Ingredients for delicious stories.
It’s something I’ve heard from many writers and I’ve complained about myself. How do you write dialogue that sounds realistic? Maureen, leveraging some of her screenwriting experience, offers some unexpected advice in the latest Story Kitchen newsletter: How to Write Dialogue that Sounds Realistic.
Check it out and if you’d like these kinds of tips delivered to your inbox twice a month, join the newsletter below!
“How do I get started writing science fiction and fantasy?”
I’ve seen this question crop up often enough in the online spaces I’m part of that I thought I’d put together some thoughts about it. As with any advice about anything creative, please don’t take anything I say to mean, “This is the only way.” I only mean, “this is the way I’ve done it, and how I’ve seen other people do it.” Use this guide as exactly that–a guide, a template with which to build your own roadmap. Your way will be different! But maybe my way can help you discover your way.
I organized this roughly into an order so that each step develops and builds on skills and practices in a logical way–at least, in a way that feels logical to me! Many of these steps can be done concurrently, of course. And feel free to skip any that don’t make sense for you. Or go in any order you want! This guide isn’t the boss of you!
Table of Contents:
Good question! I use this term to mean “Science Fiction and Fantasy” in the broadest sense while also including Horror. Another umbrella term that I like is “speculative fiction.” For me, this includes horror, magical realism, fabulism, alternate histories, historical fantasy, steampunk and cyberpunk and all the -punks, fairy tales, slipstream, weird fiction, secondary world, and more. I’m not a fan of drawing too many boundaries between genres because I think the most interesting writing is often at the edges, and genres are fluid anyway. For now, don’t spend too much time thinking about genre or subgenre. It’s more useful (and more exciting!) to explore widely, in my opinion.
So you want to write SFF! That’s great! In my experience, SFF is a vast, infinitely variable, rich space to explore that’s evolving all the time. In short stories, we’ve seen a crop of exciting new markets open up (markets, in this case, means places you can sell your stories). There’s a resurgence of novellas (which is fiction between about 17,000- 40,000 words.) Novels have crossed genres and categories. English-language SFF outside of the UK and North America continues to expand and become more internationally available, translation efforts are expanding, and the readership for English-language SFF is increasingly global. It’s a really exciting time for readers and writers of SFF!
If you’re a writer who already knows how to write in another genre or in literary fiction, and you’re looking for advice about writing specifically SFF, hang tight. I’ve got you covered, and we’re going to address your concerns in Part 2. So come back next week for that!
For those who are brand new to writing prose fiction (including prose fiction for SFF), read on!
Anyone new to writing prose (and this includes folks who might already be adept storytellers in other media, like screenwriting or poetry or visual arts) can benefit from reading a lot. I suggest starting with short stories because, well, they’re short! You can sample a lot of different voices and methods in a relatively short time! And for this purpose they’ll work just as well as a novel. But by all means, if you’re really into novels and short stories just don’t do it for you, then read novels.
Remember, no one is born knowing how to write prose. It’s a skill. Everyone had to start somewhere. Yes, even N.K. Jemison, Ted Chiang, and Lois McMaster Bujold. Even Octavia Butler (!!!). (I know, I have to remind myself of this too.)
But Jane, I hear you say, what about talent? Yes, it’s true, some writers are naturally talented. But in my experience, talent only gets you so far. Talent without the work to back it up … that’s not enough to get really good at writing SFF and to keep progressing as a writer.
So, read. The first thing you want to do is, train yourself to understand the basic mechanics, the nuts and bolts of prose. I mean on the level of, “what words does the writer use?m What’s the punctuation? How long are the sentences and the paragraphs?” Be thoughtful, and ask yourself a lot of questions as you read.
For example:
The technical side of writing has little to do with whether or not you can tell a good story; think of it like understanding how to use the tools. Reading helps you understand the scope of the tools, what they are, and how they can be used. It’s like understanding the techniques of cooking: how to use a knife, how to sear, how to braise, how to stir fry. With those techniques you can make an okay meal or a sublime one, depending on how you apply the techniques and the ingredients and all that.
As with anything, just remember that there are as many ways to write prose as there are writers in the world, so stay flexible and open-minded to what you encounter.
As for where to read short stories, there are a lot available online. Some of my favorite SFF markets are:
This can be done concurrently with reading… assuming you have the time, of course. If you don’t, then I suggest putting aside some separate times for reading and for writing.
To start with, you don’t even have to write full stories. You could try writing a journal every day, or freewriting for a few minutes regularly. Try writing down your dreams every morning (this is a great source of weird ideas for stories!) Try writing down memories. Practice expressing complicated feelings on the page, practice converting imagery and sensation. Carry a notebook with you and take notes about what you experience wherever you go.
For slightly more formal activities, try working through some writing exercises. Ursula Le Guin’s book, Steering the Craft, is basically a workbook for developing prose. Go through those exercises. The 3AM Epiphany is another one.
If you have the resources, and if you feel like it would help you, consider taking a basic creative writing class on prose. Local community colleges usually have an affordable option to check out, and there are online workshop options as well. But don’t take a screenwriting class. Screenwriting is a different form of storytelling and it won’t help you on the prose level, which is what I’m suggesting you practice now.
There are online collections of writing prompts. Set a timer and respond to the prompt. If you hate timers, you can also go by word count–try for about 500 to 750 words.
Don’t judge any of these exercises. No one needs to see them but you. These are the push ups and sit ups of writing. That said, I’ve had stories come out of exercises that I’ve then gone on to develop and sell to a market, so although that’s not the point of doing these, it’s a nice bonus. 🙂
Here’s a link to get you started: https://ghost.org/blog/10-minute-writing-workouts/
If you’re the kind of person motivated by goals and deadlines, then participating in something like Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month) could be really helpful. I’ve used Nanowrimo in the past to draft lots of words quickly. The goal is 50,000 words in a month. Some years I hit it, many years I don’t, but it’s a fun, community-supported way to ramp up your regular writing habits. The only caveat is, don’t compare yourself to other people because everyone writes at their own pace, and don’t feel bad if you don’t make it to 50K. To me, that’s not the point–it’s about showing up to write regularly and giving it a shot. There’s also a Camp Nano that happens in April and July.
You can try journaling. That’s another form of writing, and it still gets you to show up to the page. For a couple of years I wrote every morning, just writing about what I was thinking and feeling, writing down my dreams, and whatever I felt like. I found it really freed up my ability to get words down, and it helped me practice how to express emotions on the page. I’m a big believer that any kind of writing is good for you. You’re using those writing muscles in different ways.
If you’re part of a fandom, try writing fanfiction. Yes, it’s a legitimate way to learn to write! Most fandoms have supportive fanfiction communities where you can practice skills and get gentle feedback and cheers. (All of us can use cheers! Especially when we’re starting out.)
Keep going. Keep writing. Try to find a way to make writing a regular practice–not necessarily daily, but find a way to make it into a habit. Yes, you might be bad at it in the beginning. You might hate your clumsy, awkward words. Don’t worry about it. If it bothers you, don’t reread what you wrote for a while, just keep going forward. And I bet you’ll find that you’re not as bad as you thought (imposter syndrome is real!) And anyway, it’s okay to be a beginner.
The next step is to finish something. I suggest this “something” should be a short story as opposed to a novel… because you can write a short story in a couple of days, whereas even a sloppy novel is going to take a lot longer than that!
You’ve probably already written something that’s story-shaped! Maybe not a complete story, but a lot of us start by writing a beginning, or a scene, or a few ideas we’d like to explore. Pick one and write it. Don’t judge yourself; no one has to see this but you. Write to the end. This is really important because it’s too easy to start new things when you get frustrated (ask me how I know! haha), and learning to finish a story is one of the most powerful things you can learn to do.
(Hint: It’s totally okay to be inspired by a story you read to try to write one that’s like it, or that borrows some of its features. This is how we learn!)
If you’re stuck, try asking yourself these questions and treating them like writing prompts:
Don’t worry about whether the story’s “good” or “bad.” These are still exercises. You’re practicing, like a musician doing scales, like a painter doing life drawings. You’re training yourself. As you write and finish these experiments, take some time afterwards to reflect on what excited you. What felt rewarding? What elements of the story invited you? What felt difficult or uncomfortable? You’re getting a sense of your strengths and weaknesses.
Writing is hard. As Cat Rambo says, to get good at it, you have to either be incredibly talented, or be prepared to work your ass off. Most of us are in the latter category.
This step, like all the steps here, is optional. However, I highly recommend it. There are lots of groups for people who are learning to write SFF, at all levels. I’ll list some of them below. If you write fanfiction, you’ll probably find some people in those spaces who can form your community.
You can use these groups to workshop stories (more on that later), get critiques, or just have company. Co-working or co-writing sessions, communal writing sprints, a place to seek advice, and even just places to commiserate and share the pain (writing is HARD WORK after all!) can be wonderfully nurturing. They can help you feel less alone and remind you that, yes, writing is hard and yes, other people are learning to do it, and so can you. Discord has a bot that can set up writing sprints for you, if you find a community on Discord you want to hang out with!
In my experience there are two reasons you want to join a critique group or a workshop: to meet other people who are serious about writing, with whom you can build community that may or may not include critique, and to level up your reading and writing skills.
A critique group is typically free, and self-organized by maybe a couple of members. The might meet in person or over videoconference, perhaps once a month or so. A critique group can also be entirely online and never meet. Instead, they send stories and critiques to each other. Each group will have different methods and standards. Try a few different ones out to find one that works for you. Or, start your own!
Workshops are typically organized by an institution or an individual, and they usually have a cost. Workshops tend to be more focused and directed by a facilitator or instructor. Some workshops require an audition (an application process where you submit samples, a cover letter, etc.) They can be online or in person and last anywhere from a day to several weeks. Clarion and Clarion West, Odyssey, Viable Paradise, and Taos Toolbox are the most well-known workshops with a focus on SFF writing, but there are several others that aren’t as expensive or as intensive.
On workshopping and critique: I believe a good critique group can be really helpful. A good workshop-style class can be really helpful. But not always. Don’t feel like you have to be in one to get better as a writer, because you don’t. If it doesn’t work for you, there’s nothing wrong with you! They don’t work for everybody.
The thing to remember about workshop and critique is, it’s all just opinions. Some opinions are more informed than others, true. Some actually draw on a deep well of experience with stories. But still, at the end of the day, critique is subjective. Everyone reads stories through their own lenses and sometimes those lenses are helpful to you, and sometimes not. Feel free to ignore any advice or critique that doesn’t resonate with you. YOU are the expert in your own story.
What workshops and critique groups are really good for, though, is refining your reading skills. I learned way more about writing by giving critiques than by getting them. I learned how to read stories, how to think about technique and craft, how to ask myself questions about the text and writer’s intent, how to articulate the magic that short stories employ, and in the end, those are skills that stay with you and make you a stronger, more intentional writer. Writing critiques for other people’s stories is a precious gift you can give yourself. So do so generously and thoughtfully.
I also suggest that you find other SFF writers to exchange critiques with, or at least, other writers who are familiar with and love speculative fiction. SFF has certain expectations that not all readers of other genres or literary fiction are aware of.
Reedsy also has a list (although I’m not familiar with many of these, they might be worth checking out!).
There are a lot of places to get writing advice. I think it’s worth exploring a lot of these, but take everything with a grain of salt. Or maybe a huge, heaping spoonful of salt. Just remember that in writing, you can do whatever you want. You can tell, not show. You can write a prologue. You don’t have to save the cat. You don’t have to follow the hero’s journey, or a four act structure, or the Freytag pyramid, or any of that.
If something about the advice resonates with you, or sparks ideas, great! Use it! But if it doesn’t, don’t worry about it! There are as many ways to approach writing as there are writers.
That said, when I began writing, I found some of those craft books very useful because they gave me guard rails as I explored my writing skills. I enjoyed having some structure that I could work with. Sometimes, having complete freedom to do anything can be a bit….terrifying, honestly! And paralyzing! Sometimes a little prescriptive advice is not a bad thing–I think of them like training wheels. 🙂
I personally have phases where I like to listen to feedback. Near the beginning, when I have the glimmering of an idea, I like to brainstorm with a few trusted people. I might even have them read my opening and then go from there. I recognize this is pretty unusual! But I like it. Then I need a lot of time alone with the story to work on it, draft it, think about it, tinker with it. The next phase where I like getting feedback is when I have a full draft, pretty polished and ready to go, with an ending.
There are some people who just aren’t the right readers for your story. You’ll learn to recognize them and thank them for their feedback but ignore it. Others will be exactly the kind of readers you want to reach. You’ll learn who these are, and you’ll listen really closely to them–not necessarily to their advice about how to fix a story, but to how they read the story. This is where you can suss out whether the story is having the effect that you want, or which parts are working and which aren’t.
So, read stories and ask yourself questions about what you read. Start small and start simple. Practice finishing stories. Don’t worry about quality for now. Find a sustainable writing routine. Write as much as you can. Maybe find some other people to write with.
And tune in to part two next week in which we’ll explore advice that’s specifically for SFF writing!
Resources
What do we mean by strong characters? In this case, we mean characters who are compelling. Who seem to have rich inner lives. Who are nuanced, complex, complicated. Characters who seem to leap off the page and come live in your head and refuse to leave even after you finish reading the book or watching the show. The kinds of characters you write fanfiction about.
Maureen has an exercise on how to access your ability to work with characters like this, in this week’s newsletter, which you should sign up for!
I wanted to take the time this morning to think about the elements that made a character strong enough to live in your head rent free. In my experience, it doesn’t have much to do with a deep, detailed backstory or a list of personality traits. I don’t know about you, but those approaches–writing out their childhood or filling out a bunch of personal details like favorite color and most hated person–never really worked for me. Also, they felt like a lot of work! And what does a character’s favorite color say about them, anyway? Why would you need to know that? (Maybe you do, if it comes up in your story. But do you really need to know that if it never comes up?)
Instead, Maureen’s exercise has you try to get to the emotional core of a character, and explore it. This is especially fruitful to do when you can get into a territory that is emotionally intense or difficult. And yes, you’re going to be putting a lot of yourself into it, because that’s how we write. Everything we write is built from our blood and tears. Characters are no exception. More than almost any other element of writing, writing characters is an act of radical empathy.
A character that readers resonate with, whether they’re “likable” or not, are characters that feel like they are true, at their emotional core. Like the characters reveal some truth that can’t necessarily be expressed in words. This is what you’re trying to get at. Yes, it’s hard! Writing is hard! It sucks, I know. But hard doesn’t mean impossible, hard means you can get there with practice.
On a much lighter note, this week’s podcast talks about tropes! So after you do some heavy emotional mining with your characters, check out our episode on tropes — how to use them, how not to use them, and why they’re useful.
Happy writing!
It occured to me recently that we haven’t really talked about the podcast on the blog yet, and that we probably should! Maureen and I started the Story Kitchen Podcast this spring. The project came out of our twice-weekly co-writing sessions on Zoom, during last year. We met up so we could ostensibly work on our manuscripts, but would often end up talking about writing, sharing tips, debating technique, and thinking a lot about how people learn to write (we’re both teachers, so this is something that’s on our minds a lot!)
Thus, the podcast was born! I try to keep the Podcast page on this site updated, but you can listen to it at a lot of places: Apple podcasts, on Spotify, on Google Podcasts, on Spreaker, Podcast Addict, Podchaser, Castbox–on almost any plaform that distributes podcasts!
The latest episode is about fanfiction, one of our favorite topics. You can listen to it below:
I also wanted to give a shoutout to this awesome episode of Fansplaining, The Craft of Writing Fanfiction, which is a wonderful episode, and I discovered after we recorded ours, but it’s a great discussion and it reflects a lot of our experiences in writing and reading fanfiction!
Other episodes we’ve recorded:
In the first episode, we talk about how to think about feedback on your writing. Not all feedback is useful. How do you decide? And what do you do with the feedback that isn’t helping you?
How to develop creativity is a particular interest of mine, something I’ve studied and experimented with for the last several years. What I’ve learned is that creativity is a skill, and like any other skill, it can develop with practice. In this episode we talk about what to do when you’re stuck and how to develop your creativity.
In the episode, Our Favorite Writing Techniques, Maureen and I share the best practical writing tips that elevated our writing. Even so, growth as a creator isn’t always steady. In When You Hit a Plateau we discuss a time in our evolution where we felt like we weren’t growing, and what we did about it.
And last week, we realized we hadn’t really defined what “technique” is so we tackled that topic in What Exactly is Technique Anyway?
And now you’re all caught up! See you next week!
There’s no real standard for scenes or even chapters. The rule is really ‘if it works, it works’. William Faulkner, Nobel Prize Winner for Literature, has a chapter in his novel As I Lay Dying, that is five words long. “My mother is a fish.” So how do you know how long your scene should be? The answer is, you don’t. There are novels that don’t have chapters. They’re just one long continuous story.
But there are ways in which scenes are often structured. If you’ve got a scene that isn’t working for you, then you can try structuring it.
First, if you don’t mind, go watch a ten minute short film. It’s animated, and it’s about a puppy. It’s called Feast and I swear, it’s charming. https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2icqx7
I’ll wait.
Charming, right? It’s made up of several scenes (a scene in a screenplay changes every time there is a change in location or a jump in time, but scenes in prose work differently.) But it’s structured in a classic way.
It opens with the lost puppy who is adopted by a Dudebro. Dudebro and dog live an idyllic life and then Dudebro falls in love with a girl who makes him eat healthy. A scene starts with two characters wanting different things. The dog wants to eat all the good stuff but the girlfriend wants everyone to be healthy.
A scene progresses with obstacles. In this, the dog wants both all the food AND the Dudebro to be happy. When Dudebro and girlfriend break up, dog gets all the food. But that’s an obstacle to Dudebro’s happiness. Dog makes active choice to help Dudebro and girlfriend get back together.
Dog gives up pizza for happiness. Dudebro and girlfriend get married. Then they have a kid who is messy and feeds dog junk so dog gets happiness and pizza, and meatballs and cupcakes.
So how does this particular structure work?
Often a scene does that with a ‘button’, that is a line that feels like the end of a scene. So in a heroic quest, a scene might end with a line that reminds us of the stakes of the story. ‘It was a wonderful moment, but she remembered with a chill that the Dark Lord was still out there.’ Anything that feels like it ‘buttons up’ the scene is good, and there are an infinite number of ways to do that.
Another way is a cliffhanger. Endings of scenes and stories is an art, and at the end of the day there are suggestions, but no real rules.
To sum up, one way to structure a scene is to set it up, play it out, and stick the landing. But that’s not really a formula so much as a guideline. I don’t think I’ve ever read a story or book where every scene was structured this way. Doing this, it’s hard. Endings are especially hard. Good endings are amazing and have a strong effect on the reader.
I said I’d show you a way to structure a scene. I didn’t say it would be easy.
I’m a big fan of writer youtubers. There’s something about seeing and hearing a writer talk to me, with a shelf full of books behind them, that I find soothing and inspiring. A few weeks ago I came across a new-to-me writer on Youtube, Shaelin Bishop, who posted a video which shared their top 12 writing tips.
There are great tips in the video, but the one I’d never heard before and which really stood out to me as something profound and interest was this one:
Find the despair in the hope, and the hope in the despair.
Shaelin describes this (as related by a writing professor) as a source of tension: “If a scene is only despair, there’s actually no tension because there’s no possible way forward.”
This made me stop and think a lot. I’ve heard people talk about scene craft as driven by objectives — as in, your protagonist wants something! And other people (or elements) in the scene want something else! But this idea of the tension between despair and hope is a big picture, more holistic way to think about it, something that transcends character goals. It suggests that each scene is a microcosm of the despair and hope in the entire story: will the main character resolve the story question, or not? Where is the hope that they will? And where is the despair if they don’t?
This framing also suggests stakes, which I like, since that’s something that I often forget to illuminate for my reader. What do readers hope for? And what do they despair about?
Based on my thinking about this this week, I decided to give myself an assignment: go through a couple of scenes in my current WIP, a novella, and look for the hope and the despair. How can I play those against each other? Can I use this question to highlight stakes where I need to?
Happy writing!
Maureen and I have been talking for almost a year about how we would incorporate all of our ideas about teaching and writing into a series of classes and we’re so excited to announce the first one! Story from Beginning to End is an intensive short story clinic where we write a complete story in one weekend. It’s suitable for writers who already have the basics of writing but who are new to the short story format, or what to explore another method of approaching writing short stories.
Why did we decide to format a class like this?
Does this sound exciting? You can enroll here! Check out the syllabus for more details. Scholarships are available to BIPOC writers and writers of color around the world. Please email storykitchenstudio@gmail.com for more information!
Date and Time: Saturday, June 26th and Sunday, June 27th. 11am Pacific – 3pm Pacific (with breaks). Cost: $129.00
NaNoWriMo in November is the challenge to write a draft of a novel in a month. Lots of people have done it and communities have sprang up to talk about how to prepare for the challenge, how to do the challenge, and how to join with other people to do it.
Camp Nano, in April and July, is a similar challenge but instead of writing a novel in a month (because face it, some people just can’t, whether because for example, they have a job and a toddler, or because writing 2,000 words a day doesn’t work for them) the writer sets their own goals. The goals usually involve a daily practice.
Is it a good idea? Depends.
Camp Nano has some really cool aspects.
Camp Nano Drawbacks
Camp Nano and NaNoWriMo might be just the thing someone needs. If you want to do them:
Camp Nano is a great thing for a lot of writers.
Set goals that are easy, you can always do more, but you’re going to feel shitty if you do less. And use it for who you are, where you are, and getting to your own goals.
There are a lot of ways to build a world. We tend to think of worldbuilding as something for science fiction or fantasy. I don’t think of it that way. Mysteries are often tied to a particular place, like Tony Hillerman’s Navajo Tribal Police mysteries[1] or the Bridgerton series by Julia Quinn, set in the world of English aristocracy of the 18th century.
Tana French’s Dublin Murder Squad series is a lovely example of creating a very specific world in a very specific time, the waning days of Dublin’s economic boom and bust—and as good worlds do, it grounds her series in an authenticity that convinces the reader that this world is real and makes the stakes of the story feel real.
There is a lot of advice on the web for worldbuilding. Hugo Award winner N.K. Jemisin has a masterclass on worldbuilding and (https://www.masterclass.com/classes/n-k-jemisin-teaches-fantasy-and-science-fiction-writing/chapters/elements-of-worldbuilding ) Brandon Sanderson has a technique for building magic systems that you can find in his lecture series on YoutTube.
I will state up front, I don’t like Rendezvous With Rama. I tried it several times and just not my thing. It’s a book that has really meant a lot to a lot of people, so I assume that it’s like licorice, which my husband loves and which I hate. It’s not a case that Rendezvous With Rama is not good writing, it’s a matter of preference.
Thinking about worldbuilding in the way mystery and romance writers think about it can be a different and sometimes useful way to worldbuild. I’ve created four prompts that can help bootstrap both setting and worldbuilding. Also, they give me an excuse to research and I love research. So much easier than writing.
[1] Linda Rodriguez, indigenous American writer, discusses Tony Hillerman and issues of appropriation in a post http://lindarodriguezwrites.blogspot.com/2012/04/literary-mystery-noveliststony.html She feels that Hillerman was respectful but points out that not all indigenous writers and readers agree.
When you build a world, you should think about language, customs, and culture. Think of a story set in a horse racing track.
The horse racing track has its own language—in English, there are words we use at a track that we don’t use much of any place else. Horse races are described in miles but also furlongs. There are stakes and claim races, win, place, and show.
There are different kinds of people at a race track. There are the people who come to watch the races; some of them sit in the stands. Rich people and companies have boxes where food and alcohol are served. Serious gamblers may stand at the edge of the track instead of being in the stands. Then there are the horse people—trainers, grooms, exercise boys, veterinarians. And there’s another group that works at the track—they take the money, work in the office, or serve food.
There are customs—the ‘call to the post’ where a trumpet fanfare is played, the winner’s circles. For the Kentucky Derby, women wear fancy hats and people drink mint juleps. The winning horse gets a blanket of roses (which the horse probably either ignores or wants to eat.)
There are uniforms—the ‘silks’ that the jockeys wear.
It’s a complex world and if your story is, say, a mystery involving a horse racing track, knowing this is the world of your story.
Your world is not interesting in and of itself. Your world is interesting because it
Some people want to build a consistent world from the very beginning. I’ve always thought of Tolkien as this kind of writer, but Tolkien turns out to have been more of a pantser than I ever realized. There’s a letter to his son (http://hedgepickle.blogspot.com/2013/02/trotter-description-of-development-of.html) where he describes writing a scene where there’s a character sitting in the corner in an inn who he calls Trotter. Tolkien had no idea who the character was—eventually it would turn out to be Aragorn, who you would think was pretty essential to both world and plot.
I build my worlds the way theatre sets are built—that is, you can see a door at the edge of the set and the yellow flowered wallpaper that suggests a hallway, but if you go backstage, there’s no hallway. I want everything the reader sees to feel lived in, as if it has history. But I want to evolve my worldbuilding, as Tolkien did, to fit my story, so I don’t try to plan everything out at once.
When I’m thinking about worldbuilding, I’m rarely thinking about geography or even buildings. I don’t really world build systematically. I like things to feel messy because my everyday life is messy. When I first saw Star Wars, I had never seen a science fiction movie where things were dirty, and it just made everything more real.
When I’m teaching worldbuilding, I suggest that the writers think about:
By language I mean jargon or language. (Junot Diaz has very interesting things to say about using English and Spanish in his works. https://www.nytimes.com/1996/12/08/nyregion/outsider-with-a-voice.html ) But everybody uses jargon. If your world is a university, there is tons of language; GPA, required courses or GDEs, Fraternity, Sorority, tenure. At my university, D Clearance is a big issue (it’s a hoop some students have to jump through to get into certain classes.)
There are social classes in university, too. Students sort into lower classmen, upper classmen, graduate students, PhD candidates, scholarship kids, frat and sorority kids. People have opinions about Business Majors versus Theater Majors. Then there are professors; tenured, part time, TA’s. There are administrators who work in admissions, or residence life (more jargon there) and the working-class folk (in the US, often BIPOC in a mostly white landscape) who keep the place running; landscapers, cashiers, housekeeping. Each of them experiences the university in a different way.
There are a lot of weird cultural rituals; ‘rushing’ for fraternities and sororities, homecoming, commencement, school colors.
Dress and architecture come in, too. A lot of universities in the US strive to echo the architecture of Oxford or Cambridge—brick or stone buildings, ivy, walks through grassy lawns.
When you are thinking of where your story is set, if you have trouble with setting, maybe jot down a few notes about these four categories and see if they help you build out your world.
It’s sometimes useful, when you’re starting to write and define yourself as a writer, to think of broad categories of fiction, because it can help you understand what the reader expectations are (and decide whether you want to deliver them or subvert them!) If this kind of thinking is not useful for you, I absolutely do not believe you have to think about it at all — write what you want to write, and let the market and your agent figure out where and how to sell it!
But for me, as part of the study of fiction, it’s been instructive to look at the differences and similarities between different categories or markets. One of broadest is genre fiction and literary fiction.
I think the easiest and incidentally the most useful way to think about genre fiction is, it is writing that intentionally serves the expectations of a certain genre. Those expectations can be plot-centric, as in murder mysteries where we expect that the murderer will be revealed by the end, or emotional, as in a thriller when we expect to be thrilled, or both, as in a romance, where we expect the emotional fulfillment of a happily-ever-after ending that also ties up the love plot.
While literary fiction can have any or all of these elements, it also tends to be harder to categorize in a particular genre; it is also, quite often, more invested in exploring theme or as aspect of narrative technique rather than focusing on plot or emotional impact.
The main thing to remember about such categories is they are not prescriptive; at least, I don’t think it’s fruitful to treat them in any way as prescriptive. There’s no real formula for “mystery” other than the genre expectations, and even that can be broken by a skilled and confident writer, to good effect (that one mystery story where the narrator turns out to be the murderer, for example!) Instead, I use categories to help me think about my story after I’ve written a draft. It can help me focus on what I realize is most important, or it can help me understand a potential reader for the story, and what they’d expect. For me, the most helpful way to frame genre questions has been to ask myself, what other books or texts is my story in conversation with?
What’s interesting to study is when novels work in both categories. Erin Morgenstern’s novel The Night Circus is a genre fantasy romance novel about young star-crossed magicians. It is also a literary novel of surrealism exploring the power of dreams and imagination, with themes of family legacy and professional rivalry that threaten to destroy innocent lives.
Another example is the short stories of Kelly Link, who is a spectacularly gifted and literary writer whose dazzling style is as much a hallmark of her work as is her uniquely fabulist, surreal imagination. See also Carmen Maria Machado, a fantastic writer who’s published in both literary magazines like Granta as well as genre publications like Nightmare. She’s also written a memoir, In the Dream House. So don’t ever feel like this genre exploration needs to lock you in to one field or another!
One way to start understanding your own work is to read what other people write. Read a lot, read across different genres. I learned so much about emotional scene-building from reading romances, for example, and so much about plotting from reading mysteries. I learned a lot about subtlety and letting small details do the heavy lifting from reading literary fiction.
And I learned that ultimately there’s really very little difference between these categories, at least in terms of the broad outlines. I found that very comforting — it freed me up to write what I wanted and trust that there will be readers out there for it, regardless of what genre my story ends up in!
