We are preparing to move and in some ways are inadequately prepared, while in others we are more than ahead. I hadn’t unpacked a good couple of dozen boxes from the study, so those can pretty much just go straight back out (this time we’re hiring movers rather than doing it ourselves).
It’s weird prepping to move again, to hope that this time we’ll manage to achieve escape velocity. We’ve got a renter for this place, and a year’s lease on the new one, so we’ll see. Today I’ll go through cupboards, try to sort out some stuff to pitch rather than take with us, take advantage of the opportunity to declutter and cull some old and faded spices, discard dingy rags, ditch old magazines, etc.
I have tried not to overburden us in preparation, to jettison instead, but there will be some things we’ll need to pick up once there: an ironing board and iron, a table for the sewing machine, a second bath mat, more towels, etc. Instead I’ve been mostly picking up bits for a Halloween costume this year; trying to do something worthy of a SFWA president. I did also breakdown and buy the sourdough its own crock, but that was because Value Village was having 50 percent off day.
I finished one collaboration last week and am picking away at finishing up a bespoke story right now, then more on the novel, because I am so ready for that to be done. I’m also working on the updated Creating an Online Presence for Writers as well as adapting the Character Building and Editing 101 classes for the Fedora platform to go with the shiny new on-demand version of Literary techniques for Genre Writers.
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"(On the writing F&SF workshop) Wanted to crow and say thanks: the first story I wrote after taking your class was my very first sale. Coincidence? nah….thanks so much."
~K. Richardson
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Guest Post: Writing Holidays with Evan J. Peterson
Every culture tells stories. We keep our history alive this way. We all have rituals, whether they are secular or deeply religious. When you’re worldbuilding, you can communicate a plethora of culture and history through the traditions and festivals your characters observe.
Coming up on December 10th, I’ll teach Christmas in Narnia: Creating Traditions for Fictional Cultures for the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers. Pardon the frosty pun, but a fictional holiday is an excellent tip to the iceberg of your world’s history. Consider the wealth of similarities and differences of the festivals of lights that originate from the Northern Hemisphere of our planet alone:
During the season of autumn into midwinter, things get darker and colder in most of the NH. The further north you go, the more stark that dark and cold becomes. Many traditions originating in the Northern Hemisphere have celebrations and rituals revolving around light and warmth at this time. India and its diaspora bring us Diwali and Deepavali, two different but similar multi-day festivals of lights, color, and life. Judaism celebrates Hanukkah as the observance of a historical miracle”“eight nights of light produced from barely any fuel oil. A fun side note: we eat fried foods like latkes and donuts on Hanukkah to represent the bounty of the oil! Who wouldn’t love a holiday that prescribes feasting on greasy carbs?
On Christmas, people celebrate the birth of the Christ child, destined to bring light, love, and goodness into a harsh world. As Christianity spread through Europe, this tradition appropriated, fused with, and replaced several midwinter traditions, such as the birth of God of the Wood on the winter solstice. This nature-based deity literally brings the light and warmth back into the world as the days finally grow longer instead of shorter. In addition to a festival of eating and drinking (lots of drinking), popular Christmas tradition involves putting candles and electric lights on everything, particularly an evergreen tree. That tradition did not come from Nazareth.
Notice that these traditions change over time and will even be different in each family or community. Just as no ethnic group is a monolith, neither is any religious or secular culture. There’s so much room here for worldbuilding, not to mention internal as well as external conflict. Some progressive Jewish families have introduced an orange among the symbolic food (roasted egg, lamb bone, bitter herb, et al.) of the Passover Seder plate, meant to remind us of the struggle of women, lgbtq+ folks, and people of color in Judaism as well as all who face intersectional struggles and are often left out of the popular image of the Jewish community.
I have a Jewish mother and an essentially Unitarian father. I grew up with secular Christmas as well as a heritage-rich Hanukkah, but I’ve always gravitated toward Pagan traditions. As a kid, I was particularly smitten with the Egyptian and Greco-Roman pantheons and stories, and I assume this is because I grew up in Miami, Florida. Flowers, fruit, and flowing water made more spiritual sense to me than the scarcity theme prevalent in Abrahamic traditions. This is the sort of subtlety that can communicate the history of a culture; temperate or tropical traditions are more likely to celebrate abundance and indulgence. Desert cultures are more likely to emphasize struggle, scarcity, and abstinence, but also patience and most importantly, charity. It’s no coincidence that Islam, Judaism, and Christianity share these values and emerged from cultures living under harsh political and geographical conditions.
This brings us to another important subtlety of cultural norms. How hot is “hot?” How cold is “cold?” For that matter, how far is “far?” Does “nice” mean polite and friendly, or does it mean kind and empathic? These are the questions that shape so many nuances of a community and its culture, whether macro scale or micro. And don’t overlook the secular traditions”“what does Tax Day tell us about capitalist cultures? What about the Queen’s Jubilee? For that matter, what about Juneteenth?
Evan J. Peterson is an author, game writer, and Clarion West alum. His latest book is METAFLESH: Poems in the Voices of the Monster (ARUS Entertainment), and recent work includes Drag Star! (Choice of Games), the world’s first drag performance RPG. His writing appears in Weird Tales, Arcana: The Tarot Poetry Anthology, and Queers Destroy Horror. Evan’s serial novel, Better Living Through Alchemy, will be published in 2023 by Broken Eye Books. linktr.ee/evanjpeterson can tell you more.
How to Dunk Your Reader in the Details (Figuratively)
I’m finishing up converting the workshop I did at Surrey International Writers Conference a month or so ago, Dunking Your Readers in the Details, as an on-demand class. That class was in turn based on an hourlong online writing class I did for Greg Wilson’s Twitch channel a few months ago.
The class has been fun to put together. Over the course of being taught multiple times, it’s evolved to a point where it presents a dozen tools for writing more immersive worlds, and includes several exercises to allow you to test out the different techniques and see what works for you.
Curious about it? Here’s the section on prioritizing the senses.
A common tool of “Golden Age science fiction” “” the late 1930s through the 50s, when science fiction was first coming into its own as a genre “” was to invoke all five senses within the first page of a story.
It turns out there’s some science behind that method, in that writing that uses the senses creates more brain activity, setting off mirror neurons. Mirror neurons are neurons that fire under two circumstances: when you are experiencing an event and secondly when you are watching someone else experience it. Writing that invokes the senses makes mirror neurons fire, which makes your reader feel as though they’re experiencing what you are describing.
But beyond that, three of the five senses are more useful to you and should be focused on. Sight and sound will come naturally, and we’re inured to them from watching television and the movies. What you need to push to invoke are smell, taste, and most importantly: touch.
Why is the last the most important? Because touch is more than a question of smooth or rough, velvet versus pebbled. It includes:
â—¦ Temperature like a chilly breeze, the warmth of a sunbeam
â—¦ Bodily sensations such as pain, nausea, exhaustion, fever, itches
â—¦ Motion moments like falling, flying, and floating
When you use these senses in your writing, you are making the reader feel as though they are in the body of the point of view character and experiencing the story world through them. This is a key technique when writing an immersive world.
We are preparing to move and in some ways are inadequately prepared, while in others we are more than ahead. I hadn’t unpacked a good couple of dozen boxes from the study, so those can pretty much just go straight back out (this time we’re hiring movers rather than doing it ourselves).
Every culture tells stories. We keep our history alive this way. We all have rituals, whether they are secular or deeply religious. When you’re worldbuilding, you can communicate a plethora of culture and history through the traditions and festivals your characters observe.
3 Responses
@Catrambo Never fun, last time we moved we used pros too, was tired of hauling banana boxes full of boxes up and down stairs. Good luck!
@Catrambo May your move go swiftly, smoothly, and without any strained muscles. 🙂
Hello Cat. I love your blog. The best idea is hiring movers! They are professionals and know how to lift boxes and organize things. Best regards!