She/they Writing and blogging about whatever thing is in my brain at the moment AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LilyOfTheCosmos/profile Main: https://theinsanemindblog.tumblr.com
there will never be anything as funny as the mutual disbelief between long form and short form fic writers about each other's style.
short form writers look at people writing 100k+ fics as though this is some sort of talent given as part of a fae bargain, that the commitment required shows some sort of ungodly mental fortitude.
meanwhile long form writers look at people writing 1000 word one shots like god I would cut off my left nipple to be able to say anything concisely. i would love to play with multiple ideas. free me from the shackles of this child I have birthed. i love them but I now must take them to t-ball and doctor's appointments and they're going to destroy everything I own.
🍖 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
Watched Iron Lung! For a movie based on a game that's effectively a two hour long build to a single jumpscare, it was a lot more conceptual than I was expecting. The opening was a little weak I think but I really need to watch it again! With subtitles this time, though. A lot of the radio lines are *very* hard to parse.
Genuinely though it's very very good. I'm a sucker for eldritch horror where it almost seems like the Thing is trying to *help* the protagonist in its own fucked up way
The politics of the 2nd Oz book is so bizarre because a bunch of radical feminists initiate a hostile takeover of the Emerald City and our male protagonists must take it back but then it turns out the main male character was the lost princess of Oz all along.
After having read an entire biography about L Frank Baum it actually kind of makes sense as a joke about suffragist infighting. His mother in law Matilda Gage was a very important person in the suffrage movement, and Baum considered her a very good friend. Matilda Gage ended up creating a separate suffrage movement when the original one leaned too hard into the church and "we should vote because our Femininity makes us Better." If you read Jinjur's army of revolt as being the mainstream suffrage movement that Matilda hated and Glinda/Ozma as the actual effective women who get shit done it all sort of clicks.
Really a lot of Oz makes more sense when you consider that his wife was raised by one of the most radical feminists of the time and she effectively ran L Frank Baum's entire life for him. He was saved from bankruptcy at some point because his wife was the actual title holder for everything they owned. He's the ultimate wife guy and his books reflect the kind of radical feminist politics he was surrounded by from his wife's family.
6 Quick Writing Exercises to Wake Up Your Imagination
We all hit those blah writing days. Your fingers are ready, your doc is open... and your brain goes static. That’s where writing exercises come in — small creative boosts to shake off the dust and get back into your story flow. Here are six to try when your words feel stuck in traffic.
1. The 5-Minute Word Sprint
Pick a random word (use a generator or close your eyes and point at a book), set a 5-minute timer, and write anything involving that word. No stopping, no deleting.
2. Dialogue Without Context
Write a short convo between two people. No descriptions. No setting. Just back-and-forth lines.
3. Rewrite a Scene in Another Genre
Take a scene from your current story and flip the genre. Drama becomes comedy. Fantasy becomes sci-fi. Romance becomes horror.
4. Describe a Place Using the Five Senses — No Sight Allowed
Can’t mention what anything looks like. Only sound, touch, smell, taste, and intuition.
5. Character Swap POVs
Write a paragraph from the POV of a side character reacting to your main character. Bonus if the POV is brutally honest or completely wrong.
6. One Line Story Hooks
Write 3 one-sentence story starters that make you want to keep writing. (Example: “I woke up married to my enemy, and worse — he knew it before I did.”)
You don’t need to write a masterpiece every day. But showing up — even for a silly exercise — keeps the creative part of your brain warmed up. Try one of these before your next writing session, and see where it takes you. 🍒
Been in a massive Oz hyperfixation and one of my favorite things in the books is how Glinda is just fucking around 90% of the time. With Wicked out everyone has this idea of her as the de facto responsible ruler of Oz but in the original 14 books she's just chilling in her palace with her hundred girlfriends. The main characters have to travel to her to fix things multiple times and she's always like "oh yeah I already knew about your problem, here's how to solve it." She's never proactive.
Also in a bunch of the books they run into some small town where Glinda just did a magic for her own entertainment. She established a kingdom of bunnies! She gave some girl magic paper to make sentient paper dolls with! She's just fucking around and having a good time!
God damn I just finished the Cyberpunk 2077 DLC with the King of Wand ending and I am genuinely moved by it?! I did not expect Cyberpunk to actually be. Well. Punk! The ending being about radical forgiveness and caring for each other despite everything is so fuckin good.
"I like Stone Soup," said the cow. "Stone Soup is an honest con. We get a meal, everyone thinks they've seen a little bit of magic, you sell the stone for a little bit of pocket money, you pick up another stone at the next town. Everyone gets something."
"And if I remember right, you were the one who suggested we steal the magic beans."
"That wasn't stealing, that was a legitimate trade."
"A legitimate trade for a talking cow that disappeared by morning?"
"He didn't even lock the barn! How is that my fault?" She huffed and laid her head onto her forelimbs. The stalk of grass in her lips wobbled with her scowl. "Old fool never knew what he had."
Jack hummed. He craned forward to get a better look into the tiny, cracked glass, pulled gently at the corner of his eye and delicately dabbed the makeup brush.
"My point is," said the cow, "this all seems rather - cruel."
Jack turned. One half of his face was magnificently painted in faerie shades of blues and violets. The other half was just confused. "What on earth are you talking about?"
"For gods' sake, Jack, this is a perfectly innocent girl who you plan on humiliating in front of the royal court."
"How would she be humiliated? As far as she'll know, she'll have a lovely time at a lovely ball in a lovely ballgown."
"You don't have a lovely ballgown!"
"Well I can't afford a ballgown, now can I?!"
"So you're going to make her waltz in her fucking underclothes?!"
He took a dramatic breath. "Look," he said, brandishing the makeup brush. "If it worked on the fucking emperor, it'll work on a fucking scullery maid. If she gets told by a fairy that she's wearing a fairy dress that can only be seen by intelligent people, she is going to believe like hell that she's wearing the very image of sartorial extravaganza."
The brush was masterfully twiddled. "And when everyone else finds out that she's wearing a fairy dress that can only be seen by intelligent people, there won't be a single person in that room who would dare to disagree."
The cow shook her head. "I don't know, Jack," she sighed. "I just don't know."
"It'll be fine," Jack said, turning back to the tiny glass and bringing a deft hand again on the canvas. "Trust me. How did you do finding the slippers?"
"Couldn't find crystal," said the cow. "Best I could get were a glass set from an elf down at the cobbler's."
Jack hummed. "Well, they shouldn't be that important. Nobody will look too closely at her shoes."
There were two guards at the palace gate, slabs of meat and muscle wrapped in candybright costumes. They looked every bit as solid as the iron gate between them, and looked like the kind of guard prepared for every kind of foolishness they'd see tonight.
They weren't prepared for the woman who stepped down from the cow-drawn wagon. Her slippers gleamed amber in the torchlight, and her dress was... It was...
Well, the fey who hung over her shoulder told them that her dress was a beautiful thing, spun from the glimmer of starlight, the sound of snowfall, and the colour of the moon. He said that any discerning gentleman could tell that this was true, and the guards agreed.
Neither of them had looked too closely at the dress. In fact, they had been trying to carefully, politely and inexplicably avert their gaze.
It had been, Jack decided, a wonderful night.
The story of the woman with the fairy dress had spread through the party like - well, gossip, which is what it was, but it was gossip said by the rich, who couldn't afford to be wrong, and that was just as good as wildfire.
The real magic had been when the prince had asked her to dance. Her chemise had twirled like a dishrag, and everyone in the watching crowd that night would swear they saw her gown glimmer and gleam in a whorl of stars and snowlight.
And that was all well and good until midnight, when she had slipped her arm into his, gave the prince an "Attends un moment!" that glittered with polite laughter, and hauled Jack away from the hors d'oeuvres.
He slipped the squidgy grey thing he had been eating into a pocket. "May I help you, my lady?"
"I need to talk to you."
"But of course, my-"
"Now."
Jack heard the tone.
Oh fuck, he thought.
Her glass slippers made high, clear, silver sounds as she marched across the marble floors and out onto the balcony. She let him go and stepped away, breathing in the cool, clear air of the summer night, smelling of night stock and distant rain.
Her shoulders were shaking.
Jack felt something in his heart turn cold. Oh fuck, he thought. Oh fuck. Oh fucking fuck. I've gone too far, the spell's been broken, the con's gone bad, I have to get her out of here-
And then she made a... noise.
He would've called it a laugh, only it sounded like the kind of noise made by an aroused boar. It was joined by a rivulet of little snorts.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm sorry." She turned. She looked at him. She turned away again and melted into snorting hysterics.
Jack blinked. "My lady?"
"I'm sorry," she said again. She took a few calming breaths, bubbling with suppressed laughter. "I'm sorry. But holy fuck, did you see their faces?"
"Uh," said Jack.
"I mean what a bunch of morons. Fucking hell, look at this thing." She grabbed the collar of the chemise and pulled it up for an experimental sniff. "The Duchess wouldn't stop talking about opulent and extravagant it is. I think I haven't washed this thing in a week."
The penny dropped and activated his brain. "How long have you...?"
She flapped a hand. "Oh, from the start," she said. "At first I just wanted to see how far we'd get. I thought we'd be turned away at the gate, but then it just kept going!"
She pulled herself up to sit on the balcony rail and grinned at him, glass slippers glittering as she swung her legs. "There has to be a market for this," she said. "Selling fairy clothes to the nobs? Get the whole royal court's bits flapping about?"
Jack stared, and in spite of himself, felt his face grinning back. "Nah," he said. "Already did that with the emperor. No point in pulling the same con again."
Her face lit up. "So that was you! I thought so! You got a long con going on here?"
"Something like that."
"I want in."
"I already have a partner."
"I know. She's lovely. I want in."
He stared. He shrugged. He offered her his arm. "Why don't we head down to the stables to talk about it with her?"
They had made it down to the outer court before she drew herself up short. "Damn."
"What?"
"I think I lost a slipper."
"Oh, don't worry about that," said Jack. "It was only a glass set, anyways."
Screenshot redraw because Knights of Guinevere has gripped my entire soul. I'm not really an artist usually, but I'm oddly happy with how this came out!
You should only write in present tense with extreme caution.
not because it's bad or anything but because if you do it even once you're going to be editing the bits where you shifted tenses out of your writing for the rest of your life
if u write in present tense enough times in a row, you can switch this problem around & get confused when your present-tense narrator is talking abt something that happened in Their past. I recommend this bc it keeps u on ur toes
