A Taste of Kate Maruyama’s Genre Fiction Workshop – Starting Monday!

There are still a few spots in Kate Maruyama’s genre fiction workshop that starts this Monday! Here’s a sample writing exercise that gives you a sense of all the fantastic learning and productivity you’d get if you sign up.

In Wonderbook, Jeff Vandermeer talks about worldview vs. storyview. In Genre Fiction Workshop: World-Building, Structure and Suspense, we’re going to get inside the world of your story, whatever its genre, and look around. The worldview is what you as a writer know about the world you’re creating. But the storyview is what your characters know and believe about the world they live in. So whether you are writing, horror, scifi, fantasy, mystery or a even a realist book, get out a piece of paper and ask a few questions about how your character sees the world. Jot down whatever comes to mind first.Is your character a native of the dominant culture in which they live or someone who recently moved there?

Does your character exist in the minority of the culture in which they live? How does this skew how they see the world? How hard it is to accomplish things in their lives?

Sit down and go into one of your characters’ heads and make them get up on a soapbox and rail against some kind of injustice they see in their world, or something that gets on their nerves. Let ‘em loose and go on for a bit. Make it as angry as you want, you are building a world; the scenes will come after. I promise you once you get inside their heads you will learn a whole lot not just about the world you are starting to build, but about the character himself/herself.