Wednesday Worldbuilding Workshop

Welcome! This is a post both for tracking/reading the Wednesday Worldbuilding Workshop and for submitting to it.

First, if you're interested in workshopping with me and having your work looked at by my readers, please submit, in the comments space below, an excerpt of no more than five hundred words from your work in progress (novel length or shorter story length), with a sentence or two telling me what kind of feedback you're looking for. If the excerpt is the opening of your work, and you want feedback on your world-entry, don't tell me anything else. If the excerpt is from the middle of your work, you may add an additional sentence or two to give me some basic previous context. Entries totaling over 1000 words of text and explanation cannot be considered, so please be concise. Please include an email address if you want me to inform you that you have been selected.

Here is a list of links to all the posts that have appeared in the Wednesday Worldbuilding Workshop, in case you would like to take a look:

1. The Narrator is Your Ambassador - E. Arroyo
2. Making the Amnesiac work for you - Megs
3. Managing the juxtaposition of normal and abnormal - David Marshall
4. Signposting Differences - Che Gilson
5. Macro- and micro-grounding - Anonymous
6. Foregrounding and Backgrounding Information - Rachel Udin
7. Description implies narrator focus - Domini
8. Metaphors and magic in a blended world - Harry Markov
9. Take your time and build - Nnedi Okorafor (for her Nebula-nominated Who Fears Death)
10. Managing information and surprises - Suzi McGowen
11. Aligning "Ordinary" Judgment - Megs
12. Ambiguity and Anchoring in Fantasy Contexts - Lexie
13. Orienting by marking insiders and outsiders - Siri Paulson
14. Superiors and inferiors in a magic system - Nicole Sheldrake

How Linguistics Can Help You - Index

This series of posts first appeared during a workshop here at TalkToYoUniverse, and has since been reprinted at the blog of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA). It goes into detail about how different aspects of linguistics can be helpful in writing fantasy and science fiction.

1. How linguistics can help you
2. How articulatory phonetics can help you
3. How morphology can help you
4. How syntax can help you
5. How semantics can help you: Part 1 (choosing the right word)
6. How semantics can help you: Part 2 (connotations and allusion)
7. How semantics can help you: Part 3 (making up words)
8. How pragmatics can help you
9. How sociolinguistics can help you

A Different Value - Index

Here is a list of all the different posts I've made concerning different values placed on commonplace things/ideas in different cultures:

1. Teeth
2. Pale Skin
3. Alcohol
4. Choice
5. Information
6. Water

Ridiculously Close Looks - Index

A Ridiculously Close Look, for those of you who don't know, is when I do a line-by-line analysis of some aspect of a previously published work. These posts deal with voice, tension, point of view, worldbuilding, and other useful aspects of writing - from a perspective that is both useful and best described as "ridiculously close."

1. 26 Monkeys: Also the Abyss by Kij Johnson - includes comments from the author!
2. Dinosaurs Before Dark by Mary Pope Osborne
3. Dune by Frank Herbert
4. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin
5. The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
6. Kushiel's Dart by Jacqueline Carey
7. A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge

Submit here for Wednesday Worldbuilding!

This is an open call for submissions for my ongoing micro-workshop for worldbuilders and language/culture designers. I select a maximum of one entry per week to engage with in depth and discuss on the blog.

So, you're interested in workshopping with me and having your work looked at by my readers?

Please submit an excerpt of no more than five hundred words from your work in progress (novel length or shorter story length), with a sentence or two telling me what kind of feedback you're looking for. If the excerpt is the opening of your work, and you want feedback on your world-entry, don't tell me anything else. If the excerpt is from the middle of your work, you may add an additional sentence or two to give me some basic previous context. Entries totaling over 1000 words of text and explanation cannot be considered, so please be concise.

Please submit your excerpts in the comments space below this post, or email in the body of the email only to info at juliettewade dot com. Attachments are prohibitively difficult to work with. If you're leaving a comment below and would like email confirmation that you've been selected, please include an email address with your excerpt.

Thanks!

Juliette

Reviews of The Eminence's Match (2010)

- "The writing in "The Eminence’s Match" is first class. I loved Ms Wade’s style and her ability to bring her dysfunctional people to life. The story is fitting for an opening act for any best selling anthology. ... Her characters, seeing what they saw and feeling what they felt, made for a powerful reading experience." Frank Dutkiewicz

- "In "The Eminence's Match" by Juliette Wade, we meet the leader of a clan on a distant world who has a very human affliction: obsessive compulsive disorder. He's on a quest for the perfect man-servant, one he can bend to his will, who will not let anything be out of place – ever. Unless he finds the perfect servant, the halls of his palace will be soaked in blood. Almost as disturbing as the Eminence's cruelty is the new candidate's desire to please, and indeed love, this tyrant. The inner dialog and the fixations are portrayed most credibly." Ann Wilkes

Reviews of Cold Words (2009)

- "Wade does a really good job of creating alien aliens, with their own distinctly non-human psychology and cultural values, and showing how language, the words themselves, can both create barriers and help to tear them down." Gardner Dozois

- "This is an effective portrayal of the alien from several different points of view–between species, between clans, and between competing interests even among the same groups. Individuals may make friends, yet still see each other as predator and prey." Lois Tilton, IROSF

- "Standout story of the issue was 'Cold Words.' The aliens were imho perfectly realized -- and realized as individuals -- from the inside out. I did not detect a single false note in the story." Michael Flynn, author of The January Dancer
- "This is not my standard reaction to a weird talking alien, but I was much more emotionally invested in [Rulii] than in most humans I read about." Umbrageofsnow