My Guide to Writing and Life
Pick your point of view. Who do you want to be? What
archetypal story do you want to tell? What do you want to see happen?
Where is the most action, freedom, pain? Who is trying to change things?
Make your lands. Are they nice, scary, harsh, lovely? What plants,
forms, patterns, symbols, creatures, planets, and stars are going to populate
your space? What story does all this tell inside your story?
Pick your language. Are you going to speak a lot of new, made-up
words that no one can understand unless you give them context and repeated
usage? Are people all going to sound/look the same? No. Everyone has their own style, rhythm, and purpose in speaking, creating, or representing.
Pay attention to the signs. Foreshadowing, mirroring, and
foils are a thing: everyone/thing reflects around the matrix and back because
we are all one. There are levels, aspects and angles to a single
identity, a dyad, or tertiary relationships. These follow patterns that filter
down to the words, symbols, and environment of your story, which people either do or do not notice, understand, or care about.
Know the language. Understand exact punctuation, grammar,
and diction; and if you can know syntax, morphology, and phonology- as well as slang,
dialect, and accent. Maintain a non-exclusive vocabulary. Know where the
language/alphabet came from; know about that land, its people, and their
traditions, and what each letter really means. Understand how those meanings coalesce within a word and what their juxtaposition means for the overall "story" of a word.
Know the numbers. Understand exactly what each number means
in the context of your story and use and show it accordingly. Understand what
it means when there are double numbers, triple numbers, numbers in ascending
and descending order, and know the archetypal numbers. Understand how and why those
numbers were formed, where they came from, and what it means when one number is
next to another.
Know the colors. Provide the color of things, be detailed,
and varied, aware of the relative value, temperature, and even saturation of
each color. Know what each color means; and what it means to pair up
colors, because there are archetypal pairings such as red and blue, gold and silver,
yellow and purple; know what it means to have three colors, or four, or
all of them, or none of them and why that matters at all.
You can switch things up. You don’t have to do everything
the same the whole way through: you can change points of view, textures, level
of detail, weather, light, formality, what you/your character/your world are doing,
holding, seeing; what you/they are aware of, care about, and believe to be true:
it’s all malleable. Nothing is set in stone. Just because you’re holding
something now, and you put it down, doesn’t mean you can’t pick it back up in a
moment, or a year, or in the next chapter/lifetime/sequel even. Do what you
want. Just because you/your society/your medium has always done something a certain way,
doesn’t mean you have to.
Know the rules of magic/spacetime/interdimensional resonance:
their mechanisms and effects are felt, known, and documented (and in some cases
treated exclusively). Know how these work, when, where, why, who’s playing and
what exactly they intend by their game. Because everyone and everything is
magic and in spacetime and experiences interdimensional resonance: me, you,
children, cats, bats, balls.
Know your audience. Get outside your work and consider its
context: who are you making it for, what are you trying to say with it, and
why, and why that matters, and why that matters that that matters. Get meta,
think postmodern, go quantum about how you’re affecting the fabric of reality
with your story. Think about its meaning, the font you’ll use, what kind
of paper it’s on. It’s your story: right it.
