An amalgamation of all the questions that have come up repeatedly since the original posts. All the people who wanted to be tagged have been put under the read-more link at the bottom.
“Is it okay to use italicized speech for signed dialogue, even if I describe faces and signs?”
The short answer is a simple no. I’ve been asked this a lot, repeatedly, and I can understand why- other languages are, it’s the common mode of operation for writers when encountering a language their viewpoint character either doesn’t speak, or doesn’t understand. Differentiation between spoken language is needed in this way.
However, signed language is not spoken, and the struggle to have it recognized as a “real languge” has been long. Many people, as the result of a lack of education by no fault of their own, still don’t see it as such. Because of this, using italics to seperate signed and spoken language can do harm for the recognition of signed languages.
Also, signed language is usually in the same language of the spoken variant, while not being the same language at all: although respected as a language of it’s own, sign and spoken language are like cousins living in the same household of language, and so would be treated just like the rest of the family.
“If not using italics, how do I differentiate?”
With the description of sign, and facial expressions. For spoken language, you would write about the sharp tone of Samuel’s voice, the way it rises in tone; for signed language, you would talk about the way that Mark’s fists are tighter and his signs louder (wider).
This kind of differentiation may come naturally to a majority of people who speak signed languages, because many of us can think in signed language, but for people who do not or who use spoken language more frequently, it is understandably more difficult. It will take a little more work at first, but eventually it will come naturally in the flow of signed dialogue.
“How do I describe the tone and non-verbal inflections of sign?”
By facial expressions in combination with the signed words.
I understand that not everyone is able to read facial expressions, for a variety of reasons (I struggle too) so here’s a list of facial expressions as verbal inflections in sign:
Facial exclamation mark - For amusement, sarcasm, yelling and making points.This is done by an O mouth shape and widened eyes.
Facial question mark - For questions, confusion and when challenging someone. This is done by a simple raise of the eyebrows during the main word of the question. E.g, Name Yours What [raised eyebrows on what].
And some examples of how you might use these:
Anger - The signs become hard, sharp and fast. The fist isn’t just touched to his chest, it’s slammed in; elbows go everywhere. His face is widened in a facial exclamation mark, brow furrowed, the signs become ungainly and faster, just like speech can become faster and louder.
Fear - You know the expression small voice? Apply that to small signs: Slower actions, eyebrows knitted and arched, perhaps even mistakes are made such as hands knocking together or fingers in the wrong shape, just like people often stutter or trip over their words when afraid.
Agression/Challenging someone - use the facial question mark, but make it harder, more defined. The eyebrows are raised high and the mouth quirks, or twists, and the signs become more agressive in the same way you would write anger.
Joy, enthusiasm and humour - the signs are bigger again, and the character would grin- eyes shining, maybe, and eyebrows raised in the facial exclamation mark for jokes. Also, you know how we use silly voices in verbal language? In sign, we also make the signs really over-exaggerated, like in charades, and accompany that with pulled faces. Examples of these would be the mouth in an overlarge O, eyebrows raised too high, grinning in the middle of the O shape or mocking a grimace, so that the downwards pull of the mouth is forced.
Lying - The facial expression might contradict the sign. Eg, someone who is lying to feel confident may inflect their words with a facial exclamation mark, but their hands may shake (a signed stutter). Facial tells such as quirks of lips could also be present, since people who use signed language as a primary language learn to have naturally expressive faces.
“How could I portray signed language in artistic media, eg, comics?”
If the speech can’t be heard, because the signing character is completely deaf and either doesn’t use hearing aids/implants or doesn’t have them, the dialogue bubbles are best left blank. When the speech is signed, it should come from the hands, and facial expressions should be drawn. You wouldn’t need to do the entire sequence of signs, but give important words or phrases their own boxes to highlight them. (I don’t draw comics so I don’t know any of the phrases but i hope this makes sense)
The best example I’ve found is the Hawkeye comics! Blue Ear showed this so well.
Some extra points that have been brought up
Hearing aids get sweaty, dirty and uncomfortable if worn too long, and stop working so well. They also get clogged with wax and it’s really unpleasant
Cleaning kits should never be far off, especially in summer
Aids and implants can also withstand rain, even heavy rain, but sometimes the moulds of aids get clogged with water. They would not survive being submerged (but you can get waterproof ones as far as I know, the NHS just won’t supply them)
Some hearing aids will get through batteries faster than others. My old ones lasted a month if I used the hearing aids every day. With these new aids, the batteries for one last a week and two weeks for the other.
The sticky labels on the back of batteries are really fun but also really annoying, and get stuck on e v e r y t h i n g
Hearing aids and implants are not cure-alls for deafness. In my completely deaf ear, I can only hear a buzz from my hearing aid that vaguely resembles speech; in my semi-hearing ear, the hearing aid still misses some sounds and blurs others.
Some deaf people choose not to get implants, since sign language is available and deafness is widely considered a blessing.
There are huge nuances in the levels of deafness, so percentages are generally not as useful as medical professionals make them sound. This thread covers it very well (plus some other things, such as sunglasses and reliance on facial reading as well as lip reading)
Lip-Reading is not a skill that everyone has, it’s tricky and, no, I can’t tell you what the kids over at that table are talking about Karen.
On the subject of mouths, it’s important to mouth while signing words. In BSL, the words for battery and aunt are the same. This could get strange if you were asking where to go dispose of your aunt.
So while a character might recognize mouth shapes in connection with signs, they could still be awful at reading lips.
Aaand that was everything I have been asked frequently, collated in one place. If you still have any queries, please do drop an ask!
This has been a part of my weekly advice uploads. This week I have covered writing queer characters. The lineup for January includes Often Overlooked Points in Writing Period Fiction and Ways to Build up Settings and Scenes. If you need any help in the meantime with related or unrelated writing issues, send me an ask!
E.A. Deverell - FREE worksheets (characters, world building, narrator, etc.) and paid courses;
Hiveword - Helps to research any topic to write about (has other resources, too);
BetaBooks - Share your draft with your beta reader (can be more than one), and see where they stopped reading, their comments, etc.;
Charlotte Dillon - Research links;
Writing realistic injuries - The title is pretty self-explanatory: while writing about an injury, take a look at this useful website;
One Stop for Writers - You guys... this website has literally everything we need: a) Description thesaurus collection, b) Character builder, c) Story maps, d) Scene maps & timelines, e) World building surveys, f) Worksheets, f) Tutorials, and much more! Although it has a paid plan ($90/year | $50/6 months | $9/month), you can still get a 2-week FREE trial;
One Stop for Writers Roadmap - It has many tips for you, divided into three different topics: a) How to plan a story, b) How to write a story, c) How to revise a story. The best thing about this? It's FREE!
Story Structure Database - The Story Structure Database is an archive of books and movies, recording all their major plot points;
National Centre for Writing - FREE worksheets and writing courses. Has also paid courses;
Penguin Random House - Has some writing contests and great opportunities;
Crime Reads - Get inspired before writing a crime scene;
The Creative Academy for Writers - "Writers helping writers along every step of the path to publication." It's FREE and has ZOOM writing rooms;
Reedsy - "A trusted place to learn how to successfully publish your book" It has many tips, and tools (generators), contests, prompts lists, etc. FREE;
QueryTracker - Find agents for your books (personally, I've never used this before, but I thought I should feature it here);
Pacemaker - Track your goals (example: Write 50K words - then, everytime you write, you track the number of the words, and it will make a graphic for you with your progress). It's FREE but has a paid plan;
Save the Cat! - The blog of the most known storytelling method. You can find posts, sheets, a software (student discount - 70%), and other things;
I go on other social media sites and am reminded everyone hates furries. There's this attractive guy on tiktok who wears a fursuit sometimes and all the comments are like "so much potential wasted..." NO actually he has reached his FULL potential
its so fucking wild. i heard this twitch streamer telling an anecdote about going to a girl's house, really liking her, getting invited to her bedroom, and, after she said she was saving up to buy a fursuit, immediately bailed. the entire chat was going 'dodged a bullet holy shit' and. ????? it's so weird how so many people have such a visceral, angry response to furries
➸ “This is a sentence with a dialogue tag at the end,” she said.
➸ “This,” he said, “is a sentence split by a dialogue tag.”
➸ “This is a sentence,” she said. “This is a new sentence. New sentences are capitalized.”
➸ “This is a sentence followed by an action.” He stood. “They are separate sentences because he did not speak by standing.”
➸ She said, “Use a comma to introduce dialogue. The quote is capitalized when the dialogue tag is at the beginning.”
➸ “Use a comma when a dialogue tag follows a quote,” he said.
“Unless there is a question mark?” she asked.
“Or an exclamation point!” he answered. “The dialogue tag still remains uncapitalized because it’s not truly the end of the sentence.”
➸ “Periods and commas should be inside closing quotations.”
➸ “Hey!” she shouted, “Sometimes exclamation points are inside quotations.”
However, if it’s not dialogue exclamation points can also be “outside”!
➸ “Does this apply to question marks too?” he asked.
If it’s not dialogue, can question marks be “outside”? (Yes, they can.)
➸ “This applies to dashes too. Inside quotations dashes typically express—“
“Interruption” — but there are situations dashes may be outside.
➸ “You’ll notice that exclamation marks, question marks, and dashes do not have a comma after them. Ellipses don’t have a comma after them either…” she said.
➸ “My teacher said, ‘Use single quotation marks when quoting within dialogue.’”
➸ “Use paragraph breaks to indicate a new speaker,” he said.
“The readers will know it’s someone else speaking.”
➸ “If it’s the same speaker but different paragraph, keep the closing quotation off.
“This shows it’s the same character continuing to speak.”
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.
What type of rooms would you expect to find within a historical medieval castle? Shadiversity on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/shadiversity Principles of ...
Useful if this is how you think, though often I don’t see the outline until after the draft is written, because after awhile one just internalize this kind of stuff from all the media one ingests. Point is, use if helpful, ignore if not.
Another suggestion for anyone interested: because one of my weaknesses as a writer is sustaining narrative momentum, I’ve recently started using this mystery novel breakdown as a template, even though mystery/detective isn’t the genre I write in. It’s really useful as a way to keep track of what the story needs at a given moment in terms of balance and character.
so remember that worldbuilding website, notebook.ai, that was goin around and everyone was so excited, but it turned out you had to pay a (frankly outrageous) subscription to access any of the best tools?
well i have exciting news: World Anvil.
here’s what you get for free:
yeah. all of them. double what notebook.ai offers for pay. yeah baby.
i’ve only been using this site for like half an hour, but i am in LOVE. please check it out and consider supporting the creators if you can!
so you see, humans evolved to be bipedal on account of how our ancestors transitioned from the forest environment to the savannah environment, and in the savannah environment bipedalism was more adaptive because it provides better thermoregulation and allows you to carry things, but most of all because bipedal locomotion is highly energy efficient and energy efficient locomotion would have been very strongly selected for on account of how time budgets are a limiting factor on home range which is a limiting factor on diet quality and breadth which is really quite important
my lecturers have been very clear and very insistent that bipedalism evolved first and then allowed tool use, tool use did not spur a transition to bipedalism, the fossil record is Clear On This Point
and what I do not understand is: if bipedalism is so completely wonderfully energy-efficient and optimal, why are there so few bipedal things? How come lions and gazelles and giraffes and buffalo aren’t bipedal? Why aren’t other savannah species selected for energy-efficient locomotion too?
I am sure there is a good explanation for this but my lecturers have still not provided it and I must know please god just somebody explain this to me or I will die of curiosity
Reasons Why We Have Bipedal Apes, But Not Bipedal Lions, According To My Biological Anthropology Supervisor:
You know when creationists talk about how an eye couldn’t possibly evolve gradually, because half an eye is useless and a waste of resources and worse than no eye at all?
They’re wrong about eyes; a single photoreceptor cell (usually just an evolutionary ‘tweak’ away from a regular epidermal cell with biochemistry that happened to be photosensitive) is actually useful and great, and more is better. If you imagine breaking a modern wing in half and attaching it to a bird, “half a wing is useless” sounds true, but it stops sounding true when you realise that halfway to a wing doesn’t look like a modern bird wing but broken in half, it looks like a slightly enlarged membrane between a limb and your body that gives you just an extra half second of glide time when you jump.
But there *are* adaptations in this class of things, where it’s great if you have full-blown X but shitty to have half-baked X. As you might imagine, they are quite rare, because as the creationists correctly observe, if half-X is maladaptive there is no path to arrive at X through gradual adaptation to an environment. And yet bipedalism is of this class. How?
Well, you wanna know what it looks like to have enough bipedal foot structure that you decide to go adventuring around in the savannah on two feet, but you haven’t got the pelvic structure to make it efficient yet? YOU CAN’T RUN. You are literally incapable of moving faster than a kind of slow awkward lope. Your back kills all the time because your bones are all pointed the wrong way and your back muscles are trying to keep you upright. Your ankle and leg bones take far more pounding than they were ever optimised before and occasionally shatter. You’re unbalanced and ungainly and frankly sort of pathetic, and at very high risk from predators (to repeat: RUN AWAY IS NOT AN AVAILABLE STRATEGY).
Why would anything go through a long gradual process of getting much shittier and then eventually getting better, since evolution can’t plan or foresee? WRONG QUESTION. Whoever told you evolution was a slow gradual constant drift was a dirty rotten liar, just like all your other teachers from when you were twelve. More commonly, evolution involves long periods of relative stability where the organism is pretty much as adapted to its niche as it’s going to get, and then something changes and there’s a very rapid response. Or it involves successful populations dispersing widely over a landscape, then becoming distinct reproducing populations which lost genetic contact with each other and diverging, and then there’s an environmental change and they reconnect and sometimes they happily interbreed and sometimes one of the divergent branches drives the others extinct and disperses itself widely and rinse and repeat.
What happened was, basically:
Hi we’re early hominins and we just love hanging around in trees and we’re proud to say we’ve been hanging around in trees now for a couple million years and we haven’t changed a bit, slightly bigger skulls aside, we’re basically just per- what the fuck? WHAT THE FUCK? WHERE DID THE TREES GO?? WHY IS IT SUDDENLY SO DRY???? oh my God I can see nothing but grass and I am having to walk around on my hind legs all the FUCKING time and FUCK FUCK FUCK THAT’S A LION FUCK PANIC RED ALERT oh okay we’re bipedal now I guess, that was quick, oh well, all fine, carry on
Somehow we survived when a change in environment pushed us into a new ecological niche. The selection pressure was strong enough to make us acquire a really quite extensive range of mods to make bipedalism work, but not strong enough to make us dead.
Of course, “strong pressure to adapt somehow” doesn’t necessarily mean “strong pressure to adapt in this specific way we know is really good”. Early hominins who lived before the forest shrinkage have been shown to have a few bipedal adaptations. We weren’t sure what the hell they were doing with them, so we looked at chimps. Turns out chimps display short-distance carrying behavior - as in, picking up an object and carrying it. They don’t carry tools and can’t move far bipedally, but what they do do is pick up a valuable resource like a choice bit of prey and haul it off with them, away from the group of moneys fighting over the rest of the prey. So before the forests collapsed, there was a mild selection pressure to be able to use only your hind legs for a short stretch so that you could carry something in your arms, and when they collapsed, individuals good at that behavior were better at surviving the savannah and evolution just slammed its foot on the gas pedal until you get obligate bipeds.
So, a species that wasn’t forced into a rapid niche change like that, wouldn’t evolve an initially-painful thing like bipedalism. What about all the other species that made the same change as the same time as us? Eh, many went extinct, that happens a lot with ecological change, but the ones who survived didn’t do bipedalism.
Points to those who said it was about evolution having different starting points to build on, y'all were correct. No matter how awesome and efficient and optimal bipedalism is, evolution only cares about whether the next tiny step in some random direction increases or decreases how many offspring are produced. Evolution “looks” for the NEAREST solution that counts as a solution, not the best solution.
For a species of monkeys that were forced to spend less time in the forest and range wider and already had some variable locomotion abilities, evolution went for bipedalism. Bipedalism may have enabled the future awesomeness of humans with its efficiency and head stability and what have you, but evolution made it happen just because it was the local maxima - its awesomeness is a lucky side effect.
But where monkeys used short bursts of bipedal movements to carry things, another species might use something more convenient for them - say, a lion might pick up and carry things in its mouth, and if there was a selection pressure to be better at carrying the lions might end up with bigger mouths, but “become bipedal” is very unlikely because half bipedal is worse than no bipedal at all.
Basically, monkeys had the preconditions for bipedalism, nothing else did. (Note that this does not make monkeys special - the ancestor of any species with an unusual adaptation, from giraffes’ long necks to penguins’ Arctic-water-proofing feathers, was a thing that had the preconditions for that adaptation when nothing else did.)
Bipedalism didn’t happen because it was awesome, it became awesome because the range of adaptations it supports turned out to be a package that turned into, well, us.
…Notice that we are not actually the only bipedal species. Notice what they mean when they say things like, “Bipedalism leads to the ability to carry things leads to tool use leads to bigger brains”. On a naive reading, it means “bipedalism is a part of the tech tree and once you’ve bought it you can get hands optimised for holding tools”, and if it says this then you are right to be confused as to why perfectly good bipedal emus do not also have spears and control of fire.
When you realise that evolutionary studies is so full of ridiculously many caveats and preconditions that lecturers just omit them and assume you know they’re there, you start interpreting what they say more like, “In a species that already dabbled in just a tiny bit of bipedalism, bipedalism was the only way to go when the niche changed, it was way better for the new niche then the old way of locomotion, and given the likely presence of some proto-tool-like behaviors like throwing rocks or poking things with sticks, it created an adaptive opportunity to better fit this particular environment by improving on the tool behaviours using the new physiological advantages.”
Also god I learned a lot in that hour. Why does time spent *not* talking to biological anthropologists have to be a thing? Talking to biological anthropologists is the BEST.
Epistemic status: my recollection of a conversation an hour ago between me and an academic in this field, any misunderstandings are because I’m an undergrad who didn’t get what he was trying to say.
SO YES and also, I’m going to pull out my Vaclav Smil* for a second here.
Human locomotion is not particularly energy efficient! It takes us more energy to walk or run than it does for most mammalian quadrupeds, but our energy use curves look pretty different from theirs.
If a horse goes for a trot, its trot (like all its gaits) has a U-shaped energy curve. It costs more to trot at slower speeds, goes down to a most-efficient pace, and then comes back up. At a certain point, it crosses over the energy curve for the horse’s next gait, and the horse will (left to its own devices) start to canter or gallop.
Human WALKING has a U-shaped curve like that, but human RUNNING does not, and that is damned strange for a mammal. Our friend Smil says: “the energetic cost of human running is relatively high, but humans are unique in virtually uncoupling this cost from speed”. That particular aspect of things is a direct side-effect of bipedalism: we can vary our breathing in ways that quadrupedal animals (who have supporting legs all attached to their breathing apparatus) cannot. Basically, we are the evolutionary equivalent of cartoon characters who can spin their legs really fast. So we aren’t as efficient at running as a horse who is going at its optimum pace, but we can speed up and slow down and it won’t cost us much, which is not true of the horse.
Not incidentally, this is why many humans practiced (or still practice) persistence hunting. If you are less efficient than that delicious antelope, but you can make it run at its least-efficient panic speed while you trundle along at a nice constant rate, you can exhaust it.
* Smil, Vaclav (2007-12-21). Energy in Nature and Society: General Energetics of Complex Systems (MIT Press). The MIT Press. Kindle Edition.
I’m so glad OP came back and corrected themselves, I was sitting on my hands reading the first part! Omg those lecturers. I mean they’re getting minimum wage but still. Bless their hearts.
The lecturers conflated tool use and tool making. Tool USE is observed throughout the animal kingdom. Tool MAKING is said to be primate-specific (we ignore corvids in this scenario.) note that this isn’t hominid-specific, though. Tool MAKING is not a function of bipedalism; it’s a function of having your hands free. These are two very different things. Now, it’s certainly true that tool MAKING - in the form of shaped bones, flints and stones - postdates bipedalism in the fossil record, but we must note
1. A shaped blade of grass or a shaped branch counts as a tool, and does not reliably fossilise;
2. Behaviour is notoriously bad at fossilising;
3. Scientists must acknowledge the biases of the fossil record in geology and paleontology, so don’t think that anthropologists are going to be allowed to get away with it.
So tool-making, like bipedalism, is something that popped up occasionally in our lineage and is still practiced by our living relatives. It became fixed in our lineage, and is distinctive to hominids, but it was not dropped on us by the Hand of God. Very very few things are.
We also note that birds are bipedal, and are something of the original biped. We are kind of hipsters in that sense. (BEHOLD! THE MAN!)
But, you see, birds generally don’t have HANDS.
When you’re looking at something like bipedalism and asking yourself “what does this say about humans?” Then look at other animals, and see what they’re doing. And then come at it from a different angle. sometimes the answer isn’t the feet. Sometimes it’s the hands.
This is fascinating, but I’ve gotta admit that my major takeaway from it is that humans have bipedalism ultimately because it was adaptive for tree-dwelling proto-hominids to be able to pick stuff up and run off with it, presumably whooping like Dr. Zoidberg all the while.
Whether you’re writing Science Fiction or Fantasy, it’s incredibly likely that you’re not writing your story on Earth as we know it. In fact, you might be going lengths to create a habitable world on a new planet for your story. Or perhaps you’re less concerned with the technical aspects and just want to create a simple but believable new world. Whatever you’re aiming for, it can be fun to consider all the possibilities. Many of these details you’re going to iron out won’t eve make it into your narrative, but that doesn’t mean it’s not important for you, the author, to know. That background knowledge will shine through and help you create a deep and vibrant world that feels real and alive to your characters and to your readers.
This post will focus on planetary physics, weather, climate, seasons, etc. I will do a separate post regarding cities and the structure of society later.
Are you attempting to create an Earth-analogue? If so, you can assume many things we tend to take for granted will remain unchanged: atmosphere composition/appearance, plant color, water presence, etc. But if you’re not, and you’re willing to experiment, then please…
What is the planet’s placement in its solar system?
What type of star does it orbit? Red dwarf? White dwarf?
Is it in a binary system?
How does the star affect the world, its plants, its people?
Does the planet’s axis tilt? How much?
Does the planet have a moon? Many moons?
How different are the seasons, tides, weather patterns, etc. because of your choices thus far? Is it something totally crazy?
What types of rocks and metals are common on your planet? Are there any elements we humble humans have yet to discover?
What various types of plant life has this environment grown? Will it be familiar to your reader or vastly different?
Are you creating a single biome planet, or are you creating variety?
Is your world the home planet of its people, or did they colonize? A home planet would need relatively believable circumstances so that a race of intelligent people could have evolved there…but if you’re writing a world that’s been colonized or terraformed, then you likely have a little bit of leeway in following the regular laws of habitability.
If they colonized this planet, why did they choose to do so?
How have your people grown adjusted to a new world over time?
What is the tectonic-plate situation of your planet? How do they move and how have they shaped landmass over time?
Are there landscapes and formations that would be unfamiliar to your readers?
What are the bodies of water like? How drinkable is natural water?
What kinds of natural resources are abundant on the planet? What types are rare?
What kinds of animals inhabit the world?
How plentiful is the fauna? How aggressive or tame is it?
Do the animals contribute to or inhibit your people’s way of life?
How has the alien plant life altered the evolution of animals?
Which animals are commonly hunted and consumed or utilized?
What types of animals will the people of your world refuse to hunt?
Create a map of the planet, even if it’s broad and only outlines major things. Give yourself a solid picture of what your world looks like and use it. You don’t have to include every detail in your story (in fact, please don’t!) but knowing the big picture is good for you.
And always remember: you don’t have to do all of this brainstorming before writing your story. Sometimes, you just want to get to the heart of the story and that’s fine! Do it! If you feel like you need to write a narrative, then don’t hold yourself back. But come back to this. Come back and iron out all of the details so that you can make sure the backdrop of your story is consistent and organic (not in a carbon-based way, but in a non-contrived way).
Novel planning doesn’t have to happen in its entirety before the novel. But it does need to happen before the final draft of the novel. A lack of depth to your world will show through if you neglect to create it.
If you aren’t interested in building a world from the ground up, then don’t! We have a perfectly good world right here under our feet and there are still millions of stories to be told in it (or in its parallel versions). But also, maybe, this post isn’t for you. ;)
Check out the rest of the Brainstorming Series!
Magic Systems, Part One
Magic Systems, Part Two
New Species
You can follow the tag #Swords for Fics if you want to keep up without following me :)
Available Chapters:
1: Dumb Ways to Die 2.May Your Blade Be True! 3.On Your Guard!
4. Making the Cut 5.Stick ‘em With the Pointy End 6. It’s Like a Dance
7. The Measure of A Man 8.A Crossing of Blades 9.Like Chess, but with Knives
An Interlude About Story Telling
10. You Can Barely Lift Your Sword 11.Buckle Some Swash 12.Dual Wielding
Dual Wielding
Fighting with Two Swords or an Offhand Dagger
Fighting with a dagger in the offhand instead of a shield was a common practice. A long dagger made an excellent tool for catching the opponent’s weapon while attacking with your own. While attacks were made with the dagger, it’s greatest benefit was as a defensive tool.
Here the dagger is being used to restrain the attacker’s weapon (note: The big guy’s sword is pointed away from the dagger guy. Again, the problem with flat images and flat swords is swords tend to disappear in perspective. My apologies for the unclear drawing.) The dagger user is now free to attack with their sword in their next action.
I have more experience with double swords so we’ll be talking mostly about that now. We both know that’s why you’re reading this chapter anyways.
Two Swords are used like off-sync partners, with one movement slightly behind the other while they’re in motion. One might temporarily stay still to cover a line while the other attacks, but you’re not going to be fighting two battles at once except for in exaggerated cartoon circumstances. We’ll talk about fighting multiple opponents in “I’ll Take You All On” (chapter coming soon)
As an example, if two downward cutting attacks are being used, what this off sync movement achieves is that as the first sword finishes it’s blow, it deals with the opponent’s weapon. The second sword is a split second behind the first, and now has a clear path to finish it’s blow. The first sword continues to restrain the opponent’s weapon.
In one pattern of attack, the lower sword begins with a thrust, forcing a defence from the opponent then the upper sword begins it’s preparation. The lower sword then follows and does it’s own cut ending as the new top sword. Beginning with the thrust provokes a reaction from the defender and buys time for the first sword to swing back in preparation while the attacker remains covered.
When defending with two swords you can use any of your usual defences as outlined in “A Crossing of Blades” but you need to be careful that you’re not criss crossing your arms and getting tangled up. That’s another reason for the off sync movements. If they follow their patterns and both do the same action, the arms will stay untangled.
Crossing the blades to collect the attacker’s sword is one of the coolest looking defences you can do with two weapons. This one also works well with a dagger in the offhand.
Things get more complicated when both opponents are dual wielding. Now each opponent can restrain with one sword and attack with the other. Even so, they’ll still be following those same slightly out of sync patterns.
It might feel like we can do two things at once, but really we’re just switching quickly between two tasks. It’s better to have two swords working towards one goal then trying to have them both achieve two different things.
Often in one action you’ll still be catching both of your opponent’s swords in the defence.
I’m not feeling ambitious enough to try breaking down two dual wielding fighters anymore than that though, so we’ll leave off here. In the next chapter we’ll look into things you can do with a free hand that’s not holding anything.
Ten questions to ask a friend who just read your novel
Here are ten questions to ask that will not put your friend in a tough spot, but will still give you some useful input on your novel:
1. At what point did you feel like “Ah, now the story has really begun!”
2. What were the points where you found yourself skimming?
3. Which setting in the book was clearest to you as you were reading it? Which do you remember the best?
4. Which character would you most like to meet and get to know?
5. What was the most suspenseful moment in the book?
6. If you had to pick one character to get rid of, who would you axe?
7. Was there a situation in the novel that reminded you of something in your own life?
8. Where did you stop reading, the first time you cracked open the manuscript? (Can show you where your first dull part is, and help you fix your pacing.)
9. What was the last book you read, before this? And what did you think of it? (This can put their comments in context in surprising ways, when you find out what their general interests are. It might surprise you.)
10. Finish this sentence: “I kept reading because…”
Your friend is probably still going to tell you, “It was good!” However, if you can ask any specific questions, and read between the lines, you can still get some helpful information out of even the most well-meaning reader.
How do I avoid plot armor when I also don't want my main characters to die?
You’ll get a lot of debate about what constitutes Plot Armor, but TV Tropes has a good definition which comes with pre-baked examples. Remember that like Wikipedia, TV Tropes can be edited by anyone. Often by many different people around the web with competing opinions on what does and doesn’t constitute.
So, take it with a grain of salt.
Avoiding plot armor is pretty easy in concept, but can be difficult to execute. Plot Armor happens when a character’s value is defined by their narrative necessity rather than their relevance to what is happening in the plot or events in the narrative. Basically, the only factor which has allowed the protagonist to survive is the fact that they’re the protagonist.
This represents a critical failure in terms of storytelling. The narrative failed to distract the reader from noticing this fact, from convincing the audience that this character was in danger. Suspension of disbelief has been broken. It’s a problem on the level of when you notice a television’s placement for narrative convenience in regards to exposition rather than because it makes any sense in regards to the world the television exists in.
Plot armor represents not just a failure in marrying a protagonist to the stakes they are facing, but it’s also a problem with the underlying nuts and bolts of the world building.
It’s like when a character goes, “If only I had my knives, then I could defeat that guy chasing me with a sword!” but the character is a human who has never encountered this specific extra-terrestrial creature and the guy wielding the sword is an alien from out space.
How does the protagonist know that their technology is on a level equivalent to the alien’s? That their knives won’t just be cut in half by this sword from outer space? Or that the alien comes with a fighting style they recognize and are capable of countering?
Plot Armor happens when the narrative and the protagonist fail to justify their survival internally rather than externally. Why do they live? Because the story needs them to. That is an external justification.
Compare to: They lived because they used their quirky technological genius to defuse the bomb with wire and gum from the underside of their shoe. They lived because when we initially saw them, we learned that as a child they liked to tinker with and build homemade explosives.
This is an internal justification.
You should always have an internal justification in your narrative. Several in fact, readily available to your audience. Either to allay suspicion, or simply to answer the question of, “why this character?”
You avoid Plot Armor by building supports for the protagonist into the narrative itself. The solution to the unique problem offered by the narrative lies in their experiences, their personality traits, their training, or whatever else they have to offer the story. Challenge them, but don’t exceed their capacity for what they can deal with. Line up what you intend to challenge your character with then figure out a way for them to solve this which is within the bounds of what you’ve allowed for their character. Their solutions are tailored to their backstory/personality/experiences and come from an internal position with the narrative.
If you find yourself asking the question of: why is this character alive? Go back and look over what you’ve written. Are their solutions to the problems they face dictated on what you, the author, externally decided the best solution would be? Or is this a decision the character, when set against the evidence behind them, would make for themselves?
Did they earn their win?
Answer your own questions, keep your narrative consistent.
Why is this character your protagonist? What do they bring to the story which makes their narrative unique? Which makes them uniquely qualified to tell it? Why is this their story and not someone else‘s?
Be honest with yourself. Is your character winning this fight because they’ve earned it? Or did they win because you’ve scheduled what happens next and need them to move to Plot Point C? It can be both, but when you’ve got a Plot Armor situation then it’s usually the latter. The character didn’t win because they earned it, they won because they’re the protagonist.
Honestly, there is nothing more annoying than that.
See also, Creator’s Pet.
There’s a certain level of this which is biased. As the creator, you make the decisions which you feel are right for you. Often the trick to writing is marrying your external needs with the narratives internal ones, which means working within the setting you built and using that world as the foundation for how narrative challenges are solved. By working within the limits you’ve set for yourself and the rules you established for the audience, you will avoid Plot Armor. Let your characters justify their own right to survive, rather than you the writer doing it for them.
Who. What. Where. When. Why. How.
This is how.
You want them to survive? Okay. How do they go about doing that?
-Michi
This blog is supported through Patreon. If you enjoy our content, please consider becoming a Patron.
