Science Fantasy At Your Service @katrinafaire - Tumblr Blog

Or rather, a penned post. ;)

Hey all, I'm Trina, a long time Tumblr user who thought it was overdue I actually made a Writeblr for the original works I'm writing. What works, you say? I'm glad you asked! We'll get there shortly.

First, a bit about me. I've been a writer for 30+ years, but have never actually pursued something that would be printable (I cut my teeth on fanfic, as many of us did.) For those looking, why yes I am Catrian the one and only, and am probably still using that pen name on Royal Road, where I plan to post my work well before I ever query or seek an indie publisher.

I primarily write science fantasy / soft scifi with low fantasy aspects. This runs the gamut from post-apocalyptic rebuilding, adventures in space, and time travel just to hit the highlights. I'm also rolling around the concept of a couple things that will either be LitRPG or Gamelit depending on how certain details pan out, regarding a somewhat fantasy-esque MMO setting and something else akin to a monster breeder game.

Like the sound of my work? Give me a follow and read about my current projects under the cut. Are you also a creative? Pop in my ask and let's talk about our projects! I'm eager to make friends.

#my updates #writeblr #my writing #Tevoco Universe #Tevoco [Series]#Tevoco Book 1: I Will Call #Legend's Legacy novel #All the Queen's Men IF #Rewind IF #Travelers IF #Travelers RMMV

For the Music Challenge Game

As a reminder: 5-10 songs (lyrics ideally) per character, and 1-5 songs (instrumental, ideally) per location.

Here we go with my three MCs who are POV characters, and a fourth that doesn't come into view clearly until late in the story, but is hinted at early on.

Talia, the Protagonist ->

Odds Are, by Barenaked Ladies (lyrics here)

Lookin Up, by Barenaked Ladies (lyrics here)

Courage, by Clay Finnesand (lyrics here)

The Change, by Garth Brooks (lyrics here)

I Lived, by OneRepublic (lyrics here)

Fight Song, by Rachel Platten (lyrics here)

We're Not Gonna Take It, by Twisted Sister (lyrics here)

Titanium, by David Guetta (lyrics here)

The Climb, by Miley Cyrus (lyrics here)

Believer, by Imagine Dragons (lyrics here)

Arc, the Mentor ->

Could Have Been Me, by the Struts (lyrics here)

Measure of a Man, by Clay Aiken (lyrics here)

All About Us by tATu (lyrics here)

Battle Scars, by Paradise Fears (lyrics here)

The Phoenix, by Fall Out Boy (lyrics here)

Invincible, by David Archuleta (lyrics here)

Survive, by Lewis Capaldi (lyrics here)

The Dance, by Garth Brooks (lyrics here)

Keep Holding On, by Avril Lavigne (lyrics here)

Go The Distance, by Michael Bolton for Hercules (lyrics here)

Ana, the Traveler ->

#music challenge #tevoco [series]#talia durant [tevoco]#arcadius hallow [tevoco]

Music Challenge: People and Places

I have a deep love for music that goes beyond playing it on various instruments to just listening and letting myself be moved. I feel like most of us enjoy music to some degree, so here's a fun little bridge between music, and writing.

-> Anyone who tags me (OP @katrinafaire ) in their post will get at least 1 ask about their response. (Assuming Dumblr lets me see the tags.)

-------------------------------->

♫ PEOPLE ♫

List 5-10 songs that describe your character, at any point(s) in the novel. Ideally one with applicable lyrics. You can link to the song's music or lyric video, or spotify if you're into that (or something else I've overlooked) or just quote the lyrics.

You are encouraged to explain how the song fits, but it is not required, especially if that's a spoiler!

-------------------------------->

♫ PLACES ♫

List 1-5 instrumental pieces that hit the right vibe for your location. ASMR, nature videos, study music, and video game themes are all very good for this. Feel free to toss in some with lyrics if something really moves you.

You are encouraged to explain how the song fits, but it is not required!

#writing ask game #music association #worldbuilding #character development

blueiscoool

Pompeii Roads

Ancient Romans embedded reflective white stones (sometimes called "cat's eyes" or "tiger's eyes") into the roads of Pompeii. These pale stones caught and reflected moonlight and torchlight, helping pedestrians and cart drivers safely navigate the city streets at night.

These reflective stones highlight how Roman engineers blended practicality with ingenuity in everyday infrastructure. Before the eruption of Mount Vesuvius buried the city, Pompeii’s streets formed a well-organized network, complete with drainage systems, pedestrian walkways, and nighttime visibility features uncommon in many ancient cities.

#worldbuilding inspo #ancient rome #okay but this is really neat and gives me thoughts

probablybadrpgideas

Me at all fantasy RPGs:

#ttrpg #fantasy rpg #scifi rpg #worldbuilding #scifi generally does better with that terminology than fantasy #not really clear why but there it is #things to keep in mind #legend's legacy

thewriteadviceforwriters

🍖 How to Build a Culture Without Just Inventing Spices and Necklaces

(a worldbuilding roast. with love.)

So. You’re building a fantasy world, and you’ve just invented: → Three types of ceremonial jewelry → A spice that tastes like cinnamon if it were bitter and cursed → A holiday where everyone wears gold and screams at dawn

Cute. But that’s not culture. That’s aesthetics.

And if your worldbuilding is all outfits, dances, and spice blends with vaguely mystical names, your story’s probably going to feel like a cosplay convention held inside a Pinterest board.

Here’s how to fix that—aka: how to build a real, functioning culture that shapes your story, not just its vibes.

─────── ✦ ───────

🔗 Culture Is Built on Power, Not Just Style

Ask yourself: → Who’s in charge, and why? → Who has land? Who doesn’t? → What’s considered taboo, sacred, or punishable by death?

Culture is shaped by who gets to make the rules and who gets crushed by them. That’s where things like religion, family structure, class divisions, gender roles, and social expectations actually come from.

Start there. Not at the embroidery.

─────── ✦ ───────

2.🪓 Culture Comes From Conflict

Did this society evolve peacefully? Was it colonized? Did it colonize? Was it rebuilt after a war? Is it still in one?

→ What was destroyed and mythologized? → What do the survivors still whisper about? → What do children get taught in school that’s… suspiciously sanitized?

No culture is neutral. Every tradition has a history, and that history should taste like blood, loss, or propaganda.

─────── ✦ ───────

3.🧠 Belief Systems > Customs Lists

Sure, rituals and holidays are cool. But what do people believe about: → Death? → Love? → Time? → The natural world? → Justice?

Example: A society that believes time is cyclical vs. one that sees time as linear will approach everything—from prison sentences to grief—completely differently.

You don’t need to invent 80 gods. You need to know what those gods mean to the people who pray to them.

─────── ✦ ───────

4.🫀 Culture Controls Behavior (Quietly)

Culture shows up in: → What people apologize for → What insults cut deepest → What people are embarrassed about → What’s praised publicly vs. what’s hidden privately

For instance: → A culture obsessed with stoicism won’t say “I love you.” They’ll say “Have you eaten?” → A culture built on legacy might prioritize ancestor veneration, archival writing, name inheritance.

This stuff? Way more immersive than giving everyone matching earrings.

─────── ✦ ───────

5. 🏠 Culture = Daily Life, Not Just Festivals

Sure, your MC might attend a funeral where people paint their faces blue. But what about: → Breakfast routines? → How people greet each other on the street? → Who cooks, and who eats first? → What’s considered “clean” or “proper”? → How is parenting handled? Divorce?

Culture is what happens between plot points. It should shape your character’s assumptions, language, fears, and habits—whether or not a festival is going on.

─────── ✦ ───────

6. 💬 Let Your Characters Disagree With Their Own Culture

A culture isn’t a monolith.

Even in deeply traditional societies, people: → Rebel → Question → Break rules → Misinterpret laws → Mock sacred things → Act hypocritically → Weaponize or resist what’s expected

Let your characters wrestle with the culture around them. That’s where realism (and tension) lives.

─────── ✦ ───────

7.🧼 Beware the “Pretty = Good” Trap

Worldbuilding gets boring fast when: → The protagonist’s homeland is beautiful and pure → The enemy’s culture is dark and “barbaric” → Every detail just reinforces who the reader should like

You can—and should—challenge the aesthetic hierarchy. → Let ugly things be beloved. → Let beautiful things be corrupt. → Let your MC romanticize their culture and then get disillusioned by it later.

─────── ✦ ───────

📍 TL;DR (but like, spicy): → Culture is not food and jewelry. → Culture is power, fear, memory, contradiction. → Stop inventing spices until you know who starved last winter. → Let your world feel lived in, not curated.

The best cultural worldbuilding doesn’t look like a list. It feels like a system. A pressure. A presence your characters can’t escape—even if they try.

Now go. Build something real. (You can add spices later.)

—rin t. // writing advice for worldbuilders with rage and range // thewriteadviceforwriters

Sometimes the problem isn’t your plot. It’s your first 5 pages. Fix it here → 🖤 Free eBook: 5 Opening Pages Mistakes to Stop Making:

✦ A free (and actually helpful) guide to leveling up your first 10 pages ✦If you're unsure whether your opening is ✨doing enough✨ to hook re

🕯️ download the pack & write something cursed:

A gothic prompt pack for writers who love cursed universities, secret societies, and scholarly rot.✎ Write the Darkness ✎A 75-prompt horror

#writing advice #cultures in fiction #worldbuilding #good post OP #I live for these details in fiction #and try hard to provide my own

concerningwolves

favourite things about first drafts:

square brackets with notes to self mid-line like [does this make sense with worldbuilding?]

ah yes, Main Character and their closest friends, Unnamed Character A and Unnamed Character B.

bullshitting your way through something that you probably definitely need to research later

also square brackets to link up scenes. [scene transition idk] my beloved

the total freedom of word vomits

"I'll fix that later"

the moment when the world and characters start to gain a life of their own

pieces falling into place as you write that you were uncertain about before you started

the accomplishment of Made A Thing

concerningwolves

Not only is this allowed but it's something i encourage all writers of any kind to play with! :D

The idea that all writers know what to say all the time and just splash fully-formed drafts out one word after the other is false. There are some who can do it, but i think most of us... can't. Which is why we need tricks like square bracket notes! They're not cheats or lazy writing or some other flavour of Not Allowed, but instead really really important tools that we should use as much as we need to.

Some of the most helpful tricks I've collected over the years are:

make some notes in square brackets – e.g., I had to write a scene on a sailboat, but I know nothing about sailing so i literally just had notes like [boat part] and [how to do X thing?]. If you use square brackets as punctuation anyway, use something else like [[double square brackets]] or a unique letter combination like XY at the start of the note; the point is to pick something you can search for easily later on.

(You can also style inline comments in a different font/colour. Scrivener has an inline annotation feature; if you use Word, you can make a specific Style to make notes stand out at a glance, etc.)

bullet-point your way through any tricky parts – this can be pure stream-of-consciousness vague ideas. it only needs to make sense to me later. much more helpful than just leaving big blank gaps that Future Me has to work out how to fill, but also better than dwelling on a piece of writing forever.

use comment tools – mostly do this if I have ideas for alternate events and/or phrasing, or if I want to check something for continuity purposes.

write out of order – Best advice i ever got for academic writing is to know or even write your conclusion first and your introduction last, which your main argument in between. Similar principles apply in fiction, or any kind of creative writing. If there's a part of the essay that I can visualise clearly or a part of the story that is particularly exciting or important, I might write that first, then figure out how it fits/how everything fits around it.

keep a loose scenes and/or "outtakes" folder – anything that i write out of order goes here, along with any notes for how I think I want to incorporate it into the full text. In the same vein, if I delete something but don't know for sure it will never be relevent ever again, it gets cut and pasted into an outtakes folder.

Basic rule though is that you do not have to get your writing perfect on the first try. This is where drafts come in. The way I see it is to treat each draft as a fresh start – I create/open a new document (well, new Scrivener file) and start over as if from scratch. Each draft gets a narrower focus than the last. This is my process, as an example:

first draft is the word vomit. You do whatever you need to do to get it onto the page, and it can be terrible. In fact, it probably should be terrible. You can fix everything later. it's fine.

The second draft is a half-hearted cleanup attempt. I'll re-type everything because everything is subject to change, from the characters' personalities to the pacing to the order of events. It's all primordial goop, basically. i'm just poking and prodding and making a few adjustments, but mostly trying to create a more stable version of the first draft. All shortcut tricks continue to be my best friend.

By draft three I'll let myself copy-paste between documents if I'm particularly happy with a passage, but try not to get hung up on anything specific. I'll still make liberal use of square brackets etc. as I need to, but try to address as many from the previous draft as I can. This is where I get more brutal with making decisions and trying to fix parts of the story in place.

Draft four is usually my final draft, but there's literally no rules about how many drafts you're allowed to write. It's at this point that I try to keep square brackets etc. to a minimum (unless i've diverged significantly from the plot of a previous draft and having to rewrite large chunks), and make sure to address all the notes and problems encountered in previous drafts.

This is when I move on to revisions. Revisions are the "final do-overs", for me. I start them when I'm satisfied with all the large-scale aspects: plot and chronology; characters' personalities, motivations and arcs; large-scale pacing (so the over-arcing pace, rather than the pacing in individual scenes); backstories; and worldbuilding. I'll copy the last draft's document instead of starting with a blank one. First I run through those large scale things one more time and tweak until I'm happy, not just satisfied. Then I shrink my focus to in-scene pacing, dialogue, and the quality of the writing itself.

I'll also rewrite my plot outline between each draft, too. The act of actually re-writing stuff is very helpful for making your brain think about it.

Drafting like this isn't for everyone, but realising that you can just bullshit your way through chunks of text was a massive game-changer for me. Some people will do a draft, then work on something else, then come back and do another draft, work on something else, etc. Some people's drafting process will look more like what I consider to be revisions. Do whatever works for you. Just remember that from the moment you first decide you Want to Write a Thing to the moment you hit "post" or "publish" or give your manuscript over to a publisher, you can keep making as many changes as you like in any way you like. (And if you go the querying to traditional publishing route, you'll probably get suggestions for, and have space/time to make, changes to the manuscript quite far into the process).

laurenkmoody

Yes!!

I don't believe I've ever met two writers who have exactly the same process. Every writer I've spoken to about the craft of writing has their own process, usually developed over years and years of practice and trying things out.

For example, I don't rewrite at all, that sounds horrendous, I just save-as to create a new draft. I also get the big structure stuff done in outlining, but I'm a weirdo who writes 20k word outlines. As mentioned above, I am one of those people who needs space between drafts--or at least, between rough draft and first revision. And I do my first revision on paper, always. The human brain processes screens and hardcopy differently! I write all over my printed rough draft, and then go back to the doc and apply those edits and anything else that occurs to me at the time, so my draft 2 is more sort of draft 2.5??

There's a lot more, obviously, and it's different between novels and short stories (I don't print short stories unless I'm really struggling). But I'm always experimenting with different ways to write, and sometimes they work and sometimes I get stranded and have to go back to the drawing board. Some people have a lot more hand writing in the prep stages, in notebooks or on index cards--I visited someone once whose dining room walls were covered in butcher paper and index cards with pushpins!

So if you're a newbie writer, experiment! Read about a bunch of different ways to get those words down! Try new things! Put notes and placeholders and such in your drafts, write by the seat of your pants, try out the whole in-depth outline thing, revise every paragraph before moving on to the next one, whatever works!!

Also please feel free to come talk to me about it! I love hearing about how people write.

#writing advice #the writing process #editing #find again #first drafts

Fictional Nonfiction is so fun to write (and read!) Here's some tools:

For those who are unfamiliar, this is the stuff of wikis. This is biographies of characters and encyclopedias of knowledge, travel guides and dictionaries and more of things, people, places etc. that only exist in works of fiction.

I'm currently spending a lot of time on WorldAnvil for my main series (currently Tevoco, may change names as I develop a conlang) and Legend's Legacy, straightening my thoughts and preparing what will become a hard copy lore bible some day. It's a repository of the information blocks that built my story, be they tiny and incidental or load bearing fixtures. I'm also working with Chronicler, which is no-sub, no payment, offline desktop wiki-like program for Windows, Mac, and Linux. (I suggest if you use it a lot tossing a one-time "payment" the dev's way is good, like any tool.) I think they're looking at a single payment "pro" edition with even more bells and whistles, but it's got a really solid base.

Fair warning, Chronicler is written in Markdown, but that's easy to learn or just bookmark a reference page; if you format posts in Discord, you already know some of it.

There's also Fantasia Archive, and Fantasia Archive is also Windows/Mac/Linux, no sub/no payment, offline desktop wiki program which has categories and templates for so much. (Again, tossing what you can to the dev is always polite if not expected.) It's skewed towards fantasy but absolutely usable for other genres, even scifi.

Chronicler has much more flexibility if you want to customize things and Fantasia Archive has a lot of fixed formatting so you don't have to think it up. So it's really what you want, as to what works best.

I may reblog with more as I think of it, but these are really solid options in my opinion, and worth your time for sure.

#fictional nonfiction #world anvil #chronicler #fantasia archive #wiki stuff #worldbuilding #sites & tools

whatagrump

Apparently a lot of people get dialogue punctuation wrong despite having an otherwise solid grasp of grammar, possibly because they’re used to writing essays rather than prose. I don’t wanna be the asshole who complains about writing errors and then doesn’t offer to help, so here are the basics summarized as simply as I could manage on my phone (“dialogue tag” just refers to phrases like “he said,” “she whispered,” “they asked”):

“For most dialogue, use a comma after the sentence and don’t capitalize the next word after the quotation mark,” she said.

“But what if you’re using a question mark rather than a period?” they asked.

“When using a dialogue tag, you never capitalize the word after the quotation mark unless it’s a proper noun!” she snapped.

“When breaking up a single sentence with a dialogue tag,” she said, “use commas.”

“This is a single sentence,” she said. “Now, this is a second stand-alone sentence, so there’s no comma after ‘she said.’”

“There’s no dialogue tag after this sentence, so end it with a period rather than a comma.” She frowned, suddenly concerned that the entire post was as unasked for as it was sanctimonious.

thewritinggrindstone

And!

“If you’re breaking dialogue up with an action tag”—she waves her hands back and forth—”the dashes go outside the quotation marks.”

writing-is-a-martial-art

Reblog to save a writer’s life.

jaydove-writes

Thank you

localcanadiancryptid22

Oh my god thank you. No wonder grammarly keeps complaining about my punctuation when I boot my writing up into word counter

#grammar #dialogue #dialogue tags #writing dialogue #I knew all of these but the action tag #which I have apparently gotten wrong #but at least I've been consistent about it!

conlangery

I haven't been promoting my videos on here, but I wanted to share this review in anticipation of my review of another conlanging textbook coming up on Monday.

Long and short of it is I do recommend How to Create a Language if you can get ahold of it (or if you're a professor looking to teach a conlanging class). It's an excellent and easy to follow book packed with a ton of information on linguistics and conlanging, written by a professional conlanger.

#jessie peterson #how to create a language - jessie peterson #the conlang guide #this is SO GOOD guys #so good

dedalvs

Could I commission you to create a new conlang for me or would that be extremely expensive considering how famous you are?

I have no clue how to create one myself. I've tried for years and read books about it but I still can't figure it out.

I'm not able at the moment, but can I recommend a different book—a new one? My wife Jessie wrote How to Create a Language: The Conlang Guide and it's the best resource for starting out—better than The Art of Language Invention. You can purchase it here:

Discover How to Create a Language, 1st Edition, Jessie Peterson, HB ISBN: 9781108834070 on Cambridge Aspire website

katrinafaire

Quick add-on for my 2C -- I bought this book after reading this post and watching a video about it that I think I have queued for tomorrow and it's so good. It really embraces the beginner and explains things thoroughly and in interesting ways. I'm not far into it at all but I'm far enough to say it's earned its shelf space and is well worth spending that kind of time and focus on.

#conlang advice #conlang #jessie peterson #how to create a language - jessie peterson #book rec #find again #I have this book and it's AMAZING

bisexualcreature-deactivated202

lvl 1: the plural of octopus is octopuses because the plural version of a word is the word with an s at the end

lvl 2: the plural version of octopus is octopi because if a word ends with "us" the plural version replaces the "us" with "i" e.g. cactus -> cacti and fungus -> fungi

lvl 3: actually, that rule is only for latin words. octopus is a greek word and the correct plural is octopuses or octopodes

lvl 4: actually, language is descriptive not prescriptive. since enough people over time have used octopi as the plural for octopus, it's a valid plural

lvl 5: the plural of octopus is octopeese, like geese

official-linguistics-post

official linguistics post

#linguistics #find again #relevant #legend's legacy

transmandrake

Pro tip for conlanging. Dont start with basic words like 'air', 'speak' 'animal', etc. Start with really specific complex stuff and work back.

Maybe you want like.... 'ephemerality'.

How does that break down? Is it formed from other words combined, or is one base word altered?

State of change -> Changestateness

Change gives you a word for alteration, movement, time maybe.

State gives you a word for form, shape, the present.

You can break them down further now.

Forms and shapes, relates to the body. Body conveys material, flesh.

Movement, can come from walking, running.

Walking -> legs, feet.

Material -> crafts, harvesting, processing.

Now you have lots of words!

If you do it the other way round you will have a set of words that all come from a handful of basic words and so all sound the same and are bloated from using the same words over and over.

Speaking from experience.

#conlang #conlang advice #this is delightful #also just a really good idea as far as I can tell #going to try this going forward

dedalvs

Hi! I'm curious about sound changes and if there’s a list of the most common ones across different languages. I'm planning on making a conlang but I'm stuck on how to make my proto-lang evolve over time.

I did a video on a super common set of sound changes: assimlation and dissimilation. Maybe this will help with inspiration:

#conlang #conlang advice #video guide #youtube #dedalvs is amazing #over here wishing I had the oomph to design a working conlang for literally any of my books / series #but especially:#legends legacy #tevoco [series]#in order of relevance #at the moment at least #find again

writerthreads

How to avoid White Room Syndrome

by Writerthreads on Instagram

A common problem writers face is "white room syndrome"—when scenes feel like they’re happening in an empty white room. To avoid this, it's important to describe settings in a way that makes them feel real and alive, without overloading readers with too much detail. Here are a few tips below to help!

Focus on a few key details

You don’t need to describe everything in the scene—just pick a couple of specific, memorable details to bring the setting to life. Maybe it’s the creaky floorboards in an old house, the musty smell of a forgotten attic, or the soft hum of a refrigerator in a small kitchen. These little details help anchor the scene and give readers something to picture, without dragging the action with heaps of descriptions.

Engage the senses

Instead of just focusing on what characters can see, try to incorporate all five senses—what do they hear, smell, feel, or even taste? Describe the smell of fresh bread from a nearby bakery, or the damp chill of a foggy morning. This adds a lot of depth and make the location feel more real and imaginable.

Mix descriptions with actions

Have characters interact with the environment. How do your characters move through the space? Are they brushing their hands over a dusty bookshelf, shuffling through fallen leaves, or squeezing through a crowded subway car? Instead of dumping a paragraph of description, mix it in with the action or dialogue.

Use the setting to reflect a mood or theme

Sometimes, the setting can do more than just provide a backdrop—it can reinforce the mood of a scene or even reflect a theme in the story. A stormy night might enhance tension, while a warm, sunny day might highlight a moment of peace. The environment can add an extra layer to what’s happening symbolically.

Here's an example of writing a description that hopefully feels alive and realistic, without dragging the action:

The bookstore was tucked between two brick buildings, its faded sign creaking with every gust of wind. Inside, the air was thick with the scent of worn paper and dust, mingling with the faint aroma of freshly brewed coffee from a corner café down the street. The wooden floorboards groaned as Ella wandered between the shelves, her fingertips brushing the spines of forgotten novels. Somewhere in the back, the soft sound of jazz crackled from an ancient radio.

Hope these tips help in your writing!

#writer problems #writing advice #description in fiction #this is such a pain but has SO MUCH payoff #I'm working on it #getting better

crystalis

There was this woman poet in 4th century China called Su Hui (蘇蕙), a child genius who had reportedly mastered Chinese characters by age 3.

At 21 years old, heartbroken by her husband who left her for another woman, she decided to encode her feelings in a structure so intricate, so beautiful, so intellectually staggering that it still baffles scholars to this day.

Came to be known as the Xuanji Tu (璇璣圖) - the "Star Gauge" or "Map of the Armillary Sphere" - it's a 29 by 29 grid of 841 characters that can produce over 4,000 different poems.

Read it forward. Read it backward. Read it horizontally, vertically, diagonally. Read it spiraling outward from the center. Read it in circles around the outer edge. Each path through the grid produces a different poem - all of them coherent, all of them beautiful, all of them rhyming, all of them expressing variations on the same themes of longing, betrayal, regret, and undying love.

The outer ring of 112 characters forms a single circular poem - believed to be both the first and longest of its kind ever written. The interior grid produces 2,848 different four-line poems of seven characters each. In addition, there are hundreds of other smaller and longer poems, depending on the reading method.

At the center a single character she left implied but unwritten: 心 (xin) - "heart." Later copyists would add it explicitly, but in Su Hui's original the meaning was even more beautiful: 4,000 poems, all orbiting the space where her heart used to be.

Take for instance the outer red grid of the Star Gauge. Starting from the top right corner and reading down, you get this seven-character quatrain:

仁智懷德聖虞唐，

貞志篤終誓穹蒼，

欽所感想妄淫荒，

心憂增慕懷慘傷。

In pinyin, it is:

Rén zhì huái dé shèng yú táng,

zhēnzhì dǔ zhōng shì qióng cāng,

qīn suǒ gǎnxiǎng wàng yín huāng,

xīn yōu zēng mù huái cǎn shāng.

Notice how it rhymes? táng / cāng / huāng / shāng

The rough translation in English is: "The benevolent and wise cherish virtue, like the sage-kings Yao and Shun, With steadfast will I swear to the heavens above, What I revere and feel - how could it be wanton or dissolute? My heart's sorrow grows, longing brings only grief."

Now read it from the bottom to the top and you get this entirely different seven-character quatrain:

傷慘懷慕增憂心，

荒淫妄想感所欽，

蒼穹誓終篤志貞，

唐虞聖德懷智仁。

The pinyin:

Shāng cǎn huái mù zēng yōu xīn,

huāngyín wàngxiǎng gǎn suǒ qīn,

cāngqióng shì zhōng dǔzhì zhēn,

táng yúshèngdé huái zhì rén.

It rhymes too: xīn and qīn, zhēn and rén

And the meaning is just as beautiful and coherent: "Grief and sorrow, longing fills my worried heart, Wanton and dissolute fantasies - is that what you revere? I swear to the heavens my constancy is true, May we embody the sage-kings' virtue, wisdom, and benevolence."

That's just 2 poems out of the over 4,000 you can construct from the Xuanji Tu!

At the very center of the grid, the 8 red characters wrapped around the central heart, she "signed" her poem with a hidden message:

詩圖璇玑，始平蘇氏。 "The poem-picture of the Armillary Sphere, by Su of Shiping."

Or reversed:

蘇氏詩圖，璇玑始平。 "Su's poem-picture - the Armillary Sphere begins in peace."

Many scholars, and even emperors, throughout Chinese history have been completely obsessed by Su Hui's puzzle.

For instance, in the Ming dynasty, a scholar named Kang Wanmin (康萬民) devoted his entire life to the poems (kangshiw.com/contents/461/2…), ending up documenting twelve different reading methods - forward, backward, diagonal, radiating, corner-to-corner, spiraling - and extracting 4,206 poems. His book on the subject ("Reading Methods for the Xuanji Tu Poems", 璇璣圖詩讀法) runs to hundreds of pages.

Empress Wu Zetian herself, the legendary woman emperor of the Tang dynasty, wrote a preface to the Xuanji Tu around 692 CE (baike.baidu.com/item/%E7%BB%87…).

Incredibly, there's even far more complexity to the Xuanji Tu than just the poems:

- The name 璇玑 (Xuanji) - Armillary Sphere - is astronomical in meaning and the way the poems can be read mirrors the way celestial bodies orbit around a fixed center. It's a model of the heavens.

- Her original work, with the characters woven on silk brocade, was in five colors (red, black, blue/green, purple, and yellow) which correspond to the Five Elements (五行) - the foundational Chinese philosophical system that explains how the universe operates. So it's also a model of the entire cosmic order according to ancient Chinese philosophy.

- It's also of course deeply mathematical with this 29 x 29 perfect square grid, with sub-squares, lines and rectangles, and a structure which allows for symmetrical reading patterns in all directions

- Last but not least, the content of the poems themselves contain multiple registers. On top of expressing her personal grief and longing for her husband, it's also filled with accusations against the concubine (Zhao Yangtai) he left her for, reflections on politics (with many references to sage-kings) and philosophical reflections.

So the Star Gauge is simultaneously:

- A love letter (expressing personal longing)

- A legal brief (arguing her case against her rival)

- A cosmological model (structured like the heavens)

- A Five Element diagram (encoding the fundamental structure of the world according to ancient Chinese philosophy)

- A mathematical construction with perfect symmetry and precision

And yet, for all this complexity, we should not forget this was all ultimately in service of the simplest human message imaginable: a 21-year-old woman asking the love of her life "come back to me".

Her husband did, eventually. According to what empress Wu Zetian herself wrote in her preface to the Xuanji Tu, when he received Su's brocade he was so "moved by its supreme beauty" that he sent away his concubine and returned to his wife. As the story goes, they lived together until old age.

The heart at the center was filled after all.

katrinafaire

This is so incredibly beautiful, both emotionally and as a genius piece of literature. I've seen it before but never explained this thoroughly, and I am in awe. @ajkorvidian have you seen this?

#chinese literature #literature #poetry #language #find again #worldbuilding inspo #Su Hui #Su Hui (蘇蕙)#hats off to this unbelievable woman #I cannot express how much this moves me

dduane

What's a cover letter actually for? I'm not asking for the usual tips and tricks on how to make one; I'm more confused about what people are doing with them on the other end. How long does someone spend with one? What are they using it to determine? Is it preparing them for how to read the story, or is it filling in for parts of it so they can read through it faster? (I mean, yes, I don't want to write them. But I also want to know why someone wants/needs them on the other end. The tips and tricks never seem to convey much of that.)

Okay; let's start with the very basics, then move on to what you're curious about.

What I was taught about this (and I have a memory of my agent nodding with approval when he heard it) was as follows:

All your cover letter needs to do is announce to your intended recipient who you are and what you're enclosing with the letter, with the very VERY briefest description of the contents of the enclosure itself... and then to express the hope that your intended reader at that agency will enjoy it.

Job done. Sign it and send everything off. That is all you need, and all that anybody at the agency end wants to see. Your brief description of what you're submitting will let them know how to move forward from there.

We'll come back to the "what are they getting out of this?" issue momentarily. But let me touch on a couple of small but important details here:

Don't just send a letter to an agency or a publisher. Find the name of the specific person you want to be sending it to. (And one of the pages I'll recommend to you [and everybody else] in a bit begs you to spell their name correctly. You'd think this would be a small thing that everybody would get right, but... no. )

And also: Carefully read the agent's or agency's or publisher's page about what kind of material they're looking for (and what they're not looking for). Sometimes they'll even tell you exactly what they want to see in a cover letter. Ignore such instructions at your peril.

That goes to the heart of the "what's all this for?" question. And the simplest answer is:

It's a test.

The way you handle your cover letter helps the agent determine whether you're likely to be worth the time they may be about to spend dealing with you.

Agents are a very specific type of creative (many of them are also writers: mine certainly is...) and they have the same dread of wasting time that all the rest of us have. The way you handle a cover letter reveals to them some very basic things about you that will affect whether an agent or publisher wants to deal with you any further.

Think of the cover letter's part in this evaluation process as your reaction to being presented with an entry-level sieve featuring pretty wide holes. If you can't make it through those holes, you may well be deemed to not be worth the agent's time. The cover letter is your chance to demonstrate whether you can make it through the initial (and easiest) level of the sieve.

And the most important of the issues your potential agent is "sieving for" may simply be this:

Can you follow instructions / directions?

Publishing is full of situations that have to proceed/unfold in a certain way, or in a certain order, to succeed. Your cover letter—how it looks, how it's addressed, what it contains, what comes with it—will give your potential agent, publisher or editor a vital initial sense of where you fall on the following-directions spectrum. For example:

Have you actually read the agency's or agent's info on what they're looking for? (Because if your cover letter makes it plain that you haven't, or if you've responded as if you haven't, you're already in trouble. This may involve genre-based limitations (don't want SF or mystery, do want romance, don't want a specific kind of fantasy the field's glutted with at the moment, etc etc...). Or it may involve something length-oriented or structural. Is your correspondent asking for, let's say, a specific kind of "partial"—three chapters and an outline used to be typical—but you've sent them a whole novel instead? Uh oh. Not good.

Does the tone or content of your cover letter suggest that you think you're the next [fill in the name of currently-hot writer]? Calmly-expressed self-confidence is one thing: overexcited declarations of your fabulous talent are something else. Come across as any kind of a prima donna, and you may invoke a bout of agentic eyerolling that will deep-six your chances.

So even in so short a thing as the introductory part of a cover letter should be, tone is an issue. And now comes the next layer of the sieve. where the hole you have to slip through gets significantly smaller.

Does your very, VERY brief description of your enclosure make your letter-reader more interested in reading it, or less?

This is where stuff gets tough, and where even the most experienced of us could well spend hours laboring over a single paragraph. I'm sitting here thinking "How can I concentrate into a single paragraph the necessary information about a single book that will create enough interest, both in the content and in my voice, to make someone want to read it who'd never heard of me before?" ...And the concept unquestionably makes me break out in a sweat. Because this isn't easy to do... and is still so revealing, even if the writer doesn't pull it off.

With all the above in mind, the answer to the question "How long will they spend with my cover letter?" is, "Only as much time as it takes to work out whether you've passed the test or flunked it."

...So let me play a hand of this game. Here's a cover letter.

That looks straightforward enough, yeah? For something written in about ten minutes, it's not too bad. It accurately sums up the novel in not too many words (84, I think, for that one long paragraph), the tone is quirky but otherwise neutral, and hopefully leaves the reader thinking "Okay, what happens next?"

...It is, however, a definite fail on one minor and one major count.

The minor one is that the author (perhaps obsessing over lamb recipes again...) has neglected to mention her email address or phone number in the cover letter. ALWAYS let your correspondent have email / phone contact info for you in your cover letter document, and on the cover page of the PDF of the work you're submitting. Addresses and contact info do get lost in busy agencies. It lies with you to make sure that doesn't happen to your query, by providing contact info in every appropriate place that you can. The appearance of a letter without this basic necessary info could very well get the query immediately tossed without a second thought: who needs the extra effort involved in tracking down this person's mail info? Honestly.

More to the point, though, when reading the agent''s own info page at their website, you need to make sure that person is actually accepting queries... and Don's page expressly and explicitly says that for the last year, he's "permanently closed to queries except by referral or invitation." So egregious a Failure To Read And/Or Follow Instructions is almost certainly going to get that query tossed. (shrug) Them's the breaks. Hopefully next time this author'll be more careful.

So the best advice about cover letters is: slow down, take your time, don't leave out anything important. And polish that sentence or two of description of your work until it shines... because it will do 90% of that letter's work.

...Now let me add a couple of links to good pages that deal with other points.

"The Perfect Cover Letter" at JaneFriedman.com

The Perfect Covering Letter with Literary Agent Simon Trewin

...In any case: hope this has been some help. :)

#cover letters #how to write #publishing #this was really informative #I appreciate it very much

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