Guest Post: Worldbuilding For Pantsers

 

Worldbuilding For Pantsers

By Cynthia Sax

Before I start, I would like to stress that there are very few rules (if any) in writing and none of those rules (if they exist) are mentioned in this post. We’re all different writers. We are writing different stories. We have different goals and different visions of success. What works for me might not work for you. Use what you can and discard the rest.

I am a pantser. I write by the seat of my pants. Often when I start writing, I have an idea for a character and a vision of the first scene and that’s it.

I’ve thus far written 23 cyborg romances and 12 alien romances set in the same world. It is (now) a huge world and it is constantly evolving. And I wrote those stories while pantsing.

 

Basing It On An Existing World

Basing a new world roughly on an existing world makes worldbuilding SO much easier. Yes, it is a cheat but it is a cheat most writers use either consciously or subconsciously.

Maybe the small town your contemporary romance is set in is based on a small town you once lived in or visited. You know fundamental truths like it will have a post office and a convenience store and everyone will know everyone’s business.

Maybe the underwater world your merman romance is set in is based on research you’ve done on deep water exploration. You know there will be pressure issues and you might have an image in your mind of the plants and the creatures sharing that world with your merman. Perhaps you scuba dive and can bring that knowledge into the story.

I combined (at least) two different existing worlds when I started writing the first story in my world (Releasing Rage).

Similar to Star Wars, my world is based VERY roughly on World War II. The Humanoid Alliance, my baddies, are the empire i.e. the Nazis and my hero and heroine are the rebels i.e. the Allies.

I have studied the spread of fascism and the rise and fall of empires extensively (due to personal interest) so this was an ‘easy’ setting for me.

Then I combined that existing world with the reader expectations for futuristic settings. I’ve watched quite a few science fiction TV shows and movies and I’ve read quite a few scifi romances. There’s a default image most of us ‘see’ for spaceships and other scifi tools or garments. The flight suit, for example, is a standard garment many futuristic beings wear.

 

Writing The First Draft

I subconsciously merged these two existing worlds in that first scene I envisioned. As I started writing Releasing Rage, however, I would come across things that were specific to my unique world. The cyborgs needed a means to communicate without the enemy overhearing them, for example. I grew up with CB radios and had them speak through built-into-them transmission lines.

When I wrote the first quick (for me) draft, I didn’t know how these transmission lines would work. I left gaps that I filled in after the first draft was completed. At that point, I knew all that I needed the transmission lines to do (within that story). I researched how that could work (as SciFi Romance is based on science, I like to have science behind any tools).

Sometimes I didn’t have any idea how something would work. I wanted my cyborgs to have babies, for example. I left that as a big question mark. When I attended a Consumer Electronics Show (the big one in Vegas), I talked to every scientist and product developer who would listen to me, asking them how it might be possible. They generously gave me their thoughts, deriving a plausible solution which I used in my world.

 

The World Needed For That Story

My story wasn’t about the world. It was about the characters. So I only mentioned what I needed to mention for the story to make sense, to ‘exist’ for the readers.

I didn’t need to know what was happening on the next planet, for example, because my characters wouldn’t be visiting that planet during the story. I didn’t talk about currency, as another example, because my characters didn’t use any currency during the story.

If the point-of-view characters wouldn’t know something, I didn’t mention it. If the information wasn’t key to the story, again, I didn’t mention it.

This reduced research time and it also made my pantser heart happy. I could pants those detail in future stories.

 

Plan For Multiple Stories

I wrote Releasing Rage, the first story, originally just for me. When I completed it, I knew I wanted to share it with readers. But I thought it might be a single story.

Thankfully, when I added to my world, I envisioned what the ramifications of these additions would be…and EVERY addition leaves ripples in our worlds.

The ability to transmit stealthily, for example, meant all information would likely be shared by the cyborgs. Once one of them realized they could have babies, ALL of them would have that information. Once one of them escaped the Humanoid Alliance, ALL of them would know it was possible to escape.

The less limiting the world, the less limited your future stories will be. When you add an aspect, think to yourself, “Will I want to adhere to this new world ‘rule’ for 30 more stories?”

 

World Unique Language

Please learn from my mistakes and use world unique language sparingly. Consider testing it with readers and other writers first.

In my world, for example, the beings use a$$ coverings as the term for pants/slacks/leggings, etc. This is extremely awkward and many readers HATE it. Unfortunately, I used it in the first story and have, thus far, been forced to use it for 34 more stories.

If you’re writing in a niche like scifi or fantasy, consider using enough unique words to make your world special but not enough to be limiting or draw the reader out of the story.

 

An Ever-Expanding World

My world grew with each new story. The heroine in my second story (Breathing Vapor), for example, was a Humanoid Alliance insider. She knew things about the enemy that no one in the first story knew. The heroine in my third story (Crash And Burn) was a pilot. She knew things about ships that no one in the first two stories knew.

Everything in the previous stories is brought forward to the current story. The stories might be pantsed now but the world is definitely NOT pantsed.

That is how I, as a pantser, build my worlds. What are some tactics you use for world building?

 

Blurb:

Releasing Rage

Half Man. Half Machine. All Hers.

Rage, the Humanoid Alliance’s most primitive cyborg, has two goals—kill all of the humans on his battle station and escape to the Homeland. The warrior has seen the darkness in others and in himself. He believes that’s all he’s been programmed to experience.

Until he meets Joan.

Joan, the battle station’s first female engineer, has one goal—survive long enough to help the big sexy cyborg plotting to kill her. Rage might not trust her but he wants her. She sees the passion in his eyes, the caring in his battle-worn hands, the gruff emotion in his voice.

When Joan survives the unthinkable, Rage’s priorities are tested. Is there enough room in this cyborg’s heart for both love and revenge?

Read Now for FREE:

On Amazon US

On Amazon UK

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 ~

Bio:

About Cynthia Sax

USA Today bestselling author Cynthia Sax writes steamy Cyborg, Alien and Contemporary Romances. Her stories have been featured on TV, in Star Magazine and on numerous best of top ten lists.

Sign up for her dirty-joke-filled monthly newsletter and visit her on the web at www.CynthiaSax.com

Website:  http://CynthiaSax.com/

Newsletter:   http://CynthiaSax.com/Newsletter/

Twitter:  @CynthiaSax

Blog:  http://TasteOfCyn.com/

 

Fundraiser: Giftmas 2020

 

Connections

 

I won't take up too much of your time at all, and before I start talking about connections, I will ask you to go and donate. I'm being forward, I know, but this is important. Your donation to the Edmonton Food Bank--however small--will buy someone a warm meal. It will ease someone's worries a little, and if that isn't worth a few bucks, I don't know what is. And speaking of connections, it doesn't matter where on this planet you are. If you want to give, you can. Thank you.

So connections. They are important. In this plague year, they shifted, more to the digital and away from the personal. Some of us have not seen family members in months. I can't remember when I shook someone's hand last.

At the same time, thanks to the power of connections, I was able to help several students succeed in their final exams. They have now graduated and are moving to the next stage of their lives.

Friends that were once close have moved back to different countries earlier this year while the situation was still new and raw and developing. There was and is sadness there, because rapid change is never easy.

At the same time, I feel that digital conferences have allowed more writers to partake than in-person ones. I still want to meet with fellow authors irl, but I truly love the idea that the digital space allows more people access.

And another hugely valuable area for connections: when I came down with Covid not too long ago, people checked in with me, and it didn't matter that they were from four different countries. Truly, I was moved by this, especially because I was in isolation for several weeks, and knowing people were there, even if "there" was sometimes oceans away, helped.

So, please, stay safe. Remember to socially distance, not just for you but also those around you. And if someone you know is sick or won't be able to visit with family this holiday season, remember that you, yes you!, can be their connection. All it takes is a phone call, a text, anything that will let them know another person cares.

Alexandra Seidel

December 18, 2020

Guest Post: The Unwise Practice of Writing Epic Narrative Poetry

 Here comes a long overdue guest post on poetry by Mary Soon Lee. Enjoy!

~~~

"And what will you pay for the crown,
little princeling? Gold? Men? A song?"

"My freedom!" he shouted at her.
"Well," she said, "that's a start."

From Interregnum, The Sign of the Dragon, Mary Soon Lee

~~~ 

The Unwise Practice of Writing Epic Narrative Poetry

by Mary Soon Lee

I write both poetry and fiction. Viewed as separate activities -- wearing either my poetry hat or my fiction hat -- I have little to add to the voluminous advice already out there. But I do have thoughts about what happens if you try to jam both hats on your head at once. In particular, I have thoughts about the unwise practice of writing book-length, hard-to-market, epic narrative poetry.

 

Firstly, be careful. If you dabble in poetry at all, there's a risk you will succumb. Back in 2013, I wrote a standalone fantasy poem about a boy chosen by a dragon to be king. At least, I'd intended it to be a standalone poem. Nearly four years and 340 poems later, I completed a full draft of "The Sign of the Dragon."  It was the hardest, most addictive, most all-absorbing work I've ever attempted.

 

In 2013, I had young children. I was writing poetry because I could squash a poem into a short space of time, then set it aside and concentrate on being a stay-at-home parent. The trouble began when I found myself thinking about the boy in that first poem, about what happened next. Poem by poem, I kept returning and expanding King Xau's story.

 

This brings me to my second observation about epic narrative poetry. There's a breathtaking freedom to it. If you decide to tell a story by means of many individual poems, you can then switch style, length, point of view. You can dart from a poem about the hero near the beginning of the story, to a poem in the middle from the perspective of his elderly cleaning woman. You can choose to skip over major battles altogether, or to show them in separate glimpses from assorted characters: soldiers, generals, stableboys, women accompanying the army.

 

Poem by poem, you can tell an epic piecemeal, each poem a tile in the final mosaic. Many of the oldest stories we have come from an oral tradition of narrative poetry, though they may be essentially a single long poem. I would have found it hard to tell my story in one piece. But by breaking the story down into self-contained poems, I was able to juggle parenting and writing an epic. Not only was this a convenient form for me, it was also liberating. I could return to an earlier point in the story to add an arc about another character in a handful of poems. I could slip into rhyme, or tell a scene in the dialogue format of a play, yet not be constrained to maintain that form throughout.

 

Thirdly, I have a few tips that helped me during the process of writing "The Sign of the Dragon." Since every writer works in different ways, even if you decide (unwisely!) to write epic narrative poetry, these may or may not be useful to you. Although I darted about in the story as I wrote, I wanted the narrative as a whole to be consistent. I found it especially helpful to jot down the date that each poem took place, even though these dates are omitted from the final book. Noting down dates let me check such things as the season, the phase of the moon, the age of the king's children, how long it would take to a character to travel from one place to another.

 

Similarly, I sketched a map to show the different countries and cities. It was not a beautiful map, quite the opposite. But it was enough for me to gauge distances and to know whether a city lay to the north or east of another city. I kept many other notes common for novelists: notes on character backstories, on the fictional history, on the nature of my fictional dragons and monsters, etc.

 

Among those notes, I kept one set of records that ties in more closely to poetry: a record of repeated phrases or tags. For instance, I adopted the following tag for one of the enemy kings: "the Red King: red-haired, red-handed in war." Sometimes I would include the full phrase, sometimes just a part ("red-handed in war"). This type of device is ancient. Homer uses such epithets as swift-footed Achilles, rosy-fingered dawn, and the wine-dark sea. Epithets can remind readers of which character is which; they can call back to earlier moments in the story in a few words; they can provide common rhythms or linkage between different poems. If I had understood the scope of what I was writing from the outset, I think I would have used epithets more systematically and more extensively.

 

Fourthly and unsurprisingly, I also ended up doing research. Although "The Sign of the Dragon" takes place in an imaginary secondary world, it draws on elements from ours. So I found myself researching ancient China and the Mongols, along with sundry items from foaling to archery. For poets, I recommend picture books in addition to drier reference works. The single book I returned to most often was an illustrated children's book: "Ancient China" by Arthur Cotterell, part of the Eyewitness Books series. Images are highly evocative, conjuring an atmosphere, a sense of time and place, whether or not you include specific details from them. For illustrated military references, Osprey Publishing offers short books on topics ranging from "Siege Engines of the Far East" to "Pictish Warrior AD 297-841," and I am indebted to a friend, Timons Esaias, for introducing me to this resource.

 

Fifthly, I should caution you that writing epic narrative poetry may be a poor career choice. My agent (Lisa Rodgers, JABberwocky Literary Agency) received a series of rejections for "The Sign of the Dragon," several saying they loved the book but didn't publish poetry, others saying they loved it but didn't publish fantasy. When the COVID-19 pandemic broke, I very much wanted King Xau's story to be published, so we released an ebook version, with a print edition forthcoming in 2021.

 

Lastly, unwise or not, commercial or not, I have never written anything that matters as much to me as "The Sign of the Dragon."  I love it fiercely, protectively. Sometimes, writers should be unwise.

~~~

Mary Soon Lee was born and raised in London, but now lives in Pittsburgh. She writes both fiction and poetry, and has won the Rhysling Award and the Elgin Award. Her two latest books are from opposite ends of the poetry spectrum: "Elemental Haiku,"containing haiku for each element of the periodic table (Ten Speed Press, 2019) and "The Sign of the Dragon,"  an epic fantasy with Chinese elements (JABberwocky Literary Agency, 2020). After twenty-five years, her website has finally been updated: marysoonlee.com.

~~~

Mary's home page and Twitter (@MarySoonLee)

Buy links for the The Sign of the Dragon:

 

Amazon/Kindle

Apple Books

Barnes & Noble/Nook