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lukaafrancesca · 4 years

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Writing Tips: A Master Post

These are writing tips, rules, and habits that I picked up over the years. This is just what works for me, not necessarily what will work for everyone. As with ALL writing advice, if anything I say here deters or discourages you from your writing, DO NOT LISTEN TO THE ADVICE AND WRITE HOW YOU WANT TO WRITE. Advice is supposed to help you get better where you feel you’re lacking, not prohibit you from doing something you like. Remember that even if your goal is to write for a wider audience, if you hate writing, you’ll never finish, therefore anything that makes you hate writing needs to be eliminated from your life, or at the very least, eliminated from your drafting phase of writing. Write for yourself and your happiness first and foremost, especially in the first draft. That’s you. That’s personal. That’s joy. If you’re already having fun, don’t listen to a word I say or read any further until you’re seriously considering refining your story into something you want to sell. Disclaimer: While I have won prize money for poetry, I am by no means an expert author, nor am I officially published yet with any sort of prestige. If authority matters to you, there are plenty of published authors that also have guides on how to get your work published. While good advice can come from anyone, it is important to disclose that I am not an expert and I do not have a fool-proof plan for how to write well or how to be published. This is just a collection of what I’ve learned over the years and things I think would be important to my younger self. So without further ado, writing advice. Outlining: While I don’t outline the way you might have learned in English/Literature class in school, I do have a similar process. For my writing, I create an appendix/guide/glossary type of thing. It’s a collection of key words, characters, places, items, and events written specifically for the story or the world my story is set in. I know they call it a "Bible" when it comes to TV shows, but I'm not sure the term applies to writing books. But you can call it your project bible. I call it my project appendix, but I know the term isn’t quite right, so for the remainder I will refer to it as “the project bible.” This is where you write down everything important that you want to be in your book, even details that you don’t want to reveal expressly to the readers. Someone has a mother that they don’t know is their mother? Write it in your project bible. Have a Magic McGuffin that does something super special that your reader is only supposed to find out about in the eleventh hour? Put it in the project bible. Have a really nifty idea for a scene? Put it in the bible. I do this so that I don't forget details and accidentally write down contradictory information. You can do this with or instead of a general outline or as part of your brainstorming phase when plotting ideas for your book. Remember to revisit the project bible often to add in characters you created spur of the moment or to add in any cool ideas you think up while writing. While you shouldn’t add to the project bible during your dedicated writing time so you don’t disrupt your flow, if it’s a detail that’s not relevant to your current chapter, you should definitely write it down if you’re habitually forgetful like I am. But what I prefer to do is to write a note at the end of the current chapter and add it to the project bible when the chapter is finished. Beginning Writing (and the First Stumbling Block): Once my project bible is more or less complete, I start writing from the beginning. Then I get stuck and have writers block and cry. Then I play video games to cope with my performance anxiety. Then I wait 3 months for inspiration. This is the stage you want to avoid. Don't be like me. Instead, set a schedule. Have one or two hours a day set aside to write. I find I do best when I write first thing in the morning. This time is JUST for writing. Do not do research during this time, do not check social media, do not add to the project bible at this time unless absolutely necessary. You sit down and write and you do not stop for anything except the bathroom or an emergency. You do not backtrack. You do not rewrite. You do not read back what you wrote. You just write. If you get to a detail you're not sure of or a word you can't spell just get as close as you can to the general idea, write in a symbol or an uncommon letter pattern (TK is the standard) so that if you're on a computer you can Ctrl+F back to that spot during the editing phase. Write during that hour or two non-stop until you finish the chapter. You can keep going from there if you have lots of time dedicated to writing, but once I finish a chapter, I go into the Alpha Edit. If you have lots of time dedicated to writing and you’re in the flow, DO NOT STOP. Stopping is what gives you time to be self-critical, and that’s a major stumbling block for me. If you have the flow, DO NOT STOP. If your dedicated writing period is longer than 4 hours (and it may be because 2020 is a hell year and some of us don’t have jobs right now) remember to get up, stretch, drink water, and consume calories. But if you can avoid breaking your flow without detriment, DO IT. Flow is one of the most important things to writing, and a good flow can have you cranking out 50 pages in a single day if you’re lucky. Good flow can see you finish a short story in 3 days. My good flow days are the most valuable to me. When they come to you, do your best not to waste them.

Alpha Editing Phase: Once the chapter is done, reread it. Out loud is best so you can check the flow. If you stumble across a word, rewrite the sentence so it flows better. If you have any TK notes or words you want to change, this is the time to do research and change the notes. You do not have to do this during your scheduled writing time, but doing it during that time helps keep routine and trains your brain to want to write during that time. Just remember that if you do your editing during your writing time, you should try to work on writing your next chapter during at least half of your dedicated writing time. If you find something inconsistent with your outline or lore, change it. The editing phase is the ideal time to consult your project bible, add notes to it, and check for inconsistencies. If you have to "delete" something, DO NOT DELETE IT. Copy and paste it into a deleted scenes file with context (surrounding sentences) in case you want to use the idea or sentence somewhere else or want to change back to it during the final edit. If you're changing the sentence, that's fine. Most sentence changes only need to change the specific words but not what’s actually being said. But if you delete a sentence or paragraph or scene or passage, save it with context. You can keep it just for you, or you can refer to it during a later edit in case you change your mind again. Once you have all your spelling correct and all your TK notes filled with the proper information you have some choices. You either continue on to the next chapter if you're writing a book to publish all at once, or you move on to your beta reader if you're serializing your work. Beta readers come in after your book is done or after the chapter you want to publish is done. Beta Readers: After your alpha edit, get a few people to look over your work. All of them can be friends and family, but beware of "yes men." If your friends and family only ever say your work is good, find a more critical audience. While it’s nice to have praise, if none of your beta readers ever ask you to change anything, you run the risk of missing things that are detrimental to your work like errors with tone, clunky exposition dumps, writing about a sensitive subject without any sensitivity, and many other stumbling blocks. A beta reader can be your friend, but they shouldn’t ALWAYS put your feelings over the quality of your manuscript. A quality beta reader will sometimes butt heads with you, and it’s important you listen when they do. While a beta reader does not replace an editor, editors cost money, and a good beta reader will save you some time with your editor if you choose to hire one for your work when it’s completed. A beta reader’s primary usefulness is that their fresh eyes will catch spelling and grammar errors you and your software might miss and they'll be able to check for issues with tone, consistent lore, tedious exposition, run on sentences, and a myriad of other details that you might not be able to catch. After the beta readers, you do a Beta Edit. You take all that advice you got from your betas, decide whether to follow it or not, and then change whatever you need to about the story. After that, sit on your “finished” chapter for a week. Do not look at it, do not reread it unless you need to check a plot detail for a future chapter (which should probably be in your outline/ project bible anyway but not everyone uses an outline.) Basically do not look at or think about your "finished" chapter for a week. This is so you yourself have fresh eyes when you revisit it. The "Final" Edit: I say final in quotes because serialized work may need to be retconned or edited in the future so the edit might not always be final unless it's for a completed book. During the final edit, you read it one last time, aloud. Ideally, your book will be done for this stage, but if you publish through a site like Inkitt or Tablo, the urge to serialize a work to get feedback is very strong in the digital age and I don’t blame you at all for wanting to publish a finished chapter to get feedback before your actual book is finished. (Please be wary of the terms and conditions of the site you choose to publish to if you publish a serialized work through a publishing site. If a site mentions having exclusive rights to your content, it’s not a good idea to publish through them if you plan to publish the final work through a different venue or seek traditional publishing and are using the site for archival and viewership purposes.) If you didn't have an outline before, write one as you read back your work. If you have one, make sure, as you read, that it's consistent with the outline. When you're done read the outline and make sure everything you wanted in the book/chapter is in the book/chapter, make sure the lore is consistent, make sure you like it. Make any final corrections. Check your deleted scenes and make sure there's nothing that you want to keep in there. You may choose to keep your deleted scenes file, as I do, but you may also wish to delete it once the book is finished. While either of these choices are entirely yours, remember that every deleted scene is still something you put work into, and there’s no shame in recycling some of the prose into a later story with different characters. Publishing: Decide whether to pursue traditional or digital self-publishing. On scams and more check here. Digital Self-Publishing: Amazon is a tempting option, especially because many readers will search for books exclusively on Amazon because they are one of the cheapest options around and even if you publish traditionally, your publishing house will usually still sell through Amazon. While I personally don’t like Amazon on principle for it’s poor treatment of warehouse workers, it is worth considering that Amazon’s competitors are not well known and you have very little chance at success when Amazon is the leading name in online book and eBook retail. If you decide to go with another online publishing company, make sure they don’t have exclusive rights to your work so you can bail if a better offer comes along or if they start going under. Signing a contract or publishing exclusively limits you so if you do decide to go that route make absolutely sure you trust the company you’ll be making your business partner by publishing through them. If you decide to publish through Amazon as an E-Book, I recommend doing it yourself. Don't pay for a service that does it for you (I mentioned Inkitt and Tablo and while I do use their services for sharing my work with friends and the public, I would not elect to publish through them since the only benefit to me is that they can do the hard work for me and I’d much rather do it myself.) You can buy your own ISBN numbers and commission cover art from artists so really there's nothing you can't do yourself when it comes to self-publishing, you just need to know-how. Make sure you have the right to use the image you have on your cover, either by designing it yourself, commissioning it from an artist or photographer, or by using a royalty-free image. Remember that some fonts also require royalties if you use them commercially! Double check that you have the rights to use the typeface you have on your cover and in your book. Keep in mind that if you want to have a physical copy of your book that you need to check that the digital publishing service you choose has a print-to-order option. Amazon does, but not every site will. The Cons of Digital Self-Publishing: If you self-publish, don't expect to sell more than 1000 copies without doing some SERIOUS advertising on your own. Digital self-publishing has the perks of letting you keep more of your profits and rights, but it also has it’s downsides, namely that if you want to maximize profits AND sell more than 1000 copies, you need to do all the legwork yourself. A bookstore won’t just buy your book to put on shelves just because it exists, especially not stores like Barnes and Noble. Find the small, local bookshops in your area, get a couple books printed off and ask if they’d like to host an event for your book release. Tell everyone you meet that you wrote a book and show off your personal copy. Find online book groups and advertise there (Remember to advertise often, but not more than, say, 3 times a day for a week. There’s a point where getting the word out becomes blatant spam and spam will reduce and not increase interest.) If your local library takes donations, get a copy printed and donate it. Offer free or discounted copies to YouTubers that do book reviews in exchange for reviews and feedback. Have a Patreon or website where people can find you. If you’re willing to shell out cash and take risks, pay for ads/promoted posts on Facebook and other social media outlets. Go out to events in your hometown or nearby cities and promote the hell out of your book. Rub elbows. Keep a couple signed copies in your trunk and go ham. If you see someone reading a book, start up a conversation, ask them about their book. If it’s anything like yours, tell them that you’ve been reading a good book recently and name drop your own book if you think they won’t remember you or talk about a similar book that inspired you and let them know you wrote a book of your own. You’ll have to bust your tail for it, but if you do it right, you can get your book out there. Traditional Publishing: If you publish traditionally, be aware that you will get many, many rejection letters. Before seeking traditional publishing, research the publishing house and the industry standards. Many times, they won’t even look at your manuscript if your book is “too long” or “too short.” That doesn’t necessarily mean you should change your book to fit industry standards, but it does mean publishing will be much harder if you don’t fit the standards because very few publishing houses will look at your work unless you know someone who can put in a good word for you. Even if you meet industry standards, expect rejection letters because you’re a first-timer and “a nobody” and most publishing houses get thousands of manuscripts every day and they’re going to pick manuscripts that seem like they’ll make money, or manuscripts from authors they already know, not necessarily manuscripts that are actually “good” writing. A rejection letter is not a reflection of your skills. It’s a badge of honor. You wrote a book and someone looked at it long enough to decide it wasn’t for them. Increase your odds of getting published by focusing a lot of energy into your first chapter, first paragraph, first sentence. If you have a good opening sentence, the person reviewing your manuscript will read more. If you have a good paragraph backing up that first sentence, they’ll go in even deeper. If your first chapter slaps and intrigues, then they’re on the hook wanting more. A publishing house is much more likely to accept your submission if the person who reviewed your work sinks some time into reviewing it. If you get them hooked with the first chapter even if chapters 2 and 3 suck, that reviewer is much more likely to look for the GOLD you put into chapter 4 or 5 when you really hit your stride. If your book doesn’t catch them with chapter 1, even if chapter 5 is absolutely on par with the classics of Shakespeare and the modern greats George R.R. Martin, they’re never going to read that far if chapter 1 sucks. If you get an acceptance letter, huzzah! Work with your publishing house on the final details. Usually a publishing house will do cover art and pay for the advertising necessary to market your book, but not all of them, which is why doing your research is important so you know what to expect. More Detailed Advice: If you have writer’s block try to write anyway. Remember that your first draft will be trash and you can delete anything you don’t like later, but you can’t edit or improve on work that you don’t have finished. Getting it written is way more important than getting it written well. Because, as I said, you can’t work to improve something you don’t have. Getting it on paper is the biggest hurdle. After that, editing is just a matter of reading and rereading, tweaking words and sentences, comparing what you wrote to your outline, and asking for advice from beta readers. Putting it all on paper might take you far less time than editing, but it is, to me far harder. You can pay people to edit your work. There are professional editors out there. But no one can get it on paper like you can, even if you can pay for a ghost writer, because your vision is entirely your own and only you know what you want out of your story idea. Things to Try When the Writing Doesn’t Come: Coffee, water, snack, nap, walk outdoors, bounce ideas off a friend, write a 100 word short story off a prompt and then try again. Any or or all of these shouldn’t take up more than half your scheduled writing time. Sometimes the reason you can’t write is because you’re trying to hard, and these small breaks can make a world of difference, not to mention coffee helps some concentrate, hunger and thirst are distractions even if you don’t feel hungry or thirsty, and time spent just walking and clearing your head in nature can refresh your mind and give you a level head since working through frustration rarely leads to good results. A 100 word short story gets your brain writing something with the focus away from your book, something your brain may see as a monolithic and intimidating task, and distracts it with something short and fun. Once you prove to your brain that yes, you can write right now and once you’ve already started something, it’s easier to make your brain keep working on the next thing. Bouncing ideas off friends can help you figure out why you’re stuck or help you remember that great idea you had for your chapter last night but forgot after you slept. A nap can clear your head and let you relax and you have time alone to think instead of write. If all else fails, try to write just one sentence, take a 15 minute break, and then come back to continue writing. Tried That, Can’t Write: If, for whatever reason, you CAN’T write no matter what you try, no matter how much you force it, take a break. Try again the next day. If the next day doesn’t work, give it a week. After a week if you STILL can’t write, reread what you have written backwards. If you stumble somewhere, edit that section. If ALL of it is either “good enough, but I still can’t continue somehow” or you just hate all of it, ask yourself a few questions. “Is the scene I’m writing important? What does the character accomplish in this scene and does it HAVE to be this scene? What does this scene reveal about the plot, the characters, their motivations, or the story at large. What will this scene mean for the characters in a future scene? What does the character learn here or what do the readers learn in this scene? Is this scene a payoff for something set up in a previous scene or does it bring closure to a subplot or character arc? If you find positive answers, reformat your chapter around those answers. “Yes this scene is important because it’s where the MC learns to believe in themself.” Great, go back and make sure everything in the scene reflects that and keep moving forward from that perspective while keeping the next goal “The MC’s first success with Plot Thing A.” in mind. Keep this scene focused on the MC believing in themself while working toward their first success. If the scene isn’t important or nothing’s really happening, skip or delete the scene/chapter and move on to the next interesting scene where you find positive answers to those questions. Remember that even if you don’t plan on keeping the scene when you decide to delete it to add it to the deleted scenes file just in case, you may be forgetting a critical plot point or a good idea in the deleted section that you might need later and you’ll be grateful you saved the segment later on. This and more to try here. When You Just Hate Everything You Wrote No Matter What: Read something that inspired you before. Or watch a TV show or movie that made you want to write. Send your work to your beta reader early for feedback. Or, deal with the source of your anxiety. Are you hating it because you feel like it’s not impressive to others? It’s similar to impostor syndrome. You like the writing, but you hate reading it because you think other people will hate it. Send it to a beta reader and find out for sure. If they hate it, that’s fine. You can fix it. If they love it, GREAT. Now you know that at least one person out there likes it. More people will like it. Don’t let the critics in your head tell you otherwise. Do you hate it because you think you can do better? Then do better. Put the scene in the deleted scenes file. All of it. Every part that you hate and the context around it. Dump it. Start over fresh. If you hate that too, compare and see if you hate it less than the old version. Go with the version you hate least, or combine all the parts you hate least and move on until you figure out an even better way to write it. Are you hating it because you never wrote a scene like that before and it’s just really hard? Read stories or watch movies that do the thing you’re doing in a way that you like. Find out why you like it. Try to replicate that in your scene. This and more about writing anxiety here. “Said is Dead” and Other “Bad” Writing Advice: “Never say said! Use other verbs to convey HOW the character is saying something! Yelled! Sobbed! Laughed! Growled! Whispered!” Most of us got this in grade school. And sometimes they’re right. There’s a difference in tone when you use “‘Hurry up,’ he said.” versus “‘Hurry up,’ she growled.” But if your characters are just having a dialogue, unless there’s a tone you need to set, you CAN use “said” and other plain words. I prefer not to, because I either use taglines like “‘That’s better.’ He smirked, walking across the room.” or I don’t use taglines at all “Really?” “Yeah really.” “Well dang, I didn’t know people could just do that!” “When it’s two people, you sure can!” In the same vein: “The road to hell is paved with adverbs.” While it’s true that it’s more powerful to say “His sentences blended together” or “the words came out nearly overlapped, narry a breath between them.” if you write that way all the time, it’s going to sound weird and won’t always convey the same mood as what you want. Sometimes it’s okay to say “he said quickly.” or “His sentence ended abruptly.” Yes, dashed or sprinted are usually better words than “ran quickly” and are faster to say than “He was down the hall faster than greased lightning.” But remember that adverbs are not the devil. Adjectives are okay. Starting a sentence with “but” is fine for impact. Dialogue has no rules other than “does it sound like something someone would say?” Ending a sentence with a preposition is fine, especially in dialogue. You can use ellipsis points (...) to indicate a pause in dialogue. If you don’t like the writing advice someone gave you, you don’t have to take it. The only real rules I try to stick by are “try to spell everything properly and use proper grammar unless it’s for dialogue” and “make sure it’s easy to read.” Like, I hate when people write “should of” when they mean “should’ve” or “should have” I hate that stuff with a passion. But unless I’m the one person you’re trying to impress, you literally DO NOT HAVE TO CARE. You can write “should of.” It’s your book. I am not the authority on all books. I am not the library god. What I like is not nearly as important as what YOU like. But do take that under advisement that grammatically correct books and properly-spelled manuscripts are way more likely to get published because the world of English literature is elitist as all heck because the rules were written back when hardly anyone was literate and people hang on to traditions like that whether they’re helpful or not. As long as people can understand what you wrote, that’s all that matters in regards to “rules.” So if a rule makes you unhappy? Forget the rule and write what you want. Writer Cartels: A writing cartel is especially important for new authors and self-published authors. A writing cartel is essentially a big group or club of fellow writers. This is your main resource for writing advice, research, a good source of beta readers, free advertisement, and inspiration. Your cartel is going to be there to support you while you write your book and after you get published. You can look for writers groups on social media platforms or by visiting libraries/looking for writing conventions in your town. The comments section of YouTube book reviews has a fair number of people. Make friends. Start your own writer cartel. Join a writer’s workshop program or a writers workshop discord since everything’s closed in 20/20 for the ‘Rona. If there’s a creative writing course at your local community college and you can afford it, take the course, make contacts, make friends with the people you meet there, stay in touch, and form a cartel with them.

“Kill your Darlings”, Crutch Tropes, Crutch Words, and Other Quirks: Kill your darlings is a piece of writing advice you tend to hear a lot. It basically means “Sometimes you have to cut out a cool scene or a neat detail or a beloved character because it doesn’t add anything to your book, weighs down the chapter, ruins the flow, or just generally doesn’t belong and takes up valuable word’s that could be used to advance the plot instead.” Tom Bombadil from Lord of the Rings is a famous example. “Darlings” and crutch tropes are similar but a crutch trope isn’t always a darling and a darling isn’t always a crutch trope. A “darling” is basically anything you like as the author that you want to keep that either all your betas HATE or that holds your writing back in some way. For instance, I like to show off when writing. I wrote a whole scene about different pieces of a ship’s rigging because I knew a lot of the terms and learned a bunch more to get familiar with ships for a scene that has ships in it. But it’s not important to my character to know what a clew garnet is. It’s not important to my readers to know what the clew garnet is. The clew garnet doesn’t serve any deeper purpose in my story other than showing off that I know what that piece of rigging is called. So I removed that scene from my book. I trimmed out all the rigging terms and explanations that weren’t relevant to what was actually happening in the scene, stuck to simple terms, and shortened that chapter by a good chunk by doing so. There’s nothing important missing from the story and it reads just as well without the rigging explanations. That is “killing your darling.” A crutch trope can be a darling, too, but only if you use it excessively. I know I have crutch tropes. I really love chewing the scenery in my stories and I really, REALLY love excessively describing food. Literally chew-able scenery. My book would be a lot shorter without those scenes since they serve no larger purpose other than giving the characters just a hair’s breadth more depth by saying “Yeah, Character A likes X food. And Character B likes Y food. Now you know.” This is a “darling” and a crutch trope. Whether I choose to kill this darling is up to me. But if it’s just a thing you do often, such as writing dream sequences in all your works, then it’s just a crutch trope and not a darling. But you may still want to kill it. Crutch Words: I often use the word “rather” when I actually mean “very.” “He was rather famished.” “She was rather tired.” While this does keep you a step removed from obvious adverb addiction, it becomes rather innocuous and you tend to not notice it or give it rather much thought until it’s become rather ubiquitous and taken up rather a lot of your rather limited word count. (And as you can see, that can get... annoying.) When the word swarms your prose to the point it’s almost more common than your articles “a/the” it’s a crutch word. I already gave you an example with rather, but it happens with more than adverbs and adjectives. Verbs can be crutch words too. If all your characters sob and none of them ever weep, sob is your sadness crutch word. If all of your characters smile and none of them grin, smiled is your happiness crutch word. When is a crutch word not a crutch? When you NEED it for the sentence to make sense. If it’s important to know “He smiled and she smiled back,” there’s no reason to change it to something excessive and potentially inaccurate with “He grinned at her and she simpered in return.” If someone says “I would rather do this than do that,” the “rather” is no longer a crutch. My general rules are: other than articles and common words like “a, the, it, that, what, etc.” you shouldn't have a word used more than once in the same paragraph and definitely not in the same sentence i.e. “Her eyes glazed over as she eyed the enchanted item.” Eye is used in both eyes and eyed and it sounds clunky. A better version of the sentence would be “Here eyes glazed over as she gazed at the enchanted item” or “Her eyes glazed over as she observed the enchanted item.” If you have a crutch trope, and it’s broad i.e. chewing the scenery, try not to do it more than once per chapter. And if it’s a highly specific trope like a dream sequence, use it no more than once per book. But again, these are just rules that I personally follow. I am not God. Write what you enjoy and only take my advice if you agree with it. More on Darlings and how to kill them here. Fringe Crutch Words and How to Cope: There are only so many ways to say “smiled” in the English language, and there are many different smiles that mean many different things. A friendly smile and a sheepish grin are different things, but we don’t always have words to describe different smiles. You can describe a wide smile as beaming and a coy smile as a simper, we have words for sneers and grimaces, but a pained smile has no single word of its own. A sympathetic smile does not have a unique word. Sometimes a sad smile is just a sad smile and if there’s no other way to say it, just use the “crutch” word. Even if you think your characters “smile too much.” Don’t antagonize trying to find a perfect word or you risk falling into “Thesaurus Syndrome” by trying to avoid a word that you simply can’t avoid. Thesaurus Syndrome: Know what your words actually mean, including their connotation. Connotation is the idea or feeling a word evokes, rather than it’s pure definition. For example: stench, scent, and aroma all mean “smell” but a stench or odor is almost always a bad smell; I can’t recall ever seeing a good smell labeled as, say, a “sweet stench.” Similarly, one would never call the scent of skunk spray a “perfume” or “aroma.” “Scent” is very context-sensitive and thus neutral in connotation. So when you use a thesaurus to vary your words, make sure the connotations are the same and that you know how much bigger “gargantuan” sounds compared to just “large.” Flowery words: “Cerulean orbs” is a meme for a reason. Fancy words are all well and good, but jargon runs the risk of alienating your audience. Going back to my clew garnet example, basically no layperson that’s not obsessed with sailing knows what a clew garnet is or what it’s for. If the word isn’t necessary to your story, don’t use it. And if it is, but it’s an uncommon word, make sure to give context or define it in some way. You don’t want to alienate your audience. When it comes to poetic language, i.e. cerulean orbs, it’s important to keep a few things in mind. When you use poetic language, it makes the thing you’re describing automatically more important than anything you describe in a mundane way. If you describe your main character as “a dude with a shaggy beard.” and then describe a trash can as “a silvery vessel for all the unwanted scraps, a prison for the castaways, the lonely, cold, metal receptacle for evidence of a human life, lived to it’s messy, pure, fullness,” that trash can sounds WAY more important than your main character and you also sound like a weirdo for describing a trash can like that. If you want to describe something exceptional, use poetic language, if you want to describe the mundane, use mundane language. A red scarf is nothing more than a scarf that is red. But a crimson scarf sounds significant. However, even when you describe something significant with poetic language, there is a point where too much is too much. Hence “cerulean orbs” instead of “blue eyes.” Cerulean orbs sits right in the middle of foreign/unnatural speech, overly poetic, and overly mundane. No one regularly calls blue eyes “cerulean orbs,” so it immediately sounds alien and unnatural. But it’s also not poetic enough to come from, say, a lover describing her partner’s beautiful blue eyes. “His eyes were deep and dark, the blue like the blue of a midnight sea, shimmering as the candlelight flickered across his irises,” is a much more fitting piece of prose if you want to give off a sense of beauty and the sublime. But if it’s just someone that has blue eyes? You want to go full mundane. “He had blue eyes” is all we need to know. Don’t over-complicate it. That’s not to say you should never write the sublime as mundane or the mundane as sublime, but that’s generally reserved for actual poetry and not part of prose, so unless your book’s main theme revolves around the beauty of common/ugly things or how utterly unremarkable even the most romanticized things are, you want to stick to the general rule that poetic language is reserved for things that are special to your narrative and that mundane language is usually fine everywhere else. Remember, you’re not trying to show off for your audience and you’re not trying to talk down to them. Some Things Specific to Fantasy Writing: The next few sections are dedicated to struggles I personally experienced when writing fantasy and how I overcame them. “How Can She Have a French Braid if There is No France?” and Other Linguistic Troubles: Generally speaking, if you’re writing a fantasy novel, it will not be set on our Modern Earth, and even if it is, there are sometimes troubles. Say your world is fairly unique, something like Tolkien’s Middle Earth. Your elves wear their hair in braids as a tradition. The braid style for upper-class elves is a French braid, unlike the Fishtail Braid which is relegated to the commoners. But wait. Nowhere in your world is called “France” so how can it be a “French Braid?” My rule on this is as follows: Things like French Doors and French braids are very specific and aren’t easily described smoothly in prose as “A set of floor to ceiling/ tall double doors that are made with glass.” or “a braid of three strands, in a gathered plait, from the crown of one’s head to the nape of one’s neck.” If you have to describe it like that EVERY time, it will get tiresome, and if you invent a new word for it, your readers will have to be constantly reminded what it means. With terms like these, it’s okay to use the eponymous word or the namesake word. If your character wears a Tam O’Shanter hat, it’s okay to call it that. If the item in question is, say, a branded thing, you can get a little more flexible. Say your character has a magical item that works just like a liquid Band-aid. But you can’t call it that because Band-aid is a brand and they don’t have adhesive bandages in the story for you to compare it to. In cases like this, it’s best to name the item yourself and define it for the audience. “’Hold still,’ Theresa demanded, pouring the syrupy potion over the wound. Within a few minutes, the liquid solidified, protecting the large scrape from the outside world and dulling the pain. ‘Wow,’ Sir Hugh said, running his hand over the area. ‘What was that?’ ‘Elvish suture,’ Theresa explained. ‘Made of pine sap, some medicinal herbs, and a little alchemy. Don’t strain too hard and it should hold until we can get you to a proper doctor.’” Here, you’ve established what the thing is, what it does, and gave off the general vibe of a liquid bandage without actually using the words. This technique is best used for things that are modified from things that exist in our world. Another option when you’re borrowing from our world is to use a generic term or modify a generic term to your advantage. Going back to the Band-Aid example, let’s say your world DOES have Band-Aids, but since it’s not Earth, you want to call it something else. You can give it a completely foreign name and appearance such as “Verdant’s Dressings” and describe it as “a green, leaf-shaped fabric bandage that uses an adhesive to bind gauze to an open wound,” or you can use a generic term and just call it an “adhesive bandage” depending on how different you want it to be from something in our world the more unique your name for it is, the more it seems to belong to your world and not ours, but this can have the disadvantage of confusing or alienating your audience. When something is entirely your own invention, huzzah! Name it yourself and have fun with it! A great way to make it familiar and memorable to your readers is to name it based on mythology or with Greek/Germanic/Latin base words. If there’s a sleeping potion in your world, you can name it Morph’s Tears to associate it with Greek God Morpheus or you can call it Somnetic Vapors to associate it with somnum, Latin for sleep. If you’re drawing from the mythology of other cultures, try using words from that culture’s language for your naming conventions. Beware of what you decide to borrow from and how you decide to use terms as some mythical creatures are sacred to some cultures, some gods and monsters are sacred to some closed religions, and some foreign words have had different historical meanings than their modern ones. See also: When is it Okay to Borrow This?

How Modern is too Modern for the Medieval? General Rules and How to Break Them: When you write a fantasy work, chances are it’s a high-fantasy novel. High Fantasy often sticks with a world that is medieval or at least pre-modern. While these rules can be applied to other time periods or genres like steampunk, I’m most familiar with high fantasy and medieval time periods so I will use that for most of this advice. Generally a lot of what we think of as “normal” has only been around for 200-500 years and everything earlier than that is considered ancient by our standards. However, some things might surprise you. This is why research is always important. Things like tea, bathrooms, fireworks, and aqueducts are much older than you may think at first and some things a full set of silverware or belts and buttons are more recent than you think. When researching, always be sure to search “the history of X” and not just “when was X invented?” Often times “invented” means patented and that will yield much more recent results. Bagged tea was invented in 1908, but tea as a beverage goes way father back in history (around year 200 BC.) Furthermore, loose leaf tea is a modern invention and wasn’t purchased or sold that way until around the late 1800s. Tea was usually sold in a brick and you could buy a tea cake or an entire sheet of them at the market to grate down to a loose leaf brew at home. Sugar, similarly wasn’t the white granulated stuff we have today. Sugar was sold as a damn, cone-shaped loaf. While the layperson may not be troubled by your medieval queens and kings sipping a loose leaf tea, a more “educated” reader might. The more familiar a reader is with the time period you’re basing your work around, the more your anachronisms will stick out. If magic is present in your work, you have more flexibility, but you should generally try to stick to a period of 100-200 years. The bigger your window of time, the more you run into the chance of some things seeming inaccurate. Anachronisms are definitely not something to break your brain over trying to avoid them, but if you want, say, steam-power in your book when everything else stays more true to the medieval period, you do want to try to justify the anachronism within the narrative. As previously stated, magic existing in your world makes this much easier to do. If your world has magic, then faster-than-light communication may be possible with, say, a telepathy spell or a scrying spell. This may eliminate the need for carrier pigeons and may even hasten the equivalent of something similar to a magical computer or a magical internet or telephone service. Keep in mind that this might also hinder technological development, making your world seem to be set further back in time than it actually is. If, say, your world has magic that allows a kind of hammerspace where you can store anything, and it’s widely accessible, then wagons might not exist in your world. Who needs them when you can shove everything you own in a cheap bag and take it with you on your horse? For that matter, if transporting everything is that simple, your world might not even have many towns or hubs because more groups can afford to be nomadic. Maybe agriculture doesn’t even exist, and your main character’s village is a group of nomads that live like cowboys and just follow their herds, eating their meat and supplementing it with whatever vegetables they find on the way, rather than building farms. Research technology you want to exist in your world, narrow down an analogous time frame in our world where that technology exists, keep most of your technology to things that exist to within a 100-200 year window of your desired time period. When you have anachronisms, justify their existence within the narrative by explaining why the invention of that technology was important. Think about how the anachronisms of your world shape it and how the magic in your world, if any, would shape what anachronisms exist. Why Everyone Probably Shouldn’t Speak the Same Language: While it is true that even in the medieval period, there were plenty of people and plenty of nations that spoke English, not every country did. Similarly, while most people in your fantasy world might be able to get away with speaking a common tongue, it’s important to think about a few things. The higher caste your characters are from, the better able they should be to communicate with almost anyone as, historically, they would have had schooling where they learned from tutors how to speak with others for diplomatic purposes. Keep in mind that this is especially true for allies but also true for enemies. You cannot negotiate peace treaties between humans and elves if the elves only speak elvish and the humans only speak their own language, after all and you cannot make war time demands if your enemy doesn’t know what you want. Vice versa, if your main character is a pauper, unless their relatives are from different walks of life, your character might only speak the language of the area they grew up in or some sort of pigeon language between their nation and its nearest neighbor. Dialects within regions also happen. Canadian French is not the same as the French they speak in France, after all. Remember that the language barrier increases if there’s a large body of water or a mountain range dividing two nations. The harder it is for them to trade with each other by geography, the harder it will be for them to communicate. While this can be mitigated somewhat by the use of magic (telepathy where communication isn’t verbal, or by the use of some magical translation spell) or by the existence of a long-lived tribe (language develops fast, but it’s harder to have a tower of Babel effect where language is highly diverse when there’s a 1000 year old dwarf in your village that speaks the old tongue and everyone else around them does too because good luck getting the old goat to learn the new slang) if your world doesn’t have magic or an ancient race where people regularly live to be very old, you can benefit from the use of Conlangs. Conlangs: Short for “Constructed Language,” a conlang is basically a made up language to add a diverse feel to your book. If your characters are interacting with aliens, it would be weird for the aliens to come down and speak perfect English without the use of some translation technology. Similarly, if your world doesn’t have magic, it’s very strange if people can all understand each other if they haven’t all been colonized by the same powerful empire or if they don’t all live near each other. And Island nation that’s hard to get to is probably not going to speak the same language that they do on the mainland thousands of miles away, and if they do, it’s going to be a weird dialect that no one on the mainland understands anymore if the isolated island doesn’t somehow keep in regular contact. This is when conlangs are useful. You don’t have to go full Tolkien and have a complete, speakable elvish language. But the closer you get to that, the more real the world seems. You don’t have to be an expert linguist to do this, but if you are one or know one, creating a conlang is easier. Start by figuring out what language you want to base it on. It’s much easier to construct a language based on one that already exists. Because English is one of the most commonly spoken languages in the world (both as a first and as a second language) English is a good base language, especially if you intend to market your book to an English-speaking audience. If your conlang doesn’t appear often, you can get away with coming up with only a few words as they’re needed. But if your character is best friends with someone who immigrated from another nation, you want your conlang to be borderline translatable if not fully translatable. Lingo Jam is a great resource for creating a conlang as you can add in words and their translations to create a translator to help your readers. Lingo Jam also provides a list of the most common words used in English to help you get started with a rough idea of what words you might need to translate. Keep in mind root words, regular and irregular verbs for conjugations, and word-order. Idioms unique to your conlang also add to authenticity, and the more important something is to a culture, the more likely their language would reflect that. If your character comes from a snowy climate, maybe they have more words for snow than they do for grass. Or maybe they have fewer. Or maybe they have specific words for different thicknesses because knowing the thickness of ice is important to their survival. If there’s a special magical item that comes only from that characters country, chances are that their word for it is unique, or that other cultures and nations borrow the word for that thing from that conlang. Consider also the interplay between gender, climate, religion, and other aspects of culture and how that reflects on your language. If your character’s culture originated in a desert where water is scarce and they’re highly religious, chances are that words for water and divinity will have some link or be seen together often. If your character lives in a matriarchal society, perhaps their word for doctor is “medicine woman” the same way English has gendered terms like “fireman.” Maybe your magical race of tree people doesn’t differentiate between male and their word for “person” isn’t gendered at all. Or maybe they have several gendered words that refer to tree species more than anything about our concept of gender and they apply these “tree genders” to human populations based on height and hair color. As a final note, remember that conlangs aren’t necessary, and if this kind of thing hurts your head, you can just use Esperanto or skip it all together. There are plenty of successful fantasy novels out there that don’t use conlangs. If you want a fun way to add depth to a vast fantasy world, do consider the conlang, but it’s by no means necessary to have one and it’s not world-breaking to not have one. “When is it Okay to Borrow This?” and Other Questions About Taking Inspiration from Different Cultures: I’m basing most of my information off this post, and it sadly seems to display in improper order, but it’s worth the read. Basically if something is specific to a culture or religion (this is why researching is important) it’s probably not okay to borrow from it unless you know what you’re doing. Having a sensitivity reader is good for this, but if you don’t have one or can’t find one, consider reaching out to someone you know who is familiar with the culture to ask if it’s okay. If something is a food, item of clothing, or a technology that has spread across the world, chances are it’s okay to use that. Rice is a common staple food, for example, so if your world or your character has a specific type of riceball or onigiri, it’s usually okay to call it a rice ball, call it onigiri, or describe it as such. I do have some caveats for that later. A kimono, likewise, is considered everyday clothes, if a bit old-fashioned, and kimono are often given as gifts if you stay with a family in Japan. If you base an item of clothing off a kimono in your story, that should be fine. A good rule of thumb is: If you can buy it in a gift shop in the country you’re borrowing it from, or if it’s widely sold across the world by the people who created it, it’s probably okay to use in your story. The Caveat: Keep in mind, when you borrow things, that stereotypes exist, and if you’re using it because of a stereotype, even a positive stereotype, you need to reconsider. Let’s say one of your fantasy races is coded as “Asian” (as non-specific and vague as that is) it’s obviously bad to describe them as having yellow skin, eating “gross” and “weird” foods, having “slit” eyes and a number of other things. But what’s less obvious are positive stereotypes. If this fantasy race of yours that’s coded after some Asian group are broadly characterized as “being smarter than everyone around” that’s ALSO a stereotype. While it’s generally the case that “Asian people are smarter” here in the USA, it’s important to note that a big reason behind that is that most people immigrating from Asian countries like China, Japan, and Korea are wealthy. They can afford to take a risk and move to the USA, so they do. And because they are wealthier, they can afford to pay for better education, tutors, and private lessons for their children. And when they do, the children tend to score better on tests which makes it seem like they’re smarter. Remember that a lot of things are highly correlated with wealth and challenge and scrutinize why you might want to pick a certain trait for a certain character. Pay Special Attention to Anything You Want to Characterize Negatively: If your character doesn’t like sushi, is it just because she doesn’t like fish? Or is it because she doesn’t like raw fish? If you can’t think of a reason why, or if the answer is “she doesn’t like it because it’s different from what she’d normally eat.” think about the reason YOU think that way. Not everyone has to like sushi, but if your character hates it just because she’s never had it before and it’s strange to her, unless your character is MEANT to be inexperienced, this makes her come off as a bit xenophobic. This kind of thing exists in a grey area, so again, this doesn’t mean your character is bad if they don’t like sushi, it’s just something to consider. A more clear-cut case is this. You describe a character as ugly, with a big, long, hooked nose. Why? Chances are you picked this up from an old cartoon, and that old cartoon picked it up from somewhere else. While not intrinsically anti-semitic the “ugly, long, hooked nose” has been a long-standing anti-semitic caricature. That’s not to say an ugly character can never have a long, hooked nose, but you have to be extremely careful with what other traits they have, because that anti-semitic caricature goes hand in hand with many other negative stereotypes and you may not even realize they’re stereotypes you hold. Again, this is why a sensitivity reader is so very important. Because nowadays, representation is important and it matters, and it’s great if you want to write about lots of different people and cultures and borrow from them, but it’s also very easy to be swayed by stereotypes and biases you didn’t even know you had and accidentally come off as racist, sexist, homophobic, or xenophobic in the process. Don’t let the fear of falling victim to your own implicit biases stop you from trying to be diverse, but do let it give you pause. If you’re uncertain of the history of something, PLEASE research it and PLEASE consult as many people from that culture as possible. Remember: some things are sacred. Just because something is old doesn’t mean it’s safe, either. Some people still worship the Greek Gods. Some people still practice paganism. So When is it Okay to Borrow This Thing?: Again, if it’s something you can buy from the people who’s culture it belongs to, it’s generally okay to assume that it’s a part of their culture they want to share. Clothing, food, and technology are usually safe bets, especially if you intend to talk about them in a positive light. (Beware of “Exoticising” things too much though.) If something is a part of a culture you belong to, then that’s also usually a safe bet of something you can riff off of without being insensitive. But beware. What’s good representation for you, might be bad representation to someone else. Your idea of Christmas, might be blasphemous to someone else, hence why it’s especially important to tread lightly with religions. “Exoticising”: Exoticising can be described as a subtle form of racism in which you worship, eroticize, romanticize, or fantasize a certain element of a culture, race, or religion to which you do not belong. This is often seen when describing a black woman as a “mocha-colored goddess” but can also be seen when describing he food, customs, or language of a particular group. “Weeaboos” are often guilty of exoticising Japanese culture, and food journalists are especially bad about this when they try to describe foreign foods by describing them in ill-fitting “terms that an American would understand.” It’s known as exoticising because it serves one of two purposes. It’s either used to make the foreign or “exotic” more palatable to an audience less receptive to it or by making something foreign even MORE foreign and mysterious, enhancing it’s “exotic” appeal. You may be exoticising a food if you describe it in a way that resembles the foods described in this post. If you describe a person using food terms or describe a religion as cultish or mysterious, you may be exoticising it. Sensitivity Readers: A sensitivity reader is a type of beta reader or editor that specifically looks for elements in your book that may be problematic. While no single sensitivity reader can possibly catch every single thing that might potentially be offensive, if you have concerns about your work, it might be a good idea to run your manuscript by one of these readers first. They will give you suggestions on what to improve or remove. Just like any beta reader, you do NOT have to take the advice they give or implement the changes they suggest, but they can be helpful if you’ve ever been told your work is “problematic.” Again, remember that what’s empowering for one person is denigrating to another, and your book will never satisfy EVERYBODY. Think about what group you’re trying to write for, and implement edits based on what you think would appeal most to that group. Magic systems: Ever important for people writing fantasy is the magic system. “Harry Potter” had the “wand as a focus” and “incantation as power” set-up, “The Elder Scrolls” series has potions, books, skills, and words of power, covering a whole slew of magical rules. When designing a magic system, you need to decide how it works, and that requires answering some questions. “What can magic do, what can it not do, what does it cost, who can learn it, how is it learned and how do you do it?” What Magic Can Do?: Can magic help you light a fire? Move a mountain? Raise the dead? Cool! Write down some of the things magic can do in your project bible or somewhere that you’ll remember to look so you can reference the rules of magic later. Think of what purpose magic has in your story. Is it a tool your protagonist needs to overcome obstacles? Is it an oppressive force that needs to be banned? Consider the role magic plays when deciding what magic can do and why that’s empowering or oppressive. And remember, it’s totally okay if you just want magic to exist in your world because it’s cool! Just remember that the other aspects of magic are that much more important now, so that the magic in your world doesn’t seem out of place. Next... What Can’t Magic Do?: Remember that limitations make the world more realistic and establish boundaries. If your magic can do anything, your characters are all gods, and relative power levels are meaningless. That can be boring and no one will know what to expect. Will a new obstacle cause the main character to struggle? Is their new opponent a threat? Limitations are necessary for your readers to actually see characters grow as they push boundaries and magic is no different. If magic can help you create fire, can it put the fire out? Does it need a source of fire to bend or can the fire be spontaneously generated? If you can move a mountain, does the size of the mountain matter? Does a larger mountain require more mages to move it? (Remember that limitations like this don’t have to be well known in your world. Consider “Avatar: The Last Airbender.” Metal bending was thought to be impossible even for experienced earth benders. And then Toph came along and blew that out of the water and bent metal because Toph is awesome like that. So consider the difference between hard limits [things no one can do] and soft limits [things that are hard to do, require a loophole, or are an obstacle for your special protagonist to obliterate.] One hard limit I see a lot is that magic cannot raise the dead/make you immortal because if you can raise the dead or make yourself immortal, the stakes are drastically lower for your characters unless your universe has a “fate worse than death” clause in it somewhere. If magic can raise the dead, they come back “wrong” or imperfect or it costs so much energy to do it’s not worth trying. If magic can make you immortal there’s usually a cost associated. Even if you elect not to use any hard limits at all, consider what magic costs. What Does Magic Cost?: Is it “free” but you have to know how to do it or else risk consequences and misfires like in “Harry Potter?” Does it require energy like spell slots in “Dungeons and Dragons” or mana like in most RPG video games and when you use up all that energy you have to rest or risk killing yourself with it? Going back to raising the dead and immortality, “Full Metal Alchemist” deals with the cost pretty well. You can’t raise people from the dead because God/the Truth won’t let you, but you can try. And you will fail. And it will cost you part of your body if not your life. And whatever you do create is not what you wanted, not who you wanted. You can make a Philosopher's Stone that makes you immortal and lets you bypass other costs for alchemy. Except it requires you to kill countless people and, if I remember correctly, using alchemy uses up the souls in the Philosopher's Stone instead of materials. So you can be immortal. You just have to be a moral monster. FMA also does cost with “normal” alchemy in an interesting way. It requires “equivalent exchange,” meaning if you want to alchemically make yourself a bunch of little bird-shaped wooden paperweights, you need to have the wood to do it and you have to know the alchemical formula to make an alchemy circle to do it. It’s also stated in at least one version of the anime that the energy to perform alchemy comes from souls in a parallel world so, like, honestly, alchemy is scary as hell and the cost usually involves human life. Cost is also a good way of creating “power levels.” The strongest mage might be the one that practices more, sure. But if magic is innate and everyone can do it, what separates one educated mage from another educated mage? Cost. Whoever is willing to sacrifice more will win. This also stops your character from relying on magic for everything. If magic has a relatively low cost, we should expect things like we see in “Harry Potter.” Things never really developed much beyond the medieval because magic solved most problems so there was no need for more technology. “Why have a TV? We have magic photographs and stuff! Airplanes? Nah, we have portkeys and floo powder and magic.” If magic has a high cost, you would probably see a lot of technical development alongside magic. Why do energy-sapping magic to light a fire to make your tea when you can just invent an electric kettle to boil water for you? Think about how the cost will limit your character and shape their world. Who Can Learn Magic and How?: Is it something everyone has the potential for? If so, is everyone a mage/witch/wizard? If not, what stops people with the innate ability from performing magic? (See again: cost.) If it’s not innate, or only innate to some people, what causes people to be attuned to magic? Is it something only elves can do? If it’s something you’re born into, how did it first appear and how is it heritable? Does it spring up at random in populations with a certain level of genetic heritability i.e. Mudbloods and squibs a la “Harry Potter?” Is it passed down like an heirloom? Is it tied to access to a font/source of magic? How did the first mage learn to use magic? Experimenting? Watching another magical creature do it? Gifted the knowledge by a supreme being? How do new generations learn it? Apprenticing to a master sorcerer? From books? From parents? By practicing? From a school of magic? Are certain people limited to certain types of magic like the benders in “Avatar: The Last Air Bender?” How is Magic Done?: Do you need to know magic words? Arcane symbols? Do you need a focus or a medium like a wand or crystal? Is magic done primarily through potions, written hexes, or hand gestures? If the cost is a material, is it a special material like the tooth of a dragon or the remains of a dead fairy? If the magic is contained in a material like a scroll or a crystal, how do you cast the spell? Combining different things within and between categories helps you create a believable and controlled magic system that isn’t overpowered and creates a consistent feel for magic that your readers will pick up on. Do it right and you’ll create a world where your readers are more-or-less aware of who’s a stronger magic user than whom and why, while still leaving them room to be surprised if your protagonist is capable of breaking some of the rules of magic. Do it right and your readers will be confident in your characters’ abilities but will still be concerned when your characters go up against an opponent with either obviously more experience/power or an unknown/new power. Romance and Fluffy Stuff: Some general rules for romance writing.

Feel the Burn: Decide how slow you want it to burn, first and foremost. If your characters are already an established couple, that romance is already lit. You are on fire and your job is to keep feeding it. However, most romance stories start with the characters as strangers or friends and it’s your job to build up the relationship so that the chemistry and synergy are apparent and the romance develops naturally. Now, when I write romance, I write a burn so slow that you get 10 chapters in and the leads haven’t even met each other yet. Unless the slowest of slow burns is absolutely your shtick, you probably don’t want to do that, but your characters also probably shouldn’t be kissing in the first 2 chapters unless they’re already an established couple. Something like Disney’s Animated “Beauty and the Beast '' is about average in terms of how slow the burn is. They’re catching feels ⅓ or ½ into the movie and they’re really bonding and genuinely romancing right before the climax. A slower burn might have you wait until ⅔ of the way for the first inklings of “will they/won’t they?” TV shows are notorious for this and almost never have the main couple pair up until the end of the series, but they usually still have chemistry showing up in season one. “Miraculous Ladybug” is notorious for doing this but that’s partly because the episodes aren’t necessarily chronological, and the big appeal is the romance potential between the leads which is why the writers don’t want to make them a couple until the very last moment or else they risk losing viewers who are only in it for the romantic tension. I personally think that’s cowardly, but it’s a tried and true method for a TV series. ABC’s “Castle” didn’t have the main couple together until Season 5 out of 8 seasons and they only got married in Season 7. Just remember if you seal the deal on the romance too soon, you need an exciting plot to follow it with the romantic partners working together in order for the story to remain interesting after the “will they/won’t they?” tension is resolved or else the book after that will just be boring. But if you wait too long to get to the juicy bits, the reader might get frustrated, the actual romantic parts will feel rushed by comparison, or if you flesh out the aftermath, your book will be 500,000 words long and let’s face it, most people don’t have the patience for that (that’s 5-10 times the industry standard length, by the way.) Decide how slow you want the burn to go and then pace the story accordingly. A faster paced book will want to see the characters getting along pretty early on if not right away, and a slower paced book leaves more room for tension, enemies-to-friends-to-lovers stuff, or lots of fluffy bits. Believable Romance or “A Recipe for Good Smooches”: The next thing you have to worry about in romance is making it believable. Chemistry, synergy, and affection are your 3 big ingredients. If your characters don’t have all of this, the relationship is going to seem stale or fake. Are your characters attracted to one another? Do they get along? That’s chemistry. If your characters absolutely hate each other but suddenly start kissing, there are only 3 options, it’s either bad writing, or they’re hate-kissing/fake kissing. In a believable romance, you CAN have hate-kissing and/or fake kissing, but if you want the chemistry to feel real, they shouldn’t hate everything about each other and should like more than half (on average) of their partner’s personality quirks, facial features, hobbies etc. If your characters have nothing in common/no chemistry/no shared interests it will be REALLY hard to make your readers buy that their affection for each other is sincere. Next is Synergy. How well do the characters work together? If they fight side-by-side are they in sync? Can they predict their partners needs more often than not? If they played the Newlywed’s Game and had to answer trivia about each other, would they score a lot of points? The more your characters know about each other and the better they’re able to work with each other, the more believable their chemistry is. Finally we have affection. How warm are your characters toward each other. How easily do they resolve fights? How often do they give gifts, cuddle, or spend time together. The more affectionate they are, the more it gives credence to their synergy. You don’t have to show affection, chemistry, or synergy in equal parts or all at the same time, but remember that these aspects of the romance are part of a three-legged stool. If you remove any one of the legs completely, the stool will have a very hard time staying up, and the closer they are to the same length, the more stable the stool. A couple with very little chemistry and synergy but is VERY affectionate just seems weird, like inexperienced kids playing at romance rather than a real romance. An excess of chemistry with nothing else makes the pair seem like friends with benefits more than a romantic pairing. And synergy without the other two aspects leans way more deeply into the “best friends” category than the “we’re dating/married” category. Like certain Disney Princesses, missing synergy makes the relationship look more like mutual pining at best or a one-sided romance at worst. Missing out on chemistry, again, makes the bond more familial like found-family or best friends. And missing affection can make it seem either like a broken marriage that’s only staying together for the kids or the comfort, or it makes the couple seem like they’re not really all that committed to each other. The closer you are to having the three ingredients in balance, the closer you are to a believable and idealistic romance. This and more in this post. The Fluffy Bits: Even if the romance isn’t a primary part of your story, the people who like romance and want to see it in your story are going to hate you if you just tell them everything straight. “Henry and Jess went out on a date and had a lot of fun. They had a nice dinner, watched a movie, and slept together at the end of the night,” is WAY boring. The romantic parts don’t have to be 10 page long pining scenes, or describe the dinner date in lucid, uninterrupted detail from start to finish. But you should let the readers see the juicy bits in real time, or at least without glossing over them. “Henry and Jess met up at eight and went to the book shop where they first met to pick up the new release of their favorite book series before heading off to dinner. They read each other chapters from the book while waiting to be seated, and talked about work while waiting for their meal. Henry offered sympathy when Jess expressed her upset that she wasn’t getting along with a new coworker in her department. After the meal, they went to see a screening of Jurassic Park at the old movie theater. Henry remarked how much he loved it the same as he had when he was a boy and Jess admitted that she never appreciated the film as much before she met Henry. They stopped for ice cream on the way home before Jess spent the night at Henry’s. She fell asleep beside him, drifting off somewhere around page 23 of their new book.” That’s not nearly enough detail for some people but it’s WAY better than the first example. The more heavily romance features in your story, the more time should be spent detailing these events and the closer to real time the descriptions should be. We don’t need a frame-by-frame of every second of their night together, but the more detail you give, the more it’s going to engross the readers. Opposites Attract: While some IRL couples can get away with having completely different political ideologies, no shared interests, and nothing in common, most people aren’t like that and it’s VERY hard to pull off in fiction. While the two romantic leads should NOT be carbon copies of each other, they also shouldn’t be complete opposites. Complementary opposites should be about as far into opposites territory as you go and “cut from the same cloth by a different tailor” is about as far as you should go in the other direction. Complementary Opposites: If your characters are more different than alike, their similarities need to be rock solid when it comes to synergy and their differences shouldn’t always be polar opposites but often complementary. While you can get away with “He’s an introvert and she’s an extrovert” and “She plays concert piano but he can’t even carry a tune” it’s a lot harder to get away with “She wants to party all day, every day, and never spend a quiet night at home, and he just wants to read in bed for 6 hours a day” or “She wants every waking moment to be filled with jazz music and he absolutely hates jazz and he would erase it from existence if he could.” If she’s messy and he’s tidy, she can never be TOO messy, or else he’d realistically end up resenting her for never putting anything away and occupying every flat surface in the house to the point where he can’t work on anything without having to shove all her things off to a corner. If she’s a vegan, it’s going to be very frustrating if he’s allergic to 90% of all green foods. If you have hard/distinct differences between the two, there should be more things they agree upon to make up for it. If she’s a big family gal and he’s a lone wolf, they may choose to compromise and have 2 kids instead of 8 like she wants and 1 like he wants, but the compromise is believable because they both love going running in the evening together and they both flip their lids over the same TV show. The better your chemistry, synergy, and affection, the bigger the differences you can get away with. Same Cloth, Different Tailor: While good friends usually agree on most things, just as good spouses would, people are not hive-minds and it’s VERY rare for people to agree on everything. Even if they do agree, their reasons for agreeing may be different. For example, maybe both your characters believe murder is bad no matter what. But one character comes from the perspective that murder is bad because all life is precious and no one should have the right to take the life from someone else so even even killing in self-defense is bad. The other character may believe that murder and killing are distinct categories and believes that it’s okay to kill in self-defense because letting someone kill you is worse than killing someone in self-defense because if you die, the killer might go on to kill more people. Maybe both characters like to eat vanilla ice cream, but one of them likes it because they’re just really picky and don’t like any other flavors but the other likes vanilla because you can add a lot of toppings without it tasting bad. When characters are cut from the same cloth, it’s important to remember that they not be too codependent. They should have other interests beyond shared interests and should be comfortable being alone. Insurmountable Differences: Sometimes things that do happen in real life aren’t believable in fiction. If your characters are too different in certain regards, it’s VERY hard to believe they have a genuine romance. If your characters are on the polar opposite side of the aisle on these big issues, it’s not going to be believable in most cases. These insurmountable differences that make suspending disbelief harder (but not impossible) are: Polar opposite political beliefs. If one of your characters believes trans women are women and the other believes trans people should all die, they’re PROBABLY not going to make a very believable couple. Religion. If one of your characters is a devout Christian who believes all non-Christians are going to hell and the other is an atheist who thinks all religion is superstition and baloney, it’s way harder to believe they’re going to get along without constantly fighting over that. Cleanliness: If one character lives in a literal pigsty hoarder nest and the other is so anal retentive about dust that they take 10 showers every day and their blood boils if something doesn’t smell “right,” they are absolutely going to fight and make each other miserable. Core personality traits. If your characters are polar opposites when it comes to level of openness, introversion/extroversion, or neuroticism, they probably won’t get along. Morals. If your characters have completely different moral compasses, it’s very hard to make that work. Dependence. If one character is totally codependent and the other is completely independent, either one of them is going to be exploited or one of them is going to feel suffocated. Keep in mind this doesn’t mean the characters can never differ on these subjects, but if the differences are, as I said, polar opposite, there’s very little chance readers will believe the couple gets along, no matter how much chemistry, synergy, and affection you add in. The smaller you make differences in these categories, the more believable your couple will be. Friendships as a Bedrock for Romance: If your characters would not be best friends and you’re going for romance and not just steamy bedroom scenes, then your couple will be very hard to believe as a romantic pairing. Friendship is an ideal stepping stone between strangers and lovers, and often a necessary one. That’s not to say your characters have to start as friends. But if your characters couldn’t even imagine being friends with their intended partner, being in a romance also isn’t a likely path for their relationship.

Some Final, General Notes: A section dedicated to things I though up at the last minute or didn’t fit anywhere else. “Holy Shit! Two Cakes!” and Combating Impostor Syndrome: Sometimes you feel like, even when people like your story, that your work is nothing special, that other people are better than you, that you don’t deserve praise because your story was inspired by other things. In cases where you feel like an impostor, it’s important to remember what your work looks like from outside sources. In general, people tend to like “more of the same” and that’s why so many successful novels and movies are inspired by other sources. The Lion King didn’t set out to be Hamlet/Amleth, but it’s clearly working off the same bone structure. 90% of mystery shows take direct inspiration from Sherlock Holmes. Most high fantasy novels take inspiration from Tolkien. The Sistine Chapel is literally fanart of the Bible and Dante’s Divine Comedy (Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso) are literally Bible fan-fiction where Dante self-inserts and hangs out with his faves like Virgil while writing in all the people he hated getting punished in hell. Most if not all of Disney’s properties are adapted from fairy tales that they didn’t write themselves. When you find yourself thinking: ”Nothing I write is unique,” remember that. There is nothing new under the sun, but even if your story has been told before, no one has ever told it like you will tell it. And when you find yourself thinking: “Nothing I write will ever be as good as what I was inspired by.” Remember: “Two Cakes.” If you work your butt off to make a cake to bring to a party and someone else brings a cake that looks way better, remember that most people at the party are not going to think “Ugh, TWO cakes? No one wants two cakes! Eat the pretty one and throw out the shitty one!” No. Most people are going to think “HOLY SHIT! TWO CAKES! THAT’S AWESOME! NOW WE HAVE ENOUGH CAKE FOR PEOPLE TO HAVE SECONDS!” Sure, people might eat the prettier cake first. But maybe yours has cherries and the other one doesn’t and cherries are someone’s absolute favorite! Or maybe your cake isn’t as pretty but it’s gluten-free and there’s someone in the crowd with Celiac who’s SO thankful you brought a cake that they can eat. And even if your cakes are the exact same? And everyone goes to the pretty cake first? The hungry people will come back for your cake after. And they’ll be happy for a second slice. “But Fan-Fiction is Bad!”: No. Fan-fiction is how we’ve been telling stories for hundreds of years. The story of King Arthur that we have today is literally a fanfic of a fanfic of a fanfic of a fanfic. The original King Arthur story didn’t even have other knights or a round table or Merlin. Disney literally makes its money by doing fanfiction of public domain stories. Niel Gaiman wrote HP Lovecraft and Sherlock Holmes fanfic and published it as an original work and won a Hugo award for it. The comic book industry is literally built off taking characters someone else made and making them do different things or making them do the same thing in a different way. Fanfiction is literally how stories are told. Any original idea you have is probably inspired by something that happened to you or something you adored as a kid and forgot about. Badly written fanfiction is bad because it’s badly written, not because it’s fanfic. “No one wants to read someone’s work if it’s not original!” Nah, man. There are people that have seen every Batman movie ever made, read every comic that even remotely mentioned Batman, and own anything with Batman’s symbol on it. King Arthur and his knights are referenced in media constantly. Neon Genesis Evangelion had and still has merchandise out the ass, reboots, spin-offs, and games made about it. Harry Potter inspired copycats around the world. There’s published work out there, right now, called “50 Shades of Grey” which is erotic “Twilight” fan-fiction re-branded to something original and it took the freaking world by storm, whether it deserved the fame it got or not. Fan-fiction is just a way some people tell stories and there’s no shame in that. “But Someone Said X Trope Was Bad!”: Tropes and archetypes are neither bad nor good. They are tools and building blocks. Learning how to use them, play with them, or subvert them in a way that works for your story is the difference between a “good” trope and a “bad” one. Do you like it when the grumpy person and the soft sweet person fall in love? That’s a trope. Do you like it when the hero has a snappy one-liner? Trope. Do you like heroes that are absolute dumbasses with hearts of gold? Trope. Do you like it when the villains are flashy and goofy? Trope. If you’ve seen it more than once, chances are it’s a trope. And there’s no shame in using a trope or an archetype. Know the Answers to the Questions You Want Your Readers to be Asking: Does one of your characters die at the end? Do you want your readers to ask themselves “Oh my God? Did X just die?” Suspense is important to stories, and getting your readers to ask questions is part of building suspense. But even if you never intend to reveal the answers, you should still know the answers to the questions you want your readers to ask. “Was the hero the bad guy all along?” Even if you never confirm one way or the other, YOU personally should know the answer. This is useful not only for sequel baiting, but it also helps you tell a more consistent narrative with a one-shot story. Knowing the answers helps you be deliberate with what you choose to reveal, and whether what you reveal gets the reader closer to the answer, or muddies the waters more and more. That’s All Folks: Again, this is just stuff I picked up. Only take the advice that you want to take or that you think will help you. It’s your book and you have complete control over it. Hopefully, this has been helpful. Now get out there and write! I may add more information as I learn more because I’m always learning and growing.

#writing tips #refs #writing refs #long post #how to write

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