Writing tips & tricks

By pink-petunias

31.1K 652 81

A collection of tips and tricks for my fellow writers. :) (Some chapters will have charts that go with them) ... More

Hello!
Body Lanuage Cheat Sheet
Guide: describing clothing and appearance
Character Trait Generator
Instead of Said
Words to Use More Often
Tips for writers just starting out
Advice: Renaissance Story
Diolauge
SCREENWRITING ISNT WRITING...
What You Meed To Know Most About Character Voice
What you need to know most about voice #2
Body language: what eyes can tell you
Writing Pregnancy
Writer's Block
Backstory
Writing Fanfiction
Dialogue: how yo make it more interesting
Building you character's personality
If you need a character motivation
Tips on writing a drug dealer
Reasons to go on a roadtrip
Lay or lie?
Colors
Shades of red orange and yellow
Shades of purple and brown
Shades of green and blue
Hair colors
Eye colors
Map of the US
Limits of the human body
Words that describe somebody's voice
Hand-fan communication from the victorian era
Jobs for a fantasy character: part 1
Jobs for a fanstasy character: part 2
Jobs for a fantasy character: part 3
Jobs for a fantasy character: part 4
Instead of "looks"
45 ways to avoid using the verb "verb"
2015 reading challenge
Visual shoe dictionary
Book covers
More helpful junk
How long unopened makeup lasts

What do they eat?

542 18 1
By pink-petunias

What do they eat?

It's my favorite question of all when it comes to world building. People need an awful lot of stuff when you get right down to it, food is probably on top of the list.

It is such a huge part of any culture that it seems unwise to skip this step. There are many interesting things you can do to add *cough* a little flavor and realism.

What kind of food?

It depends on many, many factors such as climate, region, culture, population size, time period, technology, knowledge, discoveries or trade as to what kind of food they'll be able to produce or even consider.

Things like class, gender, type of work, access, difficulty to make, religion, time of year, holidays, might also play a factor in what people eat or are allowed to eat or deem appropriate.

What do your monsters eat?

Generally speaking, fantastical creatures need to eat as well and if they are offered a relatively easy source such as your livestock, they are probably getting interested. But even ignoring that, you should have a rough idea, though the more the better, how these creatures interact with your ecosystem.

You could say something like: My world only supports X dragons; their consumption is just that high. It's just that I tend to roll my eyes when I have a story with loads of giant monsters while the ecosystem looks to be perfectly unaffected by it. Those things will make a dent.

Where are the goods coming from?

Ask yourself, can your world even produce silk? Is it imported? How can a tiny country in the middle of bloody nowhere support itself, let alone get its hands on these luxury items?

It's just another tiny thing that will weaken my suspension of disbelief. That said, you don't need to lecture me for page after page as these things can be woven into the narrative and drip-fed to me over the course of a book.

Play videogames.

If you are a gamer, that is. While world building is one of the things you can learn reading and writing, I find it is very interesting to literally walk around in somebody else's to have a closer look. Fallout 3 did it differently than Fallout: New Vegas. You can look at Skyrim versus Dragon Age: Origins.

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