Have you ever heard the phrase “show, don’t tell” in relation to emotions? Instead of saying “Bob was mad,” my latest blogpost on writing emotions discusses ways to show emotion. First, I introduce the emotion wheel that I’ll be using in this post and future posts on emotions. For this post, I focus on the base emotions at the center of the wheel. After getting that out of the way, I go through some of the overall reasoning and places to add your emotions, such as physical cues, internal cues, and narrative techniques. Finally, I go through those base emotions with descriptions of why we have the emotions, a list of specific words, phrases, and actions you can use, plus a summary of how the emotion impacts your writing and story. I’ve got some really practical stuff in here that I hope you can use!

One of my absolute favorite aspects of writing is Point of View (POV), and I love teaching it in a variety of ways. On the Stellima blog, I have a detailed and comprehensive explanation of the various options, and I walk through a brief scene involving my cat Lily to demonstrate how the different POVs can change the meaning and give you different options. From first, second, or third person, close to distant to omniscient, all of the options are covered along with demonstrations and an analysis of why you would want to use them… and why you wouldn’t. If this is something you struggle with or if people have commented that you have POV slips (a very common error), I try to help figure out what’s wrong and get you back on the right track!

It can also be quite fun to examine POV through the lens of video games. Several years ago, I compiled lessons that I taught in my classes showing POV through video games. I walk through first and third person in particular, comparing it to various classic games in order to show the benefits of each but also the times when that point of view won’t work well to enhance player engagement. This analysis isn’t part of the Stellima blog, this is far earlier than I became a guest contributor, and this is based on teaching others and analyzing existing media, not necessarily using it for yourself. Please enjoy, and feel free to use anything as long as you credit me somewhere for the original analysis. Who knows, I may end up writing a paper about it!

Okay, I know I say below that I love point of view more than anything, but really, dramatic structure tops the list. In this illustrated walkthrough of the main dramatic structures available to people, I explain how almost everything in Western literature is some variation of the 3 Act Structure, talk about how the dramatic question drives conflict forward, and I look at kishōtenketsu as well, the non-Western story without conflict. In terms of illustrations, over the years I’ve made some charts mapping out the dramatic structures that I provide here. I use them in my classes and you’re welcome to use any of them in your own classes, just keep the copyright on them! You can also see how I’m recovering from the lightpox I picked up in the post on Fantasy Mana Diseases!

Exposition is a powerful tool in writing, but done poorly, it leads to infodumps and extremely boring writing. In this fun, engaging demonstration of how infodumps can be salvaged, I walk through different steps you can take to avoid and fix infodumps, and what you should do to strengthen your exposition even if you start out well. Although I start with a sample scene that is absolutely horrendous, the end result is quite good after taking all of the recommended steps! Unnecessary exposition is a weakness of mine, to be honest, which is one reason I wanted to write this. I follow these steps frequently to adjust what I have. If this is something you struggle with, or if your writing is dull or lagging in any way, following these steps and adding these elements will make a huge improvement!

When you write, conflict forms the core of the overall story and each scene. This walkthrough of strategies of techniques discusses what conflict actually is and how to talk about it in stories. What does a character want, and what prevents that? Conflict! Pacing is a huge part of conflict, since you want to balance your stakes and language and intensity to keep readers engaged but not overwhelmed, and I give some tips for that. I walk through the various types of conflict that you can have in at story, first with the key differences between external and internal as well as physical and nonphysical conflict, then into the ones you probably learned in school like character v. character and character v. nature. I close with four key strategies to strengthen the conflict so that your reader hangs on your every word!

Let’s face it, there’s a lot that goes into telling a good story. But one thing that can really make or break it is the dialogue. Throughout this explanation of dialogue and how to write it, I provide a space opera scene written in different iterations to show the strategies for strengthening your dialogue. It starts as a jumbled mess but slowly becomes something worth reading. And at the end, Vivian Sayan offers zhir own scene using the same characters and premise, followed by my critique. I walk through four broad categories, starting with the most basic, dialogue tags (and I throw formatting in there, too). This is a problem so many writers have! Next I move into language patterns, then how to use it to add personality, then how to show and increase conflict. Finally, I explain the four purposes that dialogue can have before handing it over to Vivian!

When telling stories, there’s always the story as it appears from the outside as told explicitly through the text, but what about under the surface? Stories rely on unspoken knowledge and truths, and this blogpost defines and demonstrates subtext in fiction so that you can see how exactly to use it to your best advantage. Unless you’re writing for a young audience where it’s expected you spell everything out, you want to leave things unspoken while leaving enough there so the reader can infer your meaning. This is subtext, and it can make or break your story. Explain too much, and it feels like you’re spoon-feeding the story to your audience, but explain too little, and your audience will be completely lost. I hope you learn to balance and embrace subtext with this blogpost!

Advertisements are so much fun to analyze, and it’s such an important skill to have. If you’re looking for ways to understand advertisements so that you’re a savvy consumer and not blindly falling prey to things, this post walks you through everything from car insurance ads to propaganda. However, ads can also help with your stories! I also walk through how you can incorporate advertisements to develop characters and flesh out your world, and the things to consider as you create your own ads. From futuristic scifi to modern day settings and even back to medieval fantasy, advertisements are an essential part of life in the real world, and should be reflected in yours. Who knows? You might stumble upon an ad campaign that redefines your understanding of the world, especially when it comes to propaganda!

To show how ads can work in the real world, or at least in the real fictional world of Stellima, I took the Tshutshi Cogni-Chip Manufacturing Company, the go-to place to get cognichips, and created an advertising campaign for them. It started out as practice for creating ads, but as I developed more ads alongside Vivian, we created an ad campaign that reshaped the galaxy of Stellima and introduced several new characters into the world. I had so much fun creating these ads and this character. If you want to see how thinking about the advertisements your world might have can lead to huge, sweeping change to your entire world and story, definitely check this out, and if you want to see some advertisements that are genuinely close to my heart, this is the post to read.

Designing magic systems is an essential part of fantasy stories, and I wrote a detailed description of how to go about this, starting with genre and thematic questions, moving to hard versus soft magic, and then into the magic itself: where does it come from and how do you control it? Since this is published the same week as the third book in my Imperial Saga, Heart of the Guardian, Vivian asked me to talk about my magic system, which I was happy to do. So if you’re looking for some behind-the-scenes looks at Tamarud’s magic or some sneak previews of what magic is like on the other continents, you’ll find it scattered among this post! I offer some advice on things you can try, why you might use that system, and also some things to avoid. If you’re writing fantasy, be deliberate about your magic systems!

Earlier on the Stellima blog, Vivian wrote a fascinating analysis of illnesses, what they are, how they feed and spread, and all sorts of fun stuff. After that post, they wanted a fantasy-focused illness that wasn’t a run of the mill disease or random magical disease number 3289, but something inspired by the magic system itself, hence my fantasy-based practicum on illnesses was born! I created the world of Aermundi (with Vivian’s input), developed an intricate system of mana poles and magic use, then explored the different ways mana can interact with people to create entirely fantasy-based illnesses. If you can make ailments fit your world, you add to the complexity and realism a hundredfold and your readers will love it. So explore Aermundi and be glad you don’t get lightpox… because I end up with it!