Words

Words

Quick and easy way to establish rules in your fantasy/scifi universe!

This can apply both to magic and fictional science, because it’s essentially just a magic system in disguise!

There is a whole spectrum from hard systems (with a very particular set of rules that can’t be broken) to soft systems (characters don’t know everything about the rules and the workings or the rules are flexible). Where on this spectrum your system falls depends on you and your story.

A good way to start out is by asking three questions:

What is possible? What is impossible? What is the price?

Two stupid examples:

Fantasy: With this magic shoes you can fly ten feet above the ground. But you can only fly up, not forward. And your feet will hurt like hell for the next three days after you’ve used them.

Scifi: With this laser gun you can shoot people to stun them. But you can’t kill them with it. And to power it you need to buy a bunch of those little button batteries you never seem to get anywhere.

Try starting with those questions and work from there.

If you want to learn more about building a magic system and scifi/fantasy writing in general, check out these free lectures on youtube by author Brandon Sanderson, I learned a lot!

“I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within.”

— Gustave Flaubert

This person gets it

a good writing tip i have if you wanna mature your writing is to consider that reading itself is an experience. you are crafting not just a story, but the very experience of reading.

a lot of writing advice intrinsically revolves around this fact, but i’ve rarely seen it directly stated. when people have complaints that a book uses too many modifiers for said (which is what we’re taught in grade school to learn more vocab), the annoyance comes from redundancy or clunkiness that takes the reader out of the moment.

“Aro started to laugh. “Ha ha ha,” he chucked” is the clearest example of this. It’s redundant. It tells the reader the same information three times, and that takes them out of it. Your readers are very smart and can pick up a lot of very subtle information. Very often, less is more. This is why Twilight is notoriously bad. Too many replacements for the word said that make the reading distracting, not immersive.

This is something I realized when I took workshop classes working on my degree. We got feedback on things like tone, word choice, pacing, and the overall experience of reading in addition to just the story. Readers want to be immersed in your story. Remember that great feeling you’ve gotten when you just totally slip away into the page and just lose yourself for hours? This is what you want to craft for your readers, and you can use that to your advantage: Maybe there are times when you want to pull the reader out of it because it works for your story. Then you do things like break the fourth wall, draw attention to the writing itself etc.

But the reverse is also true. You can consider things like pacing to help craft the experience of the story. If you want moments to last longer, write more about them. Flesh out the details for important scenes. You don’t need to spend paragraphs detailing every object in the room unless it’s relevant to the plot or you want to slow the story down. Conversely, you can spend less time on scenes you want to go fast, or that are less important. I do this a lot when I have time lapses where I want to portray a sense of what went on, but also want to get to the next scene. I’ll provide a few rich details as a bit of an aside to give readers the gist, then move on. If you only give a detail or two, your reader will fill out the rest, and that fact is rarely told to new writers, who find themselves trying to spend a lot of time making sure the reader’s vision exactly conforms to their own. It never will, and thats okay. That’s the beauty of it, actually. Let your readers use their imaginations. They really want to.

So yeah best piece of writing advice I realized is to consider how your book will be experienced, not just on the plot or details. This is one of those writing “use the rules and break them strategically” things, and when you consider reading as an experience it can help you with things like word choice to craft mood etc. this was really beneficial to me and i hope it can be to you as well

Coming Up With Character Names

This is going to be a fairly short post, so if you guys want more information or for me to go into more depth, totally send me an ask and I’d be happy to. 

Method 1: Building a name

This is can be a little difficult, but consider what traits your character has, and what sounds you associate with said traits. For example, if xe’s more blunt, maybe xir name has one or two syllables. If xe’s quieter, maybe softer sounds. If xe’s a fighter, maybe harsher sounds like k and t. It’s really up to you, but thinking about what sounds go with your character can be a great place to start.

Method 2: The keysmash

This is something that works better in fantasy and similar genres, but do a short keysmash-and-simplify. For example, “awerinaewoirp” might become Awryn, or Neywoir. Basically, it’s about finding patterns in random letters and cutting the rest out. You can use letters that aren’t actually there, or you can cut letters if you don’t want to use them.

Method 3: Historical/regional names

Think of what type of culture your characters live in or come from. Even if that’s in fantasy or some other planet in a sci-fi, what cultures does your character’s resemble. Then look up names from said culture. You can also mess with the spelling to make them fit the vibe of your story better.

Method 4: Baby name websites

Nameberry is my go-to. Basically, think of traits you want your name to have, or think of names that are similar to the one you’re going for, and browse through suggestions. You don’t have to keep any of them. but it can be good inspiration. Plus, appearing as a pregnant mom in your search history is a good way to spice up your searches of “how to gut someone with a knife.”

Method 5: Mess with the spelling

Note: do not go overboard with this. Basically the idea is to take a relatively normal name, and screw with the spelling. This is common especially in various YA genres such as postapocalyptic, or fantasy. You can add letters in, change letters to other letters, or take letters out.