How To Make Your Writing More Atmospheric

Pls make a list of books you recommend to aspiring writers<3

Ok. Aspiring/burgeoning writer starter kit:

In writing anything you officially become a writer so that’s step one haha, no need to aspire too much. BUT. I’m going to soapbox for a bit using this ask as an excuse love u kissing u etc. So. This will barely be about books, but sort of the recipe of what I (personally and subjectively) think will help anyone who wants to grow their craft. (I know because I've been writing seriously for 14 years)

The act of writing is the best practice you can get but having a well from which to draw on creatively and skill wise in order to DO that practice is the trickier part. And sometimes we can be found lacking because we’re either NOT refilling that well enough, consciously enough, or only with the same sorts of things so it gets stagnant. This is a long one so I’ll shove it under the cut haha.

The recipe:

Study craft

Broaden horizons 

Diversify consumption

Consume with intention

Apply with reference

1) Study craft: this is the easiest to make sense of, right? I want to get good at writing so I read books about writing yada yada. Whatever you’re writing, it’s made up of a lot of moving parts, and you can dedicate time studying EACH PART, but figure out what you have the least experience with, or the most difficulty with, and start there. Also, before I go on to preach about why you shouldn’t solely stake your growth on some dusty old books, here’s some dusty old books I recommend:

The Elements of Style (strunk/white/kalman) (really quick and abbreviated advice, read every bit of this but remember: rules are important to know so you can decide which are worth following and which are in need of breaking for the pursuit of your goals. And nobodies perfect, or editors wouldn’t have a job)

Bird by Bird (Anne Lamott) (excellent work about fostering a process, important for everyone who finds themselves a little lost on how to just. Start)

Wonderbook (Jeff Vandermeer) (I haven’t read this one but knowing Vandermeers work this is on my TBR and I KNOW it’s going to be enlightening)

How to Read Literature like a Professor (Thomas C. Foster) (perfect for those who can see others stories working but unsure how to make their own work, I personally didn’t read much of this one but this will help people to more critically engage with what they’re consuming)

Save the Cat Writes a Novel/Joseph Campbells Hero’s Journey/On Writing and Worldbuilding/etc (all of these are on structure and craft in a concrete sense), I would recommend either choose one OR getting the abbreviated/digestible versions through YouTube because a lot of these can repeat themselves. I’m working on a playlist of writing craft/structure videos that I found helpful, so keep an eye out for that)

So. Studying craft should be a multidisciplinary process. Articles online, videos on niche media, books on craft or copying things from your favorites, looking for yourself in the movies you watch or fiction you read. Punctuation, prose, structure, rhetoric, character, world building, pacing, etc. Unfortunately, no matter how seasoned you become as a writer, you will always be learning new things about the craft itself.

It should be fun and I honestly feel like an enlightened little scientist when I see something that really cracks the open the magic for me (ex: scenes that serve more than one purpose are OF COURSE going to be more engaging that scenes with only one purpose- duh) (of COURSE magic systems should have a cost) (of COURSE the characters cant always win OR always lose)

2) Broaden horizons: consuming fiction and studying it is key to knowing how to reproduce it. We start with the training wheels of imitation before we ride away full speed into truly unique original storytelling. But the most impactful and thought-provoking stories are more than just fiction, so you need to know more than stories. Science, history, art, craft, math, music, cooking, psychology, religion, whatever!

Everyone always parrots “write what you know”, but what you KNOW can expand to influence what you write- so keep learning new things all the time and for fun, because you never know what could help your story. Your knowledge is not limited to experience alone, and research is your best friend. ASOIAF was so loved because George RR Martin loved not only fantasy, but British history. The Folk of the Air series is so loved because Holly Blacks special interest is faeries.

Note: this does not mean the study of OTHER PEOPLES trauma and experiences in an appropriative way, rather, become worldly. Because sure, knowing what a gunshot feels like adds realism, but I don’t care about realism if I don’t care about your characters or world. Science fiction is the best example of this: so many of those stories stick with us generationally because they’re pointing a lens back at humanity, asking big philosophical questions with science, which is something that touches us all.

But it doesn’t even need to be Big and Thematic like that. My dear friend @chaylattes has a project where she’s applied her love of plants to the world building AND plot, and has INVENTED whole plant species that enriched their work with something so exclusively Chay. No one else could write Andromeda Rogue because Chay, with specific interests and knowledge, put that specificity into the story.

3) Diversify consumption: surrounding yourself with more of the same means you’re going to regurgitate the same, derivatively. To be a hater for a moment: I can tell within the first chapter if someone only reads/watches one kind of media (m*rvel, fairy smut, grim dark nonsense, etc), and it’s distracting. When I read that derivative work, I’m not thinking about THEIR story. All I can think of is the people who did it first, and better.

Alternatively, the best work draws on the unexpected. Fantasy work taking notes from horror, science fiction including humanistic romance, romance with elements of mystery. RF Kuangs work feels so smart because she’s literally a PHD candidate who’s reading of academic writing. Cassandra Clares work is so interpersonally messy and hard to look away from because she watches a lot of reality television. 

Genre is less a set of cages to lock yourself inside of and more so the sections of a great big fictional playground- and you need to start playing. Rules, again, are guidelines that can be bent for the sake of your stories. I predominantly write scifi/fantasy/horror but some of my favorite stuff is literary fiction, historical nonfiction, thrillers, and poetry.

And if you can’t bring yourself to read different genres, it takes significantly less effort to WATCH different genres. Television and film are stories too, and can absolutely be learned from. 

4) Consume with intention: this is easier said than done. I, embarrassingly, admit that I did not have any reading comprehension skills until I was at least 19. I was consuming, but I wasn’t thinking a damn critical thought, just spitting it back out in a way that sounded smart.

Critical thinking skills (I say, on the website that historically lacks such a thing) are a muscle that needs to be exercised just as often as your writing muscle. Reading new work, studying craft, learning new shit- none of it matters if you can’t APPLY it all to a story. One can take a clock apart to learn how exactly it ticks, but it won't tell time like a watch until you put it back together.

The key is asking questions, all of the time about everything. That whole “why the curtains were blue” nonsense comes to mind, but if you want to be a good writer, (edit: a writer that cares about whether or not their work is vapid imitation of better work) learning to ask WHY the curtains are blue really does matters.

Ask why in ALL stories you consume, including your own. Why do Ghibli films make me feel calm? (Motifs of undisturbed nature, low stakes plots and quiet scenes of reprieve between action, characters that care about one another and aren’t afraid to show it) Why do I fly through a Gillian Flynn novel but take 8,000 years to read other books? (Concise descriptions, realistic but evocative premise, witty voice, contained and fast paced plot, an abundance of questions driving the mystery leading up to a satisfying crash of answers at the end) Why were the curtains blue, the coffee cup chipped, and the lipstick stain on the rim red instead of purple or pink? And why did the colors matter at all when the scene is about a father at a kitchen table? (You tell me!) Answers may vary.

You can put the work into learning the answer at the source (ie: listening to authors talk about their own work), or through the external interpretations of a critic (proceed with caution here), sure. These are even good when learning HOW to think critically if you don’t even know where to start. But your growth as a writer depends on your ability to answer your OWN questions. 

(Why do I feel tense in this scene? Is it because the character says they’re sweating and struggling to breathe? Is it because I’ve been told the monsters close? Is it because the sentences are getting shorter and the author keeps repeating descriptions of that monsters massive bloody teeth coming closer? Or is it because I know the gun in her hands has no bullets because another character already tried what she’s about to try?)

(Why do I feel sad in this scene? Is it because the characters mom just died? Is it because the character can’t even verbalize that sadness to others? Is it because none of the other characters seem to care enough to ask? Is it because of the wilted flowers in the corner? Or is it because there are daisies in the bouquet, and those were the moms favorite?)

I can nod and smile at 1000 opinions about “why X did Y and the end of Z” or “why X is Y and not Z” but how I felt when I consume something, how I was affected and how it made ME PERSONALLY answer my critical questions, that’s what’s important. That’s how we manufacture gay subtext in everything, because sometimes gay is a feeling as opposed to a fact.

Also, if those subjective answers are inconsistent among readers/viewers, the writer likely had their own intentions a little muddled. So, and I know I’m getting tangential but stay with me: romance. You know how you’re supposed to feel happy or convinced that the people falling in love are like, in love? And want to put yourself in that position or whatever? I CANNOT consume most romance media because it all comes off as categorically terrifying to me. I ask myself why the characters are doing what they do, reacting the way they react, saying way they say, and none of it feels romantic. I want to file a restraining order, and that’s the failing of the author, who did not make enough conscious choices in their work and accidentally created horror while writing their color by numbers trope slop of a “romance” novel. 

5) Apply with reference: is like taking all your ingredients and finally cooking. You want people to notice and respect when you add certain literary devices, descriptions, character choices, but not to the detriment of your work. Shows like stranger things are popular but divisive because their intertextuality and reliance on nostalgia bolster an otherwise unoriginal idea. They weren’t trying to reinvent the wheel, they were writing a love letter to Stephen Spielberg, and are riding that wave into the ground. But the fairy dick renaissance doesn’t feel nearly as palatable as season one of stranger things did because a lot of times they aren’t using the ingredients in their own way, rather, following the recipe to a T and selling it as new. Food really is the perfect metaphor and sorry in advance because I’m really going to run with it here lol. 

When I eat a meal, first of all I know I'm eating food, so don't try and trick me into thinking otherwise or I'll only get annoyed. I want to be able to taste all of what’s in front of me, spice, salt, sweet, bitter, etc and know what what you said you've fed me is really actually truly what I've eaten. One ingredient, or writing choice, shouldn’t overpower another, or surprise me so much I can’t take another bite. I shouldn’t try something you call “sauced and baked yeast patty garnished with fermented milk and smoked meat” and think “this shits pizza” because you didn’t even try to jazz it up more than what the instructions on the digiorno box said. I also shouldn’t bite into something you call a pizza and only taste bread because you really like bread and forgot that a pizza is more than just bread. 

But inversely, avoiding all ingredients gets you weird, nary inedible shit like charred milk reduction with lamb mist or whatever. Show me you have knowledge in your genre by referencing it AND remixing it, show me that you studied craft by foreshadowing properly or pacing well, show me you’re more than an AI writerbot by deepening your work with your unique and human influence, show me you read broadly by adding surprising ingredients, and show me that you mean every word you write because you made the curtains blue instead of yellow, and topped your pizza with pepperoni instead of pineapple.

Congrats on making it all the way through my rambling, hope I made sense and that this helped!

How to Write Political Intrigue (with book recs)

POLITICAL INTRIGUE! Intrigue in general! What is it?

For the purposes of this post (as well as how it's usually used in the writing/reading community), think: scheming. Plotting. Conspiracies in the shadows, bids for power and survival, secret plans, masterful illusions, all of that stuff.

It could be on any scale that you'd like, from a duel of wits (think Light's and L's game of cat and mouse in Death Note)

...to a large-scale plot involving entire countries and their people (like any espionage networks during any major wars, such as the American Revolutionary War to World War II, and so many more)

...or even medium-sized conflicts (families, like in The Godfather, or smaller national disturbances like the Watergate scandal).

Below are 4 core tips on how you can successfully write (political) intrigue plots:

1. Read + Research

Despite how hard it may sound, it's actually pretty easy to craft a realistic yet thrilling intrigue plot—with so many examples in real life and fiction, you can easily base your plot on an existing one and just change a few things like the characters, setting, and maybe a few plot points.

History and current events are always great places to look to, but here are some books that are chock-full of great politics + intrigue:

Leviathan (Thomas Hobbes): one of the most famous treatises of politics + human nature and their intersection. The book is an in-depth exploration of human nature, government, politics, and all of the root causes of why they exist. While it does take a specific philosophical angle (you might not agree with Hobbes' ideas), they are detailed explanations of how things work + why they are required from one perspective.

48 Laws of Power (Robert Greene): GREAT BOOK for helping you plan out the means by which you want the intrigue to happen. There are lots of simplified rules that tell you why people plan and scheme (e.g. "control the options; get others to play the cards you deal," or "pose as a friend, work as a spy"). There are LOTS of really great small stories of when a rule is applied in real life that are also general plot inspo!

The Godfather (Mario Puzo): very very good, intricate, and more emotional because it deals with the intrigue surrounding families

Joseph Fouché: Portrait of a Politician (Stefan Zweig) (biography): Fouché is absolutely insane. A genius at political intrigue. His life is literally one of the craziest stories of scheming, betrayals, survival, and a general vying for power, especially behind the scenes.

The Prince (Machiavelli): obviously, I can't leave out the original tips + tricks book with explanations of WHY intrigue matters as a means, especially in terms of protecting your power.

Trust Me, I'm Lying (Ryan Holladay): a large part of intrigue plots (you need to cover up the actual game you're playing) is the manipulation of information, creating illusions and spectacles for other people to believe. This book goes in-depth about media manipulation and information wars.

Empire of Pain (Patrick Raden Keefe): takes a rather different angle, through the personal/corporate manipulation of government, as well as how wealth dynasties (especially within families) are established. Remember the opioid crisis? This book explores the generational politics of money and power that led up to that.

Prince of Thorns (Mark Lawrence): Look! Fiction! Anyway, I'm biased because it's one of my favourite works of fiction of all time, but it explores political intrigue not only through an actor participating in it, but through the lens of the common folk. I.e., the consequences all that power play has on the populace due to a lack of actual good governance...

A Song of Ice and Fire (George R. R. Martin): I haven't personally read/watched anything GoT, but it's pretty much obligatory to put this series down in a post about political intrigue. It's famous for doing it well.

2. Plan. Like, meticulously

First of all, decide what scale you want your intrigue to be on: large-scale government/international affairs type, a corporation thing, something between two people, or even within a family? There are so many possibilities.

Intrigue plots are like mysteries; they must be tightly logical to be satisfying. One of the best ways of ensuring this is through analyzing each involved party—the actors.

Each actor has their own motivations, goals, and psychologies. After you establish what they want OUT of their intrigue, think about how they'd go about achieving it: a naturally hot-headed person might try to intimidate their way into getting what they want, or they might learn through the course of the story to cool down a bit.

A naturally imaginative and analytical person might come up with all sorts of scarily genius plans, and near-flawless execution. Of course, they would also react in different ways, depending on personality. Character consistency alone will make your plot seem that much more logical.

However, cracks in logic will happen because humans are inherently imperfect and not always rational. These cracks must be DELIBERATE and realistic and must seem planned out; they can't seem more like the author forgot a detail, or didn't know how to explain something (e.g. something happened and the writer never included the consequence of it because they forgot). It must be clear that it is a flaw on the character's part.

3. Never write intrigue for the sake of the intrigue

The incentive of all scheming comes down to mainly two things: gaining power and keeping it. Of course, you could choose to explore more unusual things, such as characters exercising intrigue to satisfy boredom... (think Light and Ryuk from Death Note).

But, the bids for power, security, and survival can be used to highlight things about human nature. Themes to explore include ambition, sacrifice, the pursuit of happiness, the corruption of character, the preservation of innocence in a cruel system, etc.

4. Explore through a narrow lens

Most intrigue plots are full of complex motivations, characters, goals, and the means they use to achieve said goals.

You should gradually let your intrigue plot unfold through the POV of a few characters, preferably one or two. An omniscient narrator for this type of story is INCREDIBLY difficult to pull off without confusing the reader.

However, more POVs work if you use all of them to focus on ONE or a few intrigue plots only—it can provide a multi-layered effect, exploring the same line of action and consequence through different perspectives. But, if everyone has their own intrigue plot, it's too easy to create a tangled mess where readers can barely delineate one plot from the next.

∘₊✧────── ☾☼☽ ──────✧₊∘

instagram: @ grace_should_write

Sorry for the massive hiatus—I have officially started college!! I've been pre-occupied with settling in, classes starting, a social life, extracurriculars etc. etc...life has been super busy, but great :)

I've started working on my books as well as poetry more recently, and I'm glad I'm getting into a new workflow/lifestyle. It certainly is different, but I'm starting to enjoy it.

Anyway, I'm surprised it took me this long to do a post about this topic, considering the fact that it's basically my writergram niche and my entire personality IRL, but I think it was mainly because I was trying to find a good angle to approach this massive topic. But, stay tuned for (probably) a part 2 because there's SO MUCH MORE to cover.

Hope this was helpful, and let me know if you have any questions by commenting, re-blogging, or DMing me on IG. Any and all engagement is appreciated :)

Happy writing, and have a great day!

- grace <3

how to create a high fantasy politics reference doc (with a template and guide!)

political fantasy is an extremely fun genre to write in, that is, until you have to actually write the politics. in this semi-requested guide, i'm going to explain to you how i virgo-planned my way to a horribly detailed—though also horribly helpful—political reference doc for my one and only wip, a treatise of tyrants and thieves.

if you too would like to use a similar format to what i did (though consequently you will have to change it to fit your own worldbuilding), i have a template for dropbox paper right here.

as a sidenote, i do recommend already having built up a decent amount of your world before jumping into this; this document is meant to help flesh out pre-existing content in such a way that is really hard to do with a wip that's just starting out.

setting up.

Generally speaking, when I first began writing this doc, I was mostly doing so in relation to the government of the country wherein my WIP takes place and its relationship with other countries (or nations!), with its own people, and within itself. This then lead to my three, aptly-named subcategories; External, Internal, and Personal Relations (I'm very creative as you can see.)

These three subcategories became my main headers, and all of my organization took place within a Dropbox Paper doc—as I am partial to the cleaner interface and very easy creation of a table of contents—but using Word or Google Docs works just as well. With that, and a lot of pain and suffering in the form of preexisting worldbuilding, I started to flesh all the info out.

You should note that the country AToTaT takes place in a country called Vsyhna (vuh-sen-uh) and its government is referred to as the Dual Courts. This is also a forewarning, for the fact that I will probably be talking about my own worldbuilding quite a bit, if not only for purposes of giving proper examples!

So without any more notes from me, let's properly jump into this thing.

external relations.

The external relations between the Dual Courts and all the other governments within Ashvayr (the continent that Vsyhna is a part of), of which there are eleven, can be described in one of the following ways:

✅ = Allies

⚠️ = Allied by treaty, with tensions

❎ = Not allied, but no real tensions

✴️ = Not allied, but with tensions

⛔️ = Enemies

All of these relations should be taken with a grain of salt, and also adapted to fit your worldbuilding, of course, but as a general consensus, most governments will have one of those relationships with another. The emojis are used so that it's easily identifiable (I'm also insane, let's not forget), but emojis don't replace discussion.

Within each section, I discussed the relationship between these governments but also gave a quick list of bullet points that explained important moments in recent history that have created those tensions—or lack thereof—the current political state in each country, certain cultural tidbits, and cultural differences between Vsyhnians and others.

Generally, this isn't the stuff you want to get lazy with, and while it is fine to say something like "Oh they live across the world my mc's won't know this." It's better to have the ability to even subtly suggest other people, cultures, or ideologies. It deepens your world, and more than this, can be super interesting to readers. You should also note that this information should affect your characters in some way, otherwise the politics are going to be very boring (as they don't relate to anyone.)

This alternated between something as complex as gender politics, to things as simple as cuisine or trade goods. Indeed, you don't have to cover every base with these descriptions, arguably, this is the part you should spend the least amount of time on (unless you're braver than a U.S. marine and do, in fact, wish to take on international relations), but you should cover every important base.

For a slightly more simple example, let's look at the Empire of Sansryn. I wrote: "The Empire of Sansryn ⚠️ is an archipelago that is composed of two main ethnic groups; the Sansrynians, who occupy the northern half of the islands, and the Tarimese, who occupy the southern half of the islands." Then continued to briefly describe the relationship between Sansryn and Tarim.

The next two paragraphs were designated to a) their relationship with Vsyhna (which as you can see with the ⚠️ emoji is not great) and b) their relationship with other countries around them, not forgetting why it's so poor in the first place, which, spoiler, has to do with a number of social issues.

Also in the case of Sansryn, one of my side characters is half Sansrynian, which is something I noted mostly for the purposes of clarifying this character's relationship with this part of their identity and culture.

Realism is, quite frankly, optional in fantasy (or rather, you define what "real" actually means) but I do tend to strive for realism within AToTaT's politics, if not only because it's fun. When delving into (rightfully!) complex issues—like ethnic conflict for example—it's necessary to do your homework (and hire sensitivity readers afterward) if it's not a topic you are familiar with or related to. However, that exact process is not something I will be discussing in this post and I encourage you to do your own research.

You also want to take into consideration how these countries are related to each other. For me personally, I almost exclusively did this for the two current conflicts (i.e. actively disputed treaties, current armed conflicts) within the world, but I did briefly touch on how those relationships came to be, as you can see above.

internal relations.

Internal relations is where things start to get more complex and also more specific to the world my WIP takes place in. For this section, you need to have already realized a great deal in regards to major political institutions (if you have them!) and most importantly, cultural attitudes.

I split my internal relations section into seven sub-sections, which included: Social Cleavages, Justice System, Garrison, Navy, Cults vs. Church, Crime, and Trade.

For a Wikipedia definition, a social cleavage is "a historically determined social or cultural line which divides citizens within a society into groups with differing political interests, resulting in political conflict among these groups." AKA sexy, sexy plot tension.

The social cleavages of Vsyhna mostly revolve around social class (in-world called "rank"), an urban/rural divide, and nationality, which I note as being "considerably not a social cleavage." It appears I should have listened to my Wikipedia-defined advice. That said, rank was described at length for its importance to the religion, general structure within government, linguistic flavor (dialects!), and laws. It's one of my largest social themes and connects to almost everything within the book, including the magic system.

Speaking of magic, as I didn't mention it within my seven sub-categories above, I should note that however magic works in your society should also be included. In my case, it's heavily intertwined with religion and social class (access to the information that allows people to use magic, I mean) and so I didn't feel the need to clarify its role with an entirely new section, but how you do this is entirely up to you. It's also up to you to include a magic system, as in reality, you don't necessarily need one. I also have a completely separate Dropbox doc for most of these things anyway (re:knowing stuff before you jump into this.)

The justice system is something I find is often not immediately thought about when it comes to fantasy, but from a very general point of view, this also encompasses subjects such as law codes, the punishment for breaking those codes, and what trials look like, if you have them. This can tell us much about your culture, what they value, and more importantly, how much they value it.

For example, continuing with my themes of classism, sumptuary laws are a large part of Vsyhnian society, i.e. laws that forbid the usage of certain goods to lower classes. Given that it's illegal for someone of lowborn status to have, let's say silk, it creates a) a prime criminal market (trading "illegal" goods), b) a need to crack down on this market, and c) further severs the relationship between upper and lower classes, given that the fairness of the justice system is then put under scrutiny. Indeed, the fact that it's the Church that controls the justice system, you have a similar tension in the department of faith, and I haven't even begun to talk about how the treatment during trials differs.

I often find military to be the greatest emphasis within quite a lot of political fantasy, that being, the mobility of large land armies or prowess at sea. For me personally, I find this to be rather boring (both on accounts of reading and writing) so I did come at this with a lens of interest in the personal relationships of these people and actual organization within the military. Mostly, I used what I knew from external relationships and current conflicts to create something that could be used later on if I needed it, as it's not heavily featured (at least not in the first book!) Treaties, blockades, relationships between commanding officers, and relationships with piracy.

On notes of realism, I went with the very classic These Island People Have A Great Navy, as, historically, they tend to.

We should all know by now how important religion, or lack thereof, is in epic fantasy, and while I could go on about this for several hours, this is a political relations doc, so I focussed on the tension between sects of the main religion. How different leaders within the religion interacted with other members of government is a topic for personal relations, however, if not only because they're heavily featured, and there are several (about nine actual descriptions.)

This culminated by way of cults vs. the Church, differing ideologies within fundamental concepts of the religion, and generally how they're seen by Vsyhnian society (and—you guessed it—social class.) As an example, I wrote, "All of these organizations consider the Holy Book Rovnokh to be canon and true within their faiths, though it is the Codex Drkha that is often disputed in validity. This is the result of their own written dogma, which may convey entirely different personalities and oblation tales, or emphasis on a very specific aspect of the mortal godchild then how they are presented in the Codex."

It is important to consider, before even delving into differences, what the fundamentals of each sect or division within your religion are speaking on. Think of the historical context that may have brought about such a concept, or even fuzzy lines within canon texts. Here's another example, "The seventh mortal godchild is not mentioned within the Codex and therefore not considered a valid mortal godchild, though Vrah’s appearance in the Holy Book and the Children of the Bone’s own text—which are older than the Codex—say otherwise. 'Vrah' is more used as a term to describe magic and not at all a person, when it is mentioned in the Codex."

Crime and trade, as you can imagine in a society plagued by rules that dictate trade—and in many cases make the trade of certain items a crime—is quite important. As I hinted earlier in the justice system section, the "illegal" trade of certain goods, which goes against sumptuary laws. That said, crime happens for a number of different reasons, and I took the time here to think about partner organizations, illegal magic producers, and gangs.

Crime can actually be an excellent tool of worldbuilding, if not only for the fact that it is so specific to the country and history it resides in. Why does something need to be stolen? Fabricated? Spied on? And who is getting the most out of it?

Trade was something I rather lazily did with the above Vsyhnian roadmap—I don't plan on discussing economics at all, nor following merchants as they move goods though the country.

I want to note once more that all of this is extremely relative information; what you need to write about to create political tension is entirely up to you and your story. As a general bit of advice, however, it is helpful to ensure that everything can come back around to your characters—if not now, then at some point within the series or story as a whole. Politics can become boring very easily, especially when not personal.

personal relations.

For our final and most interesting section, I did two, somewhat important things before actually writing anything out; that being creating two charts. The first is a political alignment chart, the second is a chart that defines the different positions of government. While again, this is totally relative, this is what I came up with:

Take the time to think about and research other forms of government, what each "branch" might do, and how they do it. More importantly though, think about how the culture and religion would, can, or do influence the government, and how the government has responded to such action. Look to history especially!

The charts allowed me to very easily place my main characters, their families, and all the previous groups of people (gangs, cults, social classes) into categories that can then, more or less, directly define their relationships with one another. This made the process that I will now describe to you a little less tedious.

I divided this category into three sections: Nobleborn Houses (that being houses of great import and high rank), the Prelacy (leaders of the Church), and Others of Note.

There are ten nobleborn houses, however, I only did mass amounts of details for five of the most important. I should also note that two of my four main characters are a part of two of these houses, and it's for that reason that I felt I needed to be as in-depth as possible. For Houses, the organization went something like this:

House Name:

A general description of the house, its history, and how it rose to power, as well as what they generally control within the government or country and how long they've had this position.

Try to be as diverse as possible within these descriptions—cover a lot of different bases and don't be afraid to do it! A family rising to power as a result of the money they, for example, gained from growing roses says a lot about the culture and commerce of a particular country.

Public Opinion:

What the people think of this family, given all social standings and occupations. Naturally, when I say all, I don't mean think about what every carpenter thinks of the royal family, I just made sure it was a general consensus!

Opinion of the Other Five Houses:

This, I tended to keep as short as possible, but like the external relations above, I wanted to know what and how the relationship was what it was. For several, I already had an idea, but for...so many more I did not (hear the pain in my voice? there's pain in my voice.)

Opinion of the Remaining Houses:

Shorter than even short as possible, but the same idea as before.

Main Members:

Probably one of the more important sections; I listed out all the members of the main part of the family, that is, the immediate family of the person involved in government (or main character.) This not only defines your side characters—of which there are bound to be many—but also clarifies the conflicting motives of the people in charge. And they should conflict, hopefully with the motives of your main characters. Extended family was discussed when important, such as prominent aunts, uncles, or grandparents, but for sake of simplicity, lengthy descriptions were kept for parents and children.

I also included charts after this about minor houses sworn to these noble houses, but to be completely honest, I didn't fill out most. That said, I did repeat this process for all five houses, and the good news, is that after you talk about the relationship with one of the other five, you're done completely, so, yay one less bullet point each time. Also, don't feel pressured to have a name for everyone or everything! In fact, I mostly skip over names of people unless I really have to know them in text, far more characters are simply [BROTHER] or [PARENT], though this could be a laziness thing. Or a conlang one.

A worldbuilding note: I also included house colors, sigils, and heads in this instance, as well as their connection to certain magical oaths.

For the remaining five nobleborn houses, I only listed house heads, sigils, and colors, if not only because I described their relationship with everyone else, earlier. That said, I also included house heir and extra notes, if I needed them.

The Prelacy was organized slightly differently, as important members of the Church, they don't necessarily have family members interacting with them. Instead, I focussed on backstories, their relationships with the Arkan (the monarch, sort of), and once more, motive (and personalities, given that I don't give side characters a full oc profile.)

As shown in the chart above, there is one High Vokhsv and six Vokhvs that work under them; the former had a more in-depth section of text, however, the six got just about as much detail as the lesser five noble houses.

My last and final section was short and sweet (thank God) and covered two topics very briefly, that are so world-specific I won't even bother explaining them. That said! That's what this section is for; anything else that you might have missed.

I won't lie, the personal relations section was probably the most time-consuming part of this entire doc, but in the end, it did pay off. The entire thing took about from the 22nd of February to the 18th of April, and came out to around 30k. Do I suggest you also write this much? Not unless you feel like you need it. I don't really plan out plot, so for me, this was my plan, hence the length and detail.

Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed this far too long breakdown of my political reference doc of my WIP, A Treatise of Tyrants and Thieves and good luck with your own process, writing, and research <3

references.

Some links I found helpful:

The template link, once more ($1).

Brandon Sanderson's 2020 creative writing lectures (YouTube)

Designing a fantasy legal system (Worldbuilding Stack Exchange)

Unpacking Folk Tales/Motif Index (Uni. of Alberta)

Real Inequality in Europe since 1500 (Journal, PDF)

Diplomacy (Wikipedia)

Public Diplomacy in Early Modern Europe (Journal)

The Spy Chiefs or Renaissance Venice: Intelligence Leadership in the Early Modern World (Oxford Brookes Uni., PDF)

Branches of the U.S. military (SOU)

those who were interested.

@chovansjtsjina @zielenheil @lord-fallen @ninazeniks @viesceral @introverteddumbass @wisteria-eventide & anyone else, feel free to reply, send an ask, or dm me about questions!

Writing Tip!

An easy way to tell if you’re showing instead of telling is how much you’re using is/was. My English professor explained this to me a few semesters ago, and while he just wanted varied sentence structure in my papers, it also works very well for creative writing. 

This isn’t to say that is and was are bad verbs, but rather that they are very basic and do not express anything beyond the fact that something exists. Sometimes, that’s all you need to know in a sentence, but often, the writer can make the story or the characters more engaging by explaining who someone is, what something is, where something is, when something is, why something is, or how something or someone is more powerfully by using one of a few tactics.

The first method is to use strong verbs. “Strong verbs” is a term that gets thrown around a lot, but a strong verb is simply a verb that explains what action is happening as clearly as possibly. For instance, when one “jumps” off the diving board, the reader doesn’t know how the person jumped, but the reader will be able to more clearly see the action if you write “she dove” or “he cannonballed” or “she belly-flopped.” Be aware of who is reading your writing and who the narrator is. In general, if your target demographic probably doesn’t know the word or if your narrator wouldn’t know the word, use a simpler, less precise verb and use adverbs to make it specific.

Another way is to show why the narrator was saying “it is/she was/there is” in the first place. Think of the is/was statement as the disease. You want your reader to guess the disease, so you start describing symptoms. For instance, “She is mourning her husband.” vs. “She stared at the empty seat at the table, unfazed by her mother’s repeated attempts to get her attention.” This way is more rambly than just swapping boring verbs for strong verbs, but it is a good way to show the narrator’s experience in life, the narrator’s biases, the narrator’s emotional state, etc. 

One other way is to make the object of the sentence the subject instead. This just means that whatever “is/was” is now what the sentence is about. This is a simple fix in cases when the object is doing something in the sentence. Instead of “There was a ball rolling past her feet.” write “A ball rolled past her feet.”

Let me illustrate:

How you can use varied word choice to show who is being talked about:

Bland: Jason’s dad was standing in front of Jason. 

Engaging: His dad loomed over him.

By using a stronger verb, the more hostile loomed, the reader gets a better idea of who Jason’s dad is and how Jason feels about him.

How you can use varied word choice to show who is talking:

Bland: Macy was sitting at the edge of her seat.

Engaging: Macy balanced very carefully at the very edge of the seat so her feet could touch the floor, because Macy was a very big girl now.

The POV character is a young girl at an age where she wants to be perceived as older than the height of chair legs and the lack of height of her own legs will let her be. She also refers unironically to herself as a big girl in her own thoughts, something grownups generally do not do. By expanding on the reason for the action instead of the action itself and with careful word choice, you can set the tone of the character and of the story.

How you can use varied word choice to show what something is:

Bland: That is a tree branch blowing against the window.

Still bland but better: A tree branch blew against the window.

Engaging: The branch smacked against the window. 

This is an example of taking the object (the thing in the sentence that the verb is happening to) in this case “branch” and make it the subject. In the still bland but better version of the sentence, the fact that the tree branch is blowing against the window is obvious, but that doesn’t tell us anything about how the narrator feels about what the tree branch is doing. That tells us what, but it does not tell us what the character feels about this thing. Smacked is a more violent, sudden, startling verb that communicates suddenness, surprise, and unease.

How you can use varied word choice to show where something is:

Bland: The phone was on the far side of the nightstand. 

Engaging: She flopped an arm blindly across the nightstand, but her fingers hit empty air just shy of the faint glow of her phone.

The engaging version of this sentence tells you more about the character’s mental state, fatigued, while also communicating where the phone is. Also, using a more descriptive word like flopped gives the reader a clearer mental image of what is physically happening in the scene.

How you can use varied word choice to show when something is set:

Bland: It was the early two thousands.

Engaging: Jana looked around the room and saw many a teenage male heinie, but not a belt among them.

Noting fashion trends, like sagging pants or hoop skirts, can reinforce the time period that you’re writing in and how the narrator fits or does not fit into that time period.

How you can use varied word choice to show when (what time) something is:

Bland: It was seven P.M. on a summer night.

Engaging: He watched the sun dip below the far reaches of the ocean as he wiped the sweat from his brow.

The engaging version of this sentence uses a few details to show about what time and when in the year this sentence takes place: it is sunset, so the exact time isn’t stated, but the rough time is implied; the ocean does exist at times of the year when humans aren’t on it as much (and here I though the entire state of Hawaii disappeared between September and April) but most readers will associate the beach with summer; and if the reader didn’t get the clue about the traditionally seasonal location, it is hot enough to make the main character sweat. 

How you can use varied word choice to show why the narrator believes something:

Bland: Kai is a good friend.

Engaging: Kai held her hair away from her face as she threw up into the toilet bowl for the fourth time that night.

Anyone can say anything about anyone else, but the best way to get a reader to like a character, an idea, or a thing is to show them why they should like that thing. Instead of making bland moral claims like “Love is stronger than hate.” tell me how the Samaritan stopped to save the Jew, or how the enemies put aside their differences to protect what they care about. Instead of saying “He was scared of his dad.” show me the beer cans and the slurred speech, show me the belt falling and the voice yelling. Show the reader why.

How you can use varied word choice to show how something is:

Bland: The woman was looking at him.

Engaging: The woman ogled him.

Strong verbs again! Use strong verbs that are emotionally charged when you’re talking about emotionally charged situations! Being ogled is an uncomfortable sensation for the person being ogled, and it also shows disrespect on the part of the person ogling. 

Keep in mind that these are guidelines! Sometimes is is the best word for the job, and don’t stress if you have a lot of is/was in your stories. Just because they’re bland doesn’t mean that sometimes you need bland verbs to communicate what you want to communicate. Still, you don’t want vagueness to be your crutch, either. Practice showing instead of telling when showing is more important, but have fun with it! Besides, you can always edit whatever you hate or are unsure of now sometime later. 

Don’t sweat! Go write awesome papers and stories!

write EVERY DAY. here's how.

where inspiration fails, habit will always have your back. this is why it's important to build writing into your life as a habit, if you ever want to finish a project or improve your skills.

back in 2018, i (nat) was a college student without much going for me. i was feeling creatively stifled and insecure and like i didn't have TIME to write good. and i was right. i didn't have time to write GOOD. but i did have time to write SOMETHING. so that january, i built the habit. i wrote every single day in 2018, and almost every single day since.

because once you establish the habit, it becomes safer to skip a day (or three days) here and there. you will at least THINK about writing every day, even if you go straight from work to social plans to bed, or you're on vacation, or you're too sick to write. and that thinking is part of the habit!

here are the tips i followed to make this happen.

-pick a reasonable goal. starting off, mine was 300 words. now, i don't follow a goal, because the habit is so solid i don't need to. but 300 words is easy and quick. and if you give a pig a pancake, they'll probably have days where they write 500, 1000, even 3k words.

-log your word count. this is interesting to look back on every new year's eve, and it provides accountability. do this however you like; a spreadsheet, a physical notebook, a note in your phone, each day's section in your planner, whatever works for you. i have a channel in my personal discord server where i log mine.

-do NOT edit as you go. just write write write. if you feel like something you wrote needs work, yeah, it probably does-- everything needs to be edited, but that's a problem for later. highlight sentences you can't get right or make note of them to edit LATER. but do not edit as you go!

-write self-indulgent crap. fanfiction, shitty poetry, manifestos, rants, self insert fantasy romance, whatever floats your boat. having a shitty self-indulgent backup story to work on when i didn't feel like writing for the projects i cared about really helped get me in the habit. write for an audience of one!

-journal if you can't write. this may not necessarily build your skill as much as writing regular prose would, but it does help you maintain the habit and it can be useful in lots of other ways.

-think outside the box. write trivia questions. write a list of your favorite childhood toys. write a review of the book you're reading. i'm writing this post, that's going toward my word count for the day. again, this is still writing, and it helps maintain the habit.

-get comfortable writing on your phone. this took me a long time, but making it over this hurdle has saved my habit so many times.

you'll be surprised at the cool shit you end up writing on those days when you swore you weren't inspired enough. and you'll be delighted with how much progress you will make honing your craft!

happy writing! if you have any questions about how to implement any of these tips, our ask box is always open.

Writing tool for your fight scenes.

Can you hear your characters?

I have a whole lot of trouble making my dialogue sound natural if I don’t know what my characters sound like. Having a strong sense of their voice can help distinguish your characters from each other, show their personalities, and make them more engaging to readers. 

Here’s some details to think over if you’re trying to nail down a character’s voice:

Speed

Pitch

Volume

Accent

Vocabulary

Amount spoken

Willingness to speak

Stutters

Hesitations

Repetitions

Quirks 

Common phrases 

Other questions to ask:

Do their voices or the way they talk change depending on who they’re talking to or the situation they’re in? 

How can their personality come through their voice? Their sarcasm, empathy, awkwardness, etc. 

What in their backstory contributes to the way they talk? 

When they make a statement, how often does it come off as unsure or questioning, versus confident and factual? 

How does their voice relate or coexist with their body language? 

advice of the day: let your rough draft be shitty. Let it be full of corner notes of “I dont know what the fuck this means” and “expand on this later” let it have jumps and spelling errors and weird descriptions! It will help you get to that beautiful final draft so much more than getting frustrated and deleting all of it because you refuse to let yourself write “poorly”

dont get mad at cakebatter for not being a finished cake when you haven’t put it in the oven yet! It’s all apart of the process. 

I probably shouldn't admit this about something I wrote, but I accidentally re-read Carnivore all the time. I'll open it to look something up to reference in Gripped Tight and then start reading like "oh shit, this was good. oh dang i did that so true of me. oh wow i'd forgotten that part i love that jeez!" lol

things people do in real world dialogue:

• laugh at their own jokes

• don’t finish/say complete sentences

• interrupt a line of thought with a sudden new one

• say ‘uh’ between words when unsure

• accidentally blend multiple words together, and may start the sentence over again

• repeat filler words such as ‘like’ ‘literally’ ‘really’ ‘anyways’ and ‘i think’

• begin and/or end sentences with phrases such as ‘eh’ and ‘you know’, and may make those phrases into question form to get another’s input

• repeat words/phrases when in an excited state

• words fizzle out upon realizing no one is listening

• repeat themselves when others don’t understand what they’re saying, as well as to get their point across

• reply nonverbally such as hand gestures, facial expressions, random noises, movement, and even silence