Author Scott Lynch responds to a critic of the character Zamira Drakasha, a black woman pirate in his fantasy book Red Seas Under Red Skies, the second novel of the Gentleman Bastard series.

The bolded sections represent quotes from the criticism he received. All the z-snaps are in order.

God, yes! If there’s one thing fantasy is just crawling with these days it’s widowed black middle-aged pirate moms.  Real sea pirates could not be controlled by women, they were vicous rapits and murderers and I am sorry to say it was a man’s world. It is unrealistic wish fulfilment for you and your readers to have so many female pirates, especially if you want to be politically correct about it! First, I will pretend that your last sentence makes sense because it will save us all time. Second, now you’re pissing me off.  You know what? Yeah, Zamira Drakasha, middle-aged pirate mother of two, is a wish-fulfillment fantasy. I realized this as she was evolving on the page, and you know what? I fucking embrace it.  Why shouldn’t middle-aged mothers get a wish-fulfillment character, you sad little bigot? Everyone else does. H.L. Mencken once wrote that “Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.” I can’t think of anyone to whom that applies more than my own mom, and the mothers on my friends list, with the incredible demands on time and spirit they face in their efforts to raise their kids, preserve their families, and save their own identity/sanity into the bargain.  Shit yes, Zamira Drakasha, leaping across the gap between burning ships with twin sabers in hand to kick in some fucking heads and sail off into the sunset with her toddlers in her arms and a hold full of plundered goods, is a wish-fulfillment fantasy from hell. I offer her up on a silver platter with a fucking bow on top; I hope she amuses and delights. In my fictional world, opportunities for butt-kicking do not cease merely because one isn’t a beautiful teenager or a muscle-wrapped font of testosterone. In my fictional universe, the main characters are a fat ugly guy and a skinny forgettable guy, with a supporting cast that includes “SBF, 41, nonsmoker, 2 children, buccaneer of no fixed abode, seeks unescorted merchant for light boarding, heavy plunder.” You don’t like it? Don’t buy my books. Get your own fictional universe. Your cabbage-water vision of worldbuilding bores me to tears.  As for the “man’s world” thing, religious sentiments and gender prejudices flow differently in this fictional world. Women are regarded as luckier, better sailors than men. It’s regarded as folly for a ship to put to sea without at least one female officer; there are several all-female naval military traditions dating back centuries, and Drakasha comes from one of them. As for claims to “realism,” your complaint is of a kind with those from bigoted hand-wringers who whine that women can’t possibly fly combat aircraft, command naval vessels, serve in infantry actions, work as firefighters, police officers, etc. despite the fact that they do all of those things– and are, for a certainty, doing them all somewhere at this very minute. Tell me that a fit fortyish woman with 25+ years of experience at sea and several decades of live bladefighting practice under her belt isn’t a threat when she runs across the deck toward you, and I’ll tell you something in return– you’re gonna die of stab wounds. What you’re really complaining about isn’t the fact that my fiction violates some objective “reality,” but rather that it impinges upon your sad, dull little conception of how the world works. I’m not beholden to the confirmation of your prejudices; to be perfectly frank, the prospect of confining the female characters in my story to placid, helpless secondary places in the narrative is so goddamn boring that I would rather not write at all. I’m not writing history, I’m writing speculative fiction. Nobody’s going to force you to buy it. Conversely, you’re cracked if you think you can persuade me not to write about what amuses and excites me in deference to your vision, because your vision fucking sucks. I do not expect to change your mind but i hope that you will at least consider that I and others will not be buying your work because of these issues. I have been reading science fiction and fantasy for years and i know that I speak for a great many people. I hope you might stop to think about the sales you will lose because you want to bring your political corectness and foul language into fantasy. if we wanted those things we could go to the movies. Think about this!  Thank you for your sentiments. I offer you in exchange this engraved invitation to go piss up a hill, suitable for framing.

Here follows is a non-comprehensive list of historical female pirates and sailors, women of color first:

In conclusion: read a goddamn book, critic person.

“ Your cabbage-water vision of worldbuilding bores me to tears. “

  “ I offer you in exchange this engraved invitation to go piss up a hill, suitable for framing. “

I didn’t know this writer until now and this post was enough to make me a fan

Does anyone else really want to read his books now?

It is book 2 of 3, and the firstvis also awesome, as is the third.

If anyone wants to read a non-fiction exploration of female pirates, I have to plug Pirate Women: The Princesses, Prostitutes, and Privateers Who Ruled the Seven Seas by Laura Sook Duncombe.

Also the Gentlemen Bastards books have the most fabulously creative, passionate, lyrical swearing I’ve ever read. Genuinely worth reading for that alone.

Gentlemen Bastard books are amazing, though I’ve only read 2/3. Scott Lynch is also very open about his mental health issues; used to read his LJ for a long while.

This asshole: *bitching about how he thinks Scott Lynch should write his books*

Scott Lynch: my character would canonically kill you

(Also his books are amaaaaaaaaaazing.)

Skirts, ball gowns and chitons. Fantasy fashion is seen more often on women than the men so we focus on their clothes more. Sorry for this bible of a post.

Under the gown

Stop that dirty mind. These are the structures that hold out the gown to keep it the shape desired.

Top of the gown

This portion of the gown covers from the shoulders to the hips/waist.

Sleeves

The sleeves of the gown are just as important as the rest of it. Again variations lead to a wider sense of imagination.

Skirts

The shapes of the skirt vary. Try different shapes with your world to give a feeling of variety and depth.

Examples of interesting historical gowns.

On Faeries: Selkies

Selkies are a kind of aquatic faerie native to the northern Atlantic Ocean, where stories of them are found throughout Ireland, Scotland, the Orkney Islands, the Faroe Islands, and Iceland. Similar stories of shapeshifting seals can be found elsewhere in the world as well. The term “selkie” supposedly originates from an older Scots word, “selich”, which simply means “seal.” I have also read, however, that at least in the dialect of Orkney, “selkie” is itself just a word for “seal”. In Scotland and Ireland, selkies are often not differentiated from mermaids and may be referred to simply as “maighdeann-mhara”, meaning “maidens of the sea”.

Said to live in the sea as seals, selkies may assume the form of a human to traverse on land. When changing into human form, a selkie quite literally sheds its seal skin, which they are often depicted as wearing like a cloak. A selkie’s seal skin is its most important and treasured possession, as it is the source of their shapeshifting powers; without it, a selkie can’t change back into its seal form and return home to the sea. As such, a selkie will often hide its skin in a safe place along the shore while on land. Beliefs differ from place to place regarding when and for how long selkies can come onto land, with some making the claim that they can only come onto land on a specific night once each year, and others putting no such restrictions on them at all. In the Faroe Islands, it was believed that the selkies were the spirits of drowned humans who could only come to land and regain human form on Twelfth Night, January 5th or 6th, when they would dance and revel on the shore. 

Cultures across the world have stories of faeries and faerie-like beings that become beholden to a human who has stolen their clothing and, unfortunately for the selkies, they are no exception to that trope. Many stories about selkies tell of men who steal a selkie woman’s cloak, preventing her from returning home and forcing her to marry him. In most such stories, the selkie lives with her human husband for many years and bears his children, but her seal skin is nearly always returned to her by some means in the end, at which point she leaves her human family behind and returns to the sea. In some stories, her half-selkie children may also join her in the sea, leaving their father all alone. It should be noted that the so-called seal-wives were not always held against their will, with some stories telling of happy marriages between human men and selkie women. 

While stories of selkie women often depict them as victims of human men, the opposite is true of stories about selkie men, who are depicted as targeting human women in a similar fashion. Terribly handsome and seductive, male selkies were said to come to land to seek out unsatisfied or lonely human women, whether married or unmarried, with whom they could engage in sexual relations. Quite commonly, the woman in question is a fisherman’s wife whose husband is often away at sea for long stretches of time. It was also believed that a woman seeking out a selkie man could summon one by shedding seven tears into the sea at high tide. If a woman went missing while down by the shore or while at sea, it was often said that she had been whisked away by her selkie lover. 

In more modern portrayals, selkies are most often depicted as being largely benign and friendly, and while many selkies certainly may be friendly, there was apparently a great fear of them, historically. Faeries are people, after all, and not all people are nice. Shipwrecks, drownings, shoreline disappearances, and poor catches while fishing might be blamed on the acts of malevolent selkies, and mothers would often paint crosses on their daughters’ breasts to protect them from the selkies while at sea. A story from Mikladalur in the Faroe Islands tells of a vengeful selkie woman whose family was killed by hunters, who laid a curse on the people of the island to die at sea until their collective severed hands would be enough to circle the entire island. 

In the folklore of the Orkney Islands, the malevolent acts attributed elsewhere to selkies instead became attributed to another supernatural race called the finfolk, who were a more fish-like race of amphibious sorcerers who would abduct humans at sea and drag them to their underwater homes to be used as slaves. Selkies, meanwhile, came to be seen exclusively as more benevolent and romantic. It is theorized by some, however, that the finfolk and selkies were once believed to be one and the same in Orkney, as the finfolk do not appear to exist in other places where belief in selkies has existed. 

There are many different theories as to the origins of the selkie, which may vary from place to place. A more Christianized theory claims that, like other kinds of faeries, the selkies are fallen angels who were cursed to live on Earth as animals until Judgment Day. Others claim that, rather than angels, they are humans who, for whatever transgressions, were cursed to become seals and live the rest of their lives in the ocean. In some places, as previously mentioned, it was believed that the selkies were actually the spirits of drowned humans who took on the form of seals, only permitted to come on land and regain human form for one night each year. Other, far more mundane, theories posit that stories of selkies and finfolk originated from old Norse stories of the Sami people, who were referred to as “finnar” and were believed to be powerful sorcerers capable of shapeshifting.  

How to Write Excellent Introspection

Nothing can quite kill a story’s pacing like a big hunk of introspection, except, of course, its cousin, the info-dump. The reason for this is that the more time we spend reading a character’s thoughts, the less immediacy the story has, which means the less the audience cares about it. Often beginning writers put in whole paragraphs or even pages of introspection in addition to info-dumps–killing the pacing and readers’ interests even more. Some writing instructors will tell you that you shouldn’t spend more than 20% of the novel in a character’s thoughts. But yet in some successful stories, this rule is completely disregarded.

I admit I can be a sucker for a good chunk of introspection. I just love character depth. So how do you master introspection so that it makes your writing stronger, not weaker? Well, here are some tips.

1. Less is More

Because beginning writers usually also love character depth and are trying hard to get the audience to feel close with their characters, they will often write huge chunks of introspection, especially in the opening. It’s a great way to annoy or bore your audience. What usually happens, is that the writer–because she or he is the writer–already feels a strong connection to her characters, and in an effort to get the audience to feel and see what she does with her characters, she thinks that writing more is the answer.

In reality, writing less is more. If you truly want your audience to love your character as much as you do, you need to let them discover the character for themselves–you don’t need to spoon-feed them with chunks of introspection. You need to let them come to their own conclusions about your character.

Have you ever sat next to someone at a social gathering, maybe a wedding, who will not stop talking about himself, even when you’ve said multiple times you are trying to leave? That happened to me a few months ago. I literally said I needed to leave, but he just kept going on and on.

You think I’m looking forward to talking to that person ever again?

No way! I’m going to try to avoid him.

To get your audience interested in your character’s interior, you need to show them just enough. Keep it short enough to stay interesting, but long enough to cover the character’s point. A glimpse of an interesting interior will make us want to come back, without slowing the pacing in your story so much we want to get away.

You can sneak in bigger chunks after we already know and care about the person. But almost never put big chunks in the story’s opening. (Rare types of stories can break this rule though.)

2. Look Forward, not Back

A mistake that is easy to make is to only include introspection that looks back at something–something that happened earlier in the story, or, that really naughty thing, a flashback, and have the character relive it in his or her thoughts.

It can be very important to have a character think back on something. But since introspection naturally takes away immediacy, it’s often better to have your character think forward on something. What could happen. (Yes, you’ve heard me talk about this before.) The past can’t change (unless you shift context). But the future is something we can only guess at. And having your character think forward on something can create anticipation, tension, hooks, fear, dread, or hope, and then makes the audience want to read more to see what happens.

It’s not necessarily bad to look back, but it’s problematic if you only or almost only ever look back, and not forward. Ideally, if your character is going to look backward, see if you can connect it to something that is forward–how a past experience is going to effect an upcoming one, how a past experience makes the character fearful or hopeful of a future one.

3. Make it Intriguing

A chunk of introspection can hold the audience’s attention if it’s intriguing in some way. This means that the character’s thought can’t simply be a recap of something the audience already knows or read. Introspection needs to have a reason to be in the story, which usually means it needs to bring something new to the table.

While it’s common for introspection to take away from tension, because it takes away immediacy, when used well, it can actually add tension, through your character’s interpretation, perspective, and predictions. If your character is dreading something that could happen, and how it will completely unravel her world if it does–that can kick up tension.

At the beginning I talked about how introspection can come from the writer trying to create character depth. Character depth can be intriguing–but only if it’s something new or unusual. Rehashing what a character thinks for a full paragraph is boring if we already know what the character is naturally thinking. Rehashing isn’t depth. It’s repetition. To achieve more depth, you need to peel back your character’s layers to reach something deeper–an inner motive, thought, or feeling. And it should be interesting. If your character appears happy that her best friend threw a birthday party for her, but when we go into her mind, she’s fuming–that’s interesting. To add depth, we want to peel to answer why she’s fuming and then why she’s pretending to happy even though she is fuming.

Introspection can be very intriguing when it asks thematic questions. Remember the key here is the questioning. If your character is musing about the theme’s final answers without having considered the questions, it’s more likely to be boring. But if they are legitimately questioning something moral, ethical, thematic, or intellectual, that can stir the reader’s own mind, which makes it interesting.

Introspection can be intriguing when the character brings a new interpretation, or new context, to the story. For example, having the protagonist think back to some small talk he had with an unassuming taxi driver can be really boring. But reading about Sherlock’s interpretations of that exchange can be mega interesting. Why? Because he brings so much new context to the table. His introspection appeals to our intellect.

If you need to have your character think back for a bit, one way to keep it interesting is to have them change the context and interpretation of what they are thinking back on. That gives us an interesting way to interpret the past event and it gives us more character.

4. Entertaining

You can get away with a bit of introspection if it’s entertaining. If your character has an interesting voice or worldview, audiences won’t have a problem sitting through her introspection. Lemony Snicket is a great example of this. He can write a whole paragraph about his thoughts an driver licenses, and it’s so entertaining that we love it. We like to hear the way he thinks and his voice.

In closing, when working with passages of introspection, make sure it adds value to the story, instead of taking value away.

It needs to be said

Or: “writeblr etiquette that no one seems to address.”

We’ve all been in the same situation at one point or another. You know… the one where you’re interacting with someone new / someone you admire / a mutual and you get to that most glorious of topics: your WIPs! You ask them about their WIP and it becomes a long conversation about everything in their world–not that you mind, because their idea is kickass and you’re HERE for it–but then the conversation dwindles down. They’ve told you everything you need to know and now it’s your turn to share. 

They ask you what your WIP is about and you hand them the blurb or summary or basic explanation, ready to dive in, but the conversation goes kaput immediately. They may ask one or two questions, but you can tell that they just aren’t feeling it. They’re giving you “courtesy questions.” which can leave you feeling like the biggest turd in the toilet bowl. Courtesy questions can ruin your self-esteem and break your heart. It can feel unfair and make you angry at the other person, especially if you’ve spent hours talking about the their WIP, only to be rejected when it’s your turn.

We’ve all been there and it’s possible we’ve even been offenders of this. 

I want to make this clear though: you’re allowed to not like someone’s WIP, even if you like them as a person. I’ll say it again. You’re allowed to not like someone’s WIP, even if you like them as a person. We’re all individuals with different tastes. It’s a stressful situation to be in, too, especially if they’re into your WIP first. And lord knows it’s hard to say “I don’t like your story” in a way that’s NOT gonna be taken personally, y’know?

So how the heck do we avoid this situation? Try this:

There’s no guarantee that this will completely avoid hurting someone’s feelings, because WIPs are personal and sometimes rejection can feel like a personal attack. But at least you can say you tried!

That’s about all I have to say on the subject. Y’all be good to each other and yourself out there.

Hey followers and friends!

I recently reached 4000 followers on this blog which is an insane number of you and is honestly mind-blowing and so very humbling. None of what I do would be possible without you guys, and I would probably be in a very different (and much sadder) place in life, so thank you all from the bottom of my heart!

So now it’s time to give back to you guys a little bit!

Here’s what you need to do!

I’m sorry for the very fishing-for-compliments-esque requirement, but it’s stressful before graduation so I could use the extra love. I’m also using this as general feedback about my blog so I can make my writeblr better!

Here’s what I will give you!

I will do one or more of these things for you, depending on my inspiration and mood, or at random.

Please participate, this is an event to celebrate you!!!!!! If you’re hesitant to do this or not, please just do it! I’d love to get to know you guys better and hopefully brighten your day a little bit.

Thank you all so much for everything, I love you!

All posts will be tagged #4k Follower Celebration, so please feel free to blacklist it if it gets to be too much!

*****I have still not finished doing all calligraphy requests for my previous follower celebration. If you are still waiting on yours, I will get to it eventually, I promise. Probably not anytime soon, but eventually, when I am reunited with my pens and I have more time. I’m so sorry for the wait! Thank you so much for your patience and understanding! 

Extending this for my 5k follower celebration!

New and old followers alike, please consider participating so I can compliment you! If you’ve already sent one in and you feel so inclined, feel free to participate again!

Now that I’m back from my hiatus, I’m going to finish and respond to all of the asks sent to me from the last one. I’ll get to you eventually, I promise!

All posts will be tagged #5k follower celebration, so please feel free to blacklist it if it gets to be too much!

TEETH &&. LUNGS: Netflix Mockup (Click to Enlarge; template by @radwrites) 

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writing ask game

made for novels, but can be used for fanfiction or other types of writing!

REANIMATION: A RETELLING OF MARY SHELLEY’S FRANKENSTEIN

POV: SINGLE POV ; FIRST PERSON PRESENT TENSE

GENRE: CLASSIC RETELLING 

WARNINGS: GRAPHIC VIOLENCE, DISTURBING THEMES

// read the first chapter here on wattpad.

amari andromeda » afraid of the dark aesthetics

✶ son of a couple deceased in the darkness ✶ boyfriend of matias nieves ✶ faceclaim: hideo muraoka

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WIP Reintroduction: The People vs San Andres

Genres: Adult; Contemporary (dark, literary); Thriller (legal); Romance (LGBT+); Status: Second draft [23,000 / 80,000]  POV: First person Setting: Portland, OR; California; Manila; Hagonoy || 2017 ⇢ onward Characters:

more: WIP page || WIP tag

Guide To Writing Found Family

This is also available on wordsnstuffblog.com!

– Found family is a very popular trope that I don’t often see explored in technical writing resources, and as a person who is currently in the middle of developing one for my own series, I decided to make a resource for those who were also confused when approaching this character dynamic. If you have anything to add to the topic, feel free to comment down below for the other writers out there. Hopefully this is helpful to those who need a place to start. Happy writing!

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Avoiding Romantic Subtext

This is one of the hardest obstacles to sidestep when writing an unusual dynamic, and for certain genres it can be ten times worse. For example, in fiction written specifically for young adults, there’s a baseline expectation for a hefty amount of romantic tension, and readers will often insert it no matter what the text and subtext suggests. In order to prevent this automatic insertion of romance in the reader’s interpretation, it’s wise to establish a clear and reasonable explanation for why the relationships are platonic and will never develop into something more. 

It’s not a good idea to go for the “person a nor person b has ever considered this relationship blossoming romantically” because that’s often the basis for romantic stories, and will leave that wiggle room for the reader to run with. Show in the way they interact and perhaps in the narration/first person that each party has thought of that scenario and ultimately come to the conclusion that there’s just no romantic potential.

Showing Familial Relationships

Families rely on each other and in diverse ways. The way these individuals interact and build a familial bond is determined (often) by the way in which they form a dependence on the other, and this is more often than not in found family stories, a healthy dependence. It shows the other person’s reliability, care, and compassion, and the way this develops is different for family than it is for friends. 

Certain family members also have specific types of humor when it comes to each other. A father and a daughter will have a different sense of humor or understanding with each other than maybe the daughter and her brother do, and this all adds to form a vivid dynamic in your reader’s head that will alter the way they perceive relationships. Found family will be exactly the same, but they’ll have different backstories and different reasons why that sense of humor or understanding has developed that way.

Friendship vs. Family

Found family is unique in the way that readers can very easily perceive a relationship as close friendship rather than a familial one. However, friendship lacks a certain vulnerability and dependence that found family can use to its advantage, because family sees each other at their highs and lows and conflict usually carries different implications. 

Family also implies a different attitude and motivation behind the relationship. Conflicts between family members are less severe in the long-run because there’s a ground-level understanding that no matter what happens, arguments will end in forgiveness and closure, whereas that is not necessarily guaranteed with friendships or romances. The motivation, also, is different in the sense that found family is more often meant to last a lifetime, and therefore is less fragile and opens the door for more open communication and vulnerability.

Converting Tension to Intimacy

When you’re tasked with turning a tense, unfriendly relationship into a close and familial one, it’s daunting to even begin thinking about how to go about it.  First, it’s important to understand the function of this stage of their relationship as a starting point for growth in both of the characters rather than merely a device to create drama for the reader to munch on. Intimacy of any kind develops out of mutual growth, vulnerability, and understanding, and in order to convey these things to the reader, you need to take your time letting this stage simmer. If you extinguish the tension too fast, it will read as shallow and futile, and it will throw a wrench in the natural pacing.

Now, the transition from tension to intimacy is a several step process and does not happen in one chapter. Mindsets, perceptions, and attitudes change over time as both the reader and the characters learn more information and experience more genuine interaction. The relationship, as I mentioned earlier, will change as the characters see each other in increasingly vulnerable situations and in periods of growth, and as they witness this their understanding of the other and ultimate acceptance will change the way they treat each other and their mutual perceptions of one another’s place in their lives. This usually happens in the subtextual area of the story, excluding events that are formulated specifically to depict this evolution.

Different Sizes of Families

The size of the invented family very much impacts the way that the group relationship develops. For example, two or three people who develop a family-like connection will be much more intimate and dependent than a created family that includes ten. Larger groups imply more diverse, but also more shallow representations of what relationships between family members can be, but they often leave more room for relatability and comedy. Smaller families work well for more serious struggles, and make more sense with characters that deal with serious issues that a real person wouldn’t be comfortable giving all the details about to ten other people. 

There’s definitely a spectrum and it fluctuates wildly for different types of stories, genres, character archetypes, and themes. Deciding how large to make this found family really depends on the fine details and requires some time and thought.

Common Struggles

~ Bringing people together when there’s an age gap… Age gaps can serve really well in the area of establishing a familial relationship without suggesting romance because most readers will assume that a close relationship between a younger woman and an older (say, 65 year old) man is more of a father-daughter relationship than a romantic one. The way you an bring together two people with an age gap and establishing a familial relationship is by playing on the aspect of guidance and support that a parent or typically older figure would provide to a younger, more naive person. This can come off trope-y but, like any other aspect of a story, putting an original twist on it can make it more original and interesting to the reader. 

~ Starting with tension… This is very common in the case of a sibling-type relationship or a guardianship situation. Usually, there’s some resistance from the party that does not hold the upper hand, and this can create tension in both of them. I suggest that if you’re going to develop a tense relationship into a close one that resembles family, then avoid tropes. There are so many ways that you can twist these ideas and situations based on your world and characters’ traits, so don’t go straight for the “I hate you because you’re trying to control me even though you’re not my real dad” thing.

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