Cultural appropriation takes place when a privileged group takes elements of an oppressed culture and uses them as it sees fit, without regard to their importance in the oppressed culture, often deforming them beyond recognition or distorting reality to the point of making the appropriated cultural practice take the place of the authentic one.
Any... fiction writer, in attempting to present a fleshed out world, will probably several times need to reference something outside the actual story, some past kingdom or mythical animal, some hobby of the lower classes, some religious detail, or a line about, “That time when grandmother got into a drinking contest with a Giant Stoat…” ... making the world a bit more solid.
Audiences don’t love set-pieces. They love characters who do amazing things during set-pieces.
The screenwriter should never write, “The house is a mess.”... Because we can’t see it. Instead, the screenwriter must show dirty clothes on the ground and the empty Chinese food containers tipped over on the coffee table. The trick is to use props and set-dressing (nouns) to convey the “messiness.”
The same holds true for character. The audience bases their first impression on the things they see. What does the character look like? What is he/she wearing?
Is your setting and milieu historical or exotic? Work until you find one thing we’ll recognize from our own reality. What’s the generation gap like in Victorian England? Does your society of demon slayers have a long-standing fight at their meetings over refreshments?
Is your setting by intention ordinary? Find things in it that are peculiar, local and contradictory. What’s the food found nowhere else? What’s the odd annual festival? What local legend is unquestioned? Who’s at war on a miniature scale? What’s a big irony in this social realm?
grounding is the fine art of letting the reader know what is going on. You need to focus on some basics: Who is in a scene? Where does it take place? What is the major conflict?
Those questions need to be answered quickly with every scene in a book or story... You could do worse than to start a story with all three elements in the very first sentence: “Johann did not want to die on the moon, but when the asteroid struck the dome above Callisto Crater, it looked as if he didn’t have any other options.”
a great setting... makes us imagine how we'd react if we were placed in that world. And it makes us wonder whether we have the makeup to thrive within it.
give {your societies} contradictions, strengths, lofty desires, and irrational fears
If you're going to set a scene in a house, write the character of the owner(s)/occupier(s) all over it. Show the obsessive cleanliness or piles of odd socks lying in the front hall.
don't just go for the standard car chase or love scene. Build your set pieces on what's original to your story.
“the big, audience pleasing scenes that deliver on the genre elements of the movie.” In a successful comedy they’re the scenes that have you clutching your sides with laughter. In a good action movie they’re the scenes that put you on the edge of your seat holding your breath. In a horror movie they’re the scenes that make you cover your eyes in terror. In a romance they’re the scenes that have you reaching for your loved one’s hand.He recommends 5-10 set pieces per movie.
Humans... have basic cravings. If you can speak to these cravings, you’ll win a reader for 300 pages... what are some game-like qualities writers can apply to their manuscripts to make them more addictive?
Clear goals. Characters are always in pursuit of something...
Cause and effect. Characters’ actions have consequences. Always.
Obstacles and rewards. Obstacles speak for themselves. But rewards are just as important. Finding a tool, weapon, magical object, or guide adds excitement and gives readers an emotional boost... even a contemporary novel can use them, although they’ll come in a different form.
The right level of difficulty... keep the challenges coming at the very edge of your character’s ability to deal with them.
A conflict-rich environment... think of games: if you land on the black square, you get bounced back six spaces. If you jump on the yellow crate, you accidentally release a monster. The setting dispenses dangers and rewards at every turn.
one of the things most new writers fail to do is establish setting. They never describe the place the characters are in, and {Elizabeth Wolheim at DAW) likened it to sending actors out on stage without any props.http://critiquecircle.com/forums.asp?action=viewforum&thread=874873&offset=0 2nd reply by Jongoff.
I often find my way into a story by trying first to create its unique atmosphere, which takes into account the setting, the character and what has already been: that is, what forces have come together to place this character at this place in time.
One of the things that made {Tolkein's} world seem so real is that you catch glimpses of other stories that aren't explained in the book. I learned that lesson from him.http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2011/05/mind-meld-lessons-learned-from-master-world-builders/
Every religion we make up in any fantasyland is, by definition, going to be based on some kind of belief we currently have or know about, whether it’s an existing one or one we cobbled together from other sources. I think where most stuff goes wrong is when it tries to fully mirror modern-day religions in some other time and place. It feels hackneyed, tacked-on. And that makes it feel like you’re being talking down to, or preached at.http://feministallies.blogspot.com/2011/04/nyx-sold-her-womb-somewhere-between.html
We interpret {religious} books based on who we are, not who the people who wrote them were.
When slavery was no longer seen as a moral and humane thing to do, people stopped quoting the Bible passages that supported slavery.
Why this day out of your character’s life rather than all the other days? And the answer, it’s always Because this is the day that’s breaking the rhythm, the day that’s an aberrance, the day everything can change, if the character can just walk that tightrope to the last page.http://www.guidetoliteraryagents.com/blog/7+Things+Ive+Learned+So+Far+By+Stephen+Graham+Jones.aspx
Once upon a time, I was really diligent about my worldbuilding. I painstakingly wrote everything out. I catalogued every character’s height, weight, age, looks, religion, interest, blah, blah, blah. I had whole file folders full of crap. But all that happened was that instead of writing, I’d spend years creating character cards and fake botany notebooks. I suppose that was great for Tolkien, but I’ve always wanted to write more than a couple books, and create more than one world.http://www.rantingdragon.com/interview-with-gods-war-author-kameron-hurley/
the more depth you give your world, the more unique the character becomes to that world... That’s something I think is key to building memorable characters.http://www.rantingdragon.com/interview-with-gods-war-author-kameron-hurley/
when I think back on the books that grabbed me as a young reader and made me want to become a writer—from Jane Eyre, to the stories of J.D. Salinger, to My Antonia—I now recognize the extent to which the characters in these books were shaped by setting. And the settings were as vividly detailed and idiosyncratic as the characters who peopled them.http://www.glimmertrain.com/b41watrous.html
