#WroughtWorlds 24-03-01, Worldbuilding, Weapons: What do you do about weapons in your worlds?

I don't like guns, so they don't show up in my stuff. I tend to keep weapons pretty fantastical bc realistic violence creeps me out, not that I've never a written it. I'm not ethically constant on this.

I did create "what light sabres would be if they were real" for my WIP, so that's fun.

#WroughtWorlds 24-02-24, Characters, Language: Do you develop swear words & insults? If so what do they look like?

I use real-world swearing bc I think readers have a direct, visceral reaction to it. I don't use insults that derive from prejudices. No misogyny, no racism, no ableism. No one will be called "crazy" in my books.

#WroughtWorlds 2024 02-03, World Building: What's a detail that might slip under the radar of someone that reads your story.

I don't describe my characters' visually in terms of "hotness" unless it's relevant to the plot, and it's rarely relevant to the plot.

#WroughtWorlds 2024 01-20, World Building: How much does language play a part in your world building?

Huge! I'm constantly thinking about how the characters sound, what their native languages are, how people will understand each other, etc. I hate that I have to hand wave everyone speaking English in my novel, but I don't have a better solution yet.

#WroughtWorlds 2024 01-11, World Building: Do you pre-plan the layout of towns, villages, & etc? Or do you have another method?

Yes, but I don't draw them. They're creatures language, so they exist in language as notes and descriptions. I *see* them very clearly in my head, but they live in words.

#Writephant Q3. Do you focus on grammar when you draft or when you revise? Both? Neither?

Continuous. Grammar is the fundamental sentence structure that I'm always playing with to capture my voice. That is to say, I happen to know a good amount of grammar, so I see it in those terms.

#Writephant Q2. What is your favourite grammar rule to break? Which rule do you wish would just go away?

I use a lot of fragments. Playing with clauses is fun. They're little stories, right?

Comma splices should go away so that we can just use semi-colons again, so the unspoken rule "don't use semi-colons" is what I don't like, I guess?

@adriabailton #Writephant Q1. What is your favorite grammar rule?

It’s the subconscious ones that you don’t need to explicitly teach native speakers, because they give us such insight to how the language centres of our brains work.

In English, examples include:
Why tock-tick sounds wrong (something to do with the vowels)
Why red, little house sounds wrong (we have a very structured way to string adjectives and we all implicitly know it)

#WritingCommunity #WritersofMastodon #AmWriting #AmEditing #AmRevising and #Grammar