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Hello everybody

It's been a while!

Just a reminder to all the new (and old) followers, that this blog is mostly made up of asks, from you the readers!

There have been no updates in the past several months, because there have been no questions!

I mention this, because I think that many people might assume that the blog is dormant, but that is not so!

So if you've got a technical writing question that's been bugging you, send it my way and maybe I can help!

What have I been up to over the past few months?

Well, I have sold a couple of short stories which will be in anthologies releasing later this year, and I have just self-published a short, standalone novelette!

link to the novelette if you're interested: https://books2read.com/u/3kOvKn

I've also taken up rock climbing as a hobby, which is extremely fun!

Anyways, that's all for now!

Mason

#housekeeping

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Cheat Code #4 for accommodating disabled characters in sci-fi/fantasy:

If you want to show a character's personality in the aids they use, you need to add customization, accessories, and/or specializations.

i.e.: You'll have a more three-dimensional character design if you take the time to consider what you can make unique about an aid; it should be as much a part of your design thoughts as the clothes they wear or the hairstyle they keep, and there are several ways to go about it. For example:

Customization would be things like colors and lights. A prosthetic arm can have colored guards that slide in and latch; a rich person might have those guards gilded, while a scientist might have a whiteboard arm panel to scribble notes on, and a stage performer could have theirs painted black with a bone on it to give the appearance of a skeletal window. A visor that replaces vision could have a screen that shows expressive pixel eyes for a happy-go-lucky hacker, or a practical black shield for someone in strict uniform. ⠀ To customize: make yourself a base, then take that base and imagine what each character you apply it to would WANT it to look like; prioritize aesthetics or practicality based on their personal preference. ⠀

Accessories are add-ons to your aid, rather than part of it. A cane could have ribbons wound around it if it's used by a magical girl, or a secret compartment stopper to hide notes in for a paranoid detective. A wheelchair might come with paragliding wings that open with a pullstring for a daredevil, canvas bags full of tools for a mechanic, or hubcaps that detach and can be thrown as weapons for a soldier. ⠀ For accessories, you're not necessarily thinking of "what can I add to this aid to make it special?" The process is better defined as "what would they want to have, and how can I merge the two in a way that's easy to use?" ⠀

Specializations are sort of a deeper combination of the two above features. They're a more advanced way of making your aids stand out, down to the materials they're comprised of or their intrinsic properties, that uniquely suit your character. They're typically hard to come by without being specially made, and can't be quickly modded in. ⠀ A spine brace being made of magic, living wood that grows to fill gaps when damaged would be available to a wood elf, and probably specially given to a warrior who WOULD damage it. A wheelchair made of magic-resistant metal could have use for a battlemage that can't turn to deflect spells quickly, or a witch hunter who wants immunity from the mages they're hunting. A cane that lights up when it senses radiation would be useful to a planetary explorer or warp drive mechanic, but not to a marine xenobiologist studying the starwhale population, who instead has a whalecall whistle built into theirs. ⠀ A specialized aid takes into account not only your character's wants and needs, but also their profession, their common risks, and occasionally their class—especially if you're using rare materials.

When you want to design an aid to be unique to your character, go through this checklist:

What do they want it to look like?

What would they want to add to it, and how do I make it convenient?

What would their setting offer them for their job or status?

What modifications would they have to seek out themselves, and would/could they?

Ask yourself these, and you're well on your way to making your disabled characters as varied as your abled ones.

Cheat code 1: How to avoid eliminating disability in your setting

Cheat Code 2: What kinds of aid to use to accommodate disability

Cheat Code 3: How to make your setting itself disability-friendly

#reblog

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Hot take: Actual literary analysis requires at least as much skill as writing itself, with less obvious measures of whether or not you’re shit at it, and nobody is allowed to do any more god damn litcrit until they learn what the terms “show, don’t tell” and “pacing” mean.

#reblog

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this might be weird to ask, but how do I critically look at another person's writing and implement what I like in their writing in my own writing? I've been having trouble improving in my writing, and frankly Im not sure how to go about doing that, even. It's easy to see what I like about another person's writing, but hard to pinpoint exactly why...

THIS IS NOT WEIRD TO ASK. It is, in fact, the most important question EVER.

How to Read Like a Writer

Re-read. If you get halfway into a chapter and think, Wow this chapter is super creepy–I wonder how they did that. Or get to the end of a book and think, I feel the poignancy of the fragility of human life in an inherently volatile economic system–I wonder how the writer made me feel that way… Go back and re-read that shit.

Read slowly. When you read like a reader, you read pretty fast. When you go in for your second, or third, or fourth re-read of a passage, chapter, or book that you want to know more about, read it slowly. Really. Slowly.

Read for technique, not content. Readers read for content (”In this paragraph, Damien gave Harold a classified envelope.”). Writers read for technique. (”In this paragraph, the writer made me feel curious about the contents of the envelope by giving sensory details about its appearance and weight.”)

Ask the right questions. They usually start with HOW: How did the writer make me feel? How did they accomplish that?

Read small. Did a chapter make you feel sad? Find out WHERE EXACTLY. What paragraph, sentence, or WORD did it for you? Was it a physical detail? A line of dialogue? A well-placed piece of punctuation? Stories are made of words and sentences. Narrow it down.

Practice. Reading like a writer is a skill that takes time to develop. Over time, you’ll get better at it!

How about y’all? Anything to add to this list? I made it off the top of my head so I’m sure I’m forgetting something. What have been your experiences with learning to read like a writer?

Hope this helps!

//////////////

The Literary Architect is a writing advice blog run by me, Bucket Siler. For more writing help, check out my Free Resource Library or get The Complete Guide to Self-Editing for Fiction Writers. xoxo

#reblog

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some of the best writing advice I’ve ever received: always put the punch line at the end of the sentence.

it doesn’t have to be a “punch line” as in the end of a joke. It could be the part that punches you in the gut. The most exciting, juicy, shocking info goes at the end of the sentence. Two different examples that show the difference it makes:

doing it wrong:

She saw her brother’s dead body when she caught the smell of something rotting, thought it was coming from the fridge, and followed it into the kitchen.

doing it right:

Catching the smell of something rotten wafting from the kitchen—probably from the fridge, she thought—she followed the smell into the kitchen, and saw her brother’s dead body.

Periods are where you stop to process the sentence. Put the dead body at the start of the sentence and by the time you reach the end of the sentence, you’ve piled a whole kitchen and a weird fridge smell on top of it, and THEN you have to process the body, and it’s buried so much it barely has an impact. Put the dead body at the end, and it’s like an emotional exclamation point. Everything’s normal and then BAM, her brother’s dead.

This rule doesn’t just apply to sentences: structuring lists or paragraphs like this, by putting the important info at the end, increases their punch too. It’s why in tropes like Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking or Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick, the odd item out comes at the end of the list.

Subverting this rule can also be used to manipulate reader’s emotional reactions or tell them how shocking they SHOULD find a piece of information in the context of a story. For example, a more conventional sentence that follows this rule:

She opened the pantry door, looking for a jar of grape jelly, but the view of the shelves was blocked by a ghost.

Oh! There’s a ghost! That’s shocking! Probably the character in our sentence doesn’t even care about the jelly anymore because the spirit of a dead person has suddenly appeared inside her pantry, and that’s obviously a much higher priority. But, subvert the rule:

She opened the pantry door, found a ghost blocking her view of the shelves, and couldn’t see past it to where the grape jelly was supposed to be.

Because the ghost is in the middle of the sentence, it’s presented like it’s a mere shelf-blocking pest, and thus less important than the REAL goal of this sentence: the grape jelly. The ghost is diminished, and now you get the impression that the character is probably not too surprised by ghosts in her pantry. Maybe it lives there. Maybe she sees a dozen ghosts a day. In any case, it’s not a big deal. Even though both sentences convey the exact same information, they set up the reader to regard the presence of ghosts very differently in this story.

#reblog

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this is advice I've given friends directly before and I've probably also posted it but I really like giving it so here it is potentially again: do not create something for an imaginary bad faith reader.

there will always be someone who finds fault in your work. there will be people who read the messages on it wrong. there will be people who will take every compelling aspect about your work off of it so they can put in their own.

you cannot make art for these people.

you will never write a story that is free from criticism. you will never draw a piece that everyone finds appealing. you will never compose a song that everyone enjoys hearing. you cannot, fundamentally, set out to create something and only think of how you can avoid someone not liking it.

because, and this is key, there will be someone who sees every angle of your story and feels its intent in their heart and gushes to their friends about it. you will draw someone's favorite art and they will make it their phone wallpaper because they want to see it every day. someone will fall in love with your song and loop it on their way to work because it gets them through the day. and THOSE are the people your work is for. THOSE are the people you have to care about, because they love what you make for what it is - because it's itself.

if you set out to create something and file off every sharp edge, prune every thorn, you will be left with something fragile and weak, and it will be fragile and weak for the sake of someone who does not exist but that you were scared of anyway.

sharing art is complex and tangled and powerful, and anything you care enough to create deserves to flourish as itself. get sillay.

#reblog

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The Creative Act of Listening to a Talking Frog

Kermit the Frog gives a talk on creativity and creative risk-taking

#reblog

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learning from the reblogs of that post that there's a lot of people out there under the impression that "kill your darlings" means "kill your characters" and that's the funniest possible interpretation of that phrase

#reblog #kill your darlings

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Research Survey

We've been discussing how best to put together a masterpost on research, and realized it would help to know where our audience is as far as research knowledge and techniques. Please feel free to reblog to increase the sample size!

The survey will run until the end of July and then will be closed so we can make use of the results.

#boosting #reblog

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If I forgot an option it’s because I made a poll at 3am again

Please reblog for sample size and tag with your pick or the world may never know

#setting description for me! #reblog

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Fantasy Castle Thoughts

Wandering around castle ruins on the weekend while thinking about my fantasy WIP had me thinking about more worldbuilding stuff in fantasy (the obvious ones being covered by others, such as, where does the shit go? How do they get water? How do they not poison themselves while answering Qu 1?):

That film where they erased the entire town and the castle was sat there for no reason (meant to be Rochester) - look, even if your castle is a strategic fortress in the back of beyond, it will have some kind of nearby settlement. Because: who is building it and how long does it take and where do they all live while they're constructing it? Where do they go afterwards? How do the garrison get food (easier to grow crops and raise livestock nearby than have vulnerable wagons bringing it in and being ambushed).

A lot of castles were not built by locals, because you can't trust the fucking locals, that's (usually) why the castle is THERE. If you don't need a defensive structure you build a manor or a stately home. If you're building a castle, it's usually to subdue the population or to defend against the neighbours, but either way, what often happens is that the king or whoever will round up people from his patrimony he knows he's already whipped into shape and can trust, then force-marches them across country and re-settles them in the area the castle is meant to be. They are the ones who then farm and raise livestock, and push out the locals to do so. Over time, you get some intermingling and after a few gens it's a very different demographic, but you have a story of settlement going on with tensions bubbling under the surface. See also: William Rufus wanting to subdue the North of England, forcibly uprooting his tenants in the South of England and making them build and settle in Carlisle, where he built his castle (11thC); the Earl of Lincoln dragging a load of Yorkshire and Lancashire and Lincolnshire men to re-settle his newly bestowed North Welsh lordships, pushing the Welsh into the uplands while the settlers took over the lowlands (12th-13thC).

The settlers around castles bring their own forms of folk religion, superstition, folklore, dialect, and naming patterns, which are specific to their original region. These may be very similar to the ones where they've been settled. What does that look like? Is the culture of particular villages and settlements a little bit different or maybe strikingly so the closer you get to the castles in your world because of this? What are the issues faced by settlers and by local people, how do they get resolved (or do they)? You'd imagine settlers are favoured in court disputes, but depending on the politics, they may actually be overlooked in efforts to appease the locals, leading to some lords really upsetting the very people they took for granted that they could trust. What's going on with all this local level stuff? By the way:: 21stC "my religion is better than yours" is so fucking boring and overdone imo from Western fantasy. Not every fantasy people has to have a US Evangelical approach to faith. Maybe they just don't care, or as soon as they hear something new they're like oooh this is interesting let's incorporate that! And they do. And it's fine. And that's a normal attitude to have. That might be a lot more fun, because then you get multiple variations on a theme, which create lots of little layers and nuance to your world, rather than a very one-dimensional impression of "homogeneity" with the danger of slipping into ye olde "X Bad, Y Good" dichotomy.

Technology and adapting tech: building castles requires tech, and once you know how long something took to build, you know what the tech was and can work out how it may have developed since then. Also think about how it can be adapted. If you've got a world where castles are required because fighting happens, you have a world full of disabled people. War causes disability. Even tournaments were EXCEEDINGLY dangerous. Henry VIII got permanent brain damage at one. Other knights were left paralysed, many died, some were amputees as a result. People get their legs hacked off due to gangrene from wounds. People get arrows lodged in their spines. People get sick from malnutrition and develop conditions like osteoarthritis, osteoporosis, etc. Picture this: your lord gets severely injured and may never walk again just by falling from his horse (common). Unfortunately, the castle steps are DESIGNED to be difficult to get up and down, because it's a defensive structure, and you DO NOT want to make it easy for enemies to just stroll up to the upper levels which are the most defensible. Bear in mind that the majority of a castle is empty space: the ward. The domestic quarters are built into the walls, usually the inner walls of a concentric castle. Your lord had an upper floor room. In a castle, space is at a premium. You need all the space on the ground floor and it's already occupied. What do you do? Well - you remember that pulley system for heaving big tons of dressed stone up to the top of the scaffolding when constructing the tower? Yeah. Yeah you're going to use that. And if your lord is now permanently disabled and cannot use the stairs, you can work out how to refine that. But right now, you need to get him into bed so the physician can look him over, because if he dies right now this would be terribly politically inconvenient . Even if this hasn't happened in your current story right now, if this was the case for the lord or two BEFORE, the equipment may all still be there, and still be in place.

Anyway if you like this, you might like my newsletter and podcast, and the books I write.

#reblog #worldbuilding

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How would you suggest to wright the overall plot of a drama featuring a family of executioners and torturers in the slice of life genre, with some elements of "teen" drama, but a lot darker. Like, the plot would focus on the relationships between the various members of the executioner household: parent-child, sibling relationships, master-servant relationships and occasionally some romance? How would you recommend structuring the plot?

I would suggest mapping out the plot elements that you want to incorporate into your story, including where, when and how each of the relationships intersect with the action of the plot.

How this works is down to what you want to do with the story, there are infinite variations on how stories can be structured, but here are a few posts I have which break down some common structural approaches:

[HERE] is a post about the three act structure

[HERE] is a post about multiple plots within a narrative arc

[HERE] is a post about the conventional five-point Romance plot

I hope these help!

#writing

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Thinking about worldbuilding this weekend.

Things like: basic questions and the way they are answered can imply more about the society in 2 sentences than the author can infodump in 5 pages.

E.g.

Where I'm from, older people don't ask where you are from if they think you have ties to the area, they ask you who your people are, often phrased as "who do you belong to?"

There is a sense of possession and community in that question, also the implications that your autonomy is contingent on your standing, that you are not an individual in this interaction but they are treating you as an extension or appendage of a group and they need to know the group before they can determine how to progress in your interaction. There is also a deep sense of embedded belonging, that they have assumed you *belong* in some way.

How you understand that question determines how you answer. I would start with my grandparents, not my parents, and if the name doesn't work I would then go for a geographical point of reference down to the street they were born in, and expand to occupation and work through this with all their siblings and in laws until we hit upon a commonality, and the old lady would nod and beam and understand who I was, and move on.

In fantasy, you can play around with these dynamics to show the reader SO MUCH about the way people understand their position in the world and how important certain things are over others. Like, if occupation was the primary thing, not family name, you would start by explaining your trade, who you apprenticed under, the places you practiced your trade, your position in the guild or union if those exist, whether you belong to those or to an in-world equivalent, who your supervisors are and who they were once apprenticed to, and so on. That can come out organically in a conversation and you can make it humorous or poignant or angry or tense, depending on the context and in-world dynamics.

That's a lot more fun to read too, because when you establish things like this, later dynamics can be FORESHADOWED by these seemingly basic questions. If you can introduce a dynamic in the background then a conflict character appears, before anything happens and before that character even opens their mouth, the reader is picking up context clues and what they know so far and thinking, UH OH THERE WILL BE TROUBLE HERE

And i think that's really cool and I wish more people did that I guess

#reblog #worldbuilding

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Is it bad to describe to the readers something in media but the media doesn't exist in the world I'm building? I don't mean a character saying that, but in the third person descriptive naration. I set a story in space and I'm describing to the readers that something looks like the transporters from Star Trek (because that was my inspiration). I got a bit of feedback saying this is stupid even if not in character? I have lots of that from multiple sources of media though.

Is it bad to describe to the readers something in media but the media doesn't exist in the world I'm building?

Not "bad", per se, but it may not be the most effective way to tell your story.

When you write with a lot of references to other media, you're building in a lot of assumptions into the story.

Sometimes, this is deliberate. It can be effective in a comedic story, for example, a film like Spaceballs, or the Scary Movie franchise. The references work because they are calling back to stuff that the audience is assumed to be familiar with, and riffing on them.

These references rely on familiarity. And the audience is largely self-selecting, people go to see these films because they are familiar with the source material and want to laugh at the silly jokes that can be pulled out of a self-serious source material.

The other thing is that when you're developing a secondary world where Star Trek doesn't exist, but then you're referencing Star Trek in the narration, that is confusing.

If you mention something in the narration of a story, then the natural assumption is that the thing in question exists in the story. It's a lot more work to un-Star Trek a story once it's been Star Treked, than it is to just not mention Star Trek in the first place.

I set a story in space and I'm describing to the readers that something looks like the transporters from Star Trek (because that was my inspiration)

In a 'serious' story, this kind of referencing can feel like a joke that's left hanging. As a reader, I'm not reading a novel to be told 'it was just like that thing in Star Trek', I'm reading the novel to have you describe the things that exist in the world of your story.

When you use references to other texts as a way of avoiding describing things for yourself, you're assuming that the reader is familiar with the other texts in question.

If I am a reader who has never seen Star Trek, am I then going to have to put down your book, and go and watch some Star Trek in order to be able to picture the thing in the spaceship? How many times am I going to need to put down your book, and go and find another text so that I can get an understanding of what the things in your story are like?

It might be helpful to check out a few texts that are clearly 'inspired by' Star Trek but which are their own entities, so that you can see how other people have done this kind of thing, while also not being just a direct parody.

The Orville is a scifi series which is clearly riffing off of a lot of Star Trek stuff, but also develops its own world, societies, aliens, etc

Galaxy Quest is a movie which is about an in-world scifi show as well as an in-world real alien contact

Redshirts by John Scalzi is a novel which metatextually riffs on some of the common tropes in Star Trek, and scifi more broadly

It's also probably a good idea to think about why you have been using references to other texts to explain things in your story.

If you lack confidence in your ability to describe things, or if you aren't interested in worldbuilding, you can figure out how to develop these parts of your writing practice so that you don't have to keep reaching for other people's work to prop you up.

I hope this helps!

#writing

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Hi! I have a question about world-building.

In fantasy, do you know that you’re encoding a culture?

I have two main examples.

I have two nations in my fantasy story one is named Arbia and the other is named Vira.

Arbia is a corrupt nation that has a caste system. The lowest caste are slaves that serve the government. Their race is similar to Asian features as well as their names. This is mainly because I think Asian names are cool. They also write in characters. Most of my characters are from the slave caste and it’s about them trying to fight for their freedom.

Vira is a democratic-socialist nation that is highly disturbed by Arbia’s actions. Their government sometimes interferes with Arbia’s government. I haven’t developed yet how far this interference goes. Their race is black, but there are some tribal areas that are of a white race. Vira is pretty accepting of refugees, especially those from Arbia from the lowest caste, and has a lot of programs to help those refugees. It is a requirement that those either directly from the fourth caste (which is the lowest caste) or have fourth caste ancestry to runs these programs. These requirements would be mainly for social programs, such as support groups for alcoholics.

I guess what I’m trying to figure out is how do I determine what is subconscious coding. I’m trying to avoid the ‘white savior’ trope with the Virans. I also am not trying to not code Arbia as Asia too much. I think Asia is really cool, and I don’t want to accidentally disrespect them. I adore all my Arbian characters 😅

Are there some stereotypes to avoid? I’m trying my best to be as respectful as possible—especially in regards to the topic of human trafficking and slavery. A lot of my story revolves around that, and those in the fourth caste taking a stand to their government.

I was thinking in the editing phase that it would be helpful to change minor details about Arbia so that it reads less like Asia and more like a fictitious country. Do you have any ideas or suggestions?

Sorry this is a super loaded ask 😅

Hey: Standard disclaimer! I cannot be the arbiter of whether the story you're writing is ok or not! I don't want to be the arbiter of whether the story you're writing is ok or not!

In fantasy, do you know that you’re encoding a culture?

In fantasy, as in all writing, there is the Stuff that you do On Purpose, and there is the Stuff that you do Because You Operate With a Particular Set Of Assumptions About How the World Works.

Not every Set of Assumptions is

Problematic

But most Sets of Assumptions are not universal, and will mark you as having some kind of ~background.

how do I determine what is subconscious coding

A great deal of self reflection, as well as a lot of research.

Are there some stereotypes to avoid?

Almost certainly.

This is where the research comes in.

Read up on societies similar to the ones that you're attempting to portray. Read 'both sides' of arguments. Read history. Read current events. Read the fiction of people living in that society.

After you've done all that you will probably still fuck up, but hopefully you will be able to deal with that graciously if and when it's pointed out to you.

I was thinking in the editing phase that it would be helpful to change minor details about Arbia so that it reads less like Asia and more like a fictitious country. Do you have any ideas or suggestions?

Asia is not a homogenous region, it is actually many many very different countries that happen to be geographically and culturally linked.

There is probably a more fundamental level of work that needs to be done in developing a coherent fictional society, than changing 'minor details' in late edits.

I'd suggest checking out blogs like @writingwithcolor and @scripttorture to get a sense of some of the basic starting points for thinking about these kinds of things.

#writing

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Whgskl. Okay.

PSA to all you fantasy writers because I have just had a truly frustrating twenty minutes talking to someone about this: it’s okay to put mobility aids in your novel and have them just be ordinary.

Like. Super okay.

I don’t give a shit if it’s high fantasy, low fantasy or somewhere between the lovechild of Tolkein meets My Immortal. It’s okay to use mobility devices in your narrative. It’s okay to use the word “wheelchair”. You don’t have to remake the fucking wheel. It’s already been done for you.

And no, it doesn’t detract from the “realism” of your fictional universe in which you get to set the standard for realism. Please don’t try to use that as a reason for not using these things.

There is no reason to lock the disabled people in your narrative into towers because “that’s the way it was”, least of all in your novel about dragons and mermaids and other made up creatures. There is no historical realism here. You are in charge. You get to decide what that means.

Also:

“Depiction of Chinese philosopher Confucius in a wheelchair, dating to ca. 1680. The artist may have been thinking of methods of transport common in his own day.”

“The earliest records of wheeled furniture are an inscription found on a stone slate in China and a child’s bed depicted in a frieze on a Greek vase, both dating between the 6th and 5th century BCE.[2][3][4][5]The first records of wheeled seats being used for transporting disabled people date to three centuries later in China; the Chinese used early wheelbarrows to move people as well as heavy objects. A distinction between the two functions was not made for another several hundred years, around 525 CE, when images of wheeled chairs made specifically to carry people begin to occur in Chinese art.[5]”

“In 1655, Stephan Farffler, a 22 year old paraplegic watchmaker, built the world’s first self-propelling chair on a three-wheel chassis using a system of cranks and cogwheels.[6][3] However, the device had an appearance of a hand bike more than a wheelchair since the design included hand cranks mounted at the front wheel.[2]

The invalid carriage or Bath chair brought the technology into more common use from around 1760.[7]

In 1887, wheelchairs (“rolling chairs”) were introduced to Atlantic City so invalid tourists could rent them to enjoy the Boardwalk. Soon, many healthy tourists also rented the decorated “rolling chairs” and servants to push them as a show of decadence and treatment they could never experience at home.[8]

In 1933 Harry C. Jennings, Sr. and his disabled friend Herbert Everest, both mechanical engineers, invented the first lightweight, steel, folding, portable wheelchair.[9] Everest had previously broken his back in a mining accident. Everest and Jennings saw the business potential of the invention and went on to become the first mass-market manufacturers of wheelchairs. Their “X-brace” design is still in common use, albeit with updated materials and other improvements. The X-brace idea came to Harry from the men’s folding “camp chairs / stools”, rotated 90 degrees, that Harry and Herbert used in the outdoors and at the mines.[citation needed]

“But Joy, how do I describe this contraption in a fantasy setting that wont make it seem out of place?”

“It was a chair on wheels, which Prince FancyPants McElferson propelled forwards using his arms to direct the motion of the chair.”

“It was a chair on wheels, which Prince EvenFancierPants McElferson used to get about, pushed along by one of his companions or one of his many attending servants.”

“But it’s a high realm magical fantas—”

“It was a floating chair, the hum of magical energy keeping it off the ground casting a faint glow against the cobblestones as {CHARACTER} guided it round with expert ease, gliding back and forth.”

“But it’s a stempunk nov—”

“Unlike other wheelchairs he’d seen before, this one appeared to be self propelling, powered by the gasket of steam at the back, and directed by the use of a rudder like toggle in the front.”

Give. Disabled. Characters. In. Fantasy. Novels. Mobility. Aids.

If you can spend 60 pages telling me the history of your world in innate detail down to the formation of how magical rocks were formed, you can god damn write three lines in passing about a wheelchair.

Signed, your editor who doesn’t have time for this ableist fantasy realm shit.

#reblog

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What do you say of using text ambiguity that hints toward a common assumption that then flips itself around. Like "Her aunt said that she was getting older and growing into an adult." You'd tend to expect the 'her' and 'she' to be younger and the person growing older and the aunt is another person and already an adult. But later flip it around so that the 'her' is one person and 'she' refers to the aunt, so how you think is the 'her' a child or is actually older than the aunt?

As with many things in writing, if you pull it off effectively, it's fine.