Welcome to the Weekly Fiction WIP Thread! This is a weekly community journal for writers here on Daily Kos to showcase microfiction, ongoing serialized stories, and parts of larger works in progress. All DK fiction writers are welcome to post chapters and excerpts as comments in the Fictional works in progress Diaries.
Use the header formatting button at the top of these comments to enlarge the title of the ongoing project your material comes from so readers can find it from week to week.
If you want feedback, be sure to indicate so in bold (the formatting button next to H). Readers, please make sure your feedback is constructive (that doesn’t mean it has to be all positive, but it should always be actionable and sincere advice; for example, compare “This protagonist is terrible” to “I didn’t feel a connection with your protagonist”) and limit it to authors who ask for it. Authors, please make sure you’re OK with receiving feedback and comments before asking for them in your post. Together, we can make this a positive place to share our work and progress and pursue our hobby.
A WORD OF WARNING
Many publishers and agents will not accept a manuscript that is publicly available online in whole or in part because they run the risk of being sued for copyright infringement because someone copies your work and passes it off as their own. So if you’re hoping to sell it professionally, you probably shouldn’t publish it in DK. If you plan to publish it yourself, that risk is only on you. If you don’t plan to publish it anywhere else, that’s probably not a problem at all.
Click on one of the Readers & Book Lovers tags at the end of each published diary in this series to go to our shared host group and read today’s Keep writing Series article.
Regular participating authors are encouraged to participate in the publication of these diaries.
It’s easy. Just coordinate your schedules with each other – usually in a comment with the heading “Schedule”. Then copy them into your diary draft on the day everything You see in what you are reading, add the tags one by one —FictionWorksInProgress ■ FictionWIP ■ fiction ■ R&B ■ R&Bers ■ Readers & Book Lovers ■ Readers and book lovers ■ Write ■ WriteOnFictionWIP ■ Freelance authors — and click PUBLISH! 🙂
Then copy the URL of the published diary, which always begins with
and come over to today’s Keep writingand add it to a comment asking us to post your FWIP diary on the R&B And Freelance authors Groups. It works!
AND FINALLY, add your own WIP excerpt as a comment to the WIP diary you just published and you’re good to go!
A word of warning
Many publishers and agents will not accept a manuscript that is publicly available online in whole or in part because they run the risk of being sued for copyright infringement because someone copies your work and passes it off as their own. So if you’re hoping to sell it professionally, you probably shouldn’t publish it in DK. If you plan to publish it yourself, that risk is only on you. If you don’t plan to publish it anywhere else, that’s probably not a problem at all.
And now without further ado, let’s get to this week’s challenge!
When creating a setting for your ongoing narrative, the natural world, or lack thereof, can be an interesting way to make the setting your own. The natural world dictates so much of our daily lives without us even thinking about it.
Why are we Americans like apple pie and not pear pie? What did the early explorers think when they reached the West Coast and its stunning redwood trees that dwarfed anything in Europe? Now imagine that these redwood trees were descendants of baobabs.
Do cats curl up on your protagonist’s lap after a long day? Maybe, but maybe not. In my fantasy setting, dwarves have goblins as a sort of hybrid between pet and servant, small gecko-headed reptilian people who are intellectually on the level of great apes. There are no furry friends in the dwarven halls, but one can find goblin companions scurrying up and down walls or jumping onto the backs or shoulders of their (by comparison) large dwarf friends. To them, these literally reptilian hangers-on are their beloved companions and troublemakers.
Even though it’s still dwarves in caves, the image of lizardmen scurrying about, chirping to each other and their dwarven friends, adding to the hum of background noise and activity, is, to me, a very different sight to the tomb-like atmosphere of Tolkein’s decaying dwarven cities. But more than that, it means there’s a whole new element of dwarven domestic life to add to the scenes in their cities and houses.
Even a few small changes to what we know can affect your world in ways that make it distinctive and your own. And it doesn’t have to be just the realm of fantasy: simple things like the discovery of sugar or pineapples have led to wars of conquest and annexation. What would have happened if a crop other than cotton had become king in the south? What if cocoa was not a tropical plant but a temperate one? What if a rare and exotic spice had grown in Ireland instead of India?
Of course, this isn’t just reserved for fiction. Nature is an easy indicator of where your story is set, but it can also be an indicator of when. Think of the banana: What does a banana look like when your protagonist buys one at the store? If you picture a crooked yellow fruit, you’ve given away your age without knowing it: Until the 1960s, the predominant banana in the U.S. was the Big Mike (or Gros Michel), but disease destroyed monoculture plantations and drove them nearly to extinction. The hardy Cavendish banana you see in stores today took its place. Gros Michels were sweeter and straighter; if you’ve ever wondered why banana-flavored candy doesn’t taste like banana, it’s because the first banana flavors were based on the Big Mike variety.
Things like this can transport your reader to another place and time, and since nature is all around them and there’s no escaping it, it’s an easy way to create a world without overwhelming them with information. Even a simple dinner or a look out the window can speak volumes. Engaged readers might even try to piece together more than you’ve offered them from clues alone.
Is there anything notable about your setting? Are there any unusual sights or smells (that is, unusual to the reader, but familiar to the character) that we might encounter as your protagonist heads out to get something to eat, or takes a walk to their destination? If we dropped something we’d just eaten, who would rush out and snatch it or crawl all over it? Or, perhaps equally or even more importantly, what IS NOT THERE?
