Therobotmonster:

therobotmonster:

moniquill:

siderealsandman:

friendlytroll:

prokopetz:

mikhailvladimirovich:

bogleech:

It’s funny how science fiction universes so often treat humans as a boring, default everyman species or even the weakest and dumbest.

I want to see a sci fi universe where we’re actually considered one of the more hideous and terrifying species.

How do we know our saliva and skin oils wouldn’t be ultra-corrosive to most other sapient races? What if we actually have the strongest vocal chords and can paralyze or kill the inhabitants of other worlds just by screaming at them? What if most sentient life in the universe turns out to be vegetable-like and lives in fear of us rare “animal” races who can move so quickly and chew shit up with our teeth?

Like that old story “they’re made of meat,” only we’re scarier.

HOLY SHIT THEY EAT CAPSAICIN FOR FUN

YOU GUYS I HEARD A HUMAN ONCE ATE AN AIRPLANE.

A HUMAN CAN KEEP FIGHTING FOR HOURS EVEN AFTER YOU SHOOT IT

humans are a proud warrior race with a pantheon of bloody gods: Ram-Bo, Schwarzenegger, etc.

REMOVING A LIMB WILL NOT FATALLY INCAPACITATE HUMANS: ALWAYS DESTROY THE HEAD.

WARNING: HUMANS CAN DETECT YOU EVEN AT NIGHT BY TRACKING VIBRATIONS THROUGH THE ATMOSPHERE

WARNING: HUMANS CAN REPRODUCE AT A RATE OF 1 PER SPACEYEAR. DESTROY INFESTATIONS IMMEDIATELY

THE HUMAN MOUTH HAS OVER THIRTY OUTCROPS OF BONE AND POWERFUL JAW MUSCLES.

HUMAN BITES CAN BE FATALLY INFECTIOUS EVEN TO OTHER HUMANS

WARNING: HUMANS CAN AND WILL USE IMPROVISED WEAPONS. SEE CLASSIFIED DATA LABELED J. CHAN.

HUMANS CAN PROJECT BIOWEAPONS FROM ALMOST EVERY ORIFICE ON THEIR BODY. DO NOT INHALE

OH GOD THE HUMANS FIGURED OUT DOOR HANDLES OH GOD OH GOD

More seriously, humans do have a number of advantages even among Terrestrial life. Our endurance, shock resistance, and ability to recover from injury is absurdly high compared to almost any other animal. We often use the phrase “healthy as a horse” to connote heartiness - but compared to a human, a horse is as fragile as spun glass. There’s mounting evidence that our primitive ancestors would hunt large prey simply by following it at a walking pace, without sleep or rest, until it died of exhaustion; it’s called pursuit predation. Basically, we’re the Terminator.

(The only other animal that can sort of keep up with us? Dogs. That’s why we use them for hunting. And even then, it’s only “sort of”.)

Now extrapolate that to a galaxy in which most sapient life did not evolve from hyper-specialised pursuit predators:

Our strength and speed is nothing to write home about, but we don’t need to overpower or outrun you. We just need to outlast you - and by any other species’ standards, we just plain don’t get tired.

Where a simple broken leg will cause most species to go into shock and die, we can recover from virtually any injury that’s not immediately fatal. Even traumatic dismemberment isn’t necessarily a career-ending injury for a human.

We heal from injuries with extreme rapidity, recovering in weeks from wounds that would take others months or years to heal. The results aren’t pretty - humans have hyperactive scar tissue, among our other survival-oriented traits - but they’re highly functional.

Speaking of scarring, look at our medical science. We developed surgery centuries before developing even the most rudimentary anesthetics or life support. In extermis, humans have been known to perform surgery on themselves - and survive. Thanks to our extreme heartiness, we regard as routine medical procedures what most other species would regard as inventive forms of murder. We even perform radical surgery on ourselves for purely cosmetic reasons.

In essence, we’d be Space Orcs.

Our jaws have too many TEETH in them, so we developed a way to WELD METAL TO OUR TEETH and FORCE THE BONES IN OUR JAW to restructure over the course of years to fit them back into shape, and then we continue to wear metal in out mouths to keep them in place. 

We formed cohabitative relationships with tiny mammals and insects we keep at bay from bothering us by death, often using little analouge traps. 

And by god, we will eat anything. 

We use borderline toxic peppers to season our food. 

We expose ourselves to potentially lethal solar radiation in the pursuit of darkening our skin. 

We risk hearing loss for the opportunity to see our favorite musicians live. 

We have a game where two people get into an enclosed area and hit each other until time runs out/one of them pass out

We willingly jump out of planes with only a flimsy piece of cloth to prevent us from splattering against the ground. 

Our response to natural disasters is to just rebuild our buildings in the exact same places. 

We climb mountains and risk freezing to death for bragging rights

We invented dogs. We took our one time predators and completely domesticated them. 

On a planet full of lions, tigers and bears, we managed to advance further and faster than any other species on the planet. 

Klingons and Krogan and Orcs ain’t got shit on us

We drink ethanol (in concentrations high enough to be used as an effective as microbicide or a solvent!) for the express purpose of achieving blood toxicity and disrupting normal brain function… AS A RECREATIONAL ACTIVITY!

On the same subject, we also deliberately incinerate assorted substances and then inhale the particulate-heavy smoke and vapor resulting for the same effect. EVEN IN THE FACE OF SAID SUBSTANCES BEING CARCINOGENIC, BECAUSE WE JUST DON’T GIVE A FUCK.

Humans do not have biological castes. Kill their commander and another will take its place. Soldiers left alone on a planet will start farming and manufacturing to survive. Farmers and manufacturers will take up arms and kill you if pressed. Just because two humans look different doesn’t mean they cannot do each other’s jobs.

Breeding does not kill them. A single human can mate dozens or hundreds of times in a lifetime. They often do so as recreation. Xenobiology team six believes they do not have a mating season but this is too strange to be true.

Their appendages are not designed for hitting, so they developed special training to make them very good at hitting anyhow. 

The proteins making up their bodies are toxic and cause prion disease. Do not touch anything humans have touched. Do not consume earth foods. Fire does not adequately remove this contamination.

Humans perceive sixteen times the colors we do. Do not hide in bushes or vines from humans. They can distinguish your pelt from the foliage with ease.

We tried venting waste gas into the tunnels to kill the humans when they attacked. Turns out they breathe it. 

Everything on their planet came from a single biological strain. They developed comprehensive genetics BEFORE they developed space travel. 

They lack radio receptors and cannot be brought into compliance with right-thought simply by broadcasting to them. Even after we learned how to translate it into sound-waves one of their hatchlings drove the Great Authority mad by responding to every demand with a single question: “Why?”

#an individual human being is actually a microbiome in its own right—you are dealing with a legion each time you approach them     #they carry pathological agents inside their deep tissues and this is advantageous to their health     #one of the most widespread and resilient viruses on their planet is treated as mildly hazardous—even though it causes     #massive disruption to the body’s homeostasis     #(their young offspring endure multiple rhinovirus infections EACH YEAR yet they seem unperturbed by this)     #they have developed such long lifespans that now their primary threat is their own body’s degeneration     #humanity has literally figured out how to survive so long that their body gives out under them     #and they are not satisfied with that     #stupid willful vengeful survivalists who treat mortality like a challenge     #sarah’s ongoing love letter to humanity     #(this is my favorite post of all time I swear)    (via notbecauseofvictories)

Words that describe a voice

The publishing industry puts a lot of emphasis on the first lines of works being as attention-grabbing, unique, and, well, perfect as possible. The first impression of your work will always be the most important moment in the entire piece, followed very closely by the last lines and the climax scene. This pressure often makes starting one of the hardest things for a writer. It seems to be especially difficult when the work is projected to be at one of the two extremes: long or short.

The shorter the length, the less wiggle-room you have, and the sooner you need to make an impact, for the sake of the story.

The longer the length, the more wiggle-room you have, but you still need to make your impact and hook soon—early, and I mean as early as possible. I mean, first sentence early. This is less for the sake of the story and more for the sake of the reader.

Your first lines—first paragraph or two, really—create a contract between the book and the reader. Either it’s going to be a binding or non-binding contract. Either you’ve hooked them and they’re with the story until the end (of this book or the series), or you haven’t and they may shirk the story at any time, shaking it off like water on an exceptionally wet dog.

If you haven’t hooked them, what’s the point of them continuing?

It’s a lot of pressure for a writer. Even the most seasoned writers can be stymied by a blank page and how to begin a new project. Luckily, the pressure’s off!

The most important thing to keep in mind as you’re setting out on a new project is that you don’t have to keep it that way. Your first draft, especially, is just you feeling your way through the dark. In that lies your freedom. Pick a scene close to the planned beginning of your story and write.

Here are some ideas for starting:

In the middle of a conversation

In the middle of a car chase

In the middle of an arrest

In the middle of a heated argument

In the middle of an exchange of nefarious goods

In the middle of … anything. You get the drift?

Starting in the middle of things is one of the best and easiest ways to hook a reader in because they’re curious. Who is this person? Why are they saying those things? What are they doing? Where are they going? These sorts of situations work to our natural human personalities to draw the reader in. Once you have them, don’t leave them hanging. The surest way to set someone off the work is to not give them something for their investment. Start in the middle of something, yes, but make sure you explain setting and a little bit of what’s going on through the eyes of your  narrator within the first page (or second, if your first page starts 3/4 of the way down). If you don’t clue them in soon, the reader will become frustrated, confused, and may quit the piece.

Can I start with description? Yes, as long as it’s well-written. Here’s a tip: Don’t worry about the quality. I subscribe most to the “start in the middle and figure it out later in the scene” method, but that doesn’t make it right for all situations. If it’s easier for you to start with a description, then do it. Just do it well. But not yet! You don’t have to have the perfect form as soon as you put ink to page, digitally or traditionally. That’s what the editing stage is for.

Very few published works are published with the same beginning as when they were written. This sounds horrific! What do you mean none of this angst and worry I’m pouring into these few lines won’t matter? Don’t worry, it’s great news. There’s no need to panic. Start wherever and however you want. Just get something down. Often times, no matter how well we think we have our story figured out, it will always show us new facets of itself as we’re writing. There may be a theme or a character arc you didn’t realize was as important as it became. What’s that phrase? Hindsight is always 20/20? The most glorious thing about writing in our current era is that nothing we write is set in stone (unless you’re doing some sort of magnificent historical testing, in which case, more power to you). We can write and rewrite and move things all we want.

As you go back once you’ve completed the work, you may decide to rework the first scene. This is totally acceptable and 99.9% expected. Work with what you have. Try rearranging it to see how the flow changes. Figure out what sort of a pace you want at the front of the book and tweak things to fit that pace. Your first pass isn’t going to be perfect. That comes later. Just get something on the page to start with. 

(a side note: your “something” that you get on the page doesn’t have to be story or plot-related. Sometimes just talking about anything on the page helps alleviate the blank-page terrors. You can go back and remove the ramble when you’re done. Doing that will allow you to ease into the story, which may feel less abrupt and clunky for some writers.)

Writing Dialogue: Teenagers

Dialogue is one of the trickiest parts for a lot of writers to get down, and teenagers especially. Surprisingly, this applies to teenagers almost as well as it applies to adults—and I think we’ve all read a YA novel written by someone totally out of touch with teenagers.

Personally, I don’t have trouble with dialogue, but after analyzing my own (acclaimed? Not by anyone important) dialogue versus the stilted speech I’ve read, I’ve come up with a list of tips for the YA writer.

Contractions. This is a tip that extends beyond teenagers, because most people contract almost anything they can. However, a lot of writers still refuse to do it, and I think it’s even more pronounced in high-intensity situations and teenagers.

A lack of contractions is generally reserved for formal situations, emphasis, or seething anger.

Don’t use slang. What?! I can hear you protesting. But teenagers are the inventors of most slang! Maybe, but I can’t actually remember a time as a teenager when I used slang and any adult other than someone particularly clueless didn’t not understand.

Commonly accepted “slang” like “okay,” “yeah,” “cool,” and others should be used liberally.

Note that this does not apply to jargon terms. I would classify words like “shipping” as jargon because it makes no sense outside of a fandom community. Not necessarily a “teenage” community. Use jargon like normal.

Awkwardness. Puberty is awkward. If your character says something awkward, this is fantastic!

But everyone feels awkward. If your character says something foolish, they will know. If they say something hammy, even for comedic effect, they will probably be uncertain while they do it. Not even the “popular” kids are all-confident.

Misunderstandings. This is another tip that should be used for all dialogue, but is especially useful for teenagers. And not all misunderstandings need go unspoken. Have your questions say something nonsensical and have their conversational partner go, “that didn’t make any sense.”

This get cut as “unnecessary” a lot, but I don’t think it should. It emphasizes character’s emotional states. And if a character misunderstood something, they might bring up it up later in the conversation and have it have it re-explained (this can also be good for exposition).

Bottled Chaos. This one is mostly for conversations with more than two people. Teenagers, especially on their free time, will not stick to one topic, even in the same sentence. The topic should jump around and cover a lot of things, and not everyone in the group will be focused on the same conversational gambits.

But this has to be contained somewhat in writing, or it gets too confusing. All the topics have to spring from somewhere that the reader knows, and die when the conversation gets serious or focuses in on what the conversation is there to advance, plot- or character-wise.

But at the end of the day, you just have to listen to people talk. Listen to teenagers talk. What are they talking about? What do they care about? They aren’t a foreign species, even if you think yourself strange and different (or too adult).

World Building: Where to Start

For sci-fi or fantasy writers, creating your world could be the hardest part. Building something from nothing is incredibly difficult and, while you don’t want to be conceited, you are being a God. You are reaching into this nothingness and pulling a whole planet, whole civilization, towns and people and cities and governments out of nothing. 

You have to always keep in mind that your world, once created, exists without you. Your world existed before you dropped your characters into it, and your world will exist long after your characters die (unless they somehow end the world).

Geography

I have always thought the best place to start would be geography. If you open up a history textbook, for any country, geography is often the first thing that you see. How large is this world? Is it a full planet or just a landmass that you are discussing? Where in space is it? Do you know? It is in this universe? What does the sky look like? Are their islands? Mountains? Rivers? Oceans? Lakes? You need to know the layout of the land.

Start off with a piece of paper, and explore where your want your characters to go. If you look at Harry Potter, there is an entire world built inside of our world, living amongst us. If you look at Lord of the Rings, there is an entire different world out there that we haven’t reached and doesn’t know about us. Pokemon has it’s own region, with little towns and usually some islands. Firefly has earth-like planets in a different universe, but they know of Earth (Earth-that-was). Is your world build on ours? Build away from ours? Built after ours? Can they interact? Have they ever interacted?

Let There Be Life

Once you have a basic layout for landmass, think about the first interaction with our world. So, for example, I created a world called Fallamore, which exists underneath Earth and was built by magical folk during the witch hunts in order to escape prosecution. This is the kind of information that will probably never make the story, but it is cool to know for yourself. How long has history existed for this world? Where do they believe life started? God? Science? Aliens? 

Knowing Every Rock and Tree and Creature

You obviously don’t need to know every tree and rock that exists in the world - but you do need to know what species are around. Are trees like they are on Earth? Brown bark and green leaves? Do they change colors in the fall? Are there even seasons? While you don’t need to make note of every type of flower or tree, it’s good to have an idea of what things might look like. 

Another good idea would be knowing what kind of species exist in your world. Humans? Witches? Vampires? Goblins? Elves? Fairies? Aliens? Something you invented? Do they all live together, or do they have their own communities? Do they get along, or are they racist of each other? 

Vague and Yet Menacing World Government 

You have a lot of options for governments in your world, and are also free to make your own. You can do a traditional monarchy: king, queen, princess, prince, etc. Is your monarchy going to be a patriarchy, a matriarchy, or equestrianism? (Will the eldest son take over? Eldest daughter? Oldest child? Most prepared / smartest child? The parent chooses? It’s a vote?)  You can have a President, or Minister. You can have a dictator. You can have a council. You can have a religious leader double as a political leader. All political decisions can be asked to a magic conch shell.  Also, you can mix and match these. For my upcoming NaNoWriMo novel, I have a world with many different regions. The entire world has one royal family in charge of everything ( a patriarchal monarchy ) that defends the realm and all things in it. However, the monarchy allows the different regions to govern themselves as long as they follow the monarchy’s policies. Several regions have established their own monarchy that bows a knee to the main one. A goblin region has a council that reports to the monarchy. An elf region has a matriarchy. A final region is led by a very wise educator, who has been appointed as leader for his knowledge. 

You also need to decide how important government is - but it is necessary. If you are telling the story of a very young girl who finds a unicorn in a meadow, knowing that she lives under the rule of a beautiful princess in a far away castle is not relevant and doesn’t need to be shared. However, in The Hunger Games the government plays a huge role in the plot of the story. 

Now, there is a lot of other things to think about when creating a world, but this is just a place to start. World Building is a lot of work and takes a lot of time and effort and dedication. 

Best of luck, and happy writing!  MRM