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Rebekka Leber

Craft Editorials Genre

Conquering Genre: A Consummate Rebel’s Argument for Convention in Order to be a More Innovative Author

As a writer improves their craft, they are inevitably going to hear about genre — those dreaded categories of fiction we’re forced to shape our story to fit. Some authors find them limiting, others blend them together to create sub-genres. As an author who already knew her genre was SFF, I have not taken any time to read about genre, at all. I didn’t have to decide anything. I wanted to write what I read. What more did I have to worry about? So I didn’t, and I moved on to areas I deemed far more important to honing my craft.

Then, searching for new writing podcasts, I stumbled upon a podcast that had a bunch of episodes featuring “Story Grid Editors.” Upon Googling story grid, discovering they also had a podcast, I made my way to the work of Shawn Coyne, and summarily fell down the rabbit hole of his articles on his website,

And, his take on genre has fundamentally changed the way I think about writing fiction.

I printed out eight of his articles, then read and annotated all of them like a reading assignment for one of my old college classes. I consumed them. They blew my mind because they approached the concept of genre in a way that redefined its meaning for me in the writing process, and delivered it as framework to lay the foundations of my stories. More than anything, it appealed to my anxiety riddled OCD nature to categorize and organize everything.

Step 1: Stop thinking about genre as simply a label that determines which section in the store this book will be shelved. As Coyne describes genre, it should be used to manage reader expectations.

Many authors set out to break the mold with their writing. Despite our favorite bard’s claim that there is nothing new under the sun, writers will spend years plotting out and a building a story that doesn’t fit expectations. In other words, they avoid cliches. Obviously some writers embrace cliches. They find their niche and realize that no matter how many versions of the same story they write, readers will still buy and read the book. Their critics would see this as the pinnacle of hackery. They learn the cliches only so that they can thwart them. For every author who puts into their story a swooning damsel in distress, there will be an irate author who is so offended by that concept that will write a badass warrior woman…. Who then becomes another cliche, and the cycle repeats.

There is nothing wrong with writing a story that exceeds expectations, but the majority of readers will hold some level of expectations whether they realize it or not. When readers have a preference for a particular genre, it is because that type of story satisfies a particular intrinsic need. No matter how much we strive to break the conventions of genre, we’re fighting a battle between readers and the critics.

If you write a story that can’t be categorized, that doesn’t meet reader expectations, you may win acclaim, rewards, and shiny foil stickers that emblazon your dust jacket, extolling the enlightened and cerebral virtues of your seminal work… but that doesn’t mean readers will want to read it.

As a writer, we aspire for acclaim. The stories we write are products of our brain. We literally create substance from nothing. They are intangible. They are out intellectual property. They would not exist without us. That is why writers see their stories as extensions of themselves. When our stories are criticized or rejected, we see that personal criticism or rejection — a complete dismissal of everything we are. When a reader scans the jacket of a book and puts it back on the shelf they might as well be standing in front of us, taking us in from head to toe, and saying “Nope. Next.”

I know that acknowledgement of my stories satisfies my need for validation, and that the escapism readers seek in another form of validation. In the article about meeting your needs as an author, I discussed Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Avid readers are seeking something, and they have found that something in the conventions their favorite genre. Because of that, tweaking the conventions of genre too much creates the risk of turning away readers.

You don’t throw out a particularly delicious recipe just because you’ve eaten it a dozen times. You just add in different ingredients.

Writers who aspire to write the next literary masterpiece are seeking intellectual validation. They are the student who wanted an A for the sense of accomplishment that came with knowing not everyone was capable of it, and they were singular for doing so. Thy are intrinsically motivated — internally driven based on meeting their own personal expectations of accomplishment.

Other writers, myself included, are writing a story to share. They are writing a personal message that speaks of our own experience, and they seek to share it with others they believe also need to hear it. They are the student who wanted an A because a good GPA meant the difference between acceptance and rejection at their first choice college. They are extrinsically motivated — driven by the positive reward of meeting others’ expectations. In this example, readers are the college board of admissions, reviewing applications for acceptance. They have requirements. For them to read your story, you must meet their demands. The expectations of their preferred genre are a dealbreaker.

This does not mean you are pandering to your audience. Expectations are broader than you think. Most readers aren’t looking for cookie cutter stories. They also don’t have mega-specific demands. It’s not that they wanted a story about XYZ and you gave them one about ZYX, or even ABC. It’s that they have been conditioned to expect certain elements of story in their genre. If they pick up a fantasy story, they probably won’t put it back just because the protagonist isn’t the cliched orphaned farm boy who finds out from his secret wizard mentor he’d actually the royal heir, and the only one capable of saving the kingdom. But, if you write a protagonist that doesn’t follow some semblance of the Hero’s/Heroine’s/Fool’s Journey, or fail to write in some form of personal and physical questline, that might land your book right back on the shelf. The fun is trying to take the conventions, and put an original spin on them What if the old farmer next door tells the youngest child from a large, loving family that he’s actually magic, and he’s the only one who can stop the royal heir from destroying the kingdom? Still fits the journey and quest expectations, but without telling the same story that has been written a hundred times before.

If you are an extrinsically motivated writer, you are writing for an audience in a specific genre, and it’s fair to say it’s the same one that resonated with you as a reader too. Think about what you love about that genre — what elements of that type of story satisfy you. Furthermore, what elements of that type of story have become obligatory, as in, they have become a fundamental aspect of that type of story? A mystery story isn’t a mystery without a few red herrings, but it will become exhausting if you write it the length of an epic fantasy. Then again, a mystery is usually a form of realism, and doesn’t require the type of worldbuilding that fantasy novels must establish for the reader to their suspend belief. These are the types of things that are dictated by genre convention. While conventions and expectations can be flipped, inverted, or altered, they cannot be ignored, eliminated, or abandoned. At least, not if you want to write a story that connects with readers.

When I get the craving for a romantic story, go-to being period/historical romance, it usually stems from the fact that my husband and I have been on opposite schedules and he is working a lot of overtime, preventing us from spending time together. This creates a void, a need… not that kind of need, you degenerates. Your brain is smart, and it knows how to meet your needs, physically and emotionally. When I haven’t taken in enough salt, I crave chips, chicken noodle soup, crackers, anything with high sodium. When I’m feeling lonely, I crave period romance.

I choose that sub-genre, rather than say a rom-com, for very specific reasons, and I have been conditioned to know it will meet my needs. First, I’m a history major, and I enjoy period pieces in general. Second, historical romances have established the convention of forbidden love. In most period romances, the two lovers are going to struggle to be together because of the culture of their times. They will be kept apart for various reasons. The ebb and flow of almost getting to be together and then unmercifully torn apart tugs at my heartstrings and excites my inner Sally Sparrow.


Sally Sparrow, Doctor Who (Steven Moffat)

So, if I get thirty minutes into a period romance and the couple has already gotten together, well, I’m out. I expect that struggle. I crave it. Unless the story turns, the couple falls out of love, and the heroine meets her soulmate. Perhaps she is prevented from leaving the marriage because her husband saved her family financially, or she does not have the means or access to divorce him, if it’s even permitted at the time. Maybe she married him as part of a contract or for power or… it doesn’t matter as long as it creates an obstacle the two lovers now have to overcome.

That’s a convention, and it’s what I’m needing at that moment when I search Netflix for a particular story. I miss my husband, we are prevented from being together because we don’t have a choice in our schedules thanks to seniority and chosen profession, and this helps me overcome that sadness because I see that going through hardship and isolation makes it better when we can be together. And, I see that in the characters’ struggle. It’s the will they/won’t they, the doubt, the pain when they are separated, the joy when reunited, that I want. And in my opinion, dear merciful universe, there is nothing more seductive than a secret, hidden hand touch, eyes locking in that shared expression of I know in a crowded room, simultaneously surrounded and ignored by everyone.

As Coyne says, “While a reader or viewer may not be able to pinpoint what they want in a story, they know when it is not there. Immediately.” As a writer, I know what elements of genre I am seeking, but your average reader won’t. They just know when the story doesn’t feel right.

Anyone who questions this, simply look at the popularity of fanfiction. There is a reason that the primary category in FF is romance, usually with a specific tag, like “missing moments,” “fluff, and “one shot.” (Yes, I know that in reality that 99.999998% of romance themed fanfiction is just PWP — I’m trying to make a point here.) Those categories are either trying to create scenes that incorporate the established conventions that the original work lacked, or that takes characters that fans already relate to and puts them in circumstances that make them more relatable.

For those of you reading this who are ready to smash your monitor out of frustration, screaming the F word “formulaic,” you’re correct. That’s why it works. You don’t throw out a particularly delicious recipe just because you’ve eaten it a dozen times. You just add in different ingredients.

Humans crave order and are designed to see patterns. Coyne calls it our “superpower” in an episode of the Story Grid Podcast (that I forgot to write down the name and number of and am too lazy to go back and listen to all my downloaded episodes to find… sorry not sorry). That’s why we’re able to so easily identify when an element of story is missing. Whether we like it or not, the conventions of genre have been established because readers have responded to them for centuries. They were satisfied with stories that “worked” and rejected stories that didn’t. Readers may say they want something that looks and feels different, but this only works if it’s built on the foundations of familiarity. Readers don’t want an author to reinvent the concept of story, they just don’t want to read a story they’ve already read before.

I like to think of it as the aesthetics of story and medium. When I buy my next car, I want to upgrade to a much more energy efficient model. I have driven a regular old gasoline fed, internal combustion engine car as long as I have driven. Most of us have. It gets me where I’m going, and I’m comfortable with how it operates. But, its design is antiquated — it isn’t efficient and it creates too much pollution in my opinion. I’d love to get an electric car, especially if I could charge it with solar panels on my roof. I’m not the only person craving a newer version of the car — that’s why manufacturers responded by innovating their models. I can get anything from a hybrid to a fully electric car, but no matter what I get it will still operate like a car — it will get me where I am going and I understand how it operates. We could create pneumatic tubes or a rocket packs to get people around, which might be more efficient or greener, but I want a car. I don’t want to learn how to work a new form of transportation when I can just get a better version of what I know and like.

In essence, that is what a reader wants. A better version of a story. That is paramount to understanding the importance of reader expectations. As Coyne says, “if you don’t study the conventions and obligatory scenes in your chosen genre, and don’t know how writer’s satisfied them before, how can you be sure that you’ve written anything original? You can’t innovate if you don’t understand the basics, and what the consumer wants and needs.” This is even more important for writers of blended genres to create new versions based on the classic areas. “Obviously,” Coyne argues, “the more intimately you know one particular genre, the better your chances of creating something fresh and unique by embracing elements of both.”


There will always be a sub-set of writers who view this mindset as plebeian. They are not writing for with the general audience in mind. It is the experimental challenge to create something new that drives them — the intrinsic motivation of proving the depths of their talents and intellectual capacity. Good for them. I respect their desire to fight against the current. But, while I am usually the first person to stand up and ask “Why do we do this?” or “How can we make this broken thing better?,” I am not one of those writers.

My brain is wired for finding patterns, and thanks to OCD, programmed for organization, routine, and anything that takes the uncertainty out of my day. That is why I appreciate this as a framework. It’s like one of my sewing patterns. When I find a skirt pattern that is flattering, I’ll make the same skirt a couple of times, but I will change the fabric. Even if I use the same type of fabric, I’ll choose different designs. But, regardless of choosing polka dots or stripes or floral, I know that the skirt if going to work as long as I base it on the pattern. If you make the skirt well, nobody is even going to notice you made the same skirt three times — they will be to busy complimenting how good it looks on you or how well you made it.

I want to innovate when I write, specifically striving to break stereotypes and write with inclusivity, but I can’t do that without understanding the limitations of stories that came before. It’s important to me that I do this well because I also read for escapism — to fill a void that otherwise will go unsatisfied. I know what a good story does for people. Because of this, I feel that I have a responsibility as a writer. I am extrinsically motivated to please readers. The type of praise I want to hear isn’t that “This story is revolutionary!,” it’s “That story was just what I needed to get me through that point in my life.” As Coyne puts it, “Stories fuel our courage and offer the cautions that we believe will help guide our own path.”

There is nothing wrong with writing for intrinsic motivation — it’s just not why I write, nor why most people write. So, as a writer who wants to satisfy reader expectations, learning to identify and modify these conventions is incredibly important to my success as an author. If you are an extrinsically motivated author, then it needs to be important for you too.

For more information about Shawn Coyne and the Story Grid process, you can check out his website at

For more information about genre, conventions, obligatory scenes, and how to satisfy them, have fun falling down this rabbit hole, Alice.

Meanwhile, I’ll be diving head first into the deep end with Coyne’s book, The Story Grid.


I Don’t Own ‘Em— I Just Like Playing With Them: An Argument in the Defense of Fan-Fiction

[Disclaimer: As one is wont to do when talking fan-fiction, or FF, this article will contain acronyms and terms that are exclusive to fandom, and may be confusing to some readers. If this applies to you, refer to this helpful primer from Vox to un-confuzzle yourself. ]

When I was a kid, I wrote stories all the time. I wrote and illustrated my first complete story for a fourth grade class project. The teacher even bound the construction paper pages in a cover made out of wrapping paper and cardboard. At the time, I was incredibly proud of it.

As the adult version of myself who found it a few years ago, I have three words.

It. Was. Awful.

That story was the epitome of the word cringe. Thinking about it creates a visceral reaction so profound that I feel the compelled to squirm. It was the first thing I ever wrote, and I’m embarrassed to read it, let alone show it to people. As are the other few notebooks of stories I wrote between that time and the end of middle school.

Yeah, I know, I was a kid with no writing craft knowledge besides basic english instruction, and I should really cut myself some slack… but, trust me on this one. Upon looking back at my work and realizing it was horrendous, I also realized it was also completely plagiarized. Every story I wrote was based on whatever story, book or video form, I was completely engrossed with at the time. And, every one of those obsessions started based on some emotion that particular content evoked in me. Let’s give a big round of applause to puberty for that, considering they were all based on my obsessive and constant crushing on the male of our species.

For years I’ve been considering demanding royalties from J.K. Rowling, as I am convinced that she secretly followed me around as a kid, and Hermione is based painfully and accurately on my adolescence, but now I’m starting to think Loren Bouchard might owe me some cash too, considering I’m clearly the original Tina Belcher.


Tina Belcher, Bob’s Burgers, and her library of Erotic Friend Fiction

Sure, the names may have been different from the original stories, but I was basically writing wish fulfillment by Mary Sue-ing myself into every story, with the love interest being inspired by whatever current crush, either real life or celebrity, that I was harboring at the time. Each one of those stories, including my first (which could best be described a weird amalgam of Game of Thrones meets Beauty and the Beast, considering there were princesses from different kingdoms competing for a crown and one helped a cursed prince), was almost completely based on another story. It wasn’t until I started seriously writing in college and began actually trying to improve my craft that I even wrote a story based on an original concept. Ironically, that’s also the time I began dabbling in actual fan-fiction. Funny enough, it wasn’t until I found my old stuff, that I made the connection that writing FF was really nothing new for me.


“The beauty of writing FF is that you’re already working with something you love.”


Now, I know what you’re thinking, and I agree— yes, every story is basically based on another story, for as Shakespeare said, “There is nothing new under the sun.” So, yes, even my original work has inspiration based on other works. I certainly can’t take credit for inventing super powers, mythology, or magic. But, the worlds I created for them were the closest thing to original a person can reasonably manifest from their imagination. The characters may fit into archetypes, but they are also as original as possible.

And, as a kid, that is what I honestly thought I was doing— I mean, I changed the names and the settings, right? That makes it different.

Marshall, HIMYM

When I first started writing FF I may have not made the connection, but I also wasn’t trying to write wish fulfillment anymore. Well, that’s not accurate, honestly, since what I was writing was what I wished the actual writers had written, the first time, as in correctly.


“Now, I know what you’re thinking, and I agree— yes, every story is basically based on another story, for as Shakespeare said, There is nothing new under the sun. “


As I began to publish the FF stories, I also began to hit obstacles in writing my original content. Writing my own stuff sucked in comparison. FF was easier and more fun for two main reasons:

  1. The majority of the work is done for you.

While there will obviously be some plot and character generation for a story based on an idea of your own creation, the majority of everything else is already done. The characters are already developed. The world has already been established. All the parameters have been defined. That’s why my favorite Author Disclaimer at the beginning of a FF story has always been the line “I don’t own ‘em— I just like playing with ‘em.” When you begin writing a story within the confines of an already established universe, despite the confines of canon (even more so if you ignore it and write AU or Non-Canon), the only real creative currency you have to spend is on the original plot idea, any OCs you decide to include, and dialogue.

  1. Built in audiences of rabid fans willing to give feedback, whether you want them to, or not.

Some FF is amazing! So amazing, in fact it becomes virtually indistinguishable from the original by virtue of its merit. In other cases, it becomes headcannon for readers because everyone can agreed it’s sooooo good and makes absolute sense in the context of the original story.

The rest of FF… isn’t. There is a lot of wholly ungood FF out in the tangled interwebs. In fact, all it takes for me to completely give up on a FF story is badly written dialogue. In my opinion, that is the ONE thing you have to get right— it has to sound like the characters, or no amount of suspended disbelief can get me over the believability hump and allow me to get lost in the story (… which let’s be real here, people— why else are you reading FF?). And, if you’re writing straight garbage, the fandom is gonna let you know about it. The mass collective of fandom, well… to put it mildly, we are an unkind and confrontational people when you mess with our ships or our canons. But, when you get them right, oooooh, when you get it right it becomes an incredible magic so powerful that even Trumpers and Antifa could unite under its banner.

Okay, maybe nothing is that magical, but still, you get the idea. It’s a dozen shades of awesome.


“Slogging through a scene, or worse, a story you are not excited about is the worst. Hell, it’s a sure fire way to get you to stop writing.”


The honest-to-merciful-universe reason I fell in love with writing FF was the feedback. I’m not a perfect writer by any means, but I like to think I have some legitimate talent. When other people responded to my work positively and agreed I had talent, well… that’s just bonus points. But, those bonus points were immensely motivating. They built up my confidence enough to boost my intrinsic motivation to complete those stories. To date, my FF are the only completed stories I have.

Oh… wow. Thanks for helping me to that realization. Best. Writer. Ever.

Shaking that sad fact off, writing FF has proven helpful to my writing in the following ways:

Commencing… List the Second:

  1. It allows you to cannibalize from your own work.

I have stolen from my FF many times. It may be a particularly well crafted joke from dialogue or description in a scene. The best part is it belongs to me, so I don’t have to feel bad about it.

  1. It helps you work through blocks.

I have a complicated relationship with writing prompts. I get bent out of shape because most of the time they get you writing, just not necessarily in line with the story you are already writing. The argument can be made that writing anything is good, but when I’m already struggling to get writing work done, writing something else feels just as counter-productive. But, I don’t feel that way about FF, especially when coupled with the amount of feedback I usually get. Not to mention, the act of completing something triggers that little mechanism in your brain that makes you feel like you accomplished something, like leveling in a video game. It’s gratifying to finish something, especially when working on a big writing project that feels impossible to finish.

  1. It provides easy and fast feedback.

Even if the feedback is specific to your FF story, it’s still feedback on your writing. If you’re not doing a good job of providing description or writing strong dialogue or even plotting a successful arc in the FF, you’re probably not doing it in your original work either.

  1. It allows you to get stuff out of your system.

Sometimes, you just want to write wish fulfillment. As much as I hate it, I’ve fallen into this guilty pleasure trap. But, getting that desire out of your system in FF means that you’re not polluting your original work up with drabbles and fluff, or even the occasional lemon, and you’re writing scenes that actually move the story forward.

  1. It allows you to test stuff out.

When so much of SFF has borrowed concepts, this is a good place to test run for ideas for original concepts, especially if it’s a similar genre to the FF.

  1. It reminds you why you love stories, and why you love writing.

Slogging through a scene, or worse, a story you are not excited about is the worst. Hell, it’s a sure fire way to get you to stop writing. In my weaker moments in the beginning, failing at writing majorly important scenes was one of the things that made me fall out of love with the idea of writing at all. Writing and I have obviously made up since then, but like any relationship, it takes work.

The beauty of writing FF is that you’re already working with something you love. You relate to the characters; you are moved by the events; you’re mesmerized by the world. Not only do you get to play make believe, but you get to do it with your best friends, or at least characters you know as well as the real people in you life.

Writing FF is just plain fun. It’s immersive and open-ended, like a VR sandbox game implanted straight into your noggin. You would never make your characters do or say the things you make your FF characters do because when you’re working on your own stuff it feels to restrictive. Your logic fights against your imagination and tells you that what your writing is wrong or stupid or just plain bad. But, do the exact same thing with someone else’s characters, and suddenly your a FF prodigy.

If you still need more convincing, here’s a way better written article that talks about FF and writing… that I actually found accidentally when I was was trying to find a good image for this article… so, here you go, nerds.

From Star Trek to Fifty Shades: how fanfiction went mainstream

Craft Editorials Writing Styles

Get Your Hands Dirty: Why Writing By Hand Makes You A Better Writer


Sit back and really think about this question: When was the last time you wrote something out by hand? Excluding a quick grocery list or a to-do note, when was the last time you actually sat down and wrote long hand?

Now, maybe you have an issue that makes writing difficult, like dysgraphia, and typing is the solution to that, but for those of us that have no real legitimate reason to not hand write, I have a follow up question: When did you stop writing by hand?

Think back. I’ll give you a minute…

I’m willing to bet I can pinpoint the exact moment, because it’s my moment too- my first computer. Am I right? Of course, I’m right.

When I was eleven, my family got our first computer, but when I was fourteen, I got my own computer for my birthday. It wasn’t much back then. The entire hard drive was only about 1 GB, if you can believe it. But, I still couldn’t wait to do three things: 1) Finally get AOL and join the rest of the planet, including all my friends on AIM; 2) install the original Sims (and eventually all eight expansion packs, including hundred of downloaded custom objects from the internet); 3) get writing. I had a whole collection of clear, multi-colored floppy disks with a different story on each by my next birthday. But, despite having my very own PC, I still never managed to entirely kick the habit of writing by hand.

I picked up the habit of writing in class when I was bored. This usually happened in my English and Spanish classes which were taught by the same teacher, and was also usually a result of me being bored in the middle of one of her “teachable moment” lectures. She did these from her desk and they took the place of an actual, worthwhile lesson, and was inspired by some idiotic thing one of her two idiot sons had done to get in trouble, again. The adult teacher in me loathes her for wasting time and depriving us of real educational content, but the high school student version of me appreciated getting an uninterrupted 83 minutes to write, since we were on the block system. Whenever I sensed one of these lectures coming, which could be easily be surmised based on her mood that morning, I’d flip back to the back of my 5-subject notebook, and let rip whatever idea was feeding off my brain like insect larva.

“…on average, those students who wrote by hand instead of typing wrote more, wrote faster, and more often successfully used complex sentences.”

My favorite thing about writing by hand is that you can do it anywhere, and you never have to worry about running out of battery, (which is also why my go to combat weapon against zombies is going to be a machete or my old school metal softball bat, because bats and blades don’t run out of bullets.) But wait… what if your pen runs out of ink? Well, good thing Pens are literally E’RYWHERE! Did you know some places give them out fo’ free? Grab a notebook and a pen and you can write at the library, a coffee shop, the park, in a car (not driving, people!), in a waiting room, a plane… basically anywhere with a relatively flat surface.

Yes, writing by hand has its downsides. I’ve cried over hand cramps. But, the day that I caught myself looking up to click the “undo” button while I was writing a note by hand, I knew I had a problem. For those people who are perpetual printers, handwriting may be slower for you than typing, but practice and time will fix that. The bigger thing to keep in mind is that since handwriting curricula have been removed from schools and we cut out of the Common Core standards while every school follows for learning objectives and moved over to focusing on typing skills in older students, scientists have been studying the long term effects this could have on writing, reading, and learning.

According to science, all of you writers who prefer typing… you’re doing writing wrong.

The Brain Benefits of Handwriting


Inside our brains is a cluster of cells referred to as the RAS, the Reticular Activating System. This is just fancy talk for a part of the brain that is able to hyperfocus and filter out distractions. When we write by hand, it stimulates the RAS, which allows us to focus solely on the task itself. In other words, when we write by hand we are less distractable and able to be more efficient with our writing time, allowing us to be more productive in that time period.

Memory Recall

When I’m trying to get my students to remember a concept, I tell them to write it down. This is especially critical for my students with executive functioning issues, because that usually includes memory and recall. The physical act of writing something down forces your brain to engage with the material you are trying to learn, which means a higher chance of remembering it later without prompting.

Conceptual Thinking

My students suck at summarizing because they have been so rarely asked to do it. We’ve turned them into little copying monsters who write everything down verbatim and spit it back at us the same way.They are also the slowest writers of any generation. Notes that would take me a few minutes take then 5ever. But, when I was a kid, I got in the habit of writing my notes in my own words rather than the teacher’s (mostly, because in the case of my geography and science teachers, I thought I was better at summarizing and defining than they were). And, this is case in point for writing notes by hand. When you hand write notes, it prevents you from writing verbatim, or it slows you down. By summarizing, you’re forced to shorten them to keep u, focusing on using more purposeful words and trying to emphasize the most important points. This helps the recall, learning, and most importantly, understanding new material and the context. Writing letters by hand also improves literacy by helping you recall letters and words which strengthens reading comprehension.

Critical Thinking/Problem Solving

Long hand writing is slower for most people, which means that you also have to slow down . The benefit of this means you’re forced to slow down your thinking. This gives you time to focus on word choice, sentence structure, that funny line of dialogue you couldn’t stop laughing about


“According to science, all of you writers who prefer typing… you’re doing writing wrong.”

The Writing Benefits of Handwriting

According to a study conducted in 2009, students that wrote by hand rather than typing showed better writing skills than their peers who typed. The study was established to compare the common methods of transcription- the process of translating thoughts and ideas into writing. For reasons the scientists didn’t quite understand at the time, they discovered that on average, those students who wrote by hand instead of typing wrote more, wrote faster, and more often successfully used complex sentences.

One possible reason for this could go back to the RAS. Another study reported that when students wrote by hand, it activated the learning center of their brain. Writing by hand is much more taxing on the brain than typing because it requires the motor skills and memory recall necessary to identify and create the correct letter, and then string them together into words. This actually makes up smarter. Typing on the other hand merely trigger the muscle memory necessary to hit the correct key. I believe this is why when you are writing, especially by hand, and you get into The Zone, it’s simply that you have intensely activated your RAS, and have been able to eliminate all outside distractions to your particular task and the train of thought fueling your words.

This is the other beauty of handwriting- notebooks don’t have apps. It seems inevitable that when you are typing that at some point you will be sucked in by the black hole time suck we refer to as the internet. Sure, it starts innocently enough. One minute you’re looking up the meaning of the word or researching the background information on a topic you’re writing about, the next you’re watching YouTube because Google pulled up an Epic Rap Battle of History for the time period you were trying to research. If anyone knows how easy it is to go from background researching ancient mythologies to taking a Buzzfeed quiz to determine which badass mythical goddess I am, it’s this girl.


In general, handwriting is an exercise for strengthening cognitive ability. It keeps you sharp well into old age. It makes you more productive, producing higher word counts and better prose. Perhaps this is why famous writers such as Truman Capote (who was also a proponent of writing laying down) chose to write their first few drafts of stories long hand before typing. And, speaking of drafting, this brings us to the final writing benefit of handwriting- the process of transferring your hand written work into typed documents provides the opportunity for organic editing. Whenever I begin to type, I always manage to improve my writing by increasing word count and improving the language of the prose. Something about already having the most basic ideas out into the world on paper is freeing. Especially when I’m worried about forgetting an incredible idea and taking to time to write it all out before I can get distracted. The second time around when re-writing the material, once the pressure of getting all the “good” stuff down is gone, I’m able to go deeper into the idea and produce the “better” stuff.

At the end of the day, writing will inevitably have to be typed. No publishing house, no matter how indie, will ever accept a handwritten manuscript. But, there is strong argument for writing by hand, even if it’s just in the beginning, when you’re taking notes, plotting, or creating characters. Personally, I find it easier to hand write first and type second, which to my writing compatriots is a novelty in itself. They always comment on it, nearly shocked, always repeating the same exclamation- “You write by hand?!” Yes I do, and I always will. In the long run, does it take longer? Who knows? We all have different editing processes. But, there is just something hypnotic and methodical about the act of putting a smooth, fluid, brightly colored pen to college ruled paper that I cherish.

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Why You’re Not Writing: Making New Worlds Requires Meeting Your Needs

From years of teaching in rural, low-income areas in Central Illinois, and after being a product of one myself, I have seen and experienced the impact that deprivation can have on a child’s ability to learn. The biggest impact is on their motivation, their curiosity, and their perseverance through frustration. A kid who has been deprived of one or more needs struggles to see the point of school. But, even a kid who is fed, clothed, and has a place to sleep can still be majorly deprived of the needs a human being must have met to be successful. According to Dr. Abraham Maslow, a human being has needs that go just beyond the physical.

Credit : Simply Psychology

In fact, he formulated that there was a pyramid of needs, five tiers high, that built upon themselves to create total fulfillment. In the top tier, a person is capable of reaching the full potential of human beings, which Maslow called “Self-Actualization.” In order to produce, create, and find the drive to do so, a person must reach the fifth tier at the top of the needs pyramid, but Maslow stated that this could not happen until the bottom four tiers were met, each building on the foundation of the one below. In other words, until your most basic needs are met, it’s impossible to move to the next tier, and impossible to create.

Credit: WikiCommons


Hierarchy of Needs



  1. Physiological Needs- water, food, shelter, warmth

If we are expending all our energy on trying just to survive, we cannot expend energy on creative productivity.

It’s obvious that humans have physical needs (yes, including those physical needs… ya perv…) that are required just for survival. Humans need water, food, clothing, and shelter to survive, which is why makes up the first tier, the foundation of the pyramid of needs. Unfortunately, we live in a world, even in countries considered first world, that fail to provide these basic human rights to everyone. No progress can be made unless these basest of needs are being net, and met regularly, which is why the second tier is just as important as the first.

2. Security Needs- stability, consistency, healthcare, resources, employment

If we are expending all our energy trying to secure our resources, we cannot expend energy on creative productivity.

Human beings must have their basic needs met, and be comfortable that they will continue to be met. Living in constant fear of being hungry, cold, vulnerable, broke, creates toxic amounts of stress on the human body. This is why poverty is the root cause of so many health issues- the constant threat of losing everything in the blink of an eye. Many families in my school district are just skirting disaster, one unforeseen event, bill, accident away from collapse.

When living in this constant anxious state, toxic stress becomes a major obstacle. When unable to get out from under the stress, it leads to health issues from an impaired immune system, mental health issues such as depression and anxiety, and strain on relationships, personal and professional.

So, perhaps, your basic needs are being met, but just not consistently. Are you worried about your job security or struggling with unemployment? Is your health a constant battle for you, mental or physical? Are you worried about access the health care?



3. Socio-Emotional Needs- belonging, intimate relationships, affection, touch, family connections

If we are expending all our energy trying find a sense of belonging and identity, we cannot expend energy on creative productivity.

The biggest revelation I have had in my study of teaching children with trauma has been the impact of relationships on a child’s ability to learn and function socially. From the very first connection a baby makes with their caregivers, the roots of social, emotional, and physical needs are established. If these tiny humans establish healthy, trustworthy relationships with their caregivers, research shows that over the course of their life they will be better students, better regulators of stress and emotions, and better able to develop healthy relationships with others. Evidence has even shown that “problem” students can be helped, not with strict punishments and zero-tolerance policies, but simply by forming a trusting bond with an adult. This is especially true for children who have been deprived fulfilling relationships with their caregivers.

They also build the foundations of strong Executive Functions, or in other words, all those other things our brain does beyond problem solving and bodily functions. Executive functions include memory, organization, prioritizing and planning, task initiation, impulse control, flexibility, emotional control, and self monitoring. These are the areas of the brain that are critical for success in school. And, they’re the same skills needed to formulate a new idea, the creativity to develop it, and the motivation and inspiration to carry it through to the end.  In essence, anyone who has experienced trauma has a higher chance of deficits in their executive functioning.

Credit: Lisa Woodruff

These executive functions are the same parts of the brain heavily impacted by Autism and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, meaning that exposure to trauma can have the same impact on learning and create the same deficits as ADHD and Autism.

It may seem like a far leap to say that your relationships directly impact your abilities to think and learn. After all, relationships are social and learning is cognitive. But, human beings are social animals. Our evolution has been heavily dependent upon our ability to build communities; they create security and safety in ancient and our modern times. We crave interaction and affection, and that in itself creates its own sense of security. Belonging is crucial. And, as discussed in the second tier of the hierarchy, security is important on the path to self-actualization.

This may be the area in your life that may have the least structural foundation, and may be the cause of your writing issues. Writers are a lonely lot. We are esoteric, eccentric, and many enjoy being alone, preferring to watch from the sidelines rather than participate in society. This can lead to feelings of isolation. If you’re struggling with rejection, identity, or building healthy relationships, that fear of loneliness may be impacting the creative processes. Rejection in your personal life can easily translate over into the fear that your creations (the purest expression of you) will be rejected too.


4. Esteem Needs- Self image, confidence, mental health


When the word self-esteem enters a conversation, even I will admit, I find it hard not to roll my eyes and sigh. It’s hard not to immediately conjure images of participation trophies and posters of kittens on “hanging in there” on ropes. But, while self-esteem has become a millennial buzzword in the extreme, it remains an important part of our mental health despite the obnoxious reputation the word has garnered. In this particular case, self-esteem refers to the image we have of ourselves in our own heads and how that impacts how we interact with other people and engage in activities because of it.

A person with healthy confidence will feel comfortable around others and when alone, knowing that a healthy balance can be found in in both. They will also have a healthy respect for themselves, be able to take constructive criticism, and be able to make positive choices for their life. They will know that they have self-worth simply because they are a human being and they deserve to have their needs met.

A person who is struggling with self-esteem, especially conditions resulting from abuse and neglect, will be in constant need to validate their self-worth. This validation can come in the form of many ways- praise, physical contact, attention, and other positive forms of interaction with people. In some cases, when the need for this validation is high but does not occur, the result can be mental disorders such as anxiety, depression, eating disorders, self harm, and/or drug addictions that develop out of a need to numb the pain of worthlessness.

The biggest issue that can be a result from lack of having self-esteem needs met, especially when pursuing creative projects, is imposter syndrome. This is the deep seated feeling that you are a talent-less fraud and a paranoia that you are about to be “outed” as a fraud the minute someone sees your work. This alone is the reason some people never share their artwork, their writing, or their creations with other people, even close family and friends. Ironically, the validation for that work is what they crave most, and would actually help.

Since this need is the most cerebral of the human needs, it tends to be the most overlooked area. You can see a person physically starving, but you can’t always see self-esteem issues until they manifest physically, such as the weight loss of an eating disorder. Another sad aspect of this issue is that because they suffer from worth issues, those suffering from low self-esteem are trapped in a vicious cycle of believing that it is okay for them to feel worthless, because in their skewed belief system, they are in fact worthless.

Does this sound like you? Are you terrified to let others see your creative work for fear of rejection or ridicule? Are you fighting a battle with depression, anxiety, eating disorders, self harm, or addiction because of trauma and self-worth issues? Until you feel that your work has worth, as an extension of your own worth, you may be too paralyzed to create and share that work.



Self Actualization- reaching full potential through fulfillment of all other needs

The term self-actualization sounds so mystical and profound; to achieve self-actualization is to become the Buddha, to reach enlightenment and higher planes of existence. But, in the sense of Maslow’s hierarchy, self-actualization is much more simple and attainable than breaking the karmic cycle.

When speaking of Maslow’s hierarchy, the term self-actualization simply means generating an original idea, initiating the task to bring it to fruition, and seeing it through to completion. And, according to Maslow, this process of creation cannot happen unless you have met all the needs in the bottom four tiers.

Maslow described Self-Actualization as:

It refers to the person’s desire for self-fulfillment, namely, to the tendency for him to become actualized in what he is potentially. The specific form that these needs will take will of course vary greatly from person to person. In one individual it may take the form of the desire to be an ideal mother, in another it may be expressed athletically, and in still another it may be expressed in painting pictures or in inventions.” (Maslow, 1943, p. 382–383).

He also identified 15 common characteristics of “Self-actualizers”:

  1. They perceive reality efficiently and can tolerate uncertainty
  2. Accept themselves and others for what they are
  3. Spontaneous in thought and action
  4. Problem-centered (not self-centered)
  5. Unusual sense of humor
  6. Able to look at life objectively
  7. Highly creative
  8. Resistant to enculturation, but not purposely unconventional
  9. Concerned for the welfare of humanity
  10. Capable of deep appreciation of basic life-experience
  11. Establish deep satisfying interpersonal relationships with a few people
  12. Intense or exciting “Peak” experiences
  13. Need for privacy
  14. Democratic attitudes
  15. Strong moral/ethical standards

How many of these traits do you have? If not, why? What are you missing from life that you need? How can you resolve this need? Who can help?

If you’re not writing, painting, creating, actualizing… stop and ask yourself- Are you unable to do so because one of your needs is not being met?

Are you struggling to survive?

Are you struggling to maintain your survival?

Are you isolated?

Are you mentally healthy?


Once we resolve the obstacles to our own unmet needs, we will be able remove the blocks in our creative endeavors.




Information on brain science, development, and learning provided from Help for Billy: A Beyond Consequences Approaching to Helping Challenging Children in the Classroom by Heather Forbes

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Imposter Syndrome (APA)

Executive Functioning


Craft Creative Plotting

Scene Mapping: Using Dungeon Mastery to Plot Scenes

Growing up with OCD teaches a person to anticipate problems, which teaches them to problem solve at an early age. When most people hear the acronym OCD, they assume it is all about repetition – counting, organizing, and cleaning most famously. In actuality, that is just the typical manifestation of the the actual symptoms of OCD, the “compulsive” part of OCD. These are simply the form of rituals the person dealing with OCD is using to self-soothe their need to anticipate problems. Rituals all come down to the need to control one’s environment. The “obsessive” part of obsessive compulsive disorder is from the cycle of worry that stems from a fear of not being able to anticipate a problem.

A person with OCD may have a fear about their alarm clock not going off and being late for work. But, making sure that the alarm is set properly before they go to bed simply isn’t enough to quell that fear. What if they weren’t paying attention and accidentally set the alarm for PM instead of AM? What if they didn’t really flick the switch over all the way, and it doesn’t go off, or is set to radio, which is too quiet to wake them up? Of course, there is also the completely unavoidable problem of the power going out, which can only be solved with a backup system of generators… but even I’m not that paranoid. So, to anticipate these problems, they may check the alarm again, and again… and again and again and again, at least until they have soothed that worry enough to go to sleep.

The irony of being a writer with OCD is that even though I live my life trying anticipate problems that will trigger my anxiety, which leads to countless ways of trying to foresee how a situation with turn out, I am a particularly rigid and linear writer when plotting scenes.

“Then, I discovered the key to solving this problem simply by doing a quintessential nerd thing – playing DnD.”

When plotting out my seven major points in a story, I have no problem deciding exactly how and where I will introduce conflict and steadily working towards the resolution. The issue comes when I need to work on a smaller scale, linking the individual seven points together, or even smaller, from the beginning of a conflict within a scene to the scene’s resolution. The in-between parts are looser, more flexible, and need to contain more focus on the characters emotions. Plot occurs between the seven major points in the main story arc, but character development, which is the steering wheel for plot, meaning this is how story moves forward.

Keeping readers on their toes is incredibly important. If the story becomes predictable then readers lose interest. If they can predict what the characters are going to do, they get bored because they have already read this story. But, creating seemingly random variations in the outcome of a situation always felt like a dead end. If I knew what needed to happen at the end of a scene it felt impossible to not work towards it, even if I wasn’t convinced it was the best way to move the story forward, but was the only idea I could generate to finish the scene. And, if this was the only idea I could come up with, I found it even harder to work through the actual scene itself. I knew how a scene would start, and I had decided how I thought it needed to end, but how do I get from point A to point B in this scene without writing directly to resolve the scene. How can I work in the all important character development layers in the scene needed to feel like the plot is moving forward, even if we are just reading the internal monologue of a character dealing with the aftermath of an important plot point.

“You want to explore as many options as possible, even ones that may seem counter to your objective, because you never know the connections that will form between the ideas once your imagination takes hold.”

Then, I discovered the key to solving this problem simply by doing a quintessential nerd thing – playing DnD. Recently, I started playing Dungeons and Dragons again after a very long hiatus, creating a new group from my work friends. One of my best friends and fellow teacher, Dylan Power, joined the party as a player, but usually DMs (Dungeon Masters – the equivalent of Game Master for other tabletop RPGs). Recently, we started writing together in order to bounce ideas off each other – he plotting his campaigns while I work on my fiction, and I have discovered that he is an incredible DnD storyline writer. The reason he is a fantastic story line writer is because he has the ability to generate various outcomes of any situation he puts his player in during game play.

During one of our writing sessions, I watched him plot out his story map for the first leg of the campaign, and was stricken with envy. Much like I would have done when plotting a scene, he determined a starting point and an endpoint (conflict and resolution), but what he did in between was completely different than to my normal writing process. From the start point, he would write out a chain of events stemming from not one, but up to four ideas.

“Plot occurs between the seven major points in the main story arc, but character development, which is the steering wheel for plot, is how story moves forward.”

Begging him to teach me his dark form of idea generating magic, lamenting my situation concerning my inherent need to problem solve and plan for all contingencies, I stated how frustrating it was that I couldn’t easily do this same thing when writing scenes. And his response was so stupidly simple, I actually felt like an idiot when he pointed it out:

“Well, I have to account for people. You’re trying to account for things.”

Brick wall, meet face. It was so obvious. I was doing everything wrong… even though, he wasn’t entirely correct. Plot is driven by the actions made by characters who are constantly developing, changing, and evolving. This means that whether I am trying to plot a scene, a story arc, or the arc of a trilogy, none of this can be done without accounting for variables created by character decision making.

Using Role Playing Story Mechanics to Plot:

Try to pick a scene that you have not plotted yet. The less you have plotted the better – it prevents you from thinking too narrowly or linearly. You want to explore as many options as possible, even ones that may seem counter to your objective, because you never know the connections that will form between the ideas once your imagination takes hold. Give yourself permission to jump around and be spontaneous. Right down every possible scenario, even the ones that don’t make sense.


  1. Choose inciting incident and a conflict to be resolved by the end of the scene
  2. Brainstorm as many possible causes and effects from the inciting incident, as well as obstacles created. Think specifically about the characters involved, and how they will react in the situation presented.
  3. Continue to connect the cause and effects of the different levels of the unfolding conflict, finding ways to solve obstacles or to connect to the resolution of the conflict. (Unresolved obstacles can be used as foreshadowing or lead to other scenes.)
  4. Once finished, pick a path from beginning to end. Once chosen, write out the sequence of events you chose in order from beginning to end.
  5. Huzzah! Now do it again with another scene!

Note: Keep in mind that using this process might through your scene completely out of order. If this happens, it is probably for good reason. This process tends to reveal plot holes and weak spots in plotting. Don’t be afraid to add more to the beginning, the end, or even through out the middle. Also, do not be afraid to cut material out that doesn’t fit with the new idea. Hold on it for later, or write an alternative scene and see which fits better in the long run for the scene or the story arc.

Write on young savior,


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When Writers Don’t Write

A Rant from Sass:

It’s 10:26 am on Christmas Eve. My husband is currently working a sixteen hour overtime shift (at triple time – don’t feel bad for us. He signed up for it.), and I have the house all to myself. I don’t have anywhere to be until tomorrow. It’s cold, and the snow that started last night is still accumulating. I have a cozy little fire going in my wood burning stove and a piping hot cup of sweet, black tea steeping as I type. My cats are curled up at my feet. It’s literally a perfect day to write…

…so, why the hell don’t I want to write?

I’m a writer. You kind of have to do writing for that to work. But, meh… I just… whatever.

It’s not writer’s block. It’s not even writer’s embarrassment. I just look at my project, shrug my shoulders, and think Nope.

I have writer’s apathy.

I’m nine months shy of being a decade into my main writing project. I’ve fleshed out all the characters. I’ve outlined the entire story, the conflict, the character arcs, the twists, the turns, the reveals, and the resolution. I’ve written over 50,000 words of the chronological story, and who knows how much out of order.

The story is there. It’s ready to be completed. I love my characters, I’m happy with my style, I’m proud of the theme and message I want to resonate through the story…

…so, why can’t I finish this damn story?

Have I fallen out of love with the idea?  Am I hitting the limits of my own creativity? Or, is it simply the manifestation of something I just can’t accept – maybe I am not really a writer at all. A creator, sure. I made an entire world. That happened, and it can’t be denied. But, am I trying to create my world in the wrong universe?

Am I sabotaging myself because I subconsciously fear I’ve invested ten years in a project that will have absolutely no significance?

The worst part isn’t the not writing. It’s the fact that everybody that reads what I have written loves it. My husband, my writer friends, my best friends, strangers who’ve read it on the few places I have posted it on the internet – I’ve had tons of positive feedback. They are desperate for more. They are begging me to finish. And, when they tell me this, I want to finish. I have hope I can. I believe I can… for about, like, a day. Then it’s straight back to excuses and apathy.

“If platitudes could be burned as creative energy to motivate my ass to complete this story, it would probably be a whole damn series by now.”

Most of the time, my writing dry spells have coincided with depression. On the reverse of that, my best writing periods have coincided with manic periods. But lately, when I sit down to put words on paper – despite knowing what I need to write, and how I want to write it – just feel lethargic. Creatively devoid. Bored, even.

So, why don’t I just walk away, you ask? Many reasons…

  1. I don’t often walk away from things I start – I’m too competitive, even with myself.
  2. I keep talking myself out it.
  3. The desire to have her own fandom is strong with this one.
  4. I know in my heart that someone out there needs this story as bad as I needed it when I started writing it.

“Your words are going to change someone’s life, even if it’s your own.”

My writer friends encourage me, giving me pep talks all the time.

“It’ll take as long as it takes.”

“I know you’re going to finish this story.”

“It’s a fantastic story that needs to be written. You’re going to do it, I promise.”


I wish I had answers. I wish I could peel back my consciousness and poke around inside it with a stick until I figured out why I am motivationally blocked. But, alas, no dice.

I’m just going to have to keep plugging away, working when I can, and trying not to feel like I’m made of excuses when I can’t. Writing is an art, not a science. It’s an act of creation. The pressure of manifesting something literally from nothing is overwhelming sometimes. It’s intimidating, especially when you add on the fact that you are second guessing your every move as you do it. Every writer wants to create something new, undiscovered, and original, because every writer needs to feel those things about themselves.

Writing is an act of affirmation.

As the often contested quote says, “Writing is easy. You just sit down at a typewriter, and bleed.” In other words, a writer pours everything out onto that page that makes them. They spill their essence across the page in a flow of words – their thoughts, their beliefs, their fears, their desires, their strengths, and their limitations. A writer leaves everything they are on the page, and waits for someone to love it. A writer perceives love through the admiration of their work, because if they can lay out their essence on a page, flaws and all, and still find someone who finds beauty, joy, revelation, and kinship in that mess, then they have truly been accepted for who they are.

That is terrifying and alluring, and the secret desire of every writer. They want someone to read them like their book, and say “I love this exactly as it is. Never change a thing.”

Dear merciful universe, I will finish this book. I don’t know how long it will take, or how I will find the momentum, but I will do it for one simple reason: Finishing this book will say more about me than anything I undertake for the rest of my life. It’s become a metaphor for my entire life struggle.


I am not good enough. I will never be accepted. Nobody gets me. What’s the point in trying?

My story is not good enough. It will never be accepted by the mainstream. Nobody will get it. What’s the point in writing it?

Because it already exists. I exist. I think, therefore, I am, right? Saying this story isn’t worth writing is like saying my life is not worth fighting for anymore. It’s creative suicide. As long as people want it, I know it has worth… and, as long as I know I can write it, I too have worth.

I have to find the courage, conviction, and fortitude to keep writing. I have to tell my story as it is, without hesitation. I have to keep writing, living, bleeding out, otherwise… what is the point?

Writing is scary because it is the most honest thing you can do to accept yourself. Don’t give up. Keep fighting, even when it hurts, even when hope seems lost. It’s worth it. You’re worth it. Your words are going to change someone’s life, even if it’s your own.

Write on young savior,



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What Makes a Fictional World?

The beauty of writing speculative fiction is that anything is possible. Magic. Time Travel. World peace… (is it too cynical to think that the two formers are more possible in our real world than the latter? #writerprobs #historyteacherprobs) …and, while working in a world that will be shaped by your hand means the possibilities are endless, it also means that you have to play god, and literally build a world from scratch.

How the hell do you do that? Simple. And, lo, on the seventh day, god researched!

Writers research, period. Authenticity is key, regardless of whether you are writing realistic or fantasy driven fiction. While authors writing crime drama need to understand the mechanics of police procedure and writers of historical fiction need to understand the protocols of social status and gender, they both have the luxury of using anecdotal and empirical evidence to help them write authentically. Spec writers… well, we just make shit up, right?

Wrong. Well… kinda wrong. Wrongish.

You cannot just create matter from nothing. All cells come from previous cells. As too, with speculative fiction; you don’t just create something from nothing. The facets of the real world serve as our inspiration for fantasy worlds. The conflict that develops in fantasy setting may be fueled by metaphysical, magical, or technological issues, but it all stems from issues we encounter as real world people. Any fan of Star Trek: the Original Series will tell you that what made the show so amazing was its ability to take real world, contemporary issues and work them into a science fiction context. Species were based on cultures of Earth, albeit some were done in woefully poor and racist taste. Religious, ethical, political, ecological, cultural, and economic issues were not limited to human beings — they impacted species across the universe.

If there is one universal truth, it is that sentient beings, no matter how utopian and peaceful their society is, will always have shit to fight about. And that brings me back to my point: some aspects of the real world are universal to any society. If you want to build a fictional world, you have to start with a foundation, a template, and customize from there.

“If you’ve done your due diligence when building your fictional world, it will bleed into your writing without any great effort on your part.”

So, what makes a world? Here is the basic structure of any society, regardless of time period, culture, or race.

  • Setting
  • Political & Economic system
  • Shared cultural beliefs
  • Science & Technology


The variables of setting are very important to your world, and can either structure your world, or limit the possibilities. One of the most important ways to show authenticity is to make sure that the setting reflects every other aspect of your society.

  • Geography — What resources are available in this region? How do the people regulate resources, and does that create conflict? Do the seasons change? Are their multiple environments in one land, or is it all the same? Do the people adapt to the environment, or do they adapt the environment to meet their needs through modification and technology? What kind of flora and fauna live in the environment, and how does that impact the people?
  • Time Period — What freedoms do people have, and what limitations? For lack of better words (because as a historian, my brain throws up red flags and sees these words as ethnocentric), how “barbaric” , “primitive”, “advanced”, or “civilized” are the people? What constitutes the difference between the meaning of these words in their world? Are people treated differently based on race, class, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or other minority qualifiers? What changes has your world seen over its existence? Who has power, why, and has that changed? What historical events have shaped the world currently?
  • Science — What is technology to your people, meaning any device that makes life simpler? Do magic/paranormal/metaphysical components exist in this world? What is the difference between science and magic and religion, and does that distinction cause conflict?

Political & Economic Systems

What kind of political system(s) exist in the world, and how are they organized? Who created them? Have they always existed? What is considered to be the responsibility of the government, and of the individual? How are children educated, if at all? What is considered a well-rounded education? What are the laws, who created them, why, and how are they enforced?

It’s easy to overlook, but a nation’s government and economy are intrinsically linked. The attitudes towards making money, public services, and other ethics about business will impact how governments make laws, protect their people, and provide services. What kind of economy exists in your world? Who controls it? What kinds of goods are made, and what kinds of services are offered? Does the environment and resources play a role in that? What jobs are available?


Shared Cultural Beliefs

What unites the people of this world? What do they eat? What do they believe? How do they dress? What is sacred and blasphemous to them? What language do they speak? What are the customs and traditions in this world? What happens when parts of this culture are changed/forgotten/ignored, and does that cause conflict? Are multiple cultures fighting for resources/rights/autonomy, or do they live in harmony? How does the culture impact class, gender, age, and what expectations are held for those qualifiers? How has history played a role in the development of the culture(s)?

Science & Technology

A huge misconception modern humans have when it comes to technology is that it has to be digital, futuristic, world of tomorrow kind of stuff. But, from the historical perspective, technology is really anything that has made life easier. Many people would automatically jumped to the progress made my weapons and tools, but it gets even more simple than that. We may be spoiled with our personal pocket computers, but at one point, all those things a cell phone or tablet does, were distinct forms of technology. Printed books, brought about by the printing press, were an incredibly advanced tech in the Middle Ages. Pencils were cutting edge shit. A writing system in general changed to world, drawing the line between recorded history and pre-history, forever dividing us civilized people from those primitive savages. With this idea in mind, think about everything that makes your life safe, comfortable, and simple. Now, examine what the people in your world would need to feel the same way?

  • How do people communicate?
  • How to they move goods and people?
  • How do they fight?
  • How do they farm?
  • How do they learn and discover?
  • How do they heal?
  • How do they play and relax?
  • How do they record information?

Even if not directly important to or acknowledged in the story, these are the bare minimum elements of the world that should be addressed. The reader doesn’t need to know all of the details, especially if it will amount to endless pages of backstory and context, or if it’s irrelevant to the basic plot. But, as a writer, these are things that need to be considered to have a fleshed out understanding of how your characters will act, react, view, and function in their world. If you’ve done your due diligence when building your fictional world, it will bleed into your writing without any great effort on your part. You will be able to avoid heavy-handed exposition and your readers will appreciate the opportunity to fill in some of the blanks themselves.


Remember too, that when you are building your world, the real world is full of inspiration for the elements you need to make it seem authentic. That requires research. Good research- not a cursory skimming of a Wiki page. All of us at IndiePen Ink know just how complex and time consuming proper research can be. Lucky for you, our strife has turned into your benefit, as it has inspired us to create a truly helpful research resource for writers unlike any other: The Research-a-Torium. A writers reference source that can guide you to online resources and services, as well as services and titles you can find at you own local library. Thanks to the tireless work of our Lady of the eLibrary, Caitlin, we expect to be opening the doors by the end of July.


Start working out those worlds now, and when you get stuck, come see Caitlin in the Research-a-Torium for a world of resources guaranteed to inspire.

Write on young savior,

Craft Writing Styles

The Five Senses, and Beyond—Using Sensory Writing to Heighten your Narrative

Close your eyes.

Quit whining, and do it.

What do you notice about the space you are in?

Is the TV or music on in the background? Is there a breeze coming through the window? Can you still smell the popcorn you accidentally burned in the microwave? Can you feel the lump in the old couch cushion under you, or the numbness of your butt from time sitting on that hard seat? Is there a constant drip in your bathroom, or the ticking of a clock? Is your mouth dry, or is the taste of your now cold coffee still clinging heavily to your tongue?

Were you aware of any of this things prior to this moment?

Now, what’s really going to bake your noodle…are you even awake, or are you dreaming.

Perception in writing is incredibly important to making a scene feel real. When a scene is described with complex sensory detail the readers feel immersed in the narrative, as if they were there alongside the characters, experiencing what they are experiencing. This is the key to writing the type of story that readers get lost in.

And, the key to writing good sensory details is using all five physical senses alongside with what the characters are able to perceive. Sensing something goes far beyond just sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell. In a speculative fiction story, the characters may have extra-sensory abilities, which need to be established and recognized in the narrative. But, even without abilities beyond those of mere mortals, human beings are conditioned to perceive many other types of senses beyond the physical. Even the five physical senses become multifaceted when one starts to think about all the things we can see, hear, smell, taste, and feel, and how we experience those things.

The Five Senses, sensationalized.

When I was in middle school, I had a revelation … I’ll give you a moment to get out the crude jokes about self-discovery and puberty…

Are we good now? Fantastic. Let’s move on.

Joking aside, I do remember having one of those Ermahgerd moments in seventh grade science. One of those moments where you realize you’ve always known something, but it wasn’t apparent until someone told you it was there. Seventh grade science was biology, and we were talking about the senses. My teacher was talking about the absolute thresholds, the parameters and limitations of the human senses (fascinating and informative image included below). When talking about smell, he also mentioned something that Febreze has been marketing on for years now, though he didn’t call it this, he talked about going “noseblind” (go here, because Mental Floss)

When he described the idea behind walking out of room you’ve been in for a while, and then re-smelling an older smell when you walk back in, that idea literally blew my mind. It was one of those, I thought I was the only one who noticed that things. I realized what an important part of my childhood that concept was the next time I visited my grandparents house. The moment I stepped into their house, I always smelled a distinct smell- cigarettes and fried food. Long story short, my grandparents were not healthy people, but I digress… it was a powerful smell. It became a sense memory for me. When I smell meat being fried, I am immediately reminded of Grandma standing over a stove with a pork chop frying in the pan with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth. And, I remember when I got home from my visits, I would change my clothes, because I realized that even though I had become desensitized to it over the period of time I spent at their house, my clothes reeked of grease and smoke when I stepped into my non-smoking parents home.

When we think about the senses, we usually think about their most basic functions. I look, I see a thing. I listen, I hear a sound. I pick something up, I feel the texture in my hand. But, our senses allow us to perceive so much more than just the literal thing they do.

Vision allows us to perceive variations in light and color, even when our eyes are closed (don’t pretend you didn’t play that game as a kid where you lay down in the grass, close your eyes, and stare at the sun). We can discern depth and perspective, as well as movement.

Hearing allows us to not just notice a sound, but how the sound it made and from where it is coming. Rhythm patterns, pitch, tone, and volume are all things we perceive about a sound without even thinking about it.

Taste is complex, and we can experience five different sensations- sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and savoury (some even argue more).

Touch is really thought provoking when you really examine how many things we feel, even when we are not touching something. When you make physical contact with an object, your brain identifies so much more than just “Oh, hey look! A thing!”. When we touch or hold something, we are identifying temperature, texture, moisture, and weight. But, within your own body, you can also feel things. Pain for example is a sensation of touch we experience from the inside. Our nerves are being activated internally. Same with heartbeat, muscle tension, hunger, thirst, and that horrible numb-before-it-becomes-horrible-painful-stinging feeling we get when we sit cross legged and cut off circulation to our feet.

And, smell seems simplistic and obvious… you just smell stuff right? Wrong. Even though the act of smelling doesn’t consist of much more than a simple act, experiencing smell evokes memories and emotions, as evidenced by my story above. In animals, smell is an incredibly important sense, one that could mean the difference between life and death. It’s one of the primary instincts used in mating. And, like our animal friends, we use smell when determining potential mates, even during falling in love. Experiencing a smell is to literally experience a chemical reaction in your brain. It’s directly linked to our ability to taste… (think about that next time you smell a fart!). An odor, either good or bad can alert you to danger, ruin your day, ruin your moment, wake you up, elicit hunger, make you sick, make you sneeze, turn you on. The smell of a mother can soothe a crying baby.

Going Beyond the Five Senses

Once you’ve opened your mind and really thought about what sense is, you will start to notice the other things we perceive, some things real, others invented, that we also experience as human beings.

One feeling that we are often completely unaware of is how often we are aware of things. Awareness and consciousness are things we feel, that we experience. We can clearly discern between being awake and asleep, the feeling of clarity when we understand something, and the muddled sense of confusion when we don’t. We can also imagine things, creating a false sense of awareness of things that aren’t even really there, or convince ourselves we experienced something when we did not, and make a believable memory of that event. This means not only can we perceive reality from non-reality, we can turn the latter into the former with our brains.

Another thing humans feel is emotion, which is a truly amazing feat in the fact we can turn an intangible mental experience into a physical one. We can feel physical pain when we are sad or depressed. Nausea when we are scared or nervous. Cry when we are heartbroken or when we are elated. And, as if that wasn’t magical sounding enough, we can also detect emotions in other people. Human beings are equipped with this incredible feeling called empathy that allows us to interpret the emotional state of others. Or, in some cases, such as Autism (or Republicanism), completely lack the ability, or have it greatly impaired. Even the inability to feel or interpret emotions still has a feeling of emptiness and confusion for those who experience it.

Then, there is the strangest sense of all, which is going to get very meta here, because it helps us perceive a thing that doesn’t exist at all- time. We are able to discern the passage of time to a point, as anyone who has tried to avoid looking at a clock will know. Humans aren’t particularly good at it, which is why those extra seven minutes on the snooze button felt like thirty seconds, and why waiting for the doctor to knock on the door feels like hours when it’s been less than ten minutes. But, how we perceive the passage of that time is relevant to our mood and alertness.

Being able to properly express these experiences when writing characters and scenes is vital to creating a fleshed out story. Readers want to get lost in stories by escaping into them, and without a fully dimensional world, they can’t do that. Since reading is limited to the screen of the imagination, of which some people have a hard time using to envision the world of the story, using sensory details grounds the story in reality and makes it easy to relate to and envision.

Craft Creative Editorials Inkademy Research-a-torium Sass Setting Worldbuilding

A Fantastic World Does Not A Story Make










Write on young savior,




Craft Creative Research-a-torium Resources

The History of Storytelling: Part III: Modern Storytelling

Part III

For Part I and Part II of this series, click here and here.

Modern Storytelling

Never before in the history of storytelling have so many options been available to the average storyteller. Nor, have so many forms of storytelling even been considered actual storytelling. A story is anything that meets the requirements of having the five basic elements of story: characters, setting, plot, conflict, and theme. No matter the media, if it has all of these elements it qualifies as a story. That means that modern storytelling has a plethora of vessels for relaying a story.


Books are what we classically think of when we think of “stories”. Most of the reading we do outside of work or school comes in the form of novels. Even those who read short stories typically do so by buying an anthology in book form. But, fiction can come in variety of lengths, depending on the intention of the writer. Works shorter than one thousand words can be considered micro-fiction, flash fiction, or simply a short. A short story tends to fall into a range between one-thousand and seven thousand words. A novelette is seven to twenty-thousand words, and a novella is twenty to fifty-thousand words. A story is not typically considered a novel until it makes it past the fifty-thousand word mark, and anything longer than one-hundred thousand words is considered an epic.

Because of the visual aspect used to express the story, graphic novels and comic books are not traditionally considered books. But, like traditional books, they are just as much a story. Graphic based storytelling still uses the same elements as written stories, they just rely on a visual method to express them. Character development is seen through the actions of characters and the emotional reactions on their faces. Conflict and plot are dramatized by the way the boxes are set within the panels. Tone and theme are presented in the stylization.


Thanks to the internet making digital audio and video files accessible to everyone, a storytelling method from the early days of radio is making a comeback – the audio drama. Audio books have been around for a long time, easing the pain of long commutes and long hours of data entry by allowing busy people to listen to readings of popular books when they have the time. Along with the rise of Satellite Radio in the early 2000s, as internet speeds increased, and switched from relying on phone lines to fiber optic cables, podcasts became the new pirate radio shows. Suddenly, anyone could have a blog and a show, and both exploded during the 2000s. As podcasts became more available, with shows ranging into all areas of human interest, and downloads and listeners increased, storytellers realized that once again, audio was a format that would allow them to share their stories. Shows such as Welcome to Nightvale have made it possible for entire series to exist, serialized much like modern day soap operas, one episode at a time.

This is perhaps the closest thing we have today to the oral tradition that served as the function for the root of storytelling itself- passing information from one generation to the next by sharing a story verbally.


When people first saw Train Pulling Into a Station by the Lumière brothers in a theater in 1896, they thought they were witnessing magic. Ever since, cinema has become one of the biggest and most popular ways that we share stories. Allowing for the chance to actually witness the story in front of you, it adds a whole new dimension to what can be done with the imagination. Filmmakers take stories from pen to paper and paint it fully with the help of production design, sound engineering and musical scores, and the thing that makes us connect with them most—actual people. With films and television shows, characters are no longer imaginary figures in our minds. They become tangible before us, which while sometimes can be disappointing when it comes to adaptations, is largely something that makes people love and connect with films so much. It evolves story “telling” into story “showing”.

As MTV taught us so well, video certainly did kill the radio star, but YouTube isn’t killing podcasting in any way, especially when streaming a podcast takes less data than watching a video. But, YouTube is allowing for a Renaissance of independent film. Filmmakers are creating entirely new content, like Broad City, which went on to get picked up as a half hour scripted comedy by Comedy Central. Others, like The Lizzie Bennet Diaries by the folks of Pemberly Digital, or Hamlet the Dame by Remarkable, Singular, Curious Productions and ParaFable, are making names for themselves by adapting well beloved stories into vlog style web shows. StarKid Productions, famously known for their musicals, such as the Very Potter Musical series, have been able to capitalize on YouTube and help them find an audience by filming their productions and posting them online. The creation of Vine (before it was dropped by Twitter) was the visual version of flash fictiona snippet of a story told visually, usually in the form of a song or a joke.

With cameras on every phone it is now easier than ever to tell a story through film. And, there are more venues to display your visual art every day. Streaming services are a dime a dozen these days, and they are all climbing over each other to produce original content, hoping for the next “it” show.


Despite being a huge industry, and a huge art of the modern creative arts community, video games have never really been given the credit they are due. With the inclusion of voice acting and intricately designed cut scenes, some video games have the production value of movies, and have character voiced by celebrities from the A List to those with cult following. The story lines have to be even more complex than the average story because most video games offer the player multiple endings based on choices made at turning points in the game. Games such as the Fable Series and Dishonored build their entire story around the choices, actions, and leveling options the player makes during gameplay. A player may have to play a video game like this several times, changing their choices from the last game, to fully experience the totality of the story options.

One of the best, yet completely underrated forms of storytelling, is roleplaying games. Anyone who has played a tabletop RPG (roleplaying game), classics such as Dungeons and Dragons or Vampire: The Masquerade, will know just how much storytelling, character development, and exposition goes into a game. Game Masters will spend weeks creating a story arc, plotting obstacles to throw in the characters way, forcing their characters to use their traits, skills, resources, and cunning to overcome them. Characters may fight monsters, solve puzzles, or seek treasure, but they can only use the predetermined elements in their character that were designed at the beginning of the game. An RPG is probably the purest form of storytelling, and the closest we have to the original roots of storytellinga group of people gathered around to listen to a tale of adventure.

Virtual Reality

The coolest thing about modern storytelling is that it is evolving before our very eyes, with advanced new technologies like virtual reality. Already being incorporated into gaming systems thanks to the advent of devices like the Oculus Rift, there’s so much as-yet undiscovered potential in this technology to do as others have before it. Only time will tell if this will actually become the next big thing, but it certainly gives hope to those of escapists who’ve always said things like, “I wish I could be in the story I’m reading!”


Virtually experiencing the Red Wedding from Game of Thrones like…


And So Much More

From street theater to ballet to scrapbooking and back again, there are now so many forms of storytelling that it’s hard to keep count. And that’s a wonderful thing! We here at IndiePen Ink would love to hear what forms of storytelling you enjoy, so please share your favorites in the comments!

Write on young saviors,