Research For the Fantasy Writer

As promised to all the great attendees at my class, here are the slides from my presentation! Thank you all again for coming -- I had a blast getting to talk about my favorite subject.

Myriad Lands Now Out

Myriad Lands is now out! Both Volume 1: Around the World and Volume 2: Beyond the Edge. I loved the premise for this anthology -- fantasy stories set outside the well-trod Western tropes. Fantasy has so much to offer. My story, "Poet-Scholars of the Necropolis" appears in Volume 2. It was originally published as audio fiction from Podcastle. This is its first time in print.

This has actually been out for several weeks now. My husband said to hide any packages that came in the mail, as he was expecting a birthday present for me. I dutifully hid my book-shaped package, only to find out later they were my author copies. Extra birthday presents for me? I'm just digging into these now, and I'm enjoying all the unique worldbuilding.

Salt Lake City Comic Con

I'll be at Salt Lake City Comic Con tonight, on "Worldbuilding and Magic Systems: A Character of their Own." 7:00pm, Room 253A. Comic Con is always great -- I'm looking forward to being there again.

Worldbuilding Quickly

After a panel at Comic Con, I had a question about worldbuilding in short fiction. There both wasn't much time to answer, and I was fairly beat after the end of a long (and awesome) con. Here's a much better answer.

There are four techniques that jump to mind for effective, succinct worldbuilding: interweaving and multi-tasking.

Interweaving: This is the opposite of the dreaded info-dump. Instead of cramming all the information the reader needs into one paragraph, it's parsed out bit by bit in the text. Information feels less "info-dumpy" when it's only a sentence long, especially if it's in the characters POV.

Multi-tasking: This applies to novels as well, but especially in short fiction, a sentence or a paragraph can't do just one thing. It can't just be for setting, or worldbuilding, or character, or to advance the plot. If it's not doing at least two things, it probably needs to get cut or get revised. Three things would be even better.

Point of View (POV): This goes hand-in-hand with interweaving and multi-tasking. Those snipits of info should still sound like they're coming from your viewpoint character. And if your worldbuilding info is in its proper POV, it's also multitasking to show you character.

Concrete Details: Of course you don't want to toss clunky descriptive paragraph at the reader, but the right, specific noun can suggest a truckload of information. The restaurant serving fillet mingon over a bed of organic microgreens is not the same one dishing out Kentucky hot browns. Detail after carefully selected detail can imply a world richer and fuller than the one your character has time to explore.

On to examples! Here's the first scene in my novelette, "The Temple's Posthole". I'll dissect it below. This scene is exactly four hundred words long:

Giveaway! Guest Posts!

Read Now, Sleep Later is doing a giveaway of Drift!

I also have a post up at The Brain Lair, talking about my fascination with obsidian, and a post at It's All About Books talking about my five most influential/important books.

The Big Idea and Supernatural Snark

Over at John Scalzi's blog, I have a The Big Idea post up for Drift, talking about cultural ecology and the way we worldbuild fantasy cultures.

And I'm also at Supernatural Snark, talking about the Maya mythology inspirations for Drift.

I'll have more guest posts around the web for the next while to celebrate Drift's release! I'll continue to link to them here. I also haven't forgotten about that print-and-play game I mentioned from inside the world of Drift. Everything's just about ready for that, so it's coming soon!