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If you’re looking to be a writer, chances are you’re already pretty good in an English or Language Arts class. But aside from studying older literature to learn from, focusing exclusively on Language Arts materials is only going to get you so far. So, here are some subjects I’ve studied that I’ve found helpful to my writing.

Psychology: Since Psychology is the study of behavior, this is a good tool to study if you’re having problems with characterization. Understanding how people act and what thought processes cause people to take certain actions. This can help you give a character a more realistic response after experiencing emotional trauma, or may just help you slip into someone else’s mindset in order to write them better.

Cultural Anthropology: This may be more vital if you write Fantasy or Science Fiction, since both genres tend to require world building. Understanding the cultural element of society, what shapes it, and how it impacts behaviors, social norms, and etiquette can make worldbuilding easier for you. 

History: If you write Fantasy, War Dramas, or Historical Fiction, the subject of history is going to be your best friend. Whether it’s pulling from real people, events, or conflicts, history is littered with a goldmine of possible story ideas.

Screenwriting/Playwriting: If you struggle with ‘show don’t tell’ or dialogue, this is probably going to be a useful skill to learn. Since films and plays tend to lack an internal narration, they’ll push you to have to learn how to convey information visually or through dialogue, taking away the crutch of narration. This can also be useful as a means of writing a skeleton version of your chapters with just basic setting and dialogue and then go in later and fill in the narration elements.

There are a lot of aspects of culture strongly impacted by the world in which they are cultivated. While some Fantasy settings are a bit closer to home, others are completely foreign to our earthly world, and those changes to the world, history, and culture will impact social policies and issues. Due to my extensive study of homosexuality in history, I’ll be using that as my topic, but these topics can be applied to other prejudices.

Without Christianity, there’s probably no Homophobia

Prior to the forced widespread practices of the Christian faith, a fair number of cultures and societies had little problem with homosexuality. Among viking men, they didn’t give a crap so long as the bottom was just as strong a warrior as his lover. In Ancient Greece, the Band of Thebes was an army made entirely of same-sex lovers under the belief that they would fight harder to protect and impress each other. In Native American tribes, there was nothing wrong with a man choosing to do the women’s work, and they were even sought out as the village wise-men. And up until around the 1800s, lesbian activities weren’t even really considered sexual at all by European and American standards due to the idea that women themselves had no sex drives. Even then, the actual reason that Christians were against homosexuality was due to the ideologies of the faith at the time. See, Christianity began to spread through the Roman empire in the 300s AD, but Homosexuality only began to be seen as a sin by the church in the middle of the 1200s AD, 900 years after it spread across Europe. And the source of this sudden shift? Again, it had very little to do with actually going against the Church itself. See, in this era of Christian belief, Earthly life was seen as sort of an awful waiting room, and the only thing that mattered was getting not only your own soul to Heaven, but getting as many other people into Heaven as possible, hence the historic tendencies of Christians to shove their beliefs down the throats of everyone they invaded at knife point. Because the only purpose of life was to lay it down in service of God and to get into Heaven, taking pleasure in Earthly delights was considered selfish and sinful. Because two men engaging in intercourse would not yield offspring and was thus only an indulgence in lesser Earthly delights, it was labeled as a sin because it wasn’t in service to the Christian values of the era. 

So, why did I just write a long paragraph explaining why homosexuality is a sin? Because a fantasy world isn’t guaranteed to have Christianity existing within it, though some writers have equivalents, such as the Faith of the Seven in A Song of Ice and Fire which also derides same-sex relationships. Thus, if you’re planning a novel in a fantasy setting where one or more of the belief systems is against homosexuality (or anything else) this may help serve to inspire you to think about why these things are seen as a sin, how long ago these ideas became a sin, and if the culture has changed since then, are opinions any different now? Homosexuality became a sin in the mid 1200s, but by the time Chaucer started writing the Canterbury Tales in 1387, there were already stereotypes and derogatory slurs used to refer to homosexual men. Understanding the roots of these prejudices can be an integral part of world building and understanding your created world. Nobody really hates for no reason, as prejudices arise from differences in opinion. So ask where these prejudices come from, why do they hold these prejudices, what social, political, or cultural taboo might be being broken by these actions? Ideologies change, and what was offensive long ago might not be offensive now, but people are slow to change. Just because the culture is different doesn’t mean the mass population has changed at the same pace. Old grudges are slow to bury.

The LGBT Community is a Subculture, and thus should be fleshed out and treated like any other culture in your story.

Based on the culture, stigma, and social acceptance you established in the first part, this is where you expand upon it. Due to the need to keep gay romance or sex discreet, gay men developed secret codes to let other men know which team they played for. Whether it be wearing a red carnation in their lapel, wearing a green tie, or carrying a bandanna in their back pocket, there was usually some sort of discreet code. This also extended into dialogue, as phrases like “Are you a friend of Dorothy?” was a common coded way of asking someone if they were gay. Other themes and symbols associated with homosexuality include lavender, such as with the Lavender Scare which accompanied the Red Scare of the 1950s and 60s, or the Pink Triangle worn by homosexuals in Nazi Germany. Symbols could be connected to myths and legends, such as the notoriously bi/pansexual god Apollo. Apollo’s symbols could easily be reclaimed by a closeted shadow society of LGBT people. Phrases such as “Do you weep for the Hyacinth?” could be a stealthy way of finding other homosexuals borrowing from this myth. Beyond these clues and coded messages, there are other aspects of LGBT culture, such as the rise of Shade and Reading with the popularity of drag balls. Most homosexuals moved to larger cities where their chances of finding a partner was better, and due to the higher population density, they were far less likely to be known by half the town, and thus gossip was far less of a terrifying factor. LGBT people would designate locations as safe spaces for them to gather, and many of these locations, including the famous Stonewall Inn were under Mafia protection for a price to be allowed to meet in peace. Subcultures also tend to come with their own language and beliefs, such as the unspoken taboo of outing someone else from the closet. Usage of terms like brownie queen, shade, reading, and twink started off as discreet terms used within the community, and some such as buns have become so widespread that they’re not even necessarily connected to the community anymore, but originate from coded messages used to talk discreetly.

You’ve done it. You’ve come up with an idea for your fantasy world, but right now it’s mostly curb appeal and decorations without much else. So, you have the skin and flavor of your fictional world, but what if you’re having a bit of trouble coming up with the meat needed to make your world juicy and delicious? Well, I have a little game that can help flesh out your world.

Imagine a ship or whatever other kind of vehicle arriving on the shores or outskirts of your fantasy land and from that vehicle emerges 5 people from our own mundane world: a historian, an economist, an anthropologist, a diplomat, and a cartographer. There are some other visitors, but these are going to be the most universally beneficial.

The Historian:

This person is going to be interested in the backstory of your world. They don’t need to know every minuscule detail (though they wouldn’t turn that much information down) and just a general overview would be much obliged. Many fantasy worlds such as Tolkien’s Middle Earth and Martin’s Westeros are far more rich and interesting due to the amount of effort put into crafting their world’s histories. If you’re stumped, look to real world history for inspiration. It doesn’t even need to come from the middle ages so long as it works for your story. You should be able to answer questions like: How long has the dominant civilization been around? What are the biggest defining moments in your world’s history? What things are common knowledge that every child is expected to learn (such as George Washington being the first president of the USA) and which stuff is known more by historians and social studies teachers? And as you’re discussing the rest of the visitors, think back on how the answers you give would impact the historical aspect.

The Economist:

You don’t have to know the exact cost of every single thing in your world, but have a good guess. Be able to at least have a scale of price. If someone can buy a loaf of bread for 13 of your world’s currency, but a house costs 17, that would mean that either that bread is very expensive, that house is very cheap, or each unit of your currency is equal to a lot of real world money. Whatever you use to refer to your currency, keep not only price scaling in mind, but economics. If you have a port city, there’s going to be a lot of merchants in that area. The first primary export you’re likely to see in such a port town would be seafood, but also keep in mind the things that are closet to that port, as well as the climate. Greece for instance is a very rocky and mountainous country, so while they can grow crops, they would not have been any match for medieval French Aquitaine, the crown jewel of medieval farming territory. It’s also worth remembering that food in the middle ages was far more valuable than it is today. There was an old saying that wheat is worth its weight in gold. It was southern France’s bountiful soil that caused it to become one of the richest and most coveted territories in medieval Europe.  So, keep in mind where resources would come from and where they would need to go, as well as trade that would be useful. A seaside farming town might not have any good access to raw minerals, while a city in the frozen mountainous north might not be able to grow crops, but are bountiful in minerals. The correlation of supply and demand now opens a vital trade route between them. This becomes more complex when the topic of war comes into play. The kingdom that supplies your crops and food is at war with your oldest ally. Now there’s a dilemma between having enough food to feed your people, or betraying the trust of a long time friend. Now your world building can be used as a part of your drama and narrative tension. The economy also impacts culture. What is considered a display of wealth, or is a common status symbol? What are the living conditions of the poor, the working class, the rich, and the aristocrats? Is there upward mobility? In the middle ages, you were what you were for the most part, especially serfs: peasants tied to their land. It was illegal to leave your territory, but there was a saying in the middle ages that “city air makes you free” that once a serf made it to a city, they’d be free of the life they’ve escaped.

The Anthropologist:

Every society has a culture. The way they act, think, dress, believe, talk. It’s all impacted by culture. Beliefs tend to be tied either to what has come before, or based on the world as observed. While many modern fantasy pantheons are based on ancient Greece, it’s not the only model to live by. In a loose interpretation, religion in it’s earliest stages was a rudimentary science used to explain why things happened. A culture that developed along rivers, sea coasts, and other popular trade routes are far more likely to be diverse melting pots due to the frequent traffic of people coming and going, and the common sight of foreigners choosing to set down roots. Meanwhile, a more out of the way and isolated culture is far less likely to have widespread cultural diversity. Tying back into history, a country that has experienced a number of successful wars may tend to think of themselves as invincible, or may try to police the issues of other countries, assuming they’re always on the right side, or that they can’t be defeated. The same culture may ask a high price of any other culture that asks them for militaristic support. Ask what things your people value, be they material or abstract ideals. However, try to refrain from creating a Planet of Hats, a trope often seen in Star Trek and similar Sci-Fi shows and even some Fantasy stories where everyone of a single race all have mostly the same skills, interests, personalities, and roles in the global culture. This is also the time to start thinking about myths, legends, folk heroes, and historical people and events worth celebrating, as this may be when you start to craft holidays or celebrations. This could also lead into discussing religion, and the gods or lack there of that might be celebrated by your culture. How does your society reflect itself in art, music, literature, dance. Does the way someone dresses tell you something about their place in society? Some taboos come from simple logic. The reason it’s frowned upon to eat a cow in India is the same reason it’s immoral to eat horse in western culture. Both are beast of burden livestock worth a lot more alive than dead. Cows produce milk, a source of nutrients and health. Horses are strong and were used in just about everything from plowing fields to pulling entire families or communities a great distance. Horses even became status symbols, as even in modern culture, owning a horse or pony is still considered to be (largely) a snobby rich person thing. Understanding not only what your people believe, but even just a vague idea why they would believe it is a vital aspect.

The Diplomat:

As this landing party is your fantasy world’s first contact with our own reality. How would they react to the newcomers? If there’s more than one society in your world, how would each society, country, kingdom, race, etc. react to something completely foreign? Would they try to forge an alliance? Open trade negotiations? Declare war? Prepare a feast? How would they feel about the way we dress? act? talk? How would they react to different levels of progression in technology? Could an unbiased third party from our world help two feuding sides come to peace with one another? How would they feel about knowing of a world beyond their own? Are there actions or behaviors acceptable in our own society that are considered offensive to them?

The Cartographer:

Although it’s not necessary that all fantasy worlds have a fully designed map, it is a good idea to have at least a rough idea of where things are in relation to one another. This can tell you about climate, resources, wildlife, natural borders, natural disasters, food chains, and more. It’s worth at least taking a crash course in understanding how geographical biomes tend to be laid out in order to make your world feel more real. Some authors claim that a world map is the single most important feature, others say it’s not that important. Frankly, trust your gut based on the kind of world you have. You may need a map, you may not. It really depends on the size and scope of your world. For instance, with Disney’s

Zootopia

, the entire world doesn’t matter. The audience doesn’t need to know where in the world Zootopia is, or what climate or biome it’s in. Zootopia itself is the world being built, and the separate districts and biomes of the city explain the world that’s being focused on.

Secondary Visitors:

They may still be important to your world, but are less likely to be universally helpful to all people.

Biologist: if your world has creatures beyond those found in our real world, it may be worth exploring how their bodies work on a more scientific level in order to give more realistic weight to their supernatural abilities.

Linguist/Translator: If you feel compelled to come up with a language no matter how basic or complex, it may be worth while to consider the problems with communication. this may also extend to unique idioms, colloquialisms, and slang native to your fantasy world.

Teacher/Scholar: Regardless of whether or not there is a formal education system in place in your world, a teacher may be interested in how knowledge is passed down, and what information the culture might have that would be unknown to people of our world. Whether that’s how to keep a wild animal from charging you, to knowing how to forge a mineral that exists only in your world, being able to readily answer questions is generally considered to be a good thing.

One of the trickiest things in writing is getting the lore and rules of your world across to the reader or viewer in a natural way. If it’s mishandled, it can become an info dump that’s a slog to get through. At worst, it’s an incoherent mass of worthless information that doesn’t apply to anything. So, how can we make sure we’re giving our audience the right information at the right time?

Only Tell Your Audience As Much as They Need to Know

In the opening for Avatar: the Last Airbender, we are given a basic understanding of the magic system, and one special person who can use all the magic. He disappeared, and now there’s a war. When we cut to the first scene of Sokka and Katara fishing in the South Pole, we know as much as needed for this scene to work. We know there’s magic, a war is going on, and the special person is missing. Sokka then somewhat clumsily explains that magic is unique to a culture, and it’s so commonplace that he’s dismissive of it as being an interesting topic. We also get to see magic for the first time as Katara does a very basic demonstration. Then they stumble upon Aang frozen in an iceberg, and the glowing eyes makes it pretty clear he’s going to be important. Finally, we meet our main antagonists who are hunting the very special person. Everything established in the intro has played a role in the story. Compare this to the Shaymalan movie, and we’re told too much. Katara sets up at the start of the movie that Toi and La have come to the mortal world, and goes on a whole tirade about Spirits, but it’s not relevant to the first scene. We’re being given exposition that is not immediately relevant, and so it’s clunky and excessive.

Let’s use another example: Ba Sing Se. It’s name dropped quite a few times in season 1. However, other that it being implied to be the capital and the site of Iroh’s greatest military defeat, we are told nothing else about Ba Sing Se before the Gaang arrives there. We know nothing of its ring structure, the dai li, lake laogai, the ju dees, or the Earth King being a puppet. About the only thing we sort of know is that its walls are impressive. We only know as much as is needed. Ba Sing Se is not immediately important so it’s only being name dropped as an important location for later, because a big important city would be important in-world too.

Compare this to RWBY’s intro. Salem tells the origins of Dust, and how mankind came from dust. That mankind learned to use dust to fight off the Grimm. She then talks to Ozpin who asks her about the value of a single light from a smaller, more honest soul. This seems fine enough. Except, most of what we were just told wasn’t helpful. Ruby doesn’t really fight with dust unlike Weiss, we don’t see Grimm until we reach the Emerald Forest, and we don’t know how priceless or valuable dust is to know whether Torchwick’s robbery of a Dust shop is closer to being like robbing a jewelry store, robbing an ammo cache, robbing a bank, or robbing a general store. Ruby gets excited about the appearance of a huntress, but we have no idea what a huntress is. The intro, if it wanted to be stronger, should have focused more on the soul aspect, fleshing out that souls manifest shields and powers, and that brave warriors with strong spirits fight back against the darkness that lurks in this world. We have a basic explanation of auras, semblances, and what a huntress is, even if it’s still somewhat vague. But the audience goes into the opening scene understanding that the important thing in this scene is not the dust, its the strength and purity of Ruby’s spirit or soul, and her willingness to combat the darkness that lurks in this world, be it villains or grimm alike. The opening scene introduces the audience to what huntresses do, and so the exposition should inform the audience what a huntress is and what they do.

People Focus on the Unusual while Ignoring the Mundane

Catelyn Stark never explicitly says there is not a Godswood at Riverrun where she grew up. She doesn’t have to. All she has to say is that the Godswood is creepy and she’s never gotten used to it. She also highlights that Ned had a Sept built for her, letting the audience know that Ned and others in the region had no reason for a sept to exist until a southern woman married into the noble family. I don’t know about you, but I don’t tend to spend my days reflecting on when the Vatican was constructed, the founding of Jamestown, or how my family came to settle in the area I now live. These things are just aspects of the normal world I live in. We don’t tend to reflect on the normal, but rather to fixate on the abnormal. Think of it like this: how often do you think about any one of your neighbors on a given day? Probably not a lot unless you’re well-acquainted and friends. Otherwise, you probably pay little attention when you see them outside. If you were narrating your day as you head to work and spot your neighbor watering their garden, you might spot that you notice it, but wouldn’t think much of it. But if you saw them dragging a really oddly shaped bag across their lawn toward the backyard, that suddenly seems more suspicious. Suddenly, you might spend your entire commute thinking about your neighbor. When did they move in? How have they presented themselves to yourself and the neighborhood thusfar? You wouldn’t normally think about it, but something happened to put your neighbor on your mind. That’s a great way to lead into exposition. Something has happened to warrant your protagonist’s attention, and now they’re actively reflecting on what they know about the thing that caught their attention.

Make the Audience Want Exposition

I’ve heard it said that one of the best ways to get exposition across is to make it a mystery. Make your readers ask questions, and then reward your readers with the exposition that answers these questions. This is why lore-heavy shows can drop information bombshells and have fans react positively and begging for more. The story left gaps in the lore, which left the audience pining to figure out how the pieces fit together. So, when the story connects the dots, it’s an incredible catharsis. Let’s use Pearl from Steven Universe as our example. For all of season 1, all we really knew about Pearl was that she was the fussy intellectual perfectionist of the mom squad, she’s a little overprotective, and she had feelings for Rose. It wasn’t until the second to last episode of the season that we got the first nugget of Pearl’s true past, as Jasper dismisses her as “some lost, defective pearl”, which was also one of the first indications in the show that there were multiple copies of a single gem type, as up until that point, we’d never seen two of one gem type before. So, in Back to the Barn, when Peridot dismisses Pearl as being just a servant drone and then spells out for the audience that pearls are a slave race that serve other gems, this was a payoff for Jasper’s earlier remark. But the show paces itself perfectly here, as just as one dangling plot thread is addressed to satiate the desire to know more, Peridot also remarks that Pearl looks really fancy, and literally hands the audience the big juicy question: who did Pearl belong to? For the next 3 seasons, this was one of the biggest aspects of Pearl’s character, and every time a new important gem showed up, the audience speculated whether or not this gem or this type of gem could be Pearl’s owner, with Morganite being one of the better suggestions. If you can get your audience begging to know more, they’ll much more happily sit through exposition. And it doesn’t even have to be long. Jasper’s entire relevance to Pearl is literally one throw-away line, and Peridot shares most of the lore about pearls on homeworld in just a minute or two of dialogue. You don’t need to lock your audience in a room and rant about your world to them. Make them want to know more on their own. Just don’t pull a RWBY and have to release a companion book to answer all the lore and worldbuilding you forgot to explain in the actual story. Like what a huntress is. The thing that the main characters are training to become. Or what the fuck is a semblance, which is their main super powers. Or just wait and explain a core worldbuilding mechanic in the 5th installment. That won’t irritate your audience whatsoever.

Express Exposition Through Dialogue

When writing a scene, I like to always do the rough draft in a script format because in a script format, I can’t have a character think about the important thing that I want the reader to know. While narration exposition is doable, as I discuss with Catelyn’s thoughts on the Godswood and the Sept, sometimes it’s better to handicap yourself to not rely too heavily on it and force yourself to get across exposition through dialogue. In Game of Thrones, when the royal procession arrives, Arya excitedly exposits about Jamie being the queen’s brother, the hound, and impertinently asking where the imp is, referring to Tyrion. This might seem egregious, but I think it’s honestly flawless. If you’ve ever talked to a small child, this is exactly the way they talk. They point out every little thing and talk eagerly about it, even when it’s rude or impolite to. Robert and Ned also make it clear they haven’t seen each other in a long time, as Robert has never met Bran, who is 7 in the books and 10 in the show. Robert also immediately asks to go see the crypt so he can pay his respects to Leanna. Again, we get masterful exposition through dialogue. Robert bemoans that Leanna was buried in a dark and dreary crypt instead of some idyllic hilltop, he asserts that he murders someone every night in his dreams, and also implies that the later drunken whoremongering sides to him that we see later are all shallow attempts to fill the void in his heart when he lost Leanna Stark. Arya is more clumsy in her delivery of exposition, but she’s also a child. Arya is used to establish characters, likely people she’s heard about but never seen, which is why she’s so excited. Meanwhile, Sansa has met these people before and just wants Arya to stop annoying her, and shushes her excessive talking. Let’s compare this good exposition to bad exposition. In the Once Upon a Time episode The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, the fairytale counterpart of Sheriff Graham enters a tavern with his pet wolf, and a bunch of background extras talk very loudly amongst themselves about how the Huntsman was supposedly raised by wolves, and cries when he kills. Not only is this clunky and unnatural because they are gossiping about him while he’s in the room and able to hear them asking about his backstory, but we the audience have already seen the huntsman cry after killing a deer. So the people saying he cries when he kills things is redundant exposition. It is noise. But now for the gif in question I used to represent this part: Avatar episode 12: The Storm. One of, if not the best episode in the entire award-winning series. And Iroh spends a good 80%+ of it committing the worst exposition sin there is. He sits a bunch of characters down and explains the plot. In any lesser show, this would be a death blow to the episode, but Avatar is no lesser show. So, how come Avatar can commit this egregious writing sin? A few reasons. Firstly, Iroh was present for the backstory. He is an eyewitness who knows the truth. Secondly, the topic he is covering is a painful and traumatic memory for Zuko, something he wouldn’t freely share with people. Zuko would never tell anyone about this backstory, so the showrunners need Iroh to tell the crew and the audience the backstory. Thirdly, they asked. The crew, and the audience, wants to know why catching the Avatar matters so much, and what crawled up Zuko’s butt and died. Daddy issues, that’s what. And finally, it’s thematically relevant. The Storm is an exposition dump. That is its purpose as an episode. But it doesn’t feel like it because of pacing, characterization, and most importantly, parallels. This episode makes it clear that Zuko and Aang are foils. Despite being on opposing sides, they come from similar backgrounds, made big mistakes, and are seeking redemption for their actions. 

Don’t Write a Jaune Arc

• Those emotioal scenes you’ve planned will never be as good on page as they are in your head. To YOU. Your audience, however, is eating it up. Just because you can’t articulate the emotion of a scene to your satisfaction doesn’t mean it’s not impacting the reader. 

• Sometimes a sentence, a paragraph, or even a whole scene will not be salvagable. Either it wasn’t necessary to the story to begin with, or you can put it to the side and re-write it later, but for now it’s gotta go. It doesn’t make you a bad writer to have to trim, it makes you a good writer to know to trim.

• There are several stories just like yours. And that’s okay, there’s no story in existence of completely original concepts. What makes your story “original” is that it’s yours. No one else can write your story the way you can.

Corpses. It's corpses.

"I fucking hate this ship and I cannot wait to get off."

"I got off the ship on the dock but I know I'm going to get back on the ship when my leave is up. Fuck."

"Storm."

"Big storm."

"Is it just me or does this ship have like. Really clean lines. Like damn. Okay. Not saying I'm feeling attracted to the ship, per se, but. Damn."

"Pull harder or we are all going to die."

"Bad working conditions."

"God I Need A Drink"

"I Am Drunk And Cannot Find My Clothing"

"Listen To This Cautionary Tale Of: Don't Fall Overboard"

"My Sweetheart Has Left Me, Guess I'll Go Be Miserable At Sea"

"Whale. Big Fish."

"The Food Sucks. So Do The Wages. And The Mate Is A Bastard."

"Spent All My Money, Oops."

"Our Ship Can Kick Your Ship's Stern."

"Shipwreck."

"Nautical Gibberish That Was Probably Once Actual Words, Maybe."

"Hey, Remember That Guy? He's Dead."

"I Have Not Seen A Woman In Six Months."

"Mapquest Directions, But Rhyming."