Or, How To Write Life on a Farm

By me. A person who spends more than half their waking hours on a farm.

So you’re sitting down to write a fic, and you decide on a farming AU. It’s something that you don’t expect to put a lot of time in, it’s only for fun, and really, let’s face it: you haven’t been to a farm since your second grade field trip where you got to pet a cow and that one really unfortunate kid (you know the one) slipped off the bus and fell in mud and had to walk around in borrowed coveralls three sizes too big all day.

If you’re expecting something like this:

(yes that’s my farm STOP JUDGING ME)

Then you’re forgetting the two most important things about farming. 

Farming is GROSS and farming is WEIRD AS FUCK.

Read on for some schooling about life on farms and how you, too, can incorporate some good old farming zaniness into your next WIP.

Continua a leggere

I can whole heartedly agree. I did agriculture in highschool which meant I spent a lot of time at the school farm.

Know what I did most of the time? Feed animals, threaten geese, collect eggs, weigh sheep and the occasional medication.

The most exciting things I have ever done was wrestle a 300 pound pregnant ewe onto the scale and put an alpaca in a chokehold so it would take its medication. There are days where it is the most boring thing, or a once in a lifetime opportunity.

The other day I was part of a Twitter conversation begun by a fellow-author on the subject of sensitivity readers, in which he said that no serious author would use sensitivity readers, and spoke of work being “sanitized”. The conversation devolved, as it often does on Twitter, but it got me thinking. It must have got someone else thinking too, because a journalist from the Sunday Times got in touch with me the next day, and asked me to share my ideas on the subject. Because I have no control over how my words are used in the Press, or in what context they might appear, here’s more or less what I told her.

I think a lot of people (some of them authors, most of them not) misunderstand the role of a sensitivity reader. That’s probably mostly because they’ve never used one, and are misled by the word “sensitivity”, which, in a world of toxic masculinity, is often mistaken for weakness. To these people, hiring someone to check one’s work for sensitivity purposes implies a surrendering of control, a shift in the balance of power. 

In some ways, I can empathize. Most authors feel a tremendous sense of attachment to their work. Giving it to someone else for comment is often stressful. And yet we do: we hand over our manuscripts to specialists in grammar, spelling or plot construction. We allow them to comment. We take their advice. We call these people editors and copy-editors, and they are a good and necessary part of the process of being an author. Their job is to make an author’s work as accurate and well-polished as possible.

When writing non-fiction, authors sometimes use fact-checkers at the editorial stage, to make sure that no embarrassing factual mistakes make it into print. This fact-checking is a normal part of the writing process. We owe it to our readers to be as accurate as possible. No-one wants to look as if they don’t know what they’re talking about.

That’s why now, increasingly, when writing about the lives and experiences of others, we sometimes use readers with different specialities. That’s because, however great our imagination, however well-travelled we may be and however many books we have read, there will always be gaps in our knowledge of the way other people live, or feel, or experience the world. Without the input of those with first-hand knowledge, there’s always a danger we will slip up. That’s why crime writers often consult detectives when researching their detective fiction, or someone writing a hospital drama might find it useful to talk to a surgeon, or a nurse, or to someone with the medical condition they are planning to use in their narrative. That’s why someone writing about divorce, or disability, or being adopted, or being trans, or being homeless, or being a sex worker, or being of a different ethnicity, or of a different culture – might find it useful to take the advice of someone with more experience.

There are a number of ways to do this. One of my favourites is The Human Library, which allows subscribers to talk to all kinds of people and ask them questions about their lives  (Check them out at https://humanlibrary.org/). The other possibility is to hire a specialist sensitivity reader to go through your manuscript and check it. Both can be a valuable resource, and I doubt many authors would believe that their writing is sanitized, or diluted, or diminished by using these resources.

And yet, the concept of the sensitivity readers – which is basically another version of the specialist editor and fact-checker – continues to cause outrage and panic among those who see their use as political correctness gone mad, or unacceptable wokery, or bowdlerization, or censorship. The Press hasn’t helped. Outrage sells copies, and therefore it isn’t in the interest of the national media to point out the truth behind the ire.

Let’s look at the facts.

First, it isn’t obligatory to use a sensitivity reader. It’s a choice. I’ve used several, both officially and unofficially, for many different reasons, just as I’ve always tried to speak to people with experience when writing characters with disabilities, or from different cultures or ethnic groups. I know that my publisher already sends my work to readers of different ages and from different backgrounds, and I always run my writing past my son, who often has insights that I lack.  

Sensitivity reading is a specialist editorial service. It isn’t a political group, or the woke brigade, or an attempt to overthrow the status quo. It’s simply a writing resource; a means of reaching the widest possible audience by avoiding inaccuracy, clumsiness, or the kind of stereotyping that can alienate or pull the reader out of the story.

Sensitivity readers don’t go around crossing out sections of an author’s work and writing RACIST!!! in the margin. Usually, it’s more on the lines of pointing out details the author might have missed, or failed to consider: avoiding misinformation; suggesting authentic details that only a representative of a particular group would know.

Authors can always refuse advice. That’s their prerogative. If they do, however, and once their book is published, they receive criticism or ridicule because their book was insufficiently researched, or inauthentic, or was perceived as perpetuating harmful or outdated stereotypes, then they need to face and deal with the consequences. With power comes responsibility. We can’t assume one, and ignore the other,

Being more aware of the experiences of others doesn’t mean we have to stop writing problematic characters. Sensitivity reading isn’t about policing bad behaviour in books. It’s perfectly possible to write a thoroughly unpleasant character without suggesting that you’re condoning their behaviour. Sensitivity is about being more authentic, not less.

People noticed bigotry and racism in the past, too. Some people feel that books published a hundred years ago are somehow more pure, or more free, or more representative of the author’s vision than books published now. You often hear people say things like: “If Dickens were around today, he wouldn’t get published.”

But Dickens is still published. We still get to read Oliver Twist, in spite of its anti-Semitism. And those who believe that Dickens’ anti-Semitism was accepted as normal by his contemporaries probably don’t know that not only was he criticized by his peers for his depiction of Fagin, he actually went back and changed the text, removing over 200 references, after receiving criticism by a Jewish reader. And no, it wasn’t “normal” to be anti-Semitic in those days: Wilkie Collins, whose work was as popular as Dickens’ own, managed to write a range of Jewish characters without relying on harmful and inaccurate stereotypes. 

But it isn’t automatic that a book will survive its author. Books all have shelf lives, just as we do, and Dickens’ work has survived in spite of his anti-Semitism, not because of it. The work of many others has not. Books are for readers, and if an author loses touch with their readers - either by clinging to outdated tropes, or using outdated vocabulary, or having an outdated style – then their books will cease to be published, and they will be forgotten. It happens all the time. What one generation loves and admires may be rejected by the next. And the language is always changing. Nowadays, it’s hard to read some books that were popular 100 years ago. Styles have changed, sometimes too much for the reader to tolerate.

Recently, someone on tumblr asked about my use of the word “gypsy” in Chocolat, and whether I meant to have it changed in later editions. (River-gypsies is the term I use in connection with Roux and the river people, who are portrayed in a positive light, although they are often victims of prejudice.) It was an interesting question, and I gave it a lot of thought. When I wrote the book 25 years ago, the word “gypsy” was widely used by the travelling community, and as far as I knew, wasn’t considered offensive. Nowadays, there’s a tendency to regard it as a slur. That’s why I stopped using it in my later Chocolat books. No-one told me to. It was my choice. I don’t feel as if I’ve lost any of my artistic integrity by taking into account the fact that a word has a different resonance now. On the other hand, I don’t feel that at this stage I need to go back and edit the book I wrote. That’s because Chocolat is a moment in time. It uses the language of the moment. Let it stand for as long as it can. 

But I don’t have to stay in one place. I can move on. I can change. Change is how we show the world that we are still alive. That we are still able to feel, and to  learn, and to be aware of others. That’s what “sensitive” means, after all. And it is nothing like weakness. Living, changing, learning – that’s hard. Playing dead is easy.

Ashitaka is done!

Tips from a Beta Reading Writer

This one's for the scenes with multiple characters, and you're not sure how to keep everyone involved.

Writing group scenes is chaos. Someone’s talking, someone’s interrupting, someone’s zoning out thinking about breadsticks. And if you’re not careful, half your cast fades into the background like NPCs in a video game. I used to struggle with this so much—my characters would just exist in the scene without actually affecting it. But here’s what I've learned and have started implementing:

✨ Give everyone a job in the scene ✨

Not their literal job—like, not everyone needs to be solving a crime or casting spells. I mean: Why are they in this moment? What’s their role in the conversation?

My favourite examples are:

• The Driver: Moves the convo forward. They have an agenda, they’re pushing the action.
• The Instigator: Pokes the bear. Asks the messy questions. Stirring the pot like a chef on a mission.
• The Voice of Reason: "Guys, maybe we don’t commit arson today?"
• The Distracted One: Completely in their own world. Tuning out, doodling on a napkin, thinking about their ex.
• The Observer: Not saying much, but noticing everything. (Quiet characters still have presence!)
• The Wild Card: Who knows what they’ll do? Certainly not them. Probably about to make things worse.

If a character has no function, they’ll disappear. Give them something—even if it’s just a side comment, a reaction, or stealing fries off someone’s plate. Keep them interesting, and your readers will stay interested too.

ALT

Still wintery ❄️

Small fantasy worldbuilding elements you might want to think about:

• A currency that isn’t gold-standard/having gold be as valuable as tin
• A currency that runs entirely on a perishable resource, like cocoa beans
• A clock that isn’t 24-hours
• More or less than four seasons/seasons other than the ones we know
• Fantastical weather patterns like irregular cloud formations, iridescent rain
• Multiple moons/no moon
• Planetary rings
• A northern lights effect, but near the equator
• Roads that aren’t brown or grey/black, like San Juan’s blue bricks
• Jewelry beyond precious gems and metals
• Marriage signifiers other than wedding bands
• The husband taking the wife's name / newlyweds inventing a new surname upon marriage
• No concept of virginity or bastardry
• More than 2 genders/no concept of gender
• Monotheism, but not creationism
• Gods that don’t look like people
• Domesticated pets that aren’t re-skinned dogs and cats
• Some normalized supernatural element that has nothing to do with the plot
• Magical communication that isn’t Fantasy Zoom
• “Books” that aren’t bound or scrolls
• A nonverbal means of communicating, like sign language
• A race of people who are obligate carnivores/ vegetarians/ vegans/ pescatarians (not religious, biological imperative)

I’ve done about half of these myself in one WIP or another and a little detail here or there goes a long way in reminding the audience that this isn’t Kansas anymore.

WORLDBUILDING RULE NUMBER ONE: PUT A FUCKING EQUATOR IN YOUR WORLD MAP

WORLDBUILDING RULE NUMBER TWO: IF THERE ARE POTATOES IN YOUR WORLD THERE MUST BE AN ANDES FROM WHERE THEY CAME FROM

WORLDBUILDING RULE NUMBER THREE: PUT. A. FUCKING. EQUATOR. IN. YOUR. WORLD. MAP.

WORLDBUILDING RULE NUMBER FOUR: ANY PLACE SOUTH OF THE EQUATOR CAN AND MUST BE AN ARGENTINA EQUIVALENT

To clarify the equator thing; the FIRST thing you should know if you're doing worldbuilding of anything larger than a single city is, at least roughly, the latitude, at least if it's located in a temperate, subtropical, tropical, polar, etc. latitude.

If you're designing a continent-sized scenario, you should KNOW how large it is and how it stretches over a world map, you don't need to do the exact coordinates, even if it's just in a loose way like "it stretches from the equator to the southern temperate zone". To do this, you NEED to put the equator on your world map, or in any case, you should know where it is compared to your main setting. This will help you create a realistic distribution of climates which will serve as a spine for the rest of your worldbuilding, as you can tell where different uses of resources, crops, flora, fauna, cultures, everything is.

Otherwise you get someone like GRRM claiming to be a genius of realistic fantasy while having no idea how big his own fucking continent is or where it is placed on the world.

Also, go read about equatorial and southern hemisphere cultures and enviroments. You don't need every world to be Fantasy Europe and Fantasy Asia. There ARE other continents, you know.

This post is made by Southern Hemisphere gang. We are out here.

Some of the laziest worldbuilding (in this particular regard) is when there's only one big continent pointing north, and things just get warmer the more south you go and it just... stops there. There's nothing else. No equator, nothing. The world just... stops. This is distressingly common. How many settings are just one big contintent which is located on an assumed northern hemisphere (usually with a defined northern frozen land, but an exotic and steamy south) I can count many.

What, you think things just get hotter the more south you go, that's your universal experience? The southest you go, you'll find boiling water? Ancient Greek ass thinking. Literally.

Even the Greeks, however, knew the Earth was round and that there was temperate zones and polar zones in the south. They KNEW the Southern Hemisphere existed. (In fact, two hemispheres separated by a boiling equatorial ocean would be fun worldbuilding if unrealistic)

The south exists too. We are out here.

Okay if you have the Potato Mountains then logically, either dwarves or goblins should eat potatoes. And even more logically, they would definitely discover you can make vodka from potatoes.

No, I did mean Literally Argentina.

ive gotten quite a few questions about this so i sat down and wrote it all out for a discord power point night. here it is. no mystery, only chaos, and if novellas have no fans then i am dead.

someone get these guys some proper gear

I've been reading Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros, and it's gotten me thinking about how worldbuilding is multilayered, and about how a failure of one layer of the worldbuilding can negatively impact the book, even if the other layers of the worldbuilding work.

I don't want to spoil the book for anyone, so I'm going to talk about it more broadly instead. In my day job, one of the things I do is planning/plan development, and we talk about plans broadly as strategic, operational, and tactical. I think, in many ways, worldbuilding functions the same way.

Strategic worldbuilding, as I think of it, is how the world as a whole works. It's that vampires exist and broadly how vampires exist and interact with the world, unrelated to the characters or (sometimes) to the organizations that the characters are part of. It's the ongoing war between Earth and Mars; it's the fact that every left-handed person woke up with magic 35 years ago; it's Victorian-era London except every twelfth day it rains frogs. It's the world, in the broadest sense.

Operational worldbuilding is the organizations--the stuff that people as a whole are doing/have made within the context of that strategic-level world. For The Hunger Games, I'd probably put the post-apocalyptic nature of the world and even the existence/structure of the districts as the strategic level and the construct of the Hunger Games as the operational level: the post-apocalyptic nature of the world and the districts are the overall world that they live in, and the Hunger Games are the construct that were created as a response.

Tactical worldbuilding is, in my mind, character building--and, specifically, how the characters (especially but not exclusively the main characters) exist within the context of the world. In The Hunger Games, Katniss has experience in hunting, foraging, wilderness survival, etc. because of the context of the world that she grew up in (post-apocalyptic, district structure, Hunger Games, etc.). This sort of worldbuilding, to me, isn't about the personality part of the characterization but about the context of the character.

Each one of these layers can fail independently, even if the other ones succeed. When I think of an operational worldbuilding failure, I think of Divergent, where they took a post-apocalyptic world and set up an orgnaizational structure that didn't make any sense, where people are prescribed to like 6 jobs that don't in any way cover what's required to run a modern civilization--or even to run the society that they're shown as running. The society that they present can't exist as written in the world that they're presented as existing in--or if they can, I never could figure out how when reading the book (or watching the film).

So operational worldbuilding failures can happen when the organizations or societies that are presented don't seem like they could function in the context that they are presented in or when they just don't make any sense for what they are trying to accomplish. If the story can't reasonably answer why is this organization built this way or why do they do what they do then I see it as an organizational worldbuilding failure.

For tactical worldbuilding failures, I think of stories where characters have skillsets that conveniently match up with what they need to solve the problems of the plot but don't actually match their background or experience. If Katniss had been from an urban area and never set foot in a forest, it wouldn't have worked to have her as she was.

In this way (as in planning), the tactical level should align with the operational level which should align with the strategic level--you should be able to trace from one to the next and understand how things exist in the context of each other.

For that reason, strategic worldbuilding failures are the vaguest to explain, but I think of them like this: if it either 1) is so internally inconsistent that it starts to fall apart or 2) leaves the reader going this doesn't make any sense at all then it's probably failed.

this is so mean but sometimes i see published writing and suddenly no longer feel insecure about my own writing ability. like well okay that got published so im guessing i dont have much to worry about

I have a friend who is an editor, and gets submissions of mostly poetry and short stories.

I have had a glimpse into her slush pile, and let me tell you, the contents were unbelievable and immediately disabused me of the notion that reading through submissions is in any way glamorous. People have the nerve to submit unhinged paranoid ramblings, fetish porn, and a seemingly endless supply of poems about masturbation.

I no longer feel like my fiction is somehow an imposition on the people who read it. It may be forgettable, but at least it isn't typeset to look like sperm.

Do not be afraid to submit your work. Your competition is not only worse than you think, it's worse than you ever imagined.

Do these three things to get to the top of the slush pile:

1. The place has a style sheet. Use it. They say they want your MS in 16.5 point Papyrus italic with 0.8 inch margins all around, guess what you're doing before you send it off? Save As, reformat, send it. In the absence of a specific guide: Courier 12 pt (Times New Roman if you must), double spaced, align left, tab 0.5 at each new paragraph.
2. Check the word count. Don't submit novellas to 2500 word short story venues. BTW, you format the MS in that old style above because the question isn't literal words. Courier 12pt double spaced gives you 250 words per page for typesetting purposes. 2500 words is 10 ms pages, 5000 is 20 pages, etc.
3. Don't send your romance to Analog or your war story to Harlequin. If it's a cross-genre story, be sure there's enough of what the publication is focused on to interest them, but breaking through is hard if that's not something they usually do.

That's basically what every single editors' panel at every con I've ever been to has boiled down to. And invariably, someone tries to get up and argue with them, not realizing it's not a discussion.

Bonus tip: Don't be in any way cute in your cover letter. Just the facts/Luke Skywalker's message to Jabba the Hut in ROTJ.

Enclosed/attached is my story <Title> for your publication <Magazine>. It is x (rounded to the nearest 500) words. I can be reached at <email> (that you check regularly and isn't likely to dump things into spam) and <phone>.

(If submitting a hard copy: The manuscript is disposable. A SASE is enclosed for your response./A SASE is included for return of the manuscript and your response.)

Thank you for your consideration.

If submitting a novella length piece or greater, a brief and complete summary is appropriate.

In the midst of an interstellar revolt against an evil galactic Empire, vital weapon plans fall into the hands of a farm boy on the edges of the galaxy. With the help of an aging warrior from the Old Republic, and a smuggler with a dark past and his imposing alien copilot, the four set out to deliver them to the rebel forces but are instead flung into a rescue mission to save the beautiful princess who stole the plans as worlds are destroyed by the might of the Empire's weapon, the Death Star.

Captured by the Death Star on route to deliver the plans, they manage to escape the base with the princess, the old warrior sacrificing himself to make this possible. As the Death Star approaches the rebel base, they use the captured plans to stage a desperate final stand. In a fierce space battle of single-pilot ships over the surface of the moon-sized weapon, the farm boy manages to make the critical shot with an unexpected assist from the smuggler, destroying it.

Never under any circumstance put a cliffhanger into a query letter summary. There is no faster way to get the entire MS binned than doing that.

Happy writing.

PS "Top of the slush pile" means into the top 25% of manuscripts received. Three quarters of the submissions don't take the trouble to do even those three basic steps.

Now, that still means 25/100 submissions or 250/1000 submissions, but it still improves your odds and forms the basis for starting a relationship with the publisher for the next piece you send them.

PPS This is obviously about prose. Poetry certainly has its own submission rules, and I know none of them. If you're writing poetry, find out what they are.

@silverhand's reply is right on.

Seeing red... 🔴

In today's CR Abridged I got to illustrate Chet being a little silly :o) Who knew this cruise had face-painting activities!

One of my favourite questions for figuring out a character’s motivations is which qualities they most fear being assigned to them. Are they afraid (consciously or unconsciously) of being seen as stupid? Ungrateful? Weak? Incompetent? Lazy? Cowardly? Intimidating? Like they actually care? etc.

It’s such a fun way to explore into who they are, why they do what they do, what they don’t do out of fear, and how they might be affected by the events of the story. And I love when characters have negative motivations—trying to avoid something (in this case, being seen a particular way) as much as they’re trying to achieve a goal.