1-Million-Words

tend to look at world building in horror as half technical, half psychological. We’re writing about fear at its core, trying to tap into what makes us the most afraid. But we can’t do that without knowing how to capitalize on all that adrenaline just waiting to be released.

One of the main things to remember when world building, especially for horror, is to strike a balance between the suspension of disbelief and logic. If you’re creating a serial killer or monster with supernatural powers, for instance, there should be some limitations on what they can and can’t do so their victims have somewhat of a fighting chance, even if the odds are never in their favor. Your monster can be over-powered as all hell, but make sure to follow your own rules, even if you stray away from convention.

A good example of this is the video game Left for Dead 2. They have several different kinds of zombies, each with their own characteristics and abilities, but the rules surrounding how they act and how you kill them remain the same. If their parameters changed halfway through the game with no explanation, it would make a lot of players angry. So, pretend you are writing a video game. Keep your rules consistent.

Concept with a Kicker. You can’t just run with an idea or a basic premise. You need to create the kind of story concept that will make people excited to learn more about your novel just by hearing the one-line story concept you’ve come up with. Your story concept, all by its lonesome, should get people saying “wow.”

...Michael Hauge, screenwriting consultant and best-selling author of Writing Screenplays That Sell, encourages writers to come up with one sentence that tells your concept—and that sentence is all about the next pillar we looked at— the Protagonist with a Goal.

When you can write that one sentence to describe your story by expressing the protagonist’s goal with the emphasis on the kicker—or what makes your story so unique—you will be on track. And along with noting the protagonist and his goal, you need to identify the third pillar: the central Conflict with High Stakes.

...I agree with Hauge when he says every great story is about someone, not something. Every great story has one main character the reader roots for and cares about—a character with a visible goal that she strives to reach. It may sound simple—yes, it is! But you would be surprised how few novels I critique have this element in it at all.
The fourth pillar—Theme with a Heart—is the glue that holds the whole story together, for it’s what your novel is really about.

1. Limit exposition in dialogue

Dialogue is not the place to have a character explain his entire backstory, or detail how a technical feat is possible. Doing this undermines your characterization because your character wouldn’t really be talking like this. Yet, we’ve all read books where this happens.

Bob: “Yeah, my daughter has her surgery tomorrow.”

Sue: “That’s Zelda, your seventeen-year-old with the ingrown toenail, right? I can have my daughter Lisa, who is in Zelda’s classes, bring her homework assignments, if you want.”

That’s not how people talk. In real life, this exchange might go as follows:

Bob: “Zelda’s surgery is tomorrow.”

Sue: “I remember. Does she want Lisa to get her homework assignments?”

You have to trust that readers will pick up on the key points, or you need to establish them earlier, or put them in narrative or internal thoughts.

2. Use “said”

Ninety-eight percent of the time (yes, that number is completely arbitrary), you should only use “said” as a dialogue tag. Eschew words like hissed, hollered, retorted, whispered, etc.

“Said” is largely invisible to readers, while other tags are distracting.

3. Limit descriptive actions tacked onto your dialogue tags

This advice might be the opposite of what you’ve heard before. I am not saying don’t ever tuck a piece of action between dialogue bits; sometimes pairing an action with words can give them emphasis, reveal that a character is lying, or convey other important story information. I’m saying you should use these actions sparingly, and consider giving them more weight by separating them from the dialogue tag.

In other words, you don’t need a long string of phrases like, “Everett said, tamping tobacco into his pipe,” or “Lana said, tucking her hair behind her ears,” or “Clyde said, reaching into his pocket for a gun.”

That structure gets monotonous.

Instead, when an action is important, set it apart:

“It’s time.” Clyde reached into his pocket and withdrew a gun.

4. Don’t be afraid of white space—delete dialogue tags and actions
Readers love white space. It makes for quick reading. Especially when you only have two characters in a scene, glory in the opportunity to write rat-a-tat dialogue not weighed down by tags or actions.

Jenny glared at Gunther. “What the hell do you mean by that?”

“You know.”

“But I don’t want a divorce. I love you.”

“Oh, right. Where I’m from, people don’t try to poison people they love.”

The above snippet of dialogue is nonsense because we don’t know the context, but you know perfectly well who is speaking without tags or actions associated with each line. Try taking all the tags out of your dialog in a two-person scene and add back only as many as necessary for clarity. Aim for zero by making your characters sound so distinct that readers automatically know who’s talking.

5. Don’t overuse names

For some reason, writers tend to toss speakers’ names into dialogue much more often than occurs in real life. If you’re sitting at home with your spouse on a Wednesday evening, the conversation doesn’t go like this:

“Thelma, please hand me the remote.”

“Sure thing, Rog. Here it is.”

“Thanks, Thelma.”

“Think nothing of it, Roger.”

You don’t talk like that, so don’t make your characters talk like that. Use names sparingly.

Finally, if you want to get better at writing dialogue, then …

6. Eavesdrop

Listen to people’s conversations and try to write them down. Then cut out the stuff that’s not important and study what you have left. Do this over and over again to develop an “ear.” Do it in specific settings if you’re trying to figure out how a particular character should sound.

...Put these tips into practice and pretty soon your critique partners or reviewers will be raving about your dialogue.

To gain optimum benefit, a surprise requires a setup. To ensure surprises feel natural, while still astounding your readers, think opposites. What can your character do or say that is opposite what’s expected?...The following are three tried-and- true techniques:

1. A First Occurrence of an Unexpected Event

Consider the famous spontaneous combustion scene in Charles Dickens’ Bleak House. In Chapter 32, a merchant and collector of papers named Krook (the irony in his name intended), whose diet seems limited to gin, burns to ash through spontaneous combustion.

The novel’s primary plot revolves around a court case, Jarndyce v. Jarndyce, in which the court must determine which of several wills is the valid one. With so many potential beneficiaries, the consequences of the decision will reach far and wide. Krook’s demise, while shocking, is an important plot point. It allows access to his papers and creates more than one suspenseful moment as the other characters rifle through his hoard. When they find a document that relates to the case, the payoff is clear. The surprise—the spontaneous combustion—is effective and appropriate because it leads to a suspenseful search.

2. An Anomaly

When children see a clown, they tend to expect fun surprises to ensue. So discovering that the clown in Stephen King’s It is not a benevolent embodiment of childhood joy, but rather a violent manifestation of evil, is an astounding surprise; it is an anomaly.

The novel is set in a small town in Maine and alternates between two time periods: the late 1950s and the mid 1980s. We learn that It, a maniacally bubbly clown named Pennywise, has been eating children (his preferred prey) and adults for hundreds of years. That Pennywise has succeeded in feeding on children for generations and has just awakened from a 27-year hibernation creates a sense of impending doom. As Pennywise sets its sights on each new victim, tension ratchets up. What starts as a surprise morphs into suspense.

3. A Revelation of a Previously Unknown Fact

In Seconds, first published in 1963, author David Ely crafts a tale around the theme that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. A secret organization known only as the “company” offers dissatisfied people an opportunity for a second chance. You can cast off your boring life and live the life you always dreamed of. The “company” stages your death, including leaving behind a corpse that looks like you. They give you a fresh identity, complete with evidence of your accomplishments. Through experimental surgery, you’re provided with a new, younger, more attractive look. Life is, on the surface, perfect. Only later, when we learn how they harvest the bodies they need to stage their clients’ deaths, do we see what has been going on behind the scenes. This shocking revelation is a complete surprise; then as suspense mounts, surprise turns into dread—a byproduct of suspense.

If you don’t use surprise to build suspense, you risk the unexpected event coming across as contrived. When you allow the stunning situation to contribute to a deeper storyline, your readers will feel gratified.

Non-Human Body Language:

Human communication is very complex, and a lot of it is nonverbal. Clever writers can say a lot about a character by describing their body language. But this method has limits, both because humans have a limited degree of motion and because human body language is so sensitive to context. Crossed arms could mean anger, defensiveness, or that it’s cold outside. On the other hand, non-human body language can be as specific as you need it to be.

Consider Katherine Addison’s novel The Goblin Emperor, where most of the characters are elves. At first glance, they are nearly indistinguishable from humans, but there’s one notable difference: their long, pointed ears. This physical feature is common among fantasy settings, but Addison takes it a step further. Her elves feature mobile ears, and their position indicates what an elf is feeling.

These mobile elf ears bring two major advantages to the story. First, they give Addison another avenue for communicating a character’s emotional state while staying within the story’s close viewpoint. The protagonist can tell another elf is angry because he sees their ears flatten against their head. Second, the ears prevent these elves from feeling like dressed-up humans. They add an extra dimension to elven social interaction and make the world feel much more real.

When employing this tactic in your story, it’s best to stick with body language that’s easy for your audience to remember. You’ll still need to explain what each signal means, but if the body language is intuitive, you won’t have to repeat yourselves. Addison’s elves have ear positions very similar to those of dogs, so the audience never needs a refresher course. If you have a fantasy creature that flashes colors to indicate emotion, red and yellow are easy to remember for anger, while blue is an easy way to represent calm.

In order for this tool to work properly, the body language must be something you can physically describe to the audience. Saying a character “moved their hands in the pattern that indicated anger” doesn’t help, it’s not much better than stating the character was angry. Instead, you’ll want something like…

Shayla jabbed their third and fourth arms in front of them with fists clenched so hard veins pulsed visibly beneath the skin. The Explorer gulped. Shayla was angry now.

Once you teach your audience to associate a specific action with a specific emotion, you can skip further explanation and simply describe the action.

Even before you start writing, you already have a vague idea of who your character is currently.

Maybe he’s a crusty, old curmudgeon. Maybe she’s a optimistic, but naive, teenager.

No matter who your character is, start with what you know already and go back from there. Ask and answer the following questions to start crafting a solid backstory:

What is this character’s biggest flaw? What’s the origin of this flaw?

Where is the character from?

Where are the character’s parents from? How did they come to have a child and under what circumstances? Was it a happy union or a chance encounter?

What is the character afraid of? Trace the answer back to the character’s childhood and explain why.

What makes the character happy? Trace the answer back to the character’s childhood and explain why.

What does your character believe about himself and how did he come to this conclusion?

What are his goals? Why does he have these goals?

On a fundamental level, every kind of fight scene uses the same tools and presents similar storytelling opportunities. You write the personality of characters through the weapons they use, when and how they talk while they fight (or never speak), what style they use, how they do or don’t use their environment, and so on.

Probably, the most narratively important aspect of a fight is the conflicting agendas and approaches of the different parties. You convey these priorities through the action, show the characters struggling to keep to their agenda/approach when faced with overwhelming force or when the opponent can claim the advantage because of what they’re willing to do that others are not.

...When Ojo (one of the main characters) fights his rival Lavinia in the first episode, we saw that we could showcase them as well as their heated relationship through how they fight. Ojo’s command of a two-weapon style shows his versatility and focus, Lavinia’s aggressive style shows her arrogance and terrifying level of skill. We also wanted to show that these characters had fought one another several times, with Ojo losing most of their duels over the past few years. Because of this, he tries to change the fight by trying to use different sigils and applying his skills in grappling.

In the fourth episode, Kris (another main character) is challenging for their nation to have a seat on the Warder’s Circle, which requires getting the approval by diplomacy or duel. In practice, this means they need to beat a warder from each of four or more of the six nations. Each of these nation’s representative has a different attitude on the prospect of Kris’s bid that would color how they approached the fight as well as their own fighting style (both sword & sigil style).

Ojo supports Kris’s bid, but refuses to throw their fight – he must keep up his reputation with the other warders and doesn’t want to appear desperate – so he doesn’t push himself against Kris in the way he does fighting Lavinia. When Kris faces Warder Penelope of Vania (legendary for her two-handed longsword style) Kris displays strategic thinking and bladecrafting skill with a complicated sigil to create a second blade. This gives Kris versatility and allows Kris to change the shape of the duel as they try to use one blade to trap/bind Penelope’s while the other goes for the winning blow.

There can be no human (or alien) civilization or settlement without plumbing, energy supply, or waste disposal. So you need to spend at least a little bit figuring out how all of this works underneath your story’s setting.

How do your characters eat? How do they transport and store food?

How is waste handled?

Where does the water come from?

Who provides the clothes and shoes (or gear)?

What money system is there? Is there a single currency? Several? Electronic money? Where are the banks?

How does the majority of people live? How does that influence the public mentality?

Introducing curious, intriguing details about characters early is one way to start building your story immediately. Margaret Atwood begins her speculative fiction novel Oryx and Crake (2003) thus:

Snowman wakes before dawn. He lies unmoving, listening to the tide coming in, wave after wave sloshing over the various barricades, wish-wash, wish-wash, the rhythm of a heartbeat. He would so like to believe he is still asleep.

There are several reasons why this is good character-based exposition:

We’re told a pivotal character’s name, and it’s intriguing: ‘Snowman’ is not a typical human name. Because identity and memory later prove crucial themes in this post-apocalyptic tale, it makes sense Atwood introduces her character by his adopted name
We learn something about a character’s emotional life: Why would Snowman ‘so like to believe he is still asleep’? We guess there is something causing him displeasure or unhappiness
There’s information about the setting: Why are there barricades?

In one paragraph, Atwood’s exposition raises questions about names, the reasons underlying a character’s emotions, and their environment. It’s a good hook.