After dropping my marathon of a guide on worldbuilding, I thought that the next best topic to cover would be on worldbuilding traps. Why, you may ask? Well, because you can easily fall into any one of them. Seriously, it’s something that a lot of writers struggle with. I recently discovered that one of my closest friends was experiencing this problem. She’d gotten so lost into the worldbuilding: the history, the myths—the ethos, even that she’d completely neglected the story. And we all know how important the plot, among other aspects, of a story is. Of course, you can totally walk yourself out of such a trap. And that’s the…

After dropping my marathon of a guide on world building, I think the next best topic to cover would be on writing dialogue. Specifically, writing better dialogue. One of the biggest criticisms I got on my manuscript’s first round of edits was on this. While my world building was strong, characters pretty good, I found myself often telling, rather than showing through my dialogues. And if you’re anyone with a tiny bit of interest in writing, you know how important dialogues can be. They can reveal critical information, help us understand the psychology or motivation of a character, or through subtext, also give us a glimpse in the potential trajectory…

Worldbuilding is hard, to put it mildly. It doesn’t matter if you’re a fantasy writer, or a contemporary fiction writer, you’re going to struggle with worldbuilding. It’s pretty much on par with writing a book. Or even a short story, to be honest. After all, you want your readers to know where your story is set in. Generally, when I’m writing a short story, I like to set my characters in today’s world.  Of course, I would argue that short stories can be easier to write because you can choose to focus on a moment in time, or a particular scene only. But with novels, you can’t get away with…