Yesterday mostly vanished into the depths of dealing with bureaucracies, plural, so here’s an update on the Worldbuilding rough draft progress.
Added to the draft: Bits on making use of real biological weirdness in fiction. Portraying characters with different neurology. Worldbuilding without the info-dump. A bunch of bits on fanfic writing, including finding out about original creator opinions on it.
Still need to add to the draft: A bit on ADHD and bipolar to go along with prior written bits on autism and other character neurology pieces. I have some books on request for that, hope to get more out of the library once the dizzy spells die down enough to make driving safer. I also need to figure out where that gets slotted into the draft. With “Characters” in general, yes, but where exactly needs a good look.
A bit on handling differing fan opinions in fanfic.
Whether or not to include romance for characters.
And I should do a general review once I have a new printout to see if there’s stuff that needs adding to.
Let me know if you guys think there are any other subjects, especially relating to fanfic, that ought to get in.
I need to print a fresh draft, look everything over, and then figure out how to format an index in a book. New one on me. I’m pretty sure I can pull it off for the hardcopy myself, but for the Kindle? I may end up needing to download Kindle Create instead of just using the Previewer. Anyone have specific comments on that?
And of course it’ll need a cover. I have some possible book covers favorited over on SelfPubBookCovers.com
I have to admit I favor the last one, but feedback appreciated.
All told… trying to get the rough finished by the end of the month, so I can then hack at the “how to structure the index and make it work”. No sense in trying to put in page numbers for the index when I’m still not sure where all the various bits will be yet!
Crossover Queen's Creative Chaos 
Huh. 28561 and 73835 both have something in common – they’re portraying a type of entrance into something else where they shouldn’t exist. I confess when I first opened 28561 I thought it was perfect.
I can see why 73835 offers the same impression too.
In one you have your guide as the book, in the other it’s a person.
Dang. Harder choice than I thought it might be. I love books, clear, unambiguous lettering on the page. Talking to someone lets you do a true back and forth but also means trying to track all the myriad little bits of body language and as I type that I have an epiphany on the fact that is a problem for me. Huh. Never thought about that before.
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With the dizzy spells, are you sure you are drinking enough water? As a rule of thumb, you should take your weight in lbs. and say that you need half that number in ounces. For example, if you weigh 100 lbs. you should drink 50 oz. a day. Plus or minus for weather, diet, and activities.
With the index, you could maybe do the regular index and a topical index. It might take longer to finish the book, but a topical index would be very useful for this type of book.
I like all of the covers, but especially the first 2.
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Thanks!
I should be getting enough water. Problem is with me viral infections tend to lead to opportunistic crud in the inner ears, hence a lot of the dizzy. Grr.
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I like the first and second– it’s the book-or-pen association.
Add me to the list of folks fussing at you for the dizziness.
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*Salutes* Yes’m. Working on getting better.
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Seconded in the last one being the best. The others have a “book contains mystery, enter and explore” sense that would be great for a novel but wouldn’t work so much for nonfiction. The last one gives an impression of “people/person will take you to see and learn new things.”
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Also, the other three don’t have people on them. While from the sound of it character building isn’t going to be the majority of the book, it’s still going to be an important part, and the heart of every good story is the characters. If it were just about biology, geology, history, etc. I’d say go with one of the others, but if you’re going to be putting any emphasis on character the fourth one works best.
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I have to admit, that last one tugs at my heart. It also looks like money in the bank.
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As a writer who’s never quite starved, but definitely wondered where next week’s groceries were coming from, I am not averse to that at all. *Wry G*
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I’d say the second has too much focus on the specific world (even when one and four have odd worlds, it’s the _oddity_ that’s being focused on, not the _world_, and three focuses less on “this specific part” and more on “there’s _everything_ hear, look at _space_ too”). If it weren’t for that, I’d prefer the second because of the “manuscript and pen” motif. Unfortunately, that comes across as secondary, rather than as primary. It’s not “this is about writing, with an example world”, instead it’s “this is about this world, and maybe writing something on it”.
Of the others, I do slightly lean towards number four. Three does seem to be about “big world”, but there’s nothing beyond that. One seems to be about “there’s an adventure, and maybe a book’s involved”, but it seems more like “and it’s a specific adventure”. Four is more “there is adventure in the unknown” and “there may be unknown things to see, other worlds to explore” and “there’s a guide who can lead you forward into other worlds”. The lack of writing-related stuff in number four is the only real negative.
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Not much opinion for book covers, but for fanfic – one common trend is to boil a character down to a few of the “loudest” traits – basically boiling down a complex character to a stereotype, you know? Seen (apparently, not my fandom) with Ed and Full Metal Alchemist and his thing about being short. Batman in (some) comics giving as much care to his rogues gallery mental health as he is about punching mobsters, being reduced to just punching stuff, ect. I didn’t sleep well or I’d probably have more and better examples.
For ADHD and bipolar, before and after Autism, in my opinion; ADHD before, it has a lot of overlap with Autism, (as someone with ADHD) and it can be easier to mask or at least for an outsider to not recognize, while bipolar being after Autism. (Which has nothing to do with the alphabet… well, maybe it does. But Alphabetization can make it easier for indexing if you split them up that way, or just skimming through a chapter for the bits you want.)
Anyways, looking forward to the book once it’s published, all the snippets so far are really good!
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Noted, thanks!
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Making characters into even narrower stereotypes, ugh. Much more interesting to use what we know of their canon behavior and backstory, to try to guess what the rest of their life might be like.
Such as, “Your family is famous militarily, but you don’t even know basic tactics. You do, however, know how to conduct multiple successful affairs at the same time. Who actually raised you?”
-Albert
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The first two covers get across the idea your book is about writing a lot better than the second two covers do. I don’t think I’d associate the last two covers with writing at all until the title/tagline had something about it.
The composition of the first cover really sells the idea of causing writing to “come alive”. The second cover lacks a connection between the books and the scene, so it feels arbitrary.
ADHD is tricky because it it can be paired with a lot of other disorders. And from what I’ve read of it, it looks different when paired with different disorders (or no other disorder for that matter). ADHD on an autistic would probably look different on a dyslexic given that what counts as “not enough stimulus” is… very, very different for those two different groups of people. There’s also the issue of if it’s another character describing the ADHD character vs that character describing how they think to the reader. For the character watching someone with ADHD, it probably looks odd. For the character with ADHD… there’s a good chance they don’t think anything about it is werid because for them, that is how their brain has worked since they could articulate to themselves how their own thought patterns work.
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Maybe a title of something like “Gateway to Fiction”?
…I do puns, by preference, YMMV. 😀
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*G*
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I’d go with 3 or 4. The first two have a very definite magical fantasy feel to them, but the last two could be magical or sci-fi. I like that the last one feels like you are being guided. There’s no point in subconsciously turning potential readers off your books because they are interested in writing sci-fi, not fantasy.
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Here, watch me completely misunderstand that one sentence in the post. ^_^
The problem with places to put physiological symptoms is that they have so many different causes, and different people will have different reactions to the same stimulus..
Rettim (maybe) gets dizzy because of dehydration, you get dizzy because of ear infections, I get dizzy under high stress.
Your character is short of breath, her heart is beating fast, there’s a tight or empty feeling in the pit of her stomach and her limbs feel twitchy. Is she panicking, is she sexually aroused, or has she just run up a long flight of stairs?
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As far as the covers… 28561 and 73835 have the cleanest composition, and visually imply the start of a journey. 28937 has the visual associations for writing and for world building, but the composition is…cluttered.
On the other hand, the thumbnails I’m looking at are very small. The effect of 28937 might be less cluttered on a larger image.
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Mousing over the thumbnail makes it larger (tho only about double the each dimension).
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Tried that, didn’t work. Might be my browser settings.
Clicked on the “personalize this” link below, and that gave a slightly larger thumbnail.
Still no larger enough.
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“Is she panicking, is she sexually aroused, or has she just run up a long flight of stairs?”
That actually comes up in a book called, I think, Gate of Ivory, written in the 80s; a “love potion” is supposed to evoke those symptoms, but if you’re in the middle of fighting for your life, well….
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Doris Egan, who went onto writing teleplays and being a producer. Her IMDB page has more info about her career than anything else I’ve seen on the Internet, and she’s currently working on that show The Good Doctor. So basically, she’s making big money and is unlikely to write more novels unless/until she retires.
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Can’t blame a gal for that. 🙂
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Possible title:
World-building for Fun and Pro- Personal Satisfaction!
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*Snrk!*
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It just hit me: I read years ago that anorexia and bulimia cause brain atrophy that can be reversed by refeeding. Some of that was available for free in html.
The following is not:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28639048/
However, I found a lot when I made this search and it didn’t all look relevant. Some of it was about cancer-related anorexia.
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Apparently anorexics and bulimics also are full of the bad gutbugs, which is not surprising with an unstable diet and lots of tummy displacement. However, these gutbugs also mess with your head and body in all kinds of ways, so they are giving recovering anorexics and bulimics some transplants of gut bugs. (Which honestly would seem to mess with their heads in bad ways, but it would certainly be better for their digestive tracts.)
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I think the hope is that a stable population of gutbugs is better than an unstable population of gutbugs, even if it messes with your head.
If only because you can adapt to it once it isn’t changing every day.
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There’s something to be said for the old medical custom of telling you just to drink up and not ask what’s in it. Because sometimes you really might not want to know!
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From a Bureau 13 book: “What is this?”
“Old family recipe.”
“But what’s it made of?”
“Old families.”
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