The Autumn River

Nell | 28 | UK

[septembercfawkes]

Hello! I love your page! I’m curious if you could explain what’s a competing want and how it manifests in a character. You gave Katniss as an example.

Hi thanks! Yeah, no problem.

Katniss is driven by two major (abstract) wants:

She wants to save others (particularly those who are innocent)--this is why she volunteers to take Prim's place, this is why she teams up with Rue, this is why she wants to save Peeta, and how she picks her allies in Catching Fire, etc. She wouldn't verbalize it all that way; she's not fully conscious of it, but it's part of what drives her.

She also really, really wants to survive. She is a survivor. This one she is more self-aware of. This is why she hunts, wants to win the Games, why she does a lot of what she does (and the main reason she doesn't want to be part of the rebellion)

The trilogy regularly puts these wants in conflict, so they become competing wants. For example, in the first book, at the climax, she essentially has to choose between these wants. She could just shoot Peeta, and guarantee survival. Or, she could risk death to try to save him. She chooses to risk death--picking to save another over guaranteed survival. When the Quarter Quell is announced, she has a panic attack, because she fears for her survival (I'm simplifying, but yeah), but then recognizes Peeta will be in there with her, so she must again choose between guaranteed survival and saving him. She chooses to try to save him, so she makes a deal with Haymitch about it.

A competing want simply means the character wants two things, and she can't have both. She has to pick one.

Another example would be in Spider-man 2, where Peter both wants to live an ordinary life AND continue being a responsible hero as Spider-man, but it's not realistic. It's impossible to have both.

It could also show up as a character who wants to live as a nobody, but simultaneous wants his work recognized. Maybe he doesn't like the spotlight on a personal level, but he wants his work to make a difference in the world. But he finds himself in situations where, in order to do that, he must make big public appearances.

Another possible example: In Pirates of the Caribbean 2, Jack both wants freedom, and to be an honorable person (at least, "honorable" in the framework of being a pirate). However, to ensure freedom, he must be dishonorable (by handing over 100 innocent souls to Davy Jones). At the climax, he must choose between saving himself and letting his crew die (freedom) vs. returning to the ship to fight alongside them, risking his freedom (honor). He chooses to return to the ship.

Basically, the character wants two things, and the story makes those things mutually exclusive.

I hope that helps!

[kurhanchyk]

my preemptive answer is that because people refuse to commit main characters to it but i'm sure there are many reasons

[monstrousgourmandizingcats]

#i think it's also because many people write about them from an atheist's perspective#i.e. they write like they can't believe a character would take a religion and its tenets seriously#without being a caricature of fundamentalism

(from @lilybarthes)

[fivekoboldsinacoat]

It's a good video! I highly recommend it. Watched it a few hours after it dropped and was thinking about it again this morning.

OP isn't wrong, exactly (saying this for everyone else reading, not at you, OP) and the pasted tags are excellent & about a real issue, but actually further from the thesis of the video.

That thesis boils down to fiction that creates religions, like fantasy novels or RPGs, is very prone to only really depicting the religion's myths and sacred texts. The creation stories, the pantheon melodramas, that kind of thing. Adjacent to this is a big focus on belief. Both of these, ReligionForBreakfast (RFB) suggests, are due at least in part to (unexamined or deliberate) Christocentrism.

The thing that's missing, that RFB proposes as what he thinks would make a big difference and be good to see in fictional worlds, is action. ("Ritual", for certain definitions of the word.) What do followers of a religion, or people within that religion's culture, actually do? How does it appear in daily life, in art and architecture, customs and food, etc.? And not just the Official Approved actions or activities, either.

It's a really solid video, just under 20 minutes long, link here for the interested.

[blumineck]

Swords are arguably the most popular fantasy weapon, but why is that?

Patreon - everything else

[script-a-world]

Submitted via Google Form:

How can a world have no major religions but a vast number of small ones. Like no religion accounts for more than 1% of the entire population except maybe atheist for maybe 5% of the population? But what does that say about the distribution of culture/countries?

Tex: Major religions are often major because they are state-backed - i.e., they have lots of money at their disposal, so they become economically and thus culturally relevant. Religion answers, approximately, two major questions: 1) Are we alone in X or Y manner? and 2) I’m scared of X thing that I have difficulty understanding, what is Y solution?

For a place like Earth, the planet that we know the most about, there are no planet-wide confirmations about the physical existence of any deity in particular (as in, shows up in a grocery and says hello to you in an entirely unambiguous manner that all onlookers can agree upon). This means that religions on Earth are predicated on the idea that belief - and, thus, willpower - makes the deity real. Or at least “proves” it. Your mileage may vary.

Because of this, the real-world religions that you can observe and study will have many, many commonalities to the two general questions I stated above. The first question usually contains subjects such as sentience, and the emotional frills of that. The second question usually contains subjects such as death and the process of dying.

In order to have many distinct religions, you would need a lot of unanswered questions for various societies to answer, a severe lack of contact and communication between groups of societies, and most importantly a lack of (or lack of need of) money. The more travel there is, the more people of different backgrounds will talk to each other, and the more ideas will be confronted, shared, and discussed. Trade would correspondingly be low, because of the lack of travel.

Utuabzu: There’s a couple things to consider here. Firstly, how are we defining religion? This isn’t a trick question, it’s a genuine issue. The Abrahamic concept of religion doesn’t really carry over well to other spiritual traditions. Most other belief systems are more local and action-focused (orthoprax, concerned with what one does, rather than what one believes), and often lack any mandatory set of beliefs, or standardised mythology. Religions like Chinese Folk Religion, Shintō, Hinduism*, etc. can have wildly varying pantheons and myths depending on where you are and who you ask. So depending on your definition every tiny village could have its own religion, because it has its own version of the cultural mythos and its own pantheon including some distinctive local gods and dropping some more common cultural ones.

Universal (applicable to everyone regardless of origin or location), proselytising (actively attempting to convert people) religions are rare. There’s only actually a few of them. Most notably, Christianity and Islam. They are both also orthodox religions (concerned with believing the correct things), which means they have a standard mythology and theology (or several competing standards that have historically attempted to resolve their differences via murder). A third, very notable difference they have with most belief systems is that they are exclusive, you can’t (or at least you’re not supposed to) combine them with other belief systems. Most non-Abrahamic belief systems are more or less fine with syncretism (combining belief systems), most clearly seen with the way Buddhism** is practiced concurrently with folk religions across Asia.

So, in answer to the actual question, your best bet here is to just not have an equivalent to Christianity or Islam. I suggest reading up on non-Abrahamic and pre-Christian/Muslim religions and religious practices, as that should give you an idea of what such a world might look like. I’d expect it to be colourful and diverse, with cities filled with temples and shrines to an ever-expanding array of deities and hosting various festivals much of the year. Many people would likely layer a philosophy like Daoism or Stoicism over their day-to-day religious practice, and it would be common and expected for people to show respect to or make  offerings to local deities when traveling. Religion would be a thing you do, not what you believe.

*Hinduism is less a religion and more a family of closely related religions and spiritual traditions that all originate on the Indian subcontinent. Which is why the Indian government considers Jains and Buddhists to be Hindu.

**Buddhism can be described as a religion or as a philosophy, depending on who you ask, what the context is, and whether Mercury is in Gatorade. Western definitions don’t really apply cleanly to non-Western contexts.

[fantasy-anatomy-analyst]

Reblogging because building a culture is an important part of creating new fantasy people species. Including religion.

Here are my thoughts, based on what I have already done with religion and spirituality in my own writing:

To elaborate on what has already been said, the most common questions I think you'll find answered in most religions are "where did it all come from" and "where are we going". Or in simpler terms, creation and death. You look at religion and myth and folklore around the world, you're going to find a whole lot of creation stories and afterlife explanations. You don't need to write big global religions to have people exploring these topics in their own local spiritual belief systems. They're nearly universal questions, things people want to understand but have no mortal proof for.

Many deities in polytheistic religions also serve as explanations for, or embodiments of, major natural phenomena. Storms, seasonal changes, the ocean, etc. Natural disasters of all sorts are given a face, whether it's a deity or powerful spirits. Landmarks like mountains are viewed as sacred locations.

Methods of worship also make a big difference, even if you're writing groups that have similar beliefs. Do they pray? Do they leave offerings on altars or in temples? What sorts of offerings? What kinds of prayers?

Do they believe their deities will actively help them, or do they believe in appeasing their deities to avoid destruction? And what about deities that serve a dual purpose, like a god of harvest that also acts as a god of pregnancy and childbirth? What is the role of religious leaders in this culture?

And not all religions worship deities, of course. Perhaps you can write a culture that practices ancestral veneration instead. What power do they believe their ancestors have? How do they pay their respects to the dead?

Religion also often extends to things like weddings, funerals, and various rites pertaining to age milestones. Birth, adulthood, old age. There are also beliefs around morality. Do they believe in things like sin? What is the process of repentance and forgiveness if they do? Do they ever perform blessings of guidance or healing? Does their religion have special authority figures?

There are so many little details you can explore when writing religion and all the cultural aspects of it. And don't be afraid to add some similarities even in very different religions! In my own worldbuilding, there are three moons and a visible planetary ring, and pretty much every culture within this world has looked up at those things in the night sky and said "yeah, that is the realm of spirits, for sure" regardless of anything else they believe. It adds a little cohesion to the world and shows that despite their differences, even being different species, they're all still People and they have things in common.

[bookcub]

Cozy Fantasy and Why It Doesn't Work

I think I am among many who feel like they should love cozy fantasy and have found it an incredibly lacking genre.

This newly branded "cozy fantasy" genre that has taken readers by storm since 2020 and while it is new that books are now marketed as cozy, the genre itself isn't new. Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones is a great example of the genre before it was labeled and also how to make it work.

Cozy fantasy is defined by many as fantasy with low stakes. Fantasy aesthetic but less sword fights. On paper, it sounds great. But the execution has been less than stellar for readers like me. The lack of physical stakes has also impacted the emotional stakes of these books, creating forgettable characters with boring problems. As a romance reader, I find this frustrating. Romance is known for being a predictable and formulaic genre, the now defunct Romance Writers of America defined romances as needing happy endings, a term romances have continued to follow. Yet these romance texts manage to have low physical stakes (how to date your neighbor, how to confront your toxic friends, etc) while still maintaining high personal stakes that keep readers invested and begging for more. So I was initially confused why cozy fantasy authors struggle to write texts that connect to readers like me.

I think I have found the answer which is the genre is just here for vibes. It is all about aesthetic, not even worldbuilding that fantasy is known for as most cozy fantasy I read have so many problems as soon as you ask one question. It is hard to acknowledge that a genre that is pitched to work for readers like me doesn't work for many of us. Especially because occasionally there is one that works beautifully to my taste.

I often say my favorite cozy fantasies that are more contemporary are short and visual, which I plays into the idea of the genre being an aesthetic. The Bakery Dragon by Devin Elle Kurtz is a good example because it is a simple story that is given the perfect amount of pages and gorgeous visuals without dragging on when the message is very clear and easy to understand. Books like The Phoenix Keeper and Legends and Lattes have absolutely nothing for me, their very clear message hitting the reader over and over so the readers don't miss it and focusing on the aesthetic of worldbuilding rather than the reality of the fantastic elements within the world.

I guess my point is. . . I realize this genre isn't for me since I have realized it is more of an aesthetic than anything. .. .but I want it to be. Should I let it go and put my efforts elsewhere? Or should I keep exploring this new trend and find the hidden gems?

[logarithmicpanda]

I think you nailed it on the head but also:

So many cozy fantasies seem to do no work to make you like the characters. They feel like the epilogue to another story, or like fanfic in the sense that you're expected to already care about these people, but they're skipping the leg work to get you there.

Legends and lattes worked for me mostly because I had fun with the exploration of how a fantasy setting would reinvent a coffee shop. It also felt a bit like a videogame, delimiting tasks and creating new, small problems each time one goal was reached. Which is to say, it appealed to the part of my brain that likes puzzles, but failed to reach me with its characters. I don't remember a single thing about the love interest aside what she looks like on the cover lol

Stories with high stakes immediately make you see what your character cares about: justice for murdered parents, saving their home from the armies of evil, and so on. In low stakes fantasies, you're handed a character whose values are just the bland goodness people pretty much universally strive for. It makes them both forgettable and unremarkable. And a story that has no plot and very little worldbuilding cannot afford to have weak protagonists on top of it.

Which honestly might bring me back to my main theory of what makes a story good: it's a balancing act of Plot, Worldbuilding, Characters, and usually the stronger a book is in one of these aspects, the more likely I am to overlook flaws in the others. But by definition, cozy fantasy starts off with only two of these, so it makes it all the more important and unforgivable when an aspect is weak. Its like trying to build a stool with two legs.

[ariaste]

Hello, professional author here, I have a *slight* tweak of a suggestion to offer, or an alternate take from a slightly different perspective. First, I 100% agree with the meat of what you're both saying here, and I absolutely share your frustrations with the genre of cozy fantasy as a whole -- so many of them have something going wrong with the engine of the story. The car won't start. You turn the ignition and all you get out of it is a weak grumbling. So what's happening here from a mechanical perspective?

We're talking about cozy fantasy being "low stakes", and that's certainly how it bills itself. But low stakes are not the source of the problem -- there are plenty of stories/movies/tv shows with very low stakes that we still enjoy watching! Great British Bake Off, for example. The stakes are only "Will the cake come out right" and "how will the judges react". Right? Those are low stakes! The world is not ending, society is not in danger of crumbling to pieces, there is no great battle between Good and Evil for the fate of all humanity. But we watch GBBO and we're ENRAPTURED. We're INVESTED. Why?

Not because of the stakes, but because of the tension.

wait hang on i need to say this in the loud font because it's crucially important

IT'S BECAUSE OF THE TENSION

Both readers and apprentice writers often confuse "stakes" and "tension" because, frankly, increasing the stakes is often a cheap and easy way to increase the tension. Here's the difference, just to make sure we're all on the same page: Stakes are an external, objective thing -- "will the cake come out right, how will the judges react" -- but tension is internal. It is the pull between two things: On one hand, how much this contestant wants to win, how hard they've been trying, how emotional they're getting about a mishap, and our knowledge from an earlier episode about how their mum always believed in them and how they've struggled to believe in themself but since making it onto GBBO they've been thinking that maybe... maybe they can believe in themself.

And what's pulling from the other side is: How their nervousness and lack of confidence is causing them to make mistakes; how we as the audience don't know whether this challenging thing they're trying is going to turn out well; how they're ever going to recover from a cataclysm like forgetting to turn the oven on; whether they could do their absolute best and try so so so SO HARD and it might not make any difference because the other contestants also were all trying their hardest.

Man, I don't know about you, but even just as I was writing that out, my heart was in my throat and I was getting a little choked up.

THAT'S tension. And that's what a lot of cozy fantasy is lacking, because they say "low stakes" and they think that stakes and tension are the same thing, and so they forget that YOU STILL HAVE TO MAKE YOUR CHARACTERS CARE PASSIONATELY IF YOU WANT THE READER TO HAVE ANYTHING THAT THEY CARE ABOUT. As readers, we care when the character has something that really, really, REALLY matters to them. We literally cannot help it -- look up "mirror neurons" if you want the neuroscience explanation for why we literally cannot help it.

High stakes is a cheap cheat code to tension because something like "We have to save the world to keep the Dark Lord from invading the kingdom and slaughtering everyone" is sort of self-explanatory about why it matters. Ah, yes, We Don't Want To Be Slaughtered. Got it. No explanation necessary. You can get away with not really showing whether it matters to the character, because the audience just naturally ASSUMES that it's a Good and Important thing to be doing.

You can't get away with cutting corners like that if you're doing low stakes. Here, look:

High stakes & high tension = Think Mad Max: Fury Road. It is a LOT and you can't look away but you might feel sort of exhausted afterwards and need a nap.

High stakes & low tension = Many Marvel films. Sure ok yeah we're saving the world, that's fun, whatever. Probably saving the world is a good thing to do so that's fine

Low stakes & high tension = GBBO as previously mentioned. Also pretty much any sport (sorry, sports fans, but "will they win the big game" is not high stakes, it just SEEMS like high stakes because of ow much you care about it -- which is TENSION!!!) You will be on the edge of your seat, you will be crying about how amazingly well that border collie/papillon mix did in the agility course.

Low stakes & low tension: Legends & Lattes. Probably if Plan A doesn't work out, the character could just wander off and try Plan B and it wouldn't be that personally upsetting.

So that's my two cents on where a lot of cozy fantasy is going wrong. And like, I can kind of see where my colleagues are coming from and why books like this keep being produced these days??? Like the pandemic really fucked up everybody, and so many of us are incredibly burned out and running on fumes... And so sometimes it feels impossibly challenging to write any book except one where nothing bad happens and nothing is in danger and nobody is really bothered or worried about anything and everything is mostly fine and there aren't any major setbacks.....

But that leaves readers cold. And frankly, I don't feel like it does much of anything to nourish either our souls or theirs. It feels like eating a bag of potato chips for dinner instead of going to the effort of even just heating up a frozen dinner that has a vegetable in it.

idk, man. I've taught university classes about this shit, but what do I know. Maybe I'm talking out of my ass. (Also, if you would like an example of cozy fantasy where it really fucking matters to the person going through it, may I humbly suggest Yield Under Great Persuasion? I wrote it partially as an illustration of how there's a difference between Stakes and Tension. :D)

[duckprintspress]

Ten Things We Hate About Trad Pub

Often when I say “I’ve started a small press; we publish the works of those who have trouble breaking into traditional publishing!” what people seem to hear is “me and a bunch of sad saps couldn’t sell our books in the Real World so we’ve made our own place with lower standards.” For those with minimal understanding of traditional publishing (trad pub), this reaction is perhaps understandable? But, truly, there are many things to hate about traditional publishing (and, don’t get me wrong - there are things to love about trad pub, too, but that’s not what this list is about) and it’s entirely reasonable for even highly accomplished authors to have no interest in running the gauntlet of genre restrictions, editorial control, hazing, long waits, and more, that make trad pub at best, um, challenging, and at worst, utterly inaccessible to many authors - even excellent ones.

Written in collaboration with @jhoomwrites, with input from @ramblingandpie, here is a list of ten things that we at Duck Prints Press detest about trad pub, why we hate it, and why/how we think things should be different!

(Needless to say, part of why we created Duck Prints Press was to...not do any of these things... so if you’re a writer looking for a publishing home, and you hate these things, too, and want to write with a Press that doesn’t do them...maybe come say hi?)

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1. Work lengths dictated by genre and/or author experience.

Romance novels can’t be longer than 90,000 words or they won’t sell! New authors shouldn’t try to market a novel longer than 100,000 words!

A good story is a good story is a good story. Longer genre works give authors the chance to explore their themes and develop their plots. How often an author has been published shouldn’t put a cap on the length of their work.

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2. Editors assert control of story events...except when they don’t.

If you don’t change this plot point, the book won’t market well. Oh, you’re a ten-time bestseller? Write whatever you want, even if it doesn’t make sense we know people will buy it.

Sometimes, a beta or an editor will point out that an aspect of a story doesn’t work - because it’s nonsensical, illogical, Deus ex Machina, etc. - and in those cases it’s of course reasonable for an editor to say, “This doesn’t work and we recommend changing it, for these reasons…” However, when that list of reasons begins and ends with, “...because it won’t sell…” that’s a problem, especially because this is so often applied as a double standard. We’ve all read bestsellers with major plot issues, but those authors get a “bye” because editors don’t want to exert to heavy a hand and risk a proven seller, but with a new, less experienced, or worse-selling author, the gloves come off (even though evidence suggests time and again that publishers’ ability to predict what will sell well is at best low and at worst nonexistent.)

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3. A billion rejection letters as a required rite of passage (especially when the letters aren't helpful in pinpointing why a work has been rejected or how the author can improve).

Well, my first book was rejected by a hundred Presses before it was accepted! How many rejection letters did you get before you got a bite? What, only one or two? Oh…

How often one succeeds or fails to get published shouldn’t be treated as a form of hazing, and we all know that how often someone gets rejected or accepted has essentially no bearing on how good a writer they are. Plenty of schlock goes out into the world after being accepted on the first or second try...and so does plenty of good stuff! Likewise, plenty of schlock will get rejected 100 times but due to persistence, luck, circumstances, whatever, finally find a home, and plenty of good stuff will also get rejected 100 times before being publishing. Rejections (or lack there of) as a point of pride or as a means of judging others needs to die as a rite of passage among authors.

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4. Query letters, for so many reasons.

Summarize all your hard work in a single page! Tell us who you’re like as an author and what books your story is like, so we can gauge how well it’ll sell based on two sentences about it! Format it exactly the way we say or we won’t even consider you!

For publishers, agents, and editors who have slush piles as tall as Mount Everest...we get it. There has to be a way to differentiate. We don’t blame you. Every creative writing class, NaNoWriMo pep talk, and college lit department combine to send out hundreds of thousands of people who think all they need to do to become the next Ernest Hemingway is string a sentence together. There has to be some way to sort through that pile...but God, can’t there be a better way than query letters? Especially since even with query letters being used it often takes months or years to hear back, and...

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5. "Simultaneous submissions prohibited.”

No, we don’t know when we’ll get to your query, but we’ll throw it out instantly if you have the audacity to shop around while you wait for us.

The combination of “no simultaneous submissions” with the query letter bottleneck makes success slow and arduous. It disadvantages everyone who aims to write full-time but doesn’t have another income source (their own, or a parents’, or a spouse’s, or, or or). The result is that entire classes of people are edged out of publishing solely because the process, especially for writers early in their career, moves so glacially that people have to earn a living while they wait, and it’s so hard to, for example, work two jobs and raise a family and also somehow find the time to write. Especially considering that the standard advice for dealing with “no simultaneous submissions” is “just write something else while you wait!” ...the whole system screams privilege.

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6. Genres are boxes that must be fit into and adhered to.

Your protagonist is 18? Then obviously your book is Young Adult. It doesn’t matter how smutty your book is, erotica books must have sex within the first three chapters, ideally in the first chapter. Sorry, we’re a fantasy publisher, if you have a technological element you don’t belong here…

While some genre boxes have been becoming more like mesh cages of late, with some flow of content allowed in and out, many remain stiff prisons that constrict the kinds of stories people can tell. Even basic cross-genre works often struggle to find a place, and there’s no reason for it beyond “if we can’t pigeon-hole a story, it’s harder to sell.” This edges out many innovative, creative works. It also disadvantages people who aren’t as familiar with genre rules. And don’t get me wrong - this isn’t an argument that, for example, the romance genre would be improved by opening up to stories that don’t have “happily ever afters.” Instead, it’s pointing out - there should also be a home for, say, a space opera with a side romance, an erotica scene, and a happily-for-now ending. Occasionally, works breakthrough, but for the most part stories that don’t conform never see the light of day (or, they do, but only after Point 2 - trad pub editors insist that the elements most “outside” the box be removed or revised).

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7. The lines between romance and erotica are arbitrary, random, and hetero- and cis-normative.

This modern romance novel won’t sell if it doesn’t have an explicit sex scene, but God forbid you call a penis a penis. Oh, no, this is far too explicit, even though the book only has one mlm sex scene, this is erotica.

The difference between “romance” and “erotica” might not matter so much if not for the stigmas attached to erotica and the huge difference in marketability and audience. The difference between “romance” and “erotica” also might not matter so much if not for the fact that, so often, even incredibly raunchy stories that feature cis straight male/cis straight female sex scenes are shelved as romance, but the moment the sex is between people of the same gender, and/or a trans or genderqueer person is involved, and/or the relationship is polyamorous, and/or the characters involved are literally anything other than a cis straight male pleasuring a cis straight female in a “standard” way (cunnilingus welcome, pegging need not apply)...then the story is erotica. Two identical stories will get assigned different genres based on who the people having sex are, and also based on the “skill” of the author to use ludicrous euphemisms (instead of just...calling body parts what they’re called…), and it’s insane. Non-con can be a “romance” novel, even if it’s graphically described. “50 Shades of Gray” can sell millions of copies, even containing BDSM. But the word “vagina” gets used once...bam, erotica. (Seriously, the only standard that should matter is the Envelope Analogy).

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8. Authors are expected to do a lot of their own legwork (eg advertising) but then don't reap the benefits.

Okay, so, you’re going to get an advance of $2,500 on this, your first novel, and a royalty rate of 5% if and only if your advance sells out...so you’d better get out there and market! Wait, what do you mean you don’t have a following? Guess you’re never selling out your advance…

Trad pub can generally be relied on to do some marketing - so this item is perhaps better seen as an indictment of more mid-sized Presses - but, basically, if an author has to do the majority of the work themselves, then why aren’t they getting paid more? What’s the actual benefit to going the large press/trad pub route if it’s not going to get the book into more hands? It’s especially strange that this continues to be a major issue when self-publishing (which also requires doing one’s own marketing) garners 60%+ royalty rates. Yes, the author doesn’t get an advance, and they don’t get the cache of ~well I was published by…~, but considering some Presses require parts of advances to get paid back if the initial run doesn’t sell out, and cache doesn’t put food on the table...pay models have really, really got to change.

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9. Fanfiction writing doesn't count as writing experience

Hey there Basic White Dude, we see you’ve graduated summa cum laude from A Big Fancy Expensive School. Of course we’ll set you up to publish your first novel you haven’t actually quite finished writing yet. Oh, Fanperson, you’ve written 15 novels for your favorite fandom in the last 4 years? Get to the back of the line!

Do I really need to explain this? The only way to get better at writing is to write. Placing fanfiction on official trad pub “do not interact” lists is idiotic, especially considering many of the other items on this list. (They know how to engage readers! They have existing followings! They understand genre and tropes!) Being a fanfiction writer should absolutely be a marketable “I am a writer” skill. Nuff said. (To be clear, I’m not saying publishers should publish fanfiction, I’m saying that being a fanfiction writer is relevant and important experience that should be given weight when considering an author’s qualifications, similar to, say, publishing in a university’s quarterly.)

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10. Tagging conventions (read: lack thereof).

Oh, did I trigger you? Hahahaha. Good luck with that.

We rate movies so that people can avoid content they don’t like. Same with TV shows and video games. Increasingly, those ratings aren’t just “R - adult audiences,” either; they contain information about the nature of the story elements that have led to the rating (“blood and gore,” “alcohol reference,” “cartoon violence,” “drug reference,” “sexual violence,” “use of tobacco,” and many, many more). So why is it that I can read a book and, without warning, be surprised by incest, rape, graphic violence, explicit language, glorification of drug and alcohol use, and so so much more? That it’s left to readers to look up spoilers to ensure that they’re not exposed to content that could be upsetting or inappropriate for their children or, or, or, is insane. So often, too, authors cling to “but we don’t want to give away our story,” as if video game makes and other media makers do want to give away their stories. This shouldn’t be about author egos or ~originality~ (as if that’s even a thing)...it should be about helping readers make informed purchasing decisions. It’s way, way past time that major market books include content warnings.

Thank you for joining us, this has been our extended rant about how frustrated we are with traditional publishing. Helpful? No. Cathartic? Most definitely yes. 🤣

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[lourek]

I agree with this list, but as a reader first, writer second, I want to talk about the 10th point.

I started to use StoryGraph (SG from now on) a couple of years ago, and I've never looked back to a certain well known book site owned by a certain monopoly company.

The fact SG allows readers to add data about the books in the database, and that there's a place for content warnings, both user submitted and submitted by the author, has been a life saver for me.

I can check the tags. I can check the moods (dark, light-hearted, you name it). I can check the book's pacing. I can check the content warnings (and whether the warning is graphic, moderate or minor). And based on all this, I can make an informed choice whether I'm in the mood for that book, or if the book would harm me.

Whenever I've been forced to survive without this info, it hasn't been pretty. It has varied from slightly odd to a book being so graphic I've had a full blown panic attack from the contents. (Note: the last example was a Finnish book I had to read for literature class. The only warning I got was the teacher saying "I suppose you could give a trigger warning about this but -- *shrugs*." And that's more than some other teachers have done.)

Tags and content warnings in books, like in movies and games, as a default, would be so lovely. And even with the current warning system on movies and television shows, I still check doesthedogdie.com more often than not.

Thank you for coming to my Ted talk.

[Note: StoryGraph didn't pay me to write this post. I'm doing the "converting" by my own choice, aka talking about how helpful and useful the site has been for me, free of charge and from the genuine want to share the bliss, so to speak.]

[duckprintspress]

WE ALSO LOVE STORYGRAPH!

We even are running a queer book challenge there!

[lourek]

Challenge accepted! (Once I'm not in the middle of finals. I barely read non-queer books, anyway)

[writing-prompt-s]

“You’re a healer. Actually, you’re the best healer in the world… so how do you have more kills than everyone else in your party combined?” “Simple. I heal.”

[screamingatanemptyroom]

“THERE SHE IS!”

A voice shouted behind me, echoing through the trees along with multiple running footsteps.

I kept walking at my usual pace, whistling as I moved forward. Eventually I reached a small clearing and came to a stop, looking at the forest around me.

It should be close to winter, but since the end of the world, the cataclysm known as the Downfall, the weather stopped changing. I had long since lost track of the dates and idly wondered if it might be near Christmas.

“STOP RIGHT THERE!” Four men in basic mercenary armor wielding swords and spears raced out from between the trees and surrounded me.

Well, Merry Christmas to me, I guess.

The leader, a man titled Ronald the Destroyer whose face I recognized from the Player Leader Board, stepped forward, grinning evilly.

“My, my, my! If it isn’t the Healer.” His men snickered at his words.

I nodded calmly. “That’s what they call me.” It was my title, my listing on the Leader Board.

“The Healer” and nothing more.

“Pretty calm for a dead woman.” He laughed to himself, stepping closer. “The Hero’s party has put a price on your head, did you know?”

“I was aware.” I shrugged. “Not their smartest move, but then again… planning was never their strong point.”

“You were a part of the strongest team in the world! You were a part of our hope of saving humanity.” Ronald’s face distorted in rage. “And then you betrayed them? A weak and useless healer like you? You were lucky enough to just be along for the ride!”

I glanced around, the rest of his men were nodding in agreement, and finally shook my head, chuckling. “Weak and useless, huh? Is that what they told you?”

“Everyone knows that the healer role is worthless! Everyone who has picked it has either become a dead weight or has died. You were just fortunate enough to be able to leach off of the Hero’s party to get this far.”

I looked in the corner of my eye, where my health and mana were clearly displayed, along with status updates. The cooldown from my last use of major abilities only had a few more seconds before it was complete. Taking a deep breath, I continued the conversation.

“It’s strange.”

“Strange that you got caught? That you are about to die?” The leader laughed again. “Nothing strange about that!“

“No. It’s strange that you must know my position on the Player Leader Board, and yet you are still here.”

There was some muttering among the men confronting me at that. I caught a few snippets of dialogue.

“She is number two…”

“Only one higher is the Great Evil Wizard.”

“Shh… don’t mention him!”

“Shut up!” Ronald the Destroyer glared at his men until they were silenced. “Just because you cheated your way into the number two spot by relying on your party…”

“And the kill numbers? Do you think I cheated those too?” I asked quietly. Stats were listed for the top five Players in the world. They included number of kills both monster and human.

I had the highest of both.

“Obviously you’re just claiming the Hero’s kills as your own!” He ranted, but I had stopped listening.

Because in the corner of my eye I saw the message I had been waiting for:

**Cooldown Complete.**

Keep reading

[septembercfawkes]

Do you have any tips on how to write endings or come up with good endings? I usually have no problem coming up with a beginning and writing the meat of the story but by the end they all just kind of peter out..

I may have too many 😅

How to Write Exceptional Endings 

Story Structure Explained: Climax, Denouement, Epilogues, and Endings 

The Hero's Journey Explained: The End 

5 Keys to a Satisfying Denouement

Save the Cat! Explained: The End 

7 Point Story Structure Explained in 5 Minutes

Related, but a slightly different:

The Steadfast, Flat-arc Protagonist in Story: The End

Using Character Arc to Create Story

Variations on Story Structure: A List

Character States: Orphan, Wanderer, Warrior, Martyr I would probably look at them in that order . . . The first two are probably the most helpful?? I would think. Hope it isn't an overload. ☺️ Best wishes with the writing!

[writing-prompt-s]

You are a poor child going to a popular magic school at your mentors insistence, telling you to “broaden your horizon.” But when you get there you realise everyone is doing magic differently to what your mentor taught. They use silly chants and carry big ugly books around.

[screamingatanemptyroom]

“This job is boring.”

The young man leaned back on his stool with a sigh. His guard uniform, poorly fitting, made him appear even younger than his actual age. His cap sat too low on his head, and he had to keep reaching up to push it back to be able to see.

The older man sitting across from him laughed. “That’s a good thing in this line work, kid.” He stared up at the cold night sky with a wry grin, “It’s when things are interesting that you have to worry.”

“You say that, but I never really wanted a guard job.” The younger man pulled out his magical artifact, rolling the gold crusted wand between his hands. The casual motion seemed at odds with the expensive appearance of the item, but he seemed to give it no thought, even tossing it a bit from side to side in his boredom. “I graduated in the top third of my class in the Royal Academy. I was offered a great position in the army.”

“Then why didn’t you take it?” The older guard watched the clouds slowly cover the full moon, frowning as it slowly draped the area around the entrance they guarded in darkness. The magically lit lamps seemed all too dim against the oppressive night air. His breath began forming clouds in the air, which surprised him, he hadn’t realized it would be that cold tonight.

“The wife.” The young man groaned, leaning back even further until he was in danger of falling from his seat. “She’s pregnant with our first, and said she’d kill me if I went ‘gallivanting off to war while she grew my child in her body’.”

“Smart lady, trying to save your naïve hide.” The darkness around them deepened, it became harder to see past a few yards. “Young men like you are little more than cannon fodder in the war. No use you dying just so our king can get his hands on better magical ore.”

“You sound just like my wife.” He rolled his eyes. “Now I’m stuck here, guarding this stupid building.”

The older guard frowned at that, still watching the darkness. “It’s not stupid. This artifact has the power to take down the city.”

“Only if you had someone powerful enough to use it, which there hasn’t been in thousands of years! Any thief who stole it would be left with an expensive looking paperweight and a price on their head.”

“Let’s hope we never have to test that.”

They fell into uncomfortable silence for a few minutes. The older man stared into the night, not even the stars visible now, and felt a deep sense of unease. The sounds around them, birds, bugs, the wind through the alleys, the chatter of the night market nearby, all faded to silence. Realizing this, he stood up, clutching his artifact, a worn wooden club, in his hand.

“What are you…?” The younger man started to ask, only to be shushed by the older.

“Something is wrong.”

The darkness and the silence deepened, leaving this feeling of pressure, as if the air around them were solidifying. The guard tightened his grip on his artifact, terror slowly rising within his chest. He started a chant, the complex syllables getting tangled in his panic, but finally finished the spell successfully, allowing a light to shine from the end of the club.

It didn’t help, the extra light illuminated nothing, being sucked into the darkness and disappearing.

Finally, the young man lost patience. “WHO’S THERE?”

There was silence.

…

…

…

And then, the darkness answered:

“I am here.”

Keep reading

[parkguinevere]

Gods that are not people. Gods who dont have morals. Gods that are animals. Gods that are forces of nature. Gods that move forward, regardless of what you do. Gods that are robots, following centuries-old instructions that no longer serve a purpose. Gods who are children that let a pop bottle expire under their bed. Gods who are dead. Gods that do not understand death. Gods who are farmers, and we their cows. Gods who bred us for the slaughter to feed their families. Gods who do not acknowledge that we are alive. Gods who do not acknowledge that they made us. Gods who are people who made mistakes and are begging us to forgive them.

[whispersofthepurplevalley]

You sound like a remnant of something that once used to live. You sound like the graveyard of summer. You sound like autumn. You talk wise but the wisdom doesn't have wings, it doesn't take you to peace. You have goals but you don't have the desire to reach it. Not enough. You, a complete being, yet so incomplete in himself.

-Sabina Yesmin

[awesomebutunpractical]

One trap that All the Time Daydreamers, Sometimes Writers, fall into is this idea that writing is transcribing the daydream.

It’s not. The daydream is a fuzzy thing. There are gaps that you don’t need to fill in a daydream, because you already get the emotional point. A lot of it is emotion. And because it makes you feel like a complete story would, your brain is tricked into thinking that’s what you have.

Then you sit down to actually write the thing and you realize you’re trying to write a Space Opera without actually inventing any planets or space ships. You don’t even know if the characters start out on the same planet. If they’re on a planet at all. You didn’t bother to check.

Now you will vaguely reference this in first-second person in any writing guide you make up for the rest of time.

When you write, you’re building something. It’s not a pale imitation of what you have in your head- what you have in your head can’t exist on the outside. This is a whole new beast. It’s going to ultimately look different and this is a good thing.

Also the internal critic is dumb.

I’m not even trying to be nice to your writing specifically here. The internal critic is looking for a completed story and you don’t have one yet. So anything it has to say flat out does not apply.

[fictionadventurer]

This is so relatable that I’ve considered making this post many times.

The idea in your head is wonderful because it gives you all the emotions and ideas without pesky things like concrete details and logic getting in the way. Trying to write it down forces you to decide those things, which makes it a different story from the one that exists as a pure cloud of imagination. Story ideas can have multiple conflicting ideas happen at once–you just know the general gist and it doesn’t matter what order things happen in or which exact words are said. When you write it down, that cloud of possibilities collapses into a single reality–if Character says this line first, that means they can’t say it later; if they say Funny Line A, they can’t also say Funny Line B at that same spot in the conversation; if they go left that means they can’t also go right at that moment. Infinite possibility becomes reality, and those choice can be hard. And that’s not even getting into the fact that the moment you try to nail down a concrete timeline, issues like, “No one would react this way” or “That actually makes no sense” or “What is the mystery they’re trying to solve?” pop up and wreck the beautiful little thing in your imagination.

Any act of writing is an act of translation. You’re adapting it into a new medium. Which makes it not the thing in your head, but which does make it something you can share with your sadly non-telepathic audience. If you can figure out how to write it.

[medievalthymes]

Why do you study history

[transmechanicus]

I love the idea of dead gods. Not in the sense of “hey i killed something supernaturally strong” but in the sense of “i killed it and it’s still a god.” It is still worshipped. prayers are still answered. miracles are performed in its name, even as it lies pierced by a thousand swords and burning with chemical fire. even as it drifts through vacuum, decapitated and bleeding molten rock. in cosmic spite of being shot through each eye and hurled into a plasma reactor, it still radiates the power of the divine in a way that primitive death cannot smother. the nature of godchild is not so simple as to be tied to the mortality, or immortality, of any living being.

[bogleech]

In science that’s called a whalefall :)

[theimmortalcorpse]

that is horribly accurate of a description, thank you for the terrifying image of Bog.

Now I’m just imagining a corpse of some ancient deity slowly falling apart as it rots but its every little scrap of flesh still capable of performing miracles and people hurredly butchering it for sceaps to have REAL miracles of their own. Medieval snake-oil salesmen actually selling miraculous elixirs made of the dead god, a broken down church bustling with pilgrims wanting to touch and recieve the blessing from some priest(of an entirely different god) who can actually heal anyone but fo a small donation to their own deity. The imagery and religious iconography of the god retaining their mystical power but being adapted to other gods or even claimed as being made by one’s own magical brilliance. Bit by bit everyone takes a piece of it, carnivorous minor gods desperate to be on the limelight like the big named gods, spirits thinking they can become godly, even wizards and magicfolk trying to define and quantify its existence and power through research. By the end when there are no scraps left and only the barest bones remain is it buried in obscurity as its miracles are abused by those of other faiths, by tricksters, and by nonbelievers. Thus the deity’s own faith and religion are lost to time but still not truly dead only waiting to be unearthed unknown eras later by the unknowing and ignorant at the mercy if its remaining ancient authority as a dead god haunting the world. Even as fossilized bones in the dirt, a god is a god and even a god can leave behind a ghost.

[bogleech]

Those are very well thought out and compelling cultural effects of a god-being’s death, but one reason I thought of whalefalls is the ecological side of things, the fact that there are whole living organisms that come into existence only for the presence of a dead whale….osedax worms drift dormant in the ocean as microscopic eggs, and they only wake up when they touch whale bone. Then the skeleton of a whale spends years and years as a “garden” of worms that don’t exist in any other kind of environment, and they help maintain a tiny ecosystem out of a body so big it can take actual decades to completely disappear.

Even a deer dying is an explosion of specialized life like that; maggots eat the flesh, everyone knows that, but as the soft flesh is cleared away you get hide beetles that only eat skin and bone, moths that only eat fur, even special kinds of maggots that specialize in the interiors of broken horns, not to mention all the bacteria and fungi pouring out into the surrounding environment as well. In turn, all of these things have their own specialized parasites and predators; larger beetles that prey exclusively on maggots, mites that feed on the eggs of carrion insects, parasitoid wasps, nematodes, a whole food web exploding just around one roadkill skunk. So if you have a setting where gods have always existed and gods can die, then you have to wonder what kinds of things had to have evolved to make a god decompose :)

[hacvek]

reminder to worldbuilders: don't get caught up in things that aren't important to the story you're writing, like plot and characters! instead, try to focus on what readers actually care about: detailed plate tectonics

[wordsnstuff]

Sorry if this question has already been asked, but I haven’t seen anything similar anywhere. So I really love world building and characters, and I can spend hours figuring out their intricate details and visualizing them in my head. I would love to start turning them into stories, but that’s where I simply blank and have difficulty coming up with even a basic plot line. How would you recommend coming up with basic plots when you already have worlds and characters thought out?

Making a plot for your world and characters...

I often consider the outline of a story to surround the three pillars of events, environment, and characters. When you are struggling to develop any one of these elements, I find it helpful to examine how the other two are interacting. If you begin (in this instance) with a fairly developed environment and set of characters moving within it, you can analyze the interactions between the two and discern where there might be opportunities for conflict. Approaching plot development this way will primarily put your story in the character-driven category. 

A more detailed example might look something like this: 

You have an ensemble cast of characters who live in a dystopian society where death has been eradicated during their lifetime. They are all old enough to remember a world before immortality, and society has witnessed cultural conflict in response to this advancement in technology. This could be approached from many angles, such as dissent or advocacy from religious groups, cultural groups with practices related to death, social classes who have lesser access to the technology, political groups who manipulate the issue to their benefit, etc. Each character in your ensemble will have their own personal views and be affected individually by this factor of the environment you’ve put them in, so find the conflict in each of them. Perhaps one of the characters is inheriting a leadership position in a cultural group that advocates against the use of the technology to prolong life as it goes against their beliefs. Maybe another character is of a social class that has limited access to the technology and is going to great lengths to cure a sick family member. 

That is the thought process of development that will make it easier to create a central conflict and plot for your story. 

Identify unique factors of the environment 

Consider your characters’ established place within the environment

Anticipate conflicts between the two

Exploit those conflicts to create tension

Outline the development of all conflicts to find the through line plot of the story

I hope this helps, and as always you can feel free to reach out if you have further questions.

x Kate

–

Masterlist

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[jessebloom]

sometimes the tragedy is fun! sometimes the fact that there will be no happy ending is fun! sometimes it is really neat that one character is stuck in the past at the expense of the present and the other is going scorched earth towards the future and they’ll never be on the same page ever again! i like that.