#writingresource

WORLDBUILDING THROUGH CULTURE

Writing a Secondary World book or series, and need some help constructing your setting?

Worldbuilding is more than just maps!

Creating a believable secondary world, with consistent internal logic, language, taboos, and politics can be tricky.

Luckily, this workbook is here to help you devise the best possible setting for your #SFF story.

Based on a lecture series I used to do one be before the pandemic, this is a workbook that's really meant and designed to WORK.

I was working on a flashback scene in my WIP this AM and was trying to decide if a 2yo would have trouble pronouncing a character’s name.  I stumbled across this article on Babycenter.com.  It’s by a pediatric speech-language pathologist and I found it super helpful!  

{It includes consonants that are tough and their replacements, types of words that are difficult in general, what happens with multiple syllables and words with consonants in the middle, etc.}

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I don’t remember which author or writer friend gave me this tip, way back when, but it is the one I use the most whenever I’m writing or editing.

Write with confidence.

Yes. Believe in your story. If you don’t, no one else will. But also, here’s a more concrete piece of advice:

Cut all the passive voice, and then cut the ‘maybe’, ‘perhaps’ and ‘per chance’es that you (I) tend to use! All the ‘something’ and ‘somewhere’s should go too, unless you use it for effect.

Ex.

‘Something had hit her hair. She looked up, then down. It had been a tooth. Black blood dried on the root. From out of nowhere. She swallowed a squeal and jumped away from it.’

Here the ‘something’ has a purpose, to be unforced until the MC sees what it was, and then it’s supposed to disturb you. It makes us linger in the moment. However if you use it like this:

Ex.

‘There was something in my hand. It was maybe from a different world. But perhaps I had just never seen such a thing before..’

The image become blurry, slow, for the reader. The reader is only seeing what you are telling them. What did the thing look like? How did it feel? Smooth? Has she seen it before or not? Why are we not being told what it is?

And if you are slowing down like this, you better make a good ‘payoff’ so the story can pick up pace again (I’ll make a post about pace at some point). Think about the effect of your writing.

I especially found all this hard at first because my stories are told from a 1st person pov, and sometimes my MCs doesn’t know!

However, that is where I like to ‘overplay’ the uncertainty. Inner monologue, nervous sweat, heart thumping, the whole shebang! It makes for a bigger contrast and makes the reader understand that THIS matters.

So. Write with confidence and take my advice with a grain of salt. Because if your story is strong enough, using all the ‘maybes’ in the world won’t change that! Remember: You know your story and your characters. Only you know the room around them and the feelings within them, and most importantly; you are the author. Your word is law.

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A good para reply strives to match the length of your partner's. It may not be a spot-on match (slightly less or a bit more) but if someone writes a solid four paragraphs, a good reply should be between 3 - 6 substantial paragraphs in return.

Any para reply should provide more than a bit of action and dialogue. A good reply should explore your character's current state of mind, their physical condition, and connect it to their interaction, the environment, and their dialogue. A good para reply also maintains any previous condition your character may be in. If your character has a cold, reply 1 - 7 should all reflect that your character has a cold in some way, so that continuity isn't disrupted or lost. A character using crutches to get around in one reply should not suddenly be sprinting up the stairs for something in the next.

Another aspect of a good para reply is that it continues where the last reply left off. Though it's just fine to include your character's reactions in relation to something that occurred earlier in your partner's reply, the bulk of your para should be devoted to moving the thread forward, progressing the plot central to that particular thread.

I personally find a para reply that isn't three strong paragraphs or longer to be a poor one. I think many roleplayers, especially when first starting out, feel that when it takes them a long time to write out the reply involving thoughts, actions, and dialogue, that it's too long within the time-frame of your character's interaction, so the urge comes in to make it shorter. But you have to remind yourself (as I often do) that though it may take you anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour (depending on your level of focus or connection to the particular scene) to write, the actual time it takes your character to think, say, and do things reads and is imagined to be moving much more quickly.

A bad para is one that doesn't give your partner enough to work with in their reply, whether it's from lack of length or lack of substance. If you go into a para with a partner without a rough idea of where you both want to see the scene go (such as open paras that get picked up at random) then perhaps you should get in touch and discuss where you can mold this into something substantial. Perhaps you've run out of ideas; getting your paraing partner's thoughts and opinions can foster some new ideas, possibly even for not only the current para but future ones.

If your partner's character has several moments of dialogue, understand all these instances of dialogue to happen before your character can make a rejoinder. If you write your character to speak back to every piece of dialogue, it can become convoluted and read more like three paragraphs taken out of three different para threads. If that doesn't make much sense, ask for clarification and I'll see what I can do. I've had people write this way with me and it's extremely limiting and difficult.

Lastly, a bad para reply is one that parrots the thoughts of the other character in a different manner or seemingly responding to the other character's thoughts, as if they are either 1) thinking the same thoughts or 2) your character is somehow privy to the narrated thoughts of the other character they are interacting with, which--unless your character is telepathic--isn't the case. This is something I've just recently encountered myself and it does just as much good for the progression of a para as the interjected responses to dialogue.