Let The World Be Saved By Darkness, For Once. Instead Of Blazing Light - Too Bright And Infinitely Cold

Let the world be saved by darkness, for once. Instead of blazing light - too bright and infinitely cold to comprehend even as it gives the illusion of warmth, let it be an all-consuming dark that snuffs out the calamity approaching. Fire or ice, the rage of a superstorm, some horror adrift in the vastness of space - whatever this supposed apocalyptic event might be, let it reach what it believes to be it’s victory only to be devoured in a lightless gulf.

There are things in the dark we will never know. Never have a name for. Things that have watched and waited from beyond the reaches of our limited memory as a species and will doubtless watch us go, in the end.

Let it be that dark which gives the battered heroine/hero their relief. The tingling rush of the end filling their veins, the weighty hopelessness, now left to hang in the air as all else is swallowed by an impenetrable abyss.

Let the air ring - for silence, true silence - has descended. Let the weapon in the savior’s grasp quiver, because it was never supposed to be over so quickly. Not like that. Not before they’d ever had a chance to fight at all.

Let them sense, just for an extended, weightless moment, the presence of something huge and dark and deep all around them. How they are not alone and never have been, not even in those comforting instances of the womb.

Let the one who’d been prepared to fight put aside their weapon, breathe in the thick air with a shaky inhale, and go home.

The light has demanded enough sacrifices. How many have burned themselves alive in its pyre, desperate and willing to throw themselves into the blaze if it meant others could benefit from the flicker of warmth? Of hope?

Let the champion of the tale go home, shed their armor, and crawl into bed. Let them look out into the darkness of sudden night and see, distant and strange, the glitter of delicate stars beyond their reach.

The dark has always been. When the last flicker of light goes, it will still remain.

The dark has always kept us safe.

Things I Like in Books

- Rivals to lovers. Trying to upstage the other person at every possible opportunity...being equally matched in everything no matter how hard they try...continuing the rivalry because without it they have no reason to interact...it hits every single time

- Character A is injured and Character B absolutely pulverizes the enemy because they're overwhelmed with their fear and love for A :)

- Or: Character A being wounded/ill but hiding their true condition until they finally collapse from it

- Finally, I present to you: Character A tending to Character B’s wounds and acting passive-aggressive because they’re so worried about B

- The “I’m yours” love confession. I’m just a huge sucker for this trope. Not only is it really sweet, but it doesn’t have any possessive meaning. I just find it more romantic than “You’re mine”, too. It’s like you’re promising everything, all your faults and strengths and hopes to another person, and you’re receiving the same thing in return...it’s like a totally equal partnership

- THE ITALICIZED “oh”

- Grumpy x sunshine (bonus if there’s a grumpy girl and sunshine guy)

- The boy falls first

- Slowburn romance

- Dynamics where Character B constantly says, “Character A, no” and Character A replies with, “Character A, yes”

- Characters saying they can definitely do something, and then the scene cuts to them not being able to do the thing

- Found family (bonus points if they share exactly three braincells)

- Corruption arcs, especially female corruption arcs

- Strong female villains who don’t have love as their one motive

- A normally calm character going absolutely feral

- Characters who like reading

- TITLE DROPS! I always get so excited when I come across them

- Strong female friendships

Developing a Plot

Credit: https://www.masterclass.com/articles/how-to-master-the-art-of-plot-development#what-are-the-elements-of-a-good-plot

Introduction

Plot, also known as the bane of writers everywhere. How are you supposed to keep your readers entertained when there are so many other things they could be doing? How can you stretch out the events enough to cover tens or hundreds of pages? There is no one way to approach plotting, but there are ways to make it easier. In the end, the best way to plot is to practice!

Sketch out a plot outline

Mapping out your plot ideas can streamline your fiction writing process and help you through periods of writer’s block. The extent to which a writer outline varies, but plotters, plantsers, and pantsers alike can pick and choose which of these tips to use!

One way is to start with a freewriting session. Brainstorm scene ideas, story points, and character information. Next, organize your basic ideas into an outline to get your basic plot structure down. Place your major beats into your outline, and then create the scenes between these beats to create continuity in your storyline.

Start with the action

Your exposition--or the background information and worldbuilding for your book--has several important duties. It identifies the main character, establishes the setting and the themes of your story, and launches the plot. You need to write all this in a way that hooks the reader and engages them through the entire novel. One way to do that is by diving right into the action, dropping your reader into the scene in medias res, or Latin for “in the midst of things.” This sets the pace from the beginning and creates a strong open that engages a reader.

Lay the groundwork for the climax during the rising action

Now that you’ve set the stage, the rising action is where you really build the plot of your story, develop characters, and propel the tension towards the climax--the most active and dramatic part of the book. Over the course of the rising action, drop reminders of the conflict that’s driving the plot. Accomplish this by raising the stakes with plot points--dramatic turning points that force the protagonist to make crucial decisions that send the story in new directions. Adding these surprising plot twists keeps the momentum moving. Plot points also help deepen character development by revealing their strengths and flaws.

Create a rich narrative with subplots

A good story has several plotlines running through the narrative. Write subplots to weave in and out of your main plot. A subplot is a shorter side-story that introduces secondary characters, provides a backstory that informs a character's actions and motivations, and supports the themes established in the main plot. A common subplot is romance, but there are so many more options.

Leave your readers satisfied

When the tension has reached its peak, it’s time for the climax to resolve the conflict. If you have great exposition and dramatic rising action, then this final face-off between the protagonist and antagonist should be a big payoff. Finally, write an ending that ties up loose ends and closes out character arcs--this can happen in either a final chapter or an epilogue (as a reader, though, I prefer the epilogue). Readers will be glad they followed the story through to this satisfying resolution!

Read other authors

All great writers employ their own writing style and creative process to develop a plot with the five structural elements. If you want to refine the writing process and learn how to develop a great plot, read from writers similar to you. You might pick a bestseller, like a Rick Riordan book, and study it as an example of how plot and humor work together to play well to a large audience. Determine which authors you want to observe and which authors are like you.

This also comes in handy later, when you want to make comparisons between other works and authors and your book. For example, I’d describe my own WIP as “An Ember in the Ashes meets The Poppy War.”

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the-writer-muse

3 years ago

“Public libraries are such important, lovely places!” Yes but do you GO there. Do you STUDY there. Do you meet friends and get coffee there. Do you borrow the FREE, ZERO SUBSCRIPTION, ZERO TRACKING books, audiobooks, ebooks, and films. Have you checked out their events and schemes. Do you sign up for the low cost courses in ASL or knitting or programming or writing your CV that they probably run. Do you know they probably have myriad of schemes to help low income families. Do you hire their low cost rooms if you need them. Have you joined their social groups. Do you use the FREE COMPUTERS. Do you even know what your library is trying to offer you. Listen, the library shouldn’t just exist for you as a nice idea. That’s why more libraries shut every year

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the-writer-muse

3 years ago

we don’t talk abt how stressful buying new glasses frames is. ur shopping for your whole personality there. life on the line. do or die. all for two pieces of glass and some sticks

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the-writer-muse

3 years ago

Having done more research and not found this in the tags... What can be done to respectfully write a fantasy novel with indigenous cultures in it, as a non-indigenous author? Specifically ones that have suffered in the ways that those in the continental USA have? I've heard it's better to choose one tribe as a basis, I've heard it's better to use no tribe as a basis, I've heard you can use some aspects but not the whole, I've heard use nothing unless it's the whole. What's the best approach?

Coding Fantasy Indigenous Peoples

You’re getting conflicting answers because there is truly no right answer to this question, as with most things when it comes to representation. Some people will prefer one thing, others something else. If you’re trying to find the Perfect Path Without Backlash, it doesn’t exist. Sorry.

Also, just as a note, a lot of nations cross the border between Canada and the United States, because that border is artificial and colonial. So you might very well be looking at Canada even if you’ve picked an “American” tribe.

In my personal, singular Indigenous opinion, my process would look something like this:

1- Pick A Region First

Region will give you the environment that the tribe(s) live in (I’ll get to that plural in a second), which will then inform basically everything about how they built their customs. A lot of Indigenous beliefs are tied to natural resources and constrains of the land, so it’s very hard to code an Indigenous society without figuring out what sort of land you’re working with.

This applies even if you’re working outside of the Continental US, because even just within the States they’re subjugating wide swaths of Polynesia (including Hawai’i), Alaska, the Philippines, etc. Not to mention how many Indigenous groups there are around the globe being erased by their local states.

Indigenous peoples are everywhere. You don’t have to include them all the time, but they exist beyond Turtle Island.

2- See Who Lived There

And now, the plural. Because unlike a lot of Western places, there’s a lot more nomadic groups when it comes to Indigenous peoples.

So the region you picked could have multiple groups that cycle through the same landscape, and this will also inform the representation. Did they like each other? Or were they traditionally enemies?

How about in lands that changed hands a lot? Because the borders of what Native population owned what lands are flexible, and you can find areas where the region changed hands a dozen times over even just a couple hundred years. How will you handle that?

Now here’s your first fork in the road: You can combine the groups that were friendly (key word: friendly) with each other into one large group, or you can have multiple Indigenous groups in the worldbuilding that are mentioned in passing, like how x cycles through in certain seasons, and y in another.

I would not follow this fork if they were traditionally enemies. Because it’s just… not respectful to have two cultures that were incompatible enough they were enemies for large swaths of their history together. It does happen where traditional enemies sometimes live together for awhile, but if you’re an outsider, I’d keep them separate.

This does mean that if you’ve picked a region with traditional enemies, you’re going to need both groups. Because the “enemies” part will have also shaped the culture, like how many men were alive in ages where men were expected to be warriors. Cultures adapt for certain percentages of the population to die in war, after all.

This also provides an interesting avenue for your non-Indigenous population, because are they allied with one group? Both? How do they maintain relationships? If these non-Indigenous people are not colonial, then be very careful not to have them try to play both sides too hard, because helping both sides kill the other is a tool of colonialism. If they are colonial, they’re going to be doing this and it’ll be a villain move.

Personally, I’d toss more diversity instead of less because it helps avoid tokenism. Instead of having this One Token Nomadic Group, the One Token Indigenous Group, you have two, or three, and you’re showing a diversity of cultures instead of just throwing in Natives because you feel like you have to in order to be diverse.

But if you do want to blend (which might be useful, even if you just want to make a new culture that mixes “European” with Indigenous as people intermarry), I’d read this post: Pulling From Multiple Indigenous Legends

3- See what exists and what’s open

A lot of Indigenous practices are closed, meaning we don’t tell them to outsiders. At all. This doesn’t mean that those practices aren’t out there as appropriated pieces of “folklore”, but you need to be aware that some folklore is Indigenous and therefore should be closed.

Putting these closed practices in fantasy is generally considered a bad move (see: almost every non-Indigenous use of the w3ndigo ever), unless you can work closely with the tribe to figure out how to do it respectfully (see: Teen Wolf doing a Skinwalkers episode with the Navajo; ironically enough they did not work with the Cree when they had a w3ndigo episode, as far as I can tell)

I’d suggest reading this post: All Myths Are True, Native Spirits Invisible to Outsiders for how to include closed practices.

4- Magic gets its own point

The thing about fantasy is that you’re dealing with the supernatural, and in my experience on WWC, some of the biggest “uh” moments are whenever people don’t realize how culturally Christian their magic systems are, and how incompatible they are with Indigenous beliefs.

So you’re going to need a degree of research into Native mindset, and then extrapolate what sorts of things that make sense for them. This can fill in some blanks for not touching Native spirituality with a ten foot pole, but you are going to need extensive research to have it actually make sense.

Read through the tag and note every time I poke at the concept that Natives are more magically attuned, that there’s something like “the gods told me to”, or other little tiny “basic” things in a lot of fantasy that just don’t feel like they fit.

Or, come back after you’ve gone through steps 1 to 3 and can be more specific!

Still, I would suggest you do this sort of research anyway just to be respectful. Figuring out how magic works and dovetails with Native populations is just a nice side benefit.

Overall:

To very directly answer your questions:

Best way to respectfully include Indigenous cultures in fantasy: I’d prefer very little colonialism if any; no such thing as noble savage (aka: we are not “better” because we live closer to nature and don’t have the humdrum of Western society); complex, rich societies with social rules and the same level of care you’d give Western cultures; just generally considered valuable, complex, and sustainable.

Better to use one tribe and hard code or no tribes and blend: Whatever makes sense for the story, but I’d err on the side of trying to capture the feel of the area with the peoples who already populated it. Like, if you’re trying to work with an area that has a confederacy of tribes, you’d be better off coding multiple tribes within that confederacy because being part of a confederacy is usually pretty important to tribe leadership and general functioning of the group; if you’re writing an area with a lot of roaming nomads, you’d be better to have multiple nomadic groups; etc.

Some aspects but not whole vs the whole: Keep closed practices closed, and figure out where magic and your unique worldbuilding breaks how an Indigenous group would function in the world.

What’s the best approach: If you’re attempting to make Indigenous people feel seen in fantasy, then whatever means to that end is the best approach—while understanding there’s not going to be a solidly unified opinion that everyone will agree on, but at best broad generalities. In my opinion that is nailing down coding enough that the peoples from the region you picked can spot their own practices and mindset and know somebody cares enough to have found those details.

I personally err on the side of closer coding to irl than looser at least to start, just because the way my brain works I need a lot of details from the culture in the early stages of research, just so I can gain the confidence in what to put on the page and have it feel real.

Especially if you’re trying to unlearn a colonizer mindset through writing, and really trying to broaden your worldview, going towards an initial goal of closer coding will really help break apart the base assumptions about How Things Work, and you’ll develop the mental flexibility to write about differences more easily.

You can loosen up coding later, if you want to, once you’ve learned enough to know what you’re consciously adapting to your fantasy world instead of just throwing your ideas of how you think the culture works into the plot and expecting it to be accurate.

Hope this helps!

~Mod Lesya

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the-writer-muse

3 years ago