L.J. is writing out @ljwrites@writeout.ink

Since I was thinking on paper rather than setting & writing an actual scene I'll be continuing the session at home, but I'm excited by the ideas that came up!

Also it occurs to me the two young women who are kind of involved with the injured butch warrior might be meeting soon and I get all fluttery, lesbian metamours feels ftw

(Will it still pass the Bechdel Test if they talk about the girl they both like)

Just sketching out a few ideas for the next scene but it includes the sentence "Which is how he comes up with his nice little ethnic cleansing campaign" so it looks like it's going to be good

Maybe the scene ending is a bit abrupt, but I figure it fits the uncanny nature of the events. Besides, I'm trying to be more aggressive about scene framing.

I'm likely to have to face and resolve this issue while editing, and make choices how much setup to leave in or even add. While I'll always keep in mind that the goal is not a perfectly matched understanding but elicitation and evocation, it's also worth remembering that sometimes elicitation takes some amount of information and adjustment when frames of reference are so different.

I don't feel the need to explain every detail for the white gaze, obviously. The world is what it is for the characters, and how they exist and go about in it is much better "worldbuilding" than tour-guide explanations of basic concepts. Or a three-book compendium.

Still, I do need to set up some expectations and parameters, such as: It is Not Done to simply call highborn characters by their given names, which are rather private between their families and friends, and that titles, relationships, and positions are, in effect, their public names. And that means showing these things happen in real time, which takes words and space.

And it may be the "not European" part, and the fact that the setting is based on an actual ancient society, that makes me all the more hesitant to leave readers to their own frames of reference. For white readers especially, the frame of reference is likely to be wrong for understanding this "world" of the Yalu tributary river valleys (near the present-day China/North Korean border) in 1st century B.C.

On the other hand, I have mixed feelings about this advice for my current project especially because the newsletter leads with the example of an author who wants to do extensive worldbuilding. While I have never felt the urge to do a three-book series on the background, my WIP does require some setup for many readers to understand what the heck is going on. While it's a feudal setting of sorts it's not the familiar kings-lords-and-knights European medieval fantasy--it's not European at all and the lack of a king is a central cause of conflict.

On the one hand... yes, absolutely, fiction should elicit rather than explain, and the author absolutely shouldn't try to force readers to have the same reactions as the author would. As the newsletter points out, that goal is both impossible and undesirable. I've had trouble before letting the reader fill in the details, and paring down exacting descriptions to leave some things to the readers' imagination was one of the best things I did to improve my writing.