World Building using PESTEL

By Kasie Whitener

Writing a fantasy novel requires world building, a topic I’ve written on and delivered radio shows on in the past. I always advised authors to write a world “bible” – a document that explains the magic of the world, the rules under which the world will operate. Then, like the basic hypocrite so many of us teachers can be, I didn’t bother to do one for my vampire world. 

Until now! I used a tool from my strategic management class to define how the world operates. It’s called a PESTEL analysis and it works to explain the factors affecting a specific market. But it works in fantasy worldbuilding, too. Check it out:

P = Political

What are the political factors that affect the world? In Harry Potter this includes the Ministry of Magic and the usurper He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named who attempted to seize power in the wizarding world J.K. Rowling created. For my vampire novel, the politics are murky in the first book but consist of the Brevet who are sacred priests of the Salvia faith. They maintain the Breviary or the sacred text and enforce the rules of the faith. The three vampire lineages are meant to live in harmony with one another.

E = Economic

What are the economic factors that affect the world? This is how people earn a living, pay for goods and services, and maintain households and status. In Star Wars we know there’s a good deal of smuggling and Luke’s uncle was a moisture farmer. In my vampire world, Blue works on a ranch for cash but in Las Vegas he’d been a barback in a strip club; many vampires flock to such professions for their proximity to prey.

S = Sociocultural

What social and cultural rules dominate the world? In Kushiel’s Dart, the society is divided into a caste system with each house having its origins in one of the disciples of their faith’s scion. The system defines how people speak to one another, how they’re educated, and what they expect from life. It was this faith system that inspired me to create my own faith for my vampires.

T = Technology

What technology is available to the world? I set the vampires in the late 90s on purpose. I didn’t want mass use of the internet, social media, or other modern technology to threaten the subversion of imposters or make literary research too available.

E = Ecological

What natural world elements exist in the world? What is the climate like? What weather do the characters suffer? What is the condition of the planet? 

L = Legal

What laws are the characters bound by?

This framework can help you fully envision the fantasy world you’re building and create a rulebook that you can reference while building your stories. Whether it’s the elaborate worldbuilding of Tolkien or Rowling, or simply infusion of magic and dragons into the middle ages, fantasy books have governance, social customs, and technology. Figuring out how yours work is a rewarding and challenging undertaking.

WORDS WORTH QUOTING

By Bonnie Stanard

There's a quotation for almost any subject. Some of my favorites are from Oscar Wilde and Winston Churchill. If I'm in a bad mood, I open my folder of quotations and get a laugh while sorting out issues such as Why am I in a bad mood?

I've taken the first half of a W. Somerset Maugham quotation as the title for a presentation I've been working on for the Shepherd's Center in Lexington—"Three Rules of Writing." The audience won't know it, but I'd never attend a presentation with that title (unless I'm giving it...) What's wrong? you may ask. Maybe I'm getting cynical, but writing rules are for seventh graders. A person needs guidance learning the basics, but guidance is not the same as rules. If you don't know what point-of-view (POV) means, you need to read advice. But don't listen to rules. Rules are made by "experts" expecting to aggrandize their reputation.

What writer would say there are exactly three rules? Why not 10? If you browse the internet, you can find a hundred. I'm tempted to ask the audience what they think the three rules are, but they aren't writers. If a writer should show up, I can only hope they will stay long enough to get the second half of Maugham's quotation, which will restore my credibility, as it does for Maugham.

Whether or not they are amusing, quotations provoke us to think. They put glitter on language and show it in its best dress. Here are versions of quotations that I've taken from my folder. Some have been altered to make them applicable to either writing or life or the writing life.

 

• Over prepare, then go with the flow.

• No matter how you feel, get up, dress up, and show up.

• If a relationship has to be a secret, you should be in it.

• Be eccentric now. Don't wait to wear purple.

• However good or bad a situation is, make it better or worse.

• The most important sex organ is the brain.

• When in doubt, just take the next small step.

• Cry with one or your characters. It's more healing than crying alone.

• Everything can change in the blink of an eye. Try to see it does.

• It's OK to get angry with God. He can take it.

• All that matters in the end is that you love your story.

 

The Shepherd's Center is an organization run by volunteers that provides mental and physical activities for the 55-and-older residents of the Lexington area.

What Longevity Actually Looks Like

By Kasie Whitener

I’ve been reading the same weekly email newsletter from Canadian writer and coach Daphne Gray-Grant forever. I may be one of her longest subscribers. She’s the Publication Coach and you can find issue #847 here. 

Yes, #847 which, divided by 52 weeks a year, is 16 years she’s been delivering weekly advice to writers like me.

That’s roundabout 2006, which is when I remember finding her. I was working for SYNNEX Corporation as a copywriter, my master’s degree making me eligible to use 25-cent words when 5-cent words would suffice. But Daphne has always encouraged me to be concise and precise in my word selection and sentence structure.

This week she encouraged me to recognize where my writing imposter syndrome comes from: a non-existent continuum of writing. 

“...there’s a widely held misunderstanding that writing falls on a commonly accepted continuum of bad to good. And we all worry about doing something that’s baaaaaad,” she writes, “But, in fact, writing doesn’t operate on such a continuum. Instead, it’s a matter of taste. What I see as ‘good’ writing might not please you and visa versa.”

Ever have one of those, “Duh!” moments? Of course I know the writing I like isn’t necessarily what others like and just because others don’t like it doesn’t mean it’s bad.

Earlier in the day, I’d read a writer’s tweet asking for everyone’s favorite short stories. Lots of great titles including A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner, The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Peach Cobbler by Deesha Philyaw. I scrolled through the thread looking for Hemingway and couldn’t find him. Seriously? No one said Hills Like White Elephants?

Just to prove that writing is personal and reading is subjective, my short story The Shower that won the 2022 Broad River Prize for Prose was also the submission that got me rejected from two different conferences. Also, it didn’t make the list from the favorite short stories tweeter. That doesn’t make me Hemingway.

Daphne’s point that we we think of writing on a continuum of bad to good is frustratingly true. I see my own work as inching from the left (bad) as it’s polished, workshopped, submitted, rejected, rehabilitated, resubmitted, and accepted. Accepted is good, right? Except then people read it and don’t connect with it (bad reviews) or start it but don’t finish it (abandoned) or say they’ve been meaning to read it but haven’t yet (can’t even motivate themselves to start the doggone thing!).

Just when I think I’ve written something “good” it seems increasingly likely I’ll never write anything good ever again.

But I’m still writing. And maybe, just maybe, the more I write the better I’ll get. Maybe the next piece will connect with someone. Will resonate. Will push them, like Daphne’s been pushing me, to keep at this thing. For 847 weeks or more.

A Writer’s Education

By Sharon Ewing

While I’ve sometimes been uncertain about the path of my career, I would have said it wasn’t the case of an identity crisis.  Yet this past year I’ve been so immersed in researching and writing about my ancestry that it appears I may be mistaken about that.  My oldest sister, the family historian, did an admirable job researching our family in the days when internet access was rare.  After she passed away, the task became mine.  This happens when siblings flatter you with platitudes about your skills in research, writing, etc.  So, I set out to fatten the existing files and hopefully discover hidden treasures in my lineage.

I’d always intended to write a novel about my childhood in the 50’s.  But as I researched my Irish ancestry, my great-great grandmother’s life intrigued me, and she became the main character in my story.  Funny thing about this process is that I knew few specific facts about her. And since everyone who once knew her was dead, I resorted to fiction in order to flesh her out.  As the story progress, I’m sure the character I created didn’t remotely resemble my great-great grandmother, but by that time I was so invested in the story, it no longer mattered.

In the process, I’ve have researched more about Irish history than I ever imaged possible.  I’ve dug through facts on websites, in non-fiction books, internet archives and drew names from ancestry websites.  I have garnered a new respect for historical authors who produce engaging stories after endless research, so much so, that I forget I’m reading fiction.  Edward Rutherford’s book The Rebels of Ireland, is a proven gem in this field. 

I’ve always loved history.  I remember walking home from school carrying a very cumbersome world cultures textbook, in the era before backpacks.  It was the first day of school that year.  My older sister remarked about the cruelty of my teacher giving homework on the first day.  I told her that I didn’t have homework.  I just wanted to bring the book home so that I could look through it.  When I told her about how I loved the smell of new books, she looked at me like I had morphed into an alien from another planet.

In historical fiction, I can combine my two loves.  I just need to be extra careful not to make the mistake of inserting my fictitious characters into my ancestry chart.  I almost did that once.  However, another bonus of this writing is the intense respect I’ve acquired for my forebearers who lived in challenging times past.  Knowing more of their history demonstrates how we all struggle with the set of circumstances we’ve been given and how much these outside factors influence the path each of us will take.

When I know their history, my characters are free to come to me instead of trying to force them on the paper.  With the setting in place, like actors on stage, their story unfolds. Yes, writer’s block still besets me, but I’ve become more patient.  Eventually, they speak and I write.  Their story becomes a part of mine.  Lesson learned.

 

 

 

Excess

 by Lis Anna-Langston 

When I lived in Wisconsin, I used a Marilyn Manson CD as an ice scraper. My friends acted like it was a commentary on the music. I liked the CD a lot, had listened to it a lot, and then one day, stuck between ice and a hard place, I repurposed that MTV-award-winning beauty into a practical tool.

It’s what writers do.

Mechanical Animals turned out to be an excellent ice scraper. Durable. Easy to maneuver. Perfect at removing ice without scratching the windshield and came with a handy case sporting great artwork. It appealed to all my writerly senses. Mechanical Animals is an album full of excess. So is the process of writing.

Repurpose. Recycle. Reuse. These are terms we hear daily. In art and writing, they very much apply.

We’re always going to have excess. That section you cut from a short story, or chapter you really loved. Can it be expanded into a piece of flash? A series of vignettes you can create under a certain theme? That chapter you love in your current work in progress. Can you polish it and submit it as its own stand-alone piece? Fragments of writing exercises? What images, symbols, visuals do these conjure? Can they be memes? Key marketing materials? A new story built from another?

Later, after I moved to North Carolina, I had a roommate/close friend from Cuba. He repurposed EVERYTHING. I’d be standing in the front yard holding a cup of coffee with my nose scrunched, asking, “Why don’t you just buy a new one?”

In the late winter light, he’d turn to make eye contact with me like I’d just sprouted six wings and four heads. I came to learn that, because of the embargos, Cubans definitely didn’t live in a shopping mall culture. If something broke, you fixed it. If you were tired of something, you transformed it into a new item. I knew something about this, growing up in one of the poorest places in Mississippi. Poor wasn’t a term we used. That was for outsiders. For insiders, we knew how to do a lot with a little.

So, what about that line you absolutely loved that had to be cut? Can you start a new writing exercise with the line? Create a catchy piece of digital art? Take all the edits you loved and group them together to create a new project?

Part of repurposing is discernment. The ability to recognize that something isn’t a piece of the story puzzle you’re working on and quietly put it away or transform it into a new piece entirely. I once took the cuts from a novel and created a new novel. It went on to win ten book awards. All because I saw the process of elimination as an opportunity.

Writing is a process of discovery. At least, it is for me. Keeping notebooks and showing up to the page every day means you’ll likely end up with more material than you need for one project. So, every now and then, when you’re not feeling the fit of the raw drift, polished draft, fully realized draft, take up the challenge and shift into seeing those old pieces with fresh perspective. There is opportunity in excess.

Procrastination

by Sharon May

 

Here I am drafting a blog on procrastination the Sunday morning of submission day. What are the odds? I committed to writing this a month ago but didn’t start a draft in all that time. Instead, I mulled the topic, considering what to say and how to start. A few days ago, I jotted down ideas I wanted to include, though today I declared them useless.

 

I am a procrastinator of the finest ilk. It is my roadblock to productivity, and I am far from being in recovery. My writing routine is so ingrained that I’m almost convinced it’s my “style.” I mean, it has served me fairly well since high school, having won awards for my work. Notice: I’m just rationalizing.

 

We all have our own methods of avoidance. No fretting on my part, and I may not appear to be procrastinating because I immediately ponder, read, and research the topic as necessary. It’s almost obsessive thinking, as I talk over my ideas over with family and friends, whomever I can corral, and I listen to their thoughts on the subject as well, bouncing them all around in my head until it’s time to sit down at the laptop. No matter the project – long or short, major or minor – I wait until the last minute to write, and even determine how last minute the writing will be by setting a deadline for drafting. Telling me to start early is not really useful as I’m stuck in the beginning.

 

I’ve been writing other works, but not so much that it prevented me from completing this task. So, I’ve taken approximately 28 days to write 500 words. I could have knocked it out on any one of those days. Instead, I surfed the Internet for articles on writers’ procrastinating, watched several men’s and women’s basketball games, and who knows what else I’ve done in that time period beyond the typical activities of living. Then I took a five-day vacation out of town, during which I did no writing.

 

When my deadline arrived, I started my usual avoidance routine -- slept late rather than obey the alarm I had set, had a leisurely breakfast, took care of the cats, and chatted with a couple of friends who are also early risers. At the computer, I fought the urge to clean my workspace, though I couldn’t resist checking my email. Finally, I opened a blank document and begged the muses for words. Fortunately, the muse does finally come and words appear on the page.

 

Procrastination can be a matter of priorities. It’s how we choose to live in the moment, and procrastinators live without considering the consequences. My choices make me less productive than I could be, though I can convince myself that I’m always working. I keep trying to set goals and deadlines to move me to more seat time, but habits are stubborn.

 

How do you measure procrastination?

Confiscating Others’ Experiences

By Sharon May

During last year’s Halloween frenzy, Peggy repeated her story about being required to collect money for UNICEF while politely refusing her neighbors’ sugary treats as commanded by her parents and teachers. Not the Halloween her seven-year-old mind had envisioned, particularly given that she had received candy in previous years.

I’ve heard the story often in our 17 years together, but this time I felt her resentment and connected it to mother-daughter stories she had also told me over the years. When I say Peggy is resentful about being robbed of her Halloween fun, I don’t mean that she remembers being resentful, but that she experiences the same deep emotion she did at seven. With that realization, I began envisioning a short story about deprivation.

I began working on my it, and realized I had drafted a similar plot some 30 years ago that was now languishing in a file drawer after meeting an early death due to my inexperience with life and a lack of craft. I dusted off a draft and read it. The basic premise is that a college professor takes her fiancé home to meet the family she had willingly learned to live without. Her conflict with her mother and their confrontation over old resentments drive the story. Sounds a lot like what I had in mind with Peggy’s story.

So, maybe I didn’t have a new idea, but a resurfacing of an idea I was too young to write about. I guess the idea was being seasoned till the right moment, when I can understand how a 66-year-old slight can endure and shape a person. Had I tried to write it previously, I would have had a confrontation with a 30-year-old woman and 50-year-old mom. I envision the exchanges will be more complex if the women are older. There is something more humorous, as well as sad, if both mom and daughter have to hash out old memories that have been smoldering for years.

No matter how the story turns out, I will always think of it as Peggy’s story as it will have bits and pieces of Peggy in it. The daughter in the story she is a college-educated woman who taught at a small rural, liberal arts college as Peggy did. They are also both from small towns they desperately wanted to, and did happily, escape to make a better life for themselves. Both had troubled relationships with their mothers, though for different reasons and outcomes. Peggy never had a chance to discuss with her mother her experiences or feelings about them, as her mother died young when Peggy was in graduate school.

But there will be lots in the story not based on Peggy because characters come to life on the page and tend to do and say what they want, surprising the author as much as the audience.

You Write Like a MOTHER

by Lynda Maschek

We all do it. Straight or Gay. Male or female. Young or old. Experienced or novice. Alien or human. When we write, we write like a MOTHER.

Mothers and writers guide the plot, (child) into new directions and can change the course of a child or a story. A good writer will grip your attention, change your outlook, give you hope or tell you what you need to hear but don’t want to know, all in the same sentence. Mothers are like that, too.

Much like a writer, Mothers guide us to find new adventures at the neighborhood playground, the mountains or foreign shores.

Mothers nurture and nudge our curiosity, they educate and inform. 

Mothers can hold us in suspension about our next Birthday surprise or they can hold our suspension about the next psychotic character they plan to marry. 

Winston Groom, the author of Forrest Gump, created a memorable character who typified the essence of motherhood. Mrs. Gump was a proper Southern woman who startled the reader with her savvy sexual methods to persuade the school Superintendent to accept her son into mainstream school.

Seeing the potential for a strong plotline and character structure is another mothering gift. A writer has to dig behind the obvious, (think teenagers,) and discover what is hidden within the character.  Writers and mothers can guide a mediocre personality and develop it into its full potential, for good or evil, as did Mrs. Gump. She saw the potential in young Forrest and filled him with wise quotes that later were necessary to guide him in his life, proving him more intelligent that the people he encountered. 

Mrs. Gump also taught Forrest that he had no limits, nothing to fear, and to not let anyone tell him he was ‘different” or unworthy of accomplishing great things.

A writer writes a story, holds the hand of the story, builds it up nurtures it and then knows when to let go. The storytelling of the sacrificial mother, working multiple low paying jobs so that her gifted child can attend Juilliard, will one day realize her hardest sacrifice will be to surrender her child and allow them to pursue their dream. 

The mother/writer gave all she could and then struggles with the dreaded right-of- passage, when her work will ship out and make its own way through the world to be reviewed by critics.

Writers naturally develop a mothering consciousness about their work, be it novels, short stories or poetry.  Similar to a brooding mother bird, writers protect their literary nests of heart and art. They minister to the growth of words, characters, mysteries, dramas and adventures, allowing their unique stories to unfold.

Just like Mom.

Reclaiming Creativity, Rediscovering Self

By Jodie Cain Smith

Last April my family and I, all eighteen of us, spent a week together in a house in Destin, Florida, to celebrate my parents’ 50^th wedding anniversary. My sister Kellie is creating a photo book to commemorate the trip and my parents’ accomplishment of sticking together all those decades.

Kellie called me last night. “Jodie, I barely have any photos of you from Destin. Were you hiding from the camera?”

“Well, mostly, I was the photographer, but I’ll take a look at what I’ve got on my phone.” I hung up with her and turned back the clock seven months.

First, I saw what appears to be a collection of “before” pictures. Before my diagnosis. Before treatment. Before forty-two pounds and the most stressful year of my life melted away. Before I reclaimed creativity.

I hate every picture of myself from that trip. But, not for the reason you may think.

I hate those pictures because they show a woman I never want to be again.

Polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) had robbed my body of its ability to use insulin and brought with it a nasty cocktail of anxiety and depression to poison my mind. Unknowingly, I had struggled with this for over two decades, but always had writing to depend on as my way to embrace the world or rage against it.

However, for the year leading up to my diagnosis and treatment, I feared I had lost that coping mechanism. Most days, I struggled to write at all, much less anything worth publishing. I stopped listening to my instincts on writing, allowing others too much influence over my writing style, stories, and characters. Then, I just stopped writing at all.

I had lost my ability to be creative, authentic, and brave.

Then, a succession of miracles occurred.

First, a doctor listened to me and forced me to face the reality of anxiety and depression. She did this by asking me if I was still writing. I told her, “No.” She responded, “Jodie, that’s not good.” She also said the words PCOS and pre-diabetes. The latter was terrifying.

The second miracle was the treatment for my PCOS and insulin resistance. Within a week, I could feel the positive effects of the medication, healthy eating, and increased exercise. I felt hopeful. The constant fog in my brain began to lift. I began to like myself again. And, the scale began a nosedive.

The third miracle came via my husband and an overdue heart-to-heart. He told me to stop coddling him, worrying about him, trying to control him. Now, seven months later, I know this was the miracle I most needed.

By ditching my need to control everything and everyone around me, I freed my mind to write. One month into my new lifestyle of letting go, healthy eating, and rigorous exercise, I began a new work-in-progress, one I never thought I was capable of writing.

As for the “before” pictures, I printed one out, but it is not displayed where you might think. It’s not taped to my mirror or stuck on the fridge. It will now live on my desk as a constant reminder that if I continue to live healthily in body and mind, I can be my best creative self.