humanity for godhood if he is to keep his brothers and his beloved captain alive.

Toni Morrison - Beloved. Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. Her new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved.

Sarah J. Maas - Throne of Glass series. This is one of my favourite fantasy series that just finished this year. I can’t go into the later books without major spoilers but the first book is this: Celaena Sardothien is known as Adarlan’s Assassin and is serving prison time in the Salt Mines of Endovier with Prince Dorian of Adarlan comes to her with a proposal: partake in a series of games to become the King’s Assassin in exchange for her relative freedom. As she competes in the games to win, a mysterious beast starts stalking the rest of the assassins and it’s up to Celaena to stop it. (this is the best tldr I can come up with). What originally got me into this series was asking a bookstore employee if there was a romantic subplot in Throne of Glass and she said no so that’s why I started reading it. As the series progresses, there is more romance.

Tamora Pierce - Circle of Magic series. THIS SERIES WAS ONE OF MY FAVOURITES AS A KID. Everyone’s gay. Also so many POC characters. Magic. GREAT WORLDBUILDING. Healthy polyamory. A+

Note: These are some books I’ve studied as part of my undergrad and they’re all really well done. In my Topics in Race and Gender class, my professor refused to put anyone on our reading list that wasn’t a cisgender, white, straight, man so we could look at how typical sci fi and fantasy tropes get challenged by minority authors.

Akata Witch - a young (11ish) albino girl discovers, after her family moves back to Nigeria, that she has a unique magical inheritance which grants her access to a secret, international society of “Lions” (people with magic). Lots of fantastic worldbuilding, a super interesting magic system with roots in (afaik) various existing African belief systems. There’s also a book 2, Akata Warrior.

Zahra the Windseeker - a girl’s odd dreadlocks become the key to unlocking her magical power. Absolutely the most interesting fantasy world I’ve ever read. The society in the book grows everything, even buildings and computers! Basically, fantasy solarpunk with a black female protagonist. I wish this book was like twice as long because it’s so fascinating.

The Binti Trilogy - a sci-fi series of three very short novels. Binti, a Himba girl, gets an invitation to a prestigious outer-space academy and risks everything to travel there, but the ship is attacked by enemy aliens called the Meduse. Binti uses the book’s mathematical type of magic (it’s not really magic, but it’s definitely more magical than anything irl) to save her life and make peace with the Meduse. The math-magic stuff is again, some of the most unique worldbuilding I’ve ever read.

Aside from that specific author, there’s also:

M L Wang’s Theonite: Planet Adyn - huge, huge Tolkien levels of worldbuilding, up to and including a well-built, entirely fictional language. An alternate dimension where the “African” nation influences the world like the US and Europe do today - essentially, our world turned upside down, plus elemental-based magic powers! @officialtheonite is also on tumblr if you want to see more

Tomi Adeyemi’s Children of Blood and Bone - this one punched me in the feels, repeatedly. I had to stay up til 1am to finish it so I could see how it ended. A fantasy world where the Orisha gods have been locked away, stripping magic from the Diviners who used to be able to access it. The Diviners are now the lowest class of society, but the heirs to the country’s throne might be able to change that. It’s part one of a series, but I haven’t heard anything about book two yet.

Heidi Heiling, The Girl From Everywhere - half-Chinese Nix sails on a time-traveling ship, working with her dad (sometimes reluctantly) to try and change time in order to prevent her mother from dying in 1864 Hawaii. I liked this (and Nix’s dad) a lot more than I was expecting to by the end.

Intisaar Khanani, Thorn - holy crap could I read this book forever. While on the way to her engaged marriage, the princess (our protagonist) is forced to swap bodies with one of the court ladies traveling with her. Suddenly free from the engagement, from her abusive mother, and from prying eyes, she takes on the name Thorn and tries to find out who she is.

Malinda Lo, Ash - Cinderella-inspired lesbian fairytale. this is tumblr, i figure that’s enough for most of you. I haven’t read this one in a while so I don’t recall too much of the plot, but it was SO GOOD.

I haven’t even seen at a bunch of the books on this list (which is a plus for me because new reading material but sucks for the poor authors who deserve better) but I have one of NK Jemisin’s books on my tbr for next month and I can’t wait.

Oh gosh this has to be a Crowning Moment for people who blog about writing. An Anonymous has appeared and asked for advice holy heck oh gosh aaaaaa

It’s no worries! Hi there, welcome to Writerblr! Things are pretty easy to understand once you get the hang of it, you got this!

So first off, I HIGHLY recommend reading through @pens-swords-stuff‘s masterlist for new Writerblrs (which can be found here). I think most people follow it when they start out and it is a great foundation to build up from.

Next, in terms of introducing WIPs (works in progress), @incandescent-creativity made up a comic sans powerpoint game which seems to be Uber Popular, as well as a very fun way to present things you love! Look them up and go for it. Here are the ‘rules’ for it, if you’re that kind of person. 

Both of the above blogs are very good to follow, they’re very supportive and friendly (although Undine - first one - is currently on hiatus). They reblog a lot of other peoples content, so you could watch them for anything that catches your eye. Then follow that blog. Voila. Your spectatorship grows. 

(I would also suggest @writingmyselfintoanearlygrave partly because it was the first writing blog I followed and partially because mmmm good stuff man. Very supportive, very friendly, just a good time in general).

(Also, some people who have fantastic WIPs in my humble opinion are @kaatiba (literally all of them) @albatris (I love ATDAO but again, all of them), @timetravelingpigeon (what a URL, am I right? And what a way to deal with time travel) and @joyful-soul-collector (Alien Roommates is both touching and hilarious).

ON THAT NOTE, I want to encourage you to interact with writers as much as possible. Seriously. Most people on here are unbelievably friendly. Reblog their content, add something you liked about it, get excited in the tags, it honestly makes peoples day. Reaching out and messaging them or leaving an ask (on anonymous or off, whichever you prefer, but I would suggest off because people go ‘oh hey this person has sent me an ask before’ and ~interactions happen~) also makes most people smile. And if they’re snippy - well, they’re not really worth your time, are they? 

Next, remember: TAGS ARE YOU FRIEND. #writerblr and #writing are both good. Undine has a nice advice list again, found here. Tag your work. It is worth it. Things may be a little slow to get going at first, but bear with it. You’ve got this. 

Finally, have a good time my dude. I’m a Writerblr, sure, but there’s no Strict Way To Be A Writerblr. Do you talk about writing? Then good job, you’re a writerblr. Do whatever you enjoy, as long as it doesn’t harm other people. Reblog that content from that game you like. Rant about something dumb that happened today. Share only pictures of pasta for a week, it’s your blog, run it how you want!

– Not everyone should love the hero.

– The more antagonists you have the more conflicts you create.

– Real life should happen to the characters, even if they are saving the world they have jobs and responsibilities.

– Give the character interests and friends outside of work.

– Multiple point of views aren’t a bad thing if you know how to juggle them.

– It all needs to come together at the end.

– Not every antagonist needs to be vanquished at the end.

– – Give us more than one character to love– (from Diantha)

— Make each and every character count — (from Diantha)

Hi! Thanks for writing, and your English seems totally fine to me!

Slowing Down the Pace of Your Story Without Boring Your Reader

Firstly, I think that due to Hollywood movies we’re all a bit brainwashed that a novel needs to be a fast-paced nonstop action ride… or we risk boring the ever loving fuck out of our readers. But here’s the truth:

What holds a reader’s attention is not constant action but doubt and unanswered questions.

Let me repeat that.

Suspense is not about action (”something’s happening!”), it’s about doubt (”what’s going to happen?”).

So, how do you keep your readers from getting bored when your story’s pace slows down? Make them uncertain. Give them something to wonder about. Foreshadow the next major plot point. Sow the seeds of doubt. If you sprinkle in enough “clues,” readers will stay engaged even when the pace slows down because they don’t want to miss any important information. 

Also, you can show that although the pace may be slowed, your characters are not out of the woods. Use interior thought and emotion to reveal that even if things seem fine right now, your protagonist has concerns about the future.

If done well, these “slow” times can actually be very engaging to a sensitive reader who knows (because you’re guiding them toward this belief) that things can’t stay like this forever.