The Seven Deadly Sins of World Building

**NOTE: This is not my writing, but I am posting it here for easy access for later....also so that I can remember what the random link was for.  For the original article, please see the end of this post.**This is extremely useful and what I strive to do when writing.  I am not sure I have taken care of all of these holes, but I am working on it. 

7 Deadly Sins of Worldbuilding

Worldbuilding is an essential part of any work of fiction. But especially for science fiction or fantasy, it's the lifeblood of storytelling. But when worldbuilding fails, it can wreck your whole story, and leave your characters feeling pointless. Here are seven deadly sins of worldbuilding.

Top image: Under Tomorrow's Sky by Daniel Dociu.

1. Not thinking about basic infrastructure.

How do they eat? What do they eat? Who takes away the garbage? Who deals with their bodily wastes? How do they get around? What do the majority of people do to survive? You're not just constructing a society, you're creating an economy. People don't oppress each other for fun — usually, systems of hierarchy and oppression have an economic component to them. Maybe you need a lot of peasants to grow labor-intensive crops, or maybe you need lots of cannon fodder in your space war. Maybe your only source of protein is a weird fungus that needs to be tended by specially trained people. Maybe everybody's eating algae. In any case, there's nothing worse than a fictional world where there are elaborate social structures, which seem completely separated from the realities of food, shelter and clothing.

2. Not explaining why events are happening now.

Chances are your story revolves around all heck breaking loose in your fictional world. (Or your fictionalized version of the "real" world.) One major worldbuilding flaw is not explaining why heck is breaking loose now, as opposed to 20 years ago or 20 years from now. Why is the dark elf army showing up now? Was there something preventing them from showing up, which has been removed? Will it be too late if they wait another year or two? Often, if your plot is swinging into motion for reasons that feel purely arbitrary, that's actually a failure of worldbuilding. You haven't fully accounted for the things that kept your villain in check, and probably also for the factors that keep other political actors in your society in check as well. And that's a larger issue — every society has checks and balances. Even an absolute monarchy has invisible lines the monarch can't cross. Sometimes you can't figure out how these checks and balances worked in a particular era, without reaching beyond the official history as sanctioned by the people in charge.

On a related note, if you're drawing on real-life history, for your fantasy world or your future history, don't just read works by historians from the dominant culture, or works focusing on the ruling class. Historians have done amazing work on discovering what ordinary people and marginalized groups were doing during a lot of eras, and there's plenty of resources on what was going on in, say, the Middle Ages outside of Western Europe. To the extent that you rely on actual history in your world-building, you should reach beyond the Kings and nobles of a few Western countries. Image by Frederic St-Arnaud/CG Society.

3) Creating fictional versions of real-life human ethnic groups, that never go beyond one dimension

This is a huge problem that tons of creators seem to struggle with. But as a rule of thumb, if you want to have Belgians in your novel, you're going to have to try and create an accurate view of Belgian society. If you decide that instead of Belgians, you're going to have an alien species called the Bzlgizns — who are basically Belgians except they've got antlers — you still have to try and make them well-rounded and as nuanced as possible. Ditto if you're creating a secondary world where there happens to be a land of magical creatures called The Belge, who are still basically Belgians. Really, you should make sure that any cultural or ethnic group you create has multiple dimensions and a sense that its members have their own subjectivity, and a believable culture. Whether it's the culture that your main characters come from, or a culture that they see as the "other." But it's also a really good rule of thumb that the more your fictional group resembles real-life Belgians, the more you ought to worry about being true to life. Changing "Belgians" to "Bzlgizns" doesn’t actually let you off the hook for presenting a true-to-life portrait of people from Belgium.

4) Creating monolithic social, political, cultural and religious groups.

Everybody in a particular ethnic group agrees about everything. Every member of the ruling class, or the working class, agrees about everything. Every citizen of a particular nation holds exactly the same set of opinions. There is one version of history that absolutely everybody agrees on. Every member of a religion interprets the tenets of that religion in exactly the same way. That sounds plausible, right? Maybe if you've never been around actual humans. In real life, if you get three members of a particular in-group together, you'll probably hear four different opinions on most of the group's major concerns. Asserting that all Christians agree on all matters of doctrine is probably a good way to get laughed out of the room. So when you imagine the ruling class of your world, it's safe to assume that no two members of it will agree on much — and when you retell your fictional history, remember that nobody's likely to agree on what actually happened. Image by MacRebisz/Deviant Art.

5) Inventing a history that is totally logical

In an imaginary world, the strongest side always wins and the people who are in charge are always the descendants of the people who were in charge 100 years ago. But real life isn't like that — history is full of odd quirks and happenstances, and powerful people often make huge miscalculations that wind up costing them dearly. Just think about weird happenstances like Ireland being divided in half. Or Korea. Or Germany, for nearly five decades. Why is WashingtonDC the capital of the United States instead of Philadelphia? Why did the Portuguese have their own colony in India until 1961? History is weird. And things that seem inevitable in retrospect usually seemed anything but at the time. So a totally logical history will never pass the "smell" test. And speaking of smell...

6) Not really giving a strong sense of place, like what it smells like after it's been raining.

You can spend hours and hours thinking about the history and culture and mores of your imaginary land, and how people interact and the ways that different religious and ethnic groups collide. But if you don't make me feel the dirt under my fingernails, then you still haven't created a real place. If the reader doesn't get a little lightheaded from the stench of the polluted river, or transported by the beauty of the geometric flower gardens, then something is missing. Most of all, there should be a few spots — bars, taverns, crypts, spaceports — where the reader really feels "at home," as if you could imagine hanging out there for real. The purpose of worldbuilding isn't just to do a cool exercise, but to give a sense of place — and all of your thought experiments absolutely have to result in something vivid and alive. Image by Michel Koch/Don't Nod

7) Introducing some superpower, like magic or insane tech, without fully accounting for how it would change society.

If your pitch is, "It's just like our world, except everybody can turn invisible at will," then you've already failed. Because if everybody could turn invisible at will, it wouldn't be anything like our world. Especially if this power had been around for more than a few months. Whether you're creating an alternate history or a secondary world or a far future, any technology or power you introduce is going to have far-reaching effects — not just first-order effects, but second- and third-order effects, too. Going with the "invisibility" example, you'd have people using it to spy on each other — but you'd also have a huge boom in heat sensors. We'd start redefining the whole concept of privacy, and pop culture would be massively transformed. There would be whole art forms based around invisible performers, and it might be legal to shoot an invisible intruder on sight (on smell?). You could be here for hours imagining all the ways that the universal power of invisibility would change the world, and you'd probably still just be scratching the surface.

Link:
http://io9.com/7-deadly-sins-of-worldbuilding-998817537?trending_test_d&utm_expid=66866090-62.H_y_0o51QhmMY_tue7bevQ.4&utm_campaign=socialflow_io9_facebook&utm_source=io9_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow&utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2F

Words of Insignia

A while back I was playing with a website called "Wordle" and I made a few with the text from my story.  What Wordle does, is figure out which words are used most often and displays it in a graphic.  It doesn't grab articles and prepositions but pretty much everything else is up for grabs.  It's not the most sophisticated tool.  However, there is a way that you can filter out certain words by culling them individually.

This is very interesting to ponder. It says a lot about my writing style and also the story focus. I bet I could analyse the shit out of this if I really wanted to!

So, here are my awesome creations:

This one is all the words with only super generic verbs and such filtered out

This is all the words with all character names filtered out 

This is all the names with Mara's deleted (for some reason).

The problem with this tool is if you delete a word, you can't rally get it back...so that's why Mara is not in the last one. :-D

Yay fun...

The teenager had been so hungry - Edit - #6

New prologue for my novel: Insignia

-Prologue-

The teenager had been so hungry.

Life on the dirt-smeared streets of the slum city was more difficult than he had anticipated: squatting in abandoned warehouses with other disenfranchised youth and huddling close for warmth during the bitter winter. But not too close. He couldn’t get too close. Teens disappeared off these streets every day.  He wasn’t sure where they went. Maybe they moved on, found something better or maybe…something worse.

A year on the streets had made him lean. Gaunt. Pale. Desperate. Playing in the underground market was always risky. Unreliable. Volatile. Stressful. He had not been nearly as successful as he’d hoped to be.

Hunger.  He never imagined that he could be so hungry.

Learning to dumpster-dive had been a mixed blessing.  He now knew where to find the freshest food, though fresh was a liberal word. The food still stank with the rancid fumes of whatever had been left in the bin the night before.  Some days, he couldn’t stomach it. So he’d learned to beg. Occasionally he’d get treated to a mystery street-meat skewer, but most of the time the fare would be the mildly stale remnants of a stranger’s half-eaten sandwich. It was not much better than the dumpster, but at least it didn’t smell rotten….Then his pride overtook him.

He was better than this. He was smart.

So he taught himself to steal. He always had a knack with data:  computer navigation was second nature to him, even though he never loved it. The dingy cyber cafés had become his new haven.  Long days crouched over an ancient typepad, hunched in cheap fiberglass chairs with eyes straining at a dimly lit LED yielded him a fake credit account to which he stored real money.

He traveled through security networks of big CORPs, the underground tunnels of their cybernet space. Worming his way into firewalls and secure shields like a cockroach made of bytes, he scrounged for scraps of cred. Then he invested that cred in the virtual market. Win. Lose. Win.

He snagged only bits at a time. A little here. A little there. Not too much. Can’t get caught. Take just enough. Can’t ever get caught. Data heists were among the most severely punished crimes. In this world of capitalist greed where consumerism was rewarded, credit theft was punishable by death. 

The money though…it wasn’t for food. It wasn’t for clothing or shoes or mech mods. It wasn’t for him. It was for Charley. Someday, he hoped to have enough for two train tickets out of the hate-filled shitthole. To a real city. East, west, north – he didn’t care. All of them had promises, potential. A real job. A real school. A life. For both of them.

Then this strange man with a handlebar moustache and a plush burgundy waistcoat approached him in the café. Looking for him.

Why me? An offer. A good offer. Money. Money for food. He had been so very, very, hungry. And then this offer…

“What do you want me to do?” He asked the strange man.

The man took a drag of a long, mud-colored cigarette and handed him a small chip. “I need you to hack a shopping mall’s security system and pull the locked files.”

“Hack a system?” The teen asked incredulously, “That’s it?”

“It’s not as easy as you might think, kid,” the man explained, “It’s an AI security system. Makes what you’ve been crawling through look like a toddler’s game. It takes Skill.”

“Oh, I got skills,” he responded arrogantly.

The man barely smirked and cocked his head. Nonetheless, he tapped a metal plate on the chip. There was one line of text:

JR. Avenue 5. Independence Plaza.

 “This is where you can find me,” he said cryptically and left, nodding.

*tap* *tap* *tap* *tap* *tap*

Skills indeed, the teenager thought angrily, this bastard’s convoluted as shit.

Maybe he was in over his head. The man had warned him that several who tried before had failed. Sweat beaded on his forehead, and his t-shirt was becoming damp under his arms.

“Failed how?”

The man didn’t say. It didn’t matter.  The money was too good. Enough to get him and Charley out of the slums. To get to freedom.

*tap* *tap* *tap* *tap* *tap*

The lines of code taunted him. Flashing their glaring green deep into his strained retinas. His stomach growled. It’s just a shopping mall! He railed to himself silently. What could be on here?

*tap* *tap* *tap* *tap* *tap*

An AI system.  What was an AI system?  It couldn’t be a new software because he knew all security systems. He’d never heard the term before. Maybe it was an old word? An antiquated security system? Maybe that’s why it was so hard to crack?

*tap* *tap* *ta—

He was in, he stared wide-eyed. The files suddenly were zipping themselves onto the storage device.  Bits flashed by in a whirr: zeroes and ones. Replicating with the precision of high-speed data, submitting to his hand, no longer taunting him but almost screaming.

Screaming... Red lights flashing. Something had triggered an alarm. How, though? He had been so careful!

Shooting to his feet, he yanked the chip out of the mainframe just as a boring-looking man strode casually into the server room.  The man’s eyes, however, were not boring. They were dark, and angry. And they were looking straight at him.

Fuck! He ran like hell. 

My name is Lyndsie Clark and I am a Writer

Here, ladies and gentlemen, is my very first Toastmaster's Speech...roughly. It sounds better when spoken. I won the best speaker award (out of 2 ppl lol) and earned the nickname of "Brave Normal-Human-Size Toastmaster".

*****

My name is Lyndsie Clark and I am a writer. Saying that feels like I am admitting to a bad habit. A dirty secret.  Like I should be in rehab, not a toastmaster’s meeting.

This is because I have always struggled with being creative and also being taken seriously. When I was a child, I was encouraged to embrace this creativity.  However, as I grew into an adult, that was less and less embraced in favor of education and a “good job”. (or one that pays a lot of money)

It has taken me quite some time to accept that this creativity is as much a part of me as the desire for education and career.  And even longer to accept that I can both be simultaneously creative and successful.

1 –

When I was in fifth grade, I entered a poetry contest. My first poem inspired a life-changing love of writing.  Throughout grade school I wrote: poems, short stories, longer stories and novels. I started my first epic fantasy series when I was 13, finishing the first novel two years later.  Sadly, the second one, is still sitting half finished on an old hard drive.

This was because in high school, everyone was planning for college.  I didn’t want to go to college, I wanted to become a writer. However, my father – who had fought his way out of poverty to become a respected geophysicist at NOAA, believed in the irreplaceable value of a college education.  And as he was the one holding my college fund, I could choose to attend a university or stay home while my parents traveled the world with that money.

2 -

I chose college and enrolled in the architecture school thinking that it was creative. It also, oddly, required the least amount of science courses. I mean, you can build models and draw things, right? Not really. If anyone has ever gotten through an architecture course, I admire you. It is a lot more difficult pictures and models. Especially for one who doesn’t have much affinity for math.

Halfway through college, I changed my major to linguistics.  It was a major that sounded sciency enough for my dad to respect, but still allowed me to play with words all day. Even though I enjoyed linguistics enough to go on to my master’s degree. Something was always missing.

3 –

I hadn’t written anything for fun for my entire college career. Not a single poem. Then in the middle of my MA program, I decided to participate in National Novel Writing Month.  This is where I would write 50k words in 30 days. I was young, reckless, invincible and a bit masochistic – so I finished. I have never been more sleep deprived in my life, well…until I did it again the following year.

My creative drive had been reawakened. I was a writer! Well, not really…I was just writing for myself. I didn’t have to admit it to anyone. It’s not like I was going to make a profession of this anyway… 

But in 2012, something else happened.  I realized that I had many great ideas. I didn’t want to keep them secret, I wanted to share the excitement of my expansive imagination with the world. So this time I decided that I was going to write a novel and would not stop until it was completed, edited and my hands, my reader’s hands, my publisher’s hands.

Conclusion -  

When I won that poetry contest in fifth grade, the best thing about it for me was sharing my ideas with my friends. And that is still the case today.  When I admitted to myself that the writer in me wouldn’t be silenced until I could share my creativity with the world, I made the best decision of my life. And even if my career progresses in a different direction, I am still and always will be, a writer.

I am happy to be single

I am so happy to be a single woman. I am not lacking anything in any way. I am not any better or worse off than anyone else. I am happy and in love.

Even though I love people, I also love being by myself. I am not afraid of dying alone. After all, everyone dies alone. I am not worried about not being loved, as up until the moment I die, I will feel love every day. I am not worried about not finding love because I love so many people already, including myself.  I am not worried about having no one to rely on because you all are there. I'm not afraid of taking care of myself because I know best what I need in life. 

I don't need a husband, a wife or children to feel complete. I already am. I don't need anyone to make me a better person. I strive to do that every day, and I am always improving. 

Sure, I don't love loneliness and I'm still not happy when I get hurt. But I don't fear it. I know that I get better and hurts don't last. I will never truly be alone because I have myself. I have friends. I have family.  I have wonderful  people all around me. I don't need that one "special person". You are all special to me.

I couldn't love anyone else, if I didn't love myself. I couldn't make anyone else happy, if I was always sad. If I couldn't take care of my self, how could I take care of anyone else?

I love people but they are limiting. You have to answer to them, explain yourself, make sacrifices.  Right now, I am limitless and because of this, when I do choose to answer, explain and sacrifice for someone, it will be for the right reasons.  And I will not resent them for asking things of me, because I will have already consented to what they are asking.  Because I know myself, and my desires. I know my deal breakers, game changes, favorite foods and flaws.

I am so glad I have had a chance to really get to know myself.  I am so excited what new things I will learn in the years to come. And while sometimes my resolve will flag, in the end I am so grateful for where I am. I'm happy being single, and I may never go back. Or I might, but that choice is my prerogative. 

Memoires

OMFG - I worked for almost 5 hours on my novel tonight. And I want to do more. CURSE YOU, DAY JOB! Sooo tired.  I don't really have the mental focus right to post an excerpt so here are a few of the chapter headers for your reading pleasure.  If anyone actually reads this...XD

Headers...get it? Har Har Har.
IMG: http://www.zbrushcentral.com/printthread.php?t=46653&pp=40

* * * * * * * * *

1: Three hundred years ago, human bodies were functional.  Adequate.  They were just as nature designed them. Boring. Then we came in with technology and made them remarkable. – Memoires of A. St. Claire

2: When that shark took my arm, I thought I would have to wear a hook and a curly wig while running around yelling, “Smee!” But, thanks to science, I am more robot than pirate.  Thank god for science.  Now I’m famous. – Donatello Fark, First Robot Comedian

3. The titan Prometheus stole fire from the gods to give to his creation; mankind, opening up new doors of thought, freedom and innovation which were once locked behind lightning bolts and denied.  Prometheus was bold in challenging his creators, and was brutally punished for his disobedience.  – Legends from Ancient Greece, Adapted for a Modern Time.  Micah Weaver

4. In the year 2036 Mirabel Industries invented the world’s first cybernetic arm.  It was a quantum leap that afforded new freedoms and thought. As the fire from Prometheus had delivered humankind from the world of shadows, cosmetic cybertechnology forged a people we know today. Consuming. Unfeeling. Mech. – Before the War: A Brief History of pre-WWIII America

Tanks Don't Float - Anamnesis #2

Another Excerpt from Insignia

________________________________________________________________________________

Almost floating in midair, Sam watched Mara land with a great splash, displacing a huge amount of water. Droplets shot out in a wide radius like daggers or homing missiles, with vicious intent. The sheets of water themselves reached their peak of inertia and curved downward, falling back into the canal like hundreds of diamonds. Sam inhaled a large breath and slipped into the water after Mara almost gracefully, the sharp spray stinging his face before he became submerged. The water was cool, but not nearly as cold as he expected, and very salty. He remembered reading about that in geography class.

Suddenly, fire slammed into his senses as the seawater assaulted his open eyes. He closed them in surprise, fighting his way up to the surface. The force of the waterfall pushed him downward again as he struggled through the deluge, finally breaking the surface. He gasped in air, kicking his legs against the current and scanning the spray for Mara. A commotion of splashing to the left drew his attention, though amidst it all he saw no sign of human anatomy.

Taking the clue, he ducked under the water quickly and slid his way toward it, forcing his eyes open even though they began to burn almost immediately. A black boot flew only inches in front of his face as he dove deeper into the canal. It was Mara, scrambling violently toward the surface, a trail of bubbles dancing up from her partially opened lips. She seemed to be making negative headway, sinking instead of rising, a look of terror on her distorted features.

Sam headed toward her, but was unable to get close enough to her flailing form to be of any assistance. Even using his Foresight, he couldn’t see a clear opportunity. Wondering if his skill was compromised by being underwater – Which doesn’t make any sense, he told himself – he decided to go for Mara anyway. Rushing forward and pushing the water away with both legs, he attempted to grab the collar of her jacket. The back of Mara’s flinging hand connected with Sam’s face; pain exploded stars across his vision as his head snapped to the side. His body went limp in surprise as he stopped fighting the current, trying to clear the clouds from mind. The water carried him, a trail of red following as he floated easily to the surface. More pain startled him from his lethargy as his head smacked against the concrete lined wall of the canal. Reaching upward, he groped for a handhold, fingernails scrabbling on the rough surface, and found one:  a narrow lip jutting out from the wall. He yanked himself partially out of the water and was greeted with a throbbing in his temple. With his other hand, he touched his face.

Yep, he thought as his hand came away bloody. Broken nose.

Looking around, he tried to orient himself. The sky was above him and the water below. Good, that’s all normal. He took a deep breath and noticed that he was about a hundred yards away from the waterfall. The current was not as strong here as it had been closer in and he was able to retain his grip on the wall relatively easily. He looked up. The wall was much higher than Sam would have guessed – maybe ten to twelve feet high – and smooth above the three-inch ledge onto which he was holding. This was going to make it near impossible for them to climb out.

Them… Sam looked around for Mara. She hadn’t surfaced yet. He swallowed hard, trying to relieve the pain in his cheekbones so he could try and find her. Suddenly, the world slowed and water flowed past him like molasses, ripples rising and falling languidly. The breeze became a static hum, filling his ears like cotton balls. Through the now stilled water, he could see Mara lying on her back with only a couple of bubbles left, their amoebic forms changing fluidly as they wobbled to the surface. She moved very little as her heels, the last to settle on the canal bottom, bounced gently several times. Her features had gone slack and her eyes were closed. She looked calm, relaxed even.

(Picture from: http://otakugangsta.com/image/43441031460)