A Tasting Menu of Female Representation:

The Bechdel:

The Mako Mori:

The Sexy Lamp:

Chef’s Specials:

The Anti-Freeze:

The “Strength is Relative”:

In the years since I wrote this post, somehow it’s mutated into a kind of shambling, half-sentient creature, wandering--totally unsupervised!--though writer’s forums and Reddit and similar such places I never expected or intended to find its way into.

Turns out, this is accidentally the most controversial thing I’ve ever written.

Some people love it. Some people read it as the Ultimate Prescription of How You Must Write Characters and are beyond irritated at being told what to do.

I just want to add an addendum, if I may: This silly list is not the Arbiter of Rightness when it comes to writing. It isn’t a demand–it’s a menu. Pick what you want, leave the rest. When I wrote it, it was honestly just a tongue-in-cheek way to list all the different metrics for female representation I saw floating around at the time.

You can write a story any way you want to. The success of a story is determined by the skill of the writer, not by a series of check marks on an arbitrary metric.

Concept: a D&D-style fantasy setting where humanity’s weird thing is that we’re the only sapient species that reproduces organically.

To address the obvious question, yes, this means that dwarves have no cultural notion of childhood, at least not one that humans would recognise as such. Elves and goblins do, though it’s kind of a weird childhood in the case of elves, while with halflings it’s a toss-up; mostly they instantiate as the equivalent of a human 12–14-year-old, and are promptly adopted by a loose affiliation of self-appointed aunts and uncles, though there are outliers in either direction.

What about orcs?

The so-called goblinoid peoples are variations on the same formula, and may well emerge from the same cauldron, depending on who’s been screwing with the ingredients lately. They’re very morphologically plastic – it’s not unheard-of to encounter a kobold and an ogre who count each other as siblings.

can we take a moment to just think about how incredibly scary magical healing is in-context?

You get your insides ripped open but your friend waves his hands and your flesh just pulls back together, agony and evisceration pulling back to a ‘kinda hurts’ level of pain and you’re physically whole, with the 100% expectation that you’ll get back up and keep fighting whatever it was that struck you down the first time.

You break your arm after falling somewhere and after you’re healed instead of looking for ‘another way around’ everybody just looks at you and goes “okay try again”.

You’ve been fighting for hours, you’re hungry, thirsty, bleeding, crying from exhaustion, and a hand-wave happens and only two of those things go away. you’re still hungry, you’re still weak from thirst, but the handwave means you have ‘no excuse’ to stop.

You act out aggressively maybe punch a wall or gnash your teeth or hit your head on something and it’s hand-waved because it’s ‘such a small injury you probably can’t even feel it anymore’ but the point was that you felt it at all?

Your pain literally means nothing because as long as you’re not bleeding you’re not injured, right? Here drink this potion and who cares about the emotional exhaustion of that butchered village, why are you so reserved in camp don’t you think it’s fun retelling that time you fell through a burning building and with a hand-wave you got back up again and ran out with those two kids and their dog? 

Older warriors who get a shiver around magic-users not because of the whole ‘fireball’ thing but the ‘I don’t know what a normal pain tolerance is anymore’ effect of too much healing. Permanent paralysis and loss of sensation in limbs is pretty much a given in the later years of any fighter’s life. Did I have a stroke or did the mage just heal too hard and now this side of my face doesn’t work? No i’m not dead from the dragon’s claws but I can’t even bend my torso anymore because of how the scar tissue grew out of me like a vine.

Magical healing is great and keeps casualties down.

But man.

That stuff is scary.

shit just got creepy

Or maybe magical healing doesn’t leave scars or damage. It is magical, after all.

So after years of fighting, your skin is still perfect. Unmarred. In fact, you’re actually in better shape than regular people who don’t get magical healing when they fall out of trees or walk into doors or cut themselves while cooking dinner. You’re in such good shape that it’s unnatural.

And the really good healing magic takes away more than just the obvious injuries. You first start noticing it after about ten years when you go home and haha, you look the same age as your younger sibling, that’s funny.

Not so funny ten years later when they look older. Or forty years later, when you bury them still looking like you did at twenty. When do you retire from this gig anyway? How much damage is too much damage?

How many times do you glimpse the afterlife, or worse, how many times don’t you? What do you live through, get used to, show no outward sign of except a perfectly healthy body, too perfect for any person living a real life.

How many times are you sitting in a tavern with your friends and you hear the whispers, because the people around you know. How can they not know? Your weapons shine with enchantments and your armour is better than the best money can buy and there is not a damn scar on you. You hardly seem human to them.

How long before you hardly seem human to yourself?

And you find yourself struggling to remember the places where the scars should have been, phantom pains that wake you screaming, touching all the old injuries and finding nothing there. It’s all in your head. Was it ever anywhere else?

How long before you’re fighting a lich or a vampire or some other undead monster and you wonder…

…what makes me so different?

Building a World: Plants, Food, and Medicine

No worldbuilding is complete without flora and fauna. I’m delighted when plants make their way into narratives, and especially delighted when plants are featured. Take kingsfoil (or athelas if you will, or asëa aranion if you’re Tolkien-level extra) for example. Such a little thing, but instrumental as a representation of natural and folk medicine.

Some of you may know that I volunteer in a botanical garden library. If you don’t, now you know. Here are some books that have crossed my desk that I think would be good for a first step into creating a lush, vibrant biome.

THE PLANT HUNTERS: The Adventures of the World’s Greatest Botanical Explorers by Carolyn Fry

Don’t let the title fool you. Plant hunters, and orchid hunters especially, are some of the world’s greatest thieves. The plants we take for granted in our gardens are the result of someone taking a native plant from somewhere else, often without permission. The irony is that this book is published by the Kew Botanical Gardens, which I’m convinced is one of the world’s largest repositories of stolen plants.

Humans are pretty awful to each other when they covet plants. Even when they aren’t being awful to each other, stealing plants is a time-honored gardening tradition (for example, I might have stolen some flowers off government property in the dead of night). How did plants get from here to there? Who started importing plants? If your world has cultures that regularly communicate, you’ll have plant crossover, and plant theft.

OF NAKED LADIES AND FORGET-ME-NOTS: The Stories Behind the Common Names of Some of Our Favorite Plants by Allan Armitage

Why is arugula called rocket? (Spite, probably.) Who is the famous Susan, she of the black eyes? Who decided Sleepy Dick was a good name for a plant? This book doesn’t go the most in-depth, but I’m sure a thorough etymological journey isn’t what you’re looking for here. This one is a fun, entertaining, and easy read.

WICKED PLANTS: The Weed that Killed Lincoln’s Mother and Other Botanical Atrocities by Amy Stewart

This one’s also an easy and fun read, full of tidbits to pique your curiosity. Or not, considering many of the plants in this book are deadly and you’d do better to simply read about them. By the way, don’t eat lantana berries. Don’t eat the plant in general, but really don’t eat the berries.

HERBARIUM by Caz Hildebrand

This book is less a gardening how-to and more a beautifully illustrated primer on what herbs you should be growing. It’s a graphic designer’s dream, with saturated colors and a debossed cover that’s sure to be a conversation starter. Oh, and there’s good advice on how to eat the herbs.

SOUTHERN FOLK MEDICINE: Healing Traditions from the Appalachian Fields and Forests by Phyllis D. Light

The rural south and Appalachia once had a thriving tradition of herbal and diagnostic medicine. This is the first, but hopefully not the only, book that details Southern Folk Medicine methods. It’s fascinating to see humorism combine with Native American and African knowledge. Phyllis Light is a master herbalist and an excellent storyteller, and not one to shy away from the painful, bloody history of the South. Take time to sit down with this one.

MYCOPHILIA: Revelations from the Weird World of Mushrooms by Eugenia Bone

Okay, this one doesn’t quite fit, even though humans have been using fungi as medicine for thousands of years. Fungi aren’t plants, but they certainly have a place in any ecosystem, and many plants wouldn’t exist without their companion fungi. I had to consider how deep a dive was warranted; Eugenia Bone’s book is part memoir and part “did you know?” and as introductions go, it’s not bad. And honestly, I could have included an orchid book, and if there’s anything you need to know about orchid people, it’s that we’re really… intense. You’re welcome.

I hope this list helps you out on your journey. Nothing is too weird or too unbelievable when it comes to the natural world. Be as wild and creative as you like! Nature probably already has you beat.

an old Soviet “Walking Excavator”

ancient but wise mechancobeast

home goals

I want to live in this.

Why “Burnout” Is Okay - The Creativity Cycle

– One of the biggest fears writers face is burnout, or “writer’s block”. However, there’s always a way to look at the positives in a situation. Please take the following to heart: Not actively creating is okay, as long as you continue to your goals in another way.

Do not ever beat yourself up over not having the momentum to keep creating actively, 24/7. You need days where you relax and research and find inspiration. It’s not laziness. It’s an important part of the creative process. There’s a fabulous visual by emcheeseman on Twitter that was made for artists and explains this really well.

The Three Stages Of The Creativity Cycle

There are three stages to the creativity cycle; Action, The Middle, and Recovery. 

The Middle Ground

If you’re coming down from the action stage, you’re not quite burnt out, but you’re also not as full of creative energy as you might have been last week. Your creations aren’t popping out as quickly and you’re finding that you take more breaks, do less in one sitting, and would rather take it slow and figure out some world building for upcoming scenes or write some experimental blurbs, rather than keep writing at full speed.

Or, if you’re coming out of the recovery stage, you’re not at 100% yet, but you have the motivation to do something, such as the activities I used as examples above.

During The Action Stage

You’re actively creating. You’re, how one would say, on a roll. Your visions and ideas are coming to life and you’re using all of your energy to create, rather than research or recharge. You should be using the momentum you’ve built up in the middle ground to write, and write a lot.

The Recovery Stage

You have had enough of writing for hours and hours at a time and you need some rest. Your brain is tired and you’re finding it more difficult to get excited about your project. It’s time to let yourself breathe. Give yourself time to do absolutely nothing, distance yourself from your project, and take in some material to help you get inspired again. 

You need to input content into your head. Read, watch tv shows, watch movies, go out in the world, try new things, have new experiences, visit new places, etc. This is super important to this stage. If you don’t consume other work or things that will help you generate ideas once you have the energy again, you will not bounce back to the high energy production phase you hope to be on again. 

So What?

Just remember that creativity, no matter what art form you practice, is a cycle that you can’t stop in one place. Nobody can always be in a place where they can happily create every single day without faltering. You’re human, you’re an artist, and you need to accept that there are multiple ways you can work toward your goal, even when you’re “burnt out”. It’s all part of the process.

Happy writing!

Support Wordsnstuff!

if you don’t know about unpaywall and are researching something or studing or just want to have access to knowledge but don’t go to uni or whatever, it might be pretty helpful. it’s a free, legal browser extension widget thing that unlocks open access academia. it can unlock something like 17 million articles so it’s pretty useful if you want to keep up with academia but don’t have access to institutional repositories or subscription databases. 

(sci-hub has more access afaik but yknow. illegally. and unpaywall is still pretty great, especially at pushing subscription databases to make more stuff open access by being a legit example of what pirate repositories have been pushing for so long)

solarpunk that tries to imagine how sustainability looks in different cultures and regions seems way cooler to me than solarpunk stuff that’s like, stained glass and plants and would never be affordable to everyone (that’s not sustainability, that’s gentrification with a fun new twist)

guess what most of the art i can find is of, though

There’s this list of links.

And…yeah, I think there are some overly idealistic notions if people think it’d be all Tiffany windows and ivy.  (Yes, solarpunk is—at least arguably—innately anti-capitalist.  That doesn’t mean Tiffany windows and ivy are going to be feasible everywhere.)

Oh definitely this! A solarpunk Alaska is going to look quite different then a solarpunk Florida or South Africa or anywhere else. That variety, or potential varity at least, is part of what I love about this genre.

Ah, so that’s why that post is randomly getting notes again.

Okay, I provided some potential Solarpunk tech for different regions in the world, how about some different regional esthetics?

In areas where water will stay frozen for most of the year - Ice Sculptures. Gogeous ice sculptures all over the place, lit up with solar spotlights. People are very proud of their lovely ice sculptures, outside their homes, outside their workplaces and public spaces. Clothes are thick and practical but beautifully embroidered and/or beaded. Intricately ornamenting everyday objects is a good way to pass the long winter evenings.

In areas that don’t get a lot of sunlight in winter. Zillions of super efficient solar fairy lights that take advantage of the small amount of daylight that there is to charge up. There are so many that they create hours of artificial daylight, which helps combat seasonal depression, while looking twinkly and beautiful at the same time.

In arid regions where water is precious. Permaculture oasis’ doted through the desert. Tall spires of warka water towers reaching up into the sky to gather water from the air. Colorful tents with shining solar fabric roofs designed to provide shade from the sun while collecting it’s bounty.

In cities where there’s no room to spread out. Farms and parks in the sky. Skyscrapers designed with open spaces to let the light in. Green in color due to the algae farms attached to the outside to absorb pollution. Delicate looking (but super strong) sky bridges linking communities in different skyscrapers.

In coastal cities. People expand onto the water. Solar, wind and wave energy farms that are designed to look sculptural and beautiful and well as generating energy. Towering floating farms bobbing gently in sheltered bays and ports.

In rocky mountainous areas. Buildings cling to the rocky cliffs so that they don’t take up precious land that could be used for growing things. Terraces are carefully (to prevent errosion) carved out of the mountainsides to make gardens that spill down the slopes

10 outline techniques for writers

With this post I listed 10 outline techniques to help writes move their story from a basic idea to a complete set of arcs, plots, sequences and/or scenes. Or to simply expand whatever you have in hands right now.

If you have a vague story idea or a detailed one, this post is for you to both discover and organize. A few technique will work perfectly. A few won’t. Your mission is to find the one that works best for you. That said, I advice you to try out as many techniques as possible.

So, are you ready? Open your notebook, or your digital document, and let’s start.

1. Snowflake method: Start with a one-sentence description of the novel. Then, develop this simple phrase into a paragraph. Your next step is to write a one-page summary based on the paragraph, you can write about characters, motivations, goals, plots, options, whatever you feel like. From this point on, you can either start your book or expand the one-page summary into four pages. And, at last, four pages into a brief description of known sequences of scenes. Your goal is to make the story more and more complex as you add information, much like a forming snowflake.  

2. Chapter by chapter: List ten to twenty chapters, give each chapter a tittle and a brief description of what should happen. Then, break each chapter into three to five basic sequences of scenes. Give each sequence a title, a brief description and a short list of possibilities (possibilities of dialogues, scenarios, outcomes, moods, feelings… just play around with possibilities). From this point on, you can either create the scenes of sequences with a one-sentence description for each or jump straight to writing. Your goal is to shift from the big picture to a detail-oriented point of view.

3. Script: This might sound crazy, but, with this technique, you will write the screenplay of your story as if it’s a movie. No strings attached to creative writing, just plain actions and dialogues with basic information. Writing a script will take time, maybe months, but it will also enlighten your project like no other technique. Your goal is to create a cinematic view of your story. How to write a script here. 

4. Free writing: No rules, no format, no step, just grab a pen or prepare your fingers to write down whatever idea that comes up. Think of possibilities, characters, places, quests, journeys, evolutions, symbolisms, fears, good moments, bad moments, clothing, appearances. Complete five to ten pages. Or even more. The more you write, the more you will unravel. You can even doodle, or paste images. Your mission is to explore freely.

5. Tag: This technique is ideal if you have just a vague idea of the story. Start by listing ten to fifteen tags related to the story. Under each tag, create possible plots. And, under each plot, create possible scenes. Grab a red felt pen and circle plots and scenes that sparkle your interest.

6.  Eight-point arc: With this technique you will divide your story into eight stages. They are Stasis, Trigger, Quest, Surprise, Critical Choice, Climax, Reversal and Resolution. The Stasis is the every-day-life of your main character. Trigger is an event that will change the every-day-life of your character (for better or for worse). Quest is a period of your main characters trying to find a new balance, a new every-day-life (because we all love a good routine). Surprise will take your character away from their new found every-day-life. Critical Choice is a point of no return, a dilemma, your character will have to make the hardest decision out of two outcomes, both equally important. Climax is the critical choice put to practice. Reversal is the consequence of the climax, or how the characters evolved. Resolution is the return to a new (or old) every-day-life, a (maybe everlasting) balance.

7. Reverse: Write down a description of how your story ends, what happens to your characters and to those around them. Make it as detailed as possible. Then, move up to the climax, write a short scenario for the highest point of your story. From there, build all the way back to the beginning. 

8. Zigzag: Draw a zigzag with as many up and downs as you want. Every up represents your main character moving closer to their goal. Every down represents your main character moving further from their goal. Fill in your zigzag with sequences that will take your character closer and farther from the goal.

9. Listing: The focus of this technique is exploring new ideas when your story feels empty, short or stagnated. You’ll, basically make lists. Make a long list of plot ideas. Make another list of places and settings. Make a list of elements. And a list of possible characters. Maybe a list of book titles. Or a list of interesting scenes. A list of bad things that could happen inside this universe. A list of good things. A list of symbolism. A list of visual inspiration. A list of absurd ideas you’ll probably never use. Then, gather all this material and circle the good items. Try to organize them into a timeline.

10. Character-driven: Create a character. Don’t worry about anything else. Just think of a character, their appearance and style. Give them a name. Give them a basic personality. Give them a backstory. Develop their personality based on the backstory. Now, give this character a story that mirrors their backstory (maybe a way to overcome the past, or to grow, or to revenge, or to restore). Based on your character’s personality, come up with a few scenes to drive their story from beginning to end. Now, do the same thing for the antagonist and secondary characters.

So, when is it time to stop outlining and start writing?

This is your call. Some writers need as many details as they can get, some need just an basic plot to use as a North. Just remember, an outline is not a strict format, you can and you will improvise along the way. The most important is being comfortable with your story, exploring new ideas, expanding old concepts and, maybe, changing your mind many times. There’s no right or wrong, just follow your intuition.  

Also you can mix up EVERYTHING about all of these. 

My outlines are usually some weird combination of scripting and a conversation with my future self.