maes-writing

[maes-writing]

‘From Six Feet Under’

This little lady will be up on the store as a limited edition print tomorrow, Thurs 26th Nov 12PM (PT)!

More details can be found on my web store here

[maes-writing]

[maes-writing]

WHAT DEVELOPS THE STORY WORLD?

1. TRAVEL – journeying from one location to another not only gives you opportunities to describe different places, it also allows you to develop:

Relative distances

Relative locations

Roads or ways

Modes of transport

Methods of navigation

The status of travellers/foreigners

The state of the home world

2. VIEWPOINTS – using a variety of different characters as lenses through which to view the world helps you develop greater depth and breadth.

3. GROUPS vs. INDIVIDUALS – cultures are created by the interaction between groups and individuals. Although dealing with larger groups of characters may lead you to make generalisations, it’s helpful for developing the “big picture” and contrasting it to the private and specific.

4. INTERNAL vs. EXTERNAL – the counterchange between the character’s internal and external worlds, and how the perception of one influences the other (for example, through symbols, metaphors, projection, manifestation, and bias) is a rich vein of material for developing your story world.

5. HOME – a character’s home or “ordinary world” is often an essential component of the story world, allowing you to create contrast and determine the character’s (and reader’s) perception of new cultures. And of course, it makes the return journey possible.

6. REVISITING – if you’ve never studied the worldbuilding of your favourite novels, you might be surprised to find how often characters revisit locations. This kind of repetition really cements the importance of a particular place in the character’s life.

7. TIME – placing the world in a timeline has many uses:

Develop history

Emphasise mortality

Describe (degenerative or regenerative) cycles

Show repetition

Show how things are forgotten or lost

Describe slower, long-term change

Give events varying degrees of temporal (and narrative) weight

[maes-writing]

theres like a guarantee that if someone’s url ends in “course” or “discourse” theyre an asshole

[maes-writing]

I’m writing a first draft and reminding myself that I’m simply shovelling sand into a box so that later I can build castles.

Shannon Hale (via writingdotcoffee)

[maes-writing]

[maes-writing]

allow me to slip into something a little more… comfortable *is enveloped in fog and disappears never to be seen or heard from again*

[maes-writing]

gentle reminder to you — yes, you — that your writing is better than you think it is and it’s okay to feel proud of it

[maes-writing]

how it started

how it’s going

[maes-writing]

Grass pokemon in spring

[maes-writing]

[maes-writing]

Someone: hey, if you’re a writer, why don’t I ever see you writing?

Me, a writer who’s been daydreaming about three characters, two unwritten chapters, some scraps of dialogue, and a partial plot that still needs to be heated up in the microwave before it’s usable:

[maes-writing]

apparently, I should “use synonyms to avoid repetition”

juice

[maes-writing]

bro does anyone have tips on making my character’s voices distinct?

i feel like so many of my characters sound the same, and I don’t know how to fix it :/

[maes-writing]

“Writing Problems”

[maes-writing]

Ming-Na Wen, the Orginial Voice of Mulan, in Mulan (2020)

Bonus:

…so was her daughter

[maes-writing]

･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* 👁️👅👁️*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ

(based on this image)