Apr

29

Writing Advice from K. A. Applegate

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K. A. Applegate, creator of the Animorphs series (which both my kids loved) was interviewed on Reddit (I learned about it from The Mary Sue). In the conversation, when asked about writing, she said:

As for advice: write. That’s thing one. Write stuff that sucks. It always sucks when you start. Keep sucking, then fix it. That’s the whole job…

I love that statement. It’s so true. Nothing you ever write is perfect the first time the words hit the page.

Feb

17

How To Get Your Worldbuilding Into Your Story

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We’ve all heard it. An info dump is the worst possible way to get information across to the reader. The stereotypical one is at the beginning, where the author tries to get everything about the world into the reader’s head when the story starts. Problem is you still need to get the info across. To do it, you need to be sneaky.
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Feb

15

The Importance of Backstory

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As writers, the need to do worldbuilding is a given. Without it, there’s no world for your stories to take place in. Sometimes, though, we forget that the world didn’t just spring to life when the story starts. Things happened in the past – wars, love affairs, mage wars, World War III. You know what I mean. All the your characters have a history. Don’t you think you ought to know what it is before you start writing? Yes, this could be considered part of worldbuilding – the development of the characters. More accurately, I think, would be to call it backstory.

What is backstory? It’s the life your character lived before he walked onto the pages of your story. It’s his history, what defined and molded her and made her what she is today. It explains his motivations, what he holds dear.

K.M. Weiland wrote an excellent article about it on her blog WordPlay. I’d like to quote part of what she posted:

“The key to crafting stories with many layers—stories with depth and ballast—is to never ignore the blank spaces in your characters. Don’t let them get away with telling you only what they must to make the story work. Search out the shadows in their pasts, discover their parents, their childhood friends, their catalysts. Don’t just accept that your main character is a cop; find out why he became a cop. Don’t just slap a scar on your heroine; discover where the scar came from. “

I couldn’t agree more. The better you know your characters, the better your can write them. Giving them a history gives you a huge resource to draw on. Being able to have the hero’s buddy say “Remember that time in Malta” helps support the reader’s being drawn into the hero’s life at that moment. It makes them more of a person, someone with a past – just like we do.

Feb

1

How to Organize Your Worldbuilding Notes

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Before we go any further, I want to come out and say there’s no one true way to organize anything. You need to discover what works for you and what doesn’t, and use that. My goal is to show you one way of doing things, and give you a place to start.

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Jan

18

The World Government

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Or perhaps, more accurately, the government of the world you’re writing about.

I happened across Mary Catelli’s LiveJournal entry from back in 2008 called “politics of worldbuilding“. She brings up the thought of government, and revolution. I think she’s got a good point.

Much of the Western world lives in some form or another of democracy, so we don’t think much about how other governments work. I think it’s a good thing for writers to do a bit of research into them before saying “the Kingdom of the Sea is a monarchy because I said so”. Nor does it make sense to have people in rebellion, trying to overturn the monarchy in favor of another form of government – even if it is democracy.

Why deciding on a form of government, you really do need to look at the history of the nation. I personally don’t think that Ancient Greece with its city-states could easily form up into a single nation under a king. In my mind, it’d more likely be some sort of coalition – unless one city-state goes out and conquers all the others.

If you’re contemplating having the villain (or heck, even the hero) being involved in a revolution, you need to come up with a reason why – and not because you want a revolution for the story. Most people will be happy with the status quo, or even be appalled when presented with the thought of overthrowing the government for a completely new style (like monarchy to democracy). The villain can’t want to foment revolution because he’s the bad guy any more than the heroes because the bad guy is the kind (or whoever is in power).

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