I’ve never built a world. I build stage sets. For example, in Ashamoil, there’s a Ghetto of the Doctors. What is that? I don’t know. It’s just an evocative name. Maybe some people will think of plague doctors in masks, some might think of old Kabbalists, others might think of houngans or something. An evocative name can make your reader’s brain build something, and they’ll think you built it, but you didn’t. (I learned that trick from M. John Harrison.)

If your setting is somewhat earthlike, a few concrete details (a building with a pediment, a stained glass fanlight, a room with potted palms and cane furniture) can set up a whole lot of associations, physical and historical, saving you the need to build very much at all. The occasional strong descriptive paragraph does help, sort of like a supporting wall. But you don’t need a whole lot of them, and in a short story you might only need one, or none, and just put little flecks of set-building throughout.

I feel that all my writing lacks, all the time. I have to try pretty hard to make it work, insofar as it does work. Plain old time and effort can make up for a lack of native skill. Sometimes I have to wait for a week or a month or a year before the right line or word or solution to a problem comes. Please don’t let a weakness in one area stop you from attempting to write a story that interests you. You can write it and add worldly details later.

Sorry for the long rant, orz.

I know it sounds weird, but of all the myriad of small characters in TEC, Calla sticks in my head; that and the female slave in the market that Gwynn ordered beaten (after she chewed off a customer’s ear for getting too friendly). I know that the fates of both of them were likely to be inconsequential and unpleasant, but I’ve always wondered what would have become of them. More so than many other more important characters. I can’t say why this is so.

Strangely, I saw the spine of a large fish lying in a park yesterday morning!

Caitlyn – that story sounds like it has left TEC world, or could certainly be written without any reference to anything in TEC. If you were able to write the whole thing out, maybe it’s already yours…?

W. – obviously, the men eat the baby! The giant apes…no, the apes won’t fight. They’re like bonobos…hmmm…

Laurie – somehow I can see that guy in the Hellsingverse.

Penny – Ah, that! Sorry for my senile forgetfulness.

Calla, of Rev. fame, has been sold to a man who makes spider silk. The silk must be boiled and combined with the dreams of beautiful girls before it can be woven, and once woven it forms a cloth that is the lightest, softest, most gorgeous cloth. People sell their houses and everything they own just for a single shirt of this cloth. But even though Calla loves the spiders (they are very beautiful) she can’t make the thread because she has utterly no idea how to dream.

(I actually wrote out the entire story, which I’ve deleted since a prompt is not a story. *cough* I really, really need to stop playing in other people’s sandboxes.)

OR:

The Ant Queen steals a little boy’s cake while he is sleeping, so he calls the Wasp Queen and together they go to war against the ants.