Compelled to Teach: inspiration & spark

This post is Part 3 of a series to augment the Author's Manifesto available for free download. Start with Part 1 here.

This and other inspirations of mine are gathered in the Spark Directory for you to explore.

Find more tarot-related content in my Tarot Gallery.

In Part 1 of this series, I began my spiritual journey by questioning the world around me. After my awakening, I noticed my perspective on other people was shifting too. If I was an infinite depth of clarity and loving existence, then so was every other person on the planet. All the pain and suffering we endure (and cause) as humans is because we've grown out of our inborn sense of self-awareness.

On the whole, humanity teaches its children to think certain thoughts and assume certain roles. With enough training, these children release their intuitive ways of being and take on the identities that are expected of them.

As is common when someone has a liberating spiritual experience, I felt compelled to share my discovery of truth with others, to help erode the earthly traditions that keep us separate from the truth of who we are.

Check out this Author's Manifesto for more of my inspirations!

Becoming a spiritual teacher daunted me. My tarot readings had always been profoundly beneficial to my clients, but delivering a one-on-one tarot reading was quite different than publicly compelling students to arrive. Most people seemed unwilling to expose their carefully-ministered truths to new revelations, and they expected the revealing sources to be stoic saints with decades of credentials.

With my youth and enthusiasm, I found myself a rather uncompelling spiritual guide. Though I became licensed to deliver a spiritual awakening course called Avatar, I did not pursue students. I felt like I needed to be something more than what I was before people would take my message seriously.

As my affair with writing became ever-more enveloping, I struck upon the idea to write a book of truth. Within it, I'd divulge my knowledge of scientific discoveries and express the ultimate unity inherent in the fabric of space-time itself. I'd also interpret sacred texts across religions, and amass scientific evidence to confirm the Law of Attraction. After giving curious minds something to chew on, I'd delve into the experience of this inherent unity, which I recognize as both the self and the truth.

I felt, and still feel, profoundly at peace with this idea. Yet it rests enshrined atop my stack of unfinished books and notes on stories to be written, an opus at once insurmountable and enthralling. As I worked on my Tales of the Known World saga, I wrote pieces of the truth-book on the side. I'd share them in Facebook groups, and the responses I got were encouraging. But the stories in me still yammered for recognition. I wanted to keep working on my fantasy novels, and my writing experience told me to focus on one book at a time.


That's it for this post! Up Next: Building spiritual truths into my fantasy world...

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The Advent of Riddles: inspiration & spark

This post is Part 3 of a series to augment the Author's Manifesto available for free download. Start with Part 1 here.

This and other inspirations of mine are gathered in the Spark Directory for you to explore.

Find more prophetic poetry in my Portents Directory.

In Part 1 of this series, I created my first poem. Throughout my high-school days, I used poetry as a means of emotional venting, railing against the overblown tragedies of teenage angst and distilling meaning from the carnage of the social scene. I read very little poetry outside of school, but still played with configurations of language to create rhyming structures within my own works.

With the onset of my trendy counter-culture obsession with Alice in Wonderland, I explored the complete works of Lewis Carroll and found inspiration in the riddling Cheshire Cat. Something about the fictitious feline helped me make the connection between the rhythmic undercurrent of poetry slam with the systems of poetic meter I'd learned in school. Soon, I was writing metered riddles for friends, divulging early clues to Christmas gifts encoded in rhyming blocks of ambiguity.

Check out this Author's Manifesto for more of my inspirations!

The foundation had been laid. From there, it was a small step to including riddles in my works of fiction. My college days were filled with collaborative, recreational writing, and my co-conspirators embraced my concocted puzzles with delight. They loved the way my riddles enhanced the stories we wrote together, and I reveled in the mastery of my contributions.

As college ended and I shifted from collaborative to solo writing, I used my poetic inclinations to re-craft the body of a rhyming prophesy within the manuscript of my first book. Two principles drove me - the prophesy had to be obscure enough to not divulge the full story to the uninitiated, but cohesive enough to make sense after the story had been read. I wanted the prophesy to be intriguing but not elucidating, only mirroring the plot events it predicts in retrospect.

Delighted with my results, I decided to write more prophesies for my Tales of the Known World saga. I started with a prophesy to open each of the book's four parts. In my mind, the prophesies had been foretold some years before the book, and they predicted the events of each section individually. I also wanted to incorporate both the book and section title in each of the four prophesies.

More than ever, I needed these riddles to both veil and convey the story to unfold, in a way that would intrigue readers without revealing too much. To my great satisfaction, I succeeded, through use of symbolic code-names, extensive metaphor, and unconventional syntactical structures.


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What is Cartography?

This post is part of a series to augment the Codex of the Known World available for free download.

This and other mapping resources are gathered in my Cartography Directory for you to explore.

Find more website tag definitions in my Index Directory.

Cartography is the science and process of creating maps. The two-dimensional representation of a three-dimensional world is a science as well as an art. There are cartography schools to train professional map-makers, and there's a lot of survey equipment and math involved in drawing a real-world map.

I must confess, I know little of the science of surveying in the real world. While I apply topographical principles to my own maps, fictional map-making is an entirely different beast than the real-life surveying and mapping of geography. So while I use the word cartography to refer to my own map-making, please keep in mind that my own cartography involves significantly less science and substantially more creativity.

Check out the Codex of the Known World for more resources!

Many of the techniques and concepts for mapping are the same whether the region being mapped is real or invented. Fictional cartography relies on the same basic principles as real cartography, and it still requires a good deal of geography. Without the underpinnings of geological formation, a fictional place can defy logic and ruin a reader's immersion in the setting. In the Cartography of the Known World, you can see how I ensure that there are geological (or magical) explanations for my topography.

However, in fictional cartography, the world-builder has ultimate control over the lay of the land, from coastlines to altitudes to the flow of rivers and sprawl of civilizations. There is no survey equipment to take readings, no need to convert accurate topographical data into an accurate 2-D representation of that data. Fictional cartography is about giving form to a world without form, giving life to a land that has never been. As such, my approach to fictional cartography is hardly comparable to the scientific procedures of real-world cartography.

On this website, I use the cartography tag to denote posts that discuss map-making, specifically the making of fictional maps as an aspect of world-building. These posts include details from mapping my Tales of the Known World saga, as well as workshops and insights regarding the use of fictional cartography in storytelling. I've reserved the cartography tag for posts that aren't specific to a single map and its creation, in contrast to the commissions tag I use for posts about maps I've made for other authors.


That's it for this post! Check out the latest cartography resources for more.

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Portent XII of Broken: a riddle in rhyme

In the novel Broken, there are 24 portents fortelling the events of the unfolding saga.

Start with Portent I here.

These and other riddles in rhyme are gathered in the Portents Directory for you to explore.

Enjoy!

Misguided roams the winding way
From lowest vale to coral heights
In exiled shadow voice invites
The prince to join the fray

Dissensions thick arise in droves
To cloud the eyes of prince's wake
As land prepares for battle's quake
And sea its timeless troves

In bonded oath does prince await
Immersed in time's enraptured thrall
By will incited bitter squall
The vacant voice and gate.


Can you decode the future Tales of the Known World?

Share your interpretation!
Comment below with your take on this portent.

This prophesy comes to pass in Part 4 of Broken, and it foretells the long journey a prince must undertake. What do you think the sea's timeless troves are, and what is this prince's bonded oath?

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Download the Prophesy Appendix:

The merfolk culture is built on the prophetic Gift. Nearly all men produce a portent every twenty days, and they devote their lives to interpretation. For more about the role and inner workings of prophesy, check out the Prophesy Appendix above.

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Alongside every prophesy is an attribution block. This block contains a byline giving the name of the person who said the prophesy, and a dateline giving the day the prophesy was first said. Here is the attribution for this portent:

Jyonge Nlovahs Dynde VII
2:3:1:7/5, III:IX

The portent attributed here has not yet been interpreted. It was said recently, and it will be repeated every twenty days until either it is correctly interpreted, or it comes to pass.


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Percolating on Poetry: inspiration & spark

This post is Part 2 of a series to augment the Author's Manifesto available for free download. Start with Part 1 here.

This and other inspirations of mine are gathered in the Spark Directory for you to explore.

Find more prophetic poetry in my Portents Directory.

In Part 1 of this series, I set aside poetry after a 5th grade assignment left me disenchanted. But then I encountered the idea of non-rhyming poetry in 7th grade, when a girl in my drama class shared a few of her poems with me.

Though I'd spent the past year salvaging dreams into half-finished short stories, I'd neither shared my writings with anyone nor attempted a poem since my first brush with critique two years prior. But my brazen 12-year-old classmate had discovered something liberating about poetry that I had yet to fathom - it didn't have to rhyme. She'd not only written poetry exempt from rhyme or meter, but she found it within herself to share those poems with me.

Check out this Author's Manifesto for more of my inspirations!

Infused with her disregard for the normative, I took up non-rhyming poetry myself. We bonded over our mutual creative expression, and formed a poetry club at our middle school. Eventually, eroded by the wanton ravages of pre-teen drama, the club fell apart, but my love for poetry had been resuscitated. With the burgeoning internet at my fingertips, I found new venues to share my poems as I progressed into my teens. I pasted them line-by-line into chatrooms, earning new friends and alienating others. I posted every poem I'd ever written on Poetry.com and eagerly awaited feedback.

Ironically, the poem that got the most attention was my very first poem, a rhyming cacophony of unclear messages. The website published a yearly anthology of selected poetry. Contributing poets went unpaid, but could buy the anthology at a discounted price. Angry they'd overlooked my non-rhyming works of genius to select my debacle in rhyme for the anthology, I signed off on the publication, but didn't buy a copy for myself. In retrospect, I'm a bit surprised my parents didn't order a copy, but the price was somewhat prohibitive and my poem was just one of hundreds. To this day, I'm not even sure what the anthology was called.

Still, the publication encouraged me to continue my poetic expression, and reopened rhyming as an arena for experimentation. With Dickinson and Shakespeare, my English classes imparted the concept of poetic meter, later enhanced by the scansion of ancient Roman poet Catullus in my Latin class.

As I began work on my Tales of the Known World saga, I found the rules of meter trite and rigid, and I discounted its usefulness for my own poems. When a friend introduced me to poetry slam, the live performance of poetry, I fell in love with the spellbinding rhythms behind the spoken words, but I failed to connect this organic pulse to the sterile metrical concepts I'd learned in school. Simultaneously, I was left in awe of true poets and rejected the structural bedrock of their prowess.


That's it for this post! Up Next: The onset of riddles in rhyme...

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How to Make Fantasy Maps in Photoshop: a cartography exclusive

This post is part of a series to augment The Worldbuilder's Handbook available for free download.

This and other world workshops are gathered in my Worldbuilding Directory for you to explore.

Find more map-making content in my Cartography Directory.

Hello, there! Thanks for your interest in my mapping techniques. My name is D.N.Frost, and I'm a fictional cartographer, fantasy author, and world-builder. I began creating digital fantasy maps for my Tales of the Known World saga, and after making over twenty maps for my first book, I started offering map commissions to fellow storytellers.

How exactly do I map a fictional world? Through tutorials on YouTube, hours of experimentation, detailed notes, and a lot of trial and error, I taught myself how to use Photoshop to create professional fantasy maps. To help you make your own publish-ready maps, please enjoy this collection of short mapping insights and step-by-step instructions.

Download How to Make Fantasy Maps in Photoshop:

This is an exclusive guide to creating your own fantasy maps. The how-to provides detailed step-by-step instructions for making maps in Photoshop, and it provides some great information on how to build a realistic world. If you are a world-builder looking to create a map yourself, this exclusive download will guide you through both the concepts and the technical processes of map-making in Photoshop.

This exclusive resource also links to a number of fantasy workshops and longer blog posts, so you can delve deep into your favorite cartography tips. I'm proud to offer you these instructions on creating professional-looking maps you can be proud to share, and I hope you use this resource to enhance your fantasy world.


That's it for this post! Check out the latest worldbuilding workshops for more.

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My Great Awakening: inspiration & spark

This post is Part 2 of a series to augment the Author's Manifesto available for free download. Start with Part 1 here.

This and other inspirations of mine are gathered in the Spark Directory for you to explore.

Find more consciousness content in my Cosmic Directory.

In Part 1 of this series, I began my spiritual journey by asking the great questions about life. When I started paying attention to my own thoughts, a profound shift began to occur within me. If I was analyzing my own thoughts, then where was I? What was the "I" that was analyzing my thoughts?

In spiritual terminology, the awakening is when a person first recognizes that there's a difference between their stream of thoughts and the awareness that perceives those thoughts. If your awareness perceives something, that thing logically can't be your awareness. This core recognition forces the awareness away from identification with the mind, body, and physical world, freeing the self to be more real than ever before.

Check out this Author's Manifesto for more of my inspirations!

Though scientific questioning had brought me to this point, I began exploring different religious tenets to clarify my search for self-recognition. I found every religion laughably false when taken in entirety, but each faith seemed to reduce down to the same basic truths. Virtues like forgiveness, love, compassion, and kindness seemed universal.

I explored Hinduism, Wicca, and the mysticism of tarot cards, but what really caught me was Zen Buddhism. A close friend gave me a book called Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies, and the Truth About Reality, by Brad Warner. This punk rocker became a Zen master after he moved to Japan to make monster movies. His sardonic voice fit right in with my inner rage against the machine and fanatic love of all things Japanese.

Through his book and others, I came to recognize myself as the awareness that perceives all other things. I even noticed that sometimes I would notice that I had noticed something - which meant that I am the awareness that is aware of its own focus and attention. From this realization, my consciousness expanded, and I began to experience life in a new way. I sought to lead others to similar shifts in their own perspectives, and interwove my Tales of the Known World saga with various expressions of this one simple insight.

My self-awareness brought with it a depth of understanding that cannot be expressed in words. There came a peace and serenity as I recognized the true nature of my self, and the trappings of the external world fell away. Smart/stupid, pretty/ugly, thin/fat, male/female - I saw through dualities as meaningless labels slapped across infinite being, and I came to know my true self as the indescribable beyond.


That's it for this post! Up Next: Sharing my discovery with others...

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My First Constructed Languages: inspiration & spark

This post is Part 2 of a series to augment the Author's Manifesto available for free download. Start with Part 1 here.

This and other inspirations of mine are gathered in the Spark Directory for you to explore.

Find more linguistic content in my Language Directory.

In Part 1 of this series, I discovered my love of language. While in high school, I began working on a number of writing collaborations with a friend. She had a sci-fi world envisioned where psychic plants had evolved to resemble the human form, and for the planet of Zenith, we developed a rudimentary language called Nithii. We cared primarily about the foreign squiggle for each letter of their alphabet, and we established some basic rules for how syllables combined - mostly to invent cool names for characters and deities in the plant pantheon.

Neighboring the temperate planet Zenith was the hellish Zyph, where a runaway greenhouse effect broiled the once habitable planet into a vaporizing oven. Long ago, humans had arrived to colonize Zyph, only to discover that an ecological disaster had occurred during their long journey through space. Their mistake and desperation to survive spurred them to colonize Zenith instead, and the prehistoric psychic plants of the time grew to mimic the bipedal forms of the alien humans. Peace would not last, and over the next few centuries, the Nithii forced the humans off their planet.

Check out this Author's Manifesto for more of my inspirations!

The humans returned to Zyph and tunneled underground, the only place where conditions were livable. They carved out huge warrens through the rock, but the surface temperatures were so dangerous that the humans endeavored some genetic manipulations. Akin to The Dragonriders of Pern, the human settlers crossed their DNA with tiny winged lizards that dwelt on the surface, to ensure their survival.

Though the humans could unrealistically morph between a dragon form and a human form, their language grew to reflect their reptilian modifications. Hissing, guttural sounds with weird spellings made common appearances in names of characters and places. Over time, I dissected the names into different pieces, ascribing meaning to each piece. The language Zyphyr was born.

Well before my Tales of the Known World saga, as my friend and I adventured in our sci-fi world, I invented a new race of beings from the planet Bluith, whose bodies were formed out of crystallized blue light. Though I never invented their language, I described it as a waterfall of consonants, a dizzying and unintelligible language without a single vowel.


That's it for this post! Up Next: Linguistics classes and new creations...

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An Artist After All: inspiration & spark

This post is part of a series to augment the Author's Manifesto available for free download.

This and other inspirations of mine are gathered in the Spark Directory for you to explore.

Find more original art content in my Artwork Gallery.

My whole life, I've always had an appreciation for art. I looked to artists with awe and respect, and I had great esteem for the friends I had who could draw or paint or sculpt. I always felt like artists were cooler than me, with their pretty finished pieces that could be absorbed and appreciated with a glance. I was the less-shiny wordsmith in the corner, sculpting poetry and chiseling away at my set of novels, knowing that every one of their pictures was worth a thousand of my words. In those days, at least in my own mind, I was very much not an artist.

And yet, I dappled in artistic pursuits. An oil pastel here, a chalk and charcoal there, and once an oil painting with speckled white gaps between colors. Nope, not an artist. But I still liked to work with my hands. I expressed my creativity with crafting, particularly textiles, creating latch-hooked yarn rugs from store bought kits. Over time, I started adding more crafts to my repertoire - making candles, braiding rag-rugs, learning to knit and locker-hook with fabric and with yarn. I created my own knitting patterns, designed my own rugs, and even adapted a few traditional rug-making techniques to work with craft yarn and canvas.

Check out this Author's Manifesto for more of my inspirations!

Then one day I heard about the zentangle, a detailed freeform doodle that looks good and does not require "real" artistic talent. I read an article, watched some YouTube videos, and started my own zentangles. The first few were clunky as I drew them, the concepts of the artform still hazy and my hand unsteady as I shoved an ultra-fine Sharpie across the page. But before long, my perspective on my own art had shifted completely. After a few bigger pieces and some glowing feedback from friends and strangers, I realized - I'd been an artist the whole time!

There is an art to making stuff, whatever the stuff. Craftsmanship in this world is ever being replaced by machined parts and assembly. Handmade goods are rare and expensive, well outside the price range of what most people would call reasonable. But I love the feel of string slipping through my fingers to become something manifest, a Zen-like peace in the repetitive motions. I use my crafting time to mull over the secrets of the universe, unraveling the mysteries of the human heart and concocting the greatest stories of my Tales of the Known World saga.

Whether ink and paper, fabric and rug canvas, or yarn and knitting needles, my art expresses a bit about who I am and what I love. But no matter the medium, to me, the greatest prize is the time required to complete each project. Each hour of making art is an hour of honest meditation, self-reflection, and relaxed enjoyment of the physical world. Art gives me time to integrate my life lessons, ground myself in who I really am, and process through all the twists and turns of my epic fantasy adventures. I might have discounted my art as a youth, but with a little Sharpie and a lot of open-minded consideration, I've become one of the artists I respect and esteem.


That's it for this post! Check out my latest inspirations for more.

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Portent XI of Broken: a riddle in rhyme

In the novel Broken, there are 24 portents fortelling the events of the unfolding saga.

Start with Portent I here.

These and other riddles in rhyme are gathered in the Portents Directory for you to explore.

Enjoy!

To bitter end the forests clasp
Relent and heed the call
To wrest themselves from hollow grasp
Of hatred's bitter sprawl

In bonded fate their hearts arise
And under curse renowned
Release the long engendered ties
Of enmity unbound

With aid at last to foes reply
Their winged spears untold
Rejoin the caverns from the sky
To smite the curse of old.


Can you decode the future Tales of the Known World?

Share your interpretation!
Comment below with your take on this portent.

This portent tells of an ancient curse broken when a people come to the aid of their enemies. Who do you think released the long engendered ties of enmity unbound, and what foes share their bonded fate?

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Download the Prophesy Appendix:

The merfolk culture is built on the prophetic Gift. Nearly all men produce a portent every twenty days, and they devote their lives to interpretation. For more about the role and inner workings of prophesy, check out the Prophesy Appendix above.

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Alongside every prophesy is an attribution block. This block contains a byline giving the name of the person who said the prophesy, and a dateline giving the day the prophesy was first said. Here is the attribution for this portent:

Ranyik Rwahnna Rovikya V
2:2:4:7/5, III:IX

The portent attributed here has not yet been interpreted. It was said recently, and it will be repeated every twenty days until either it is correctly interpreted, or it comes to pass.


That's it for this post! Up Next: In exiled shadow voice invites...

For the Prophesy Appendix, enter your email above.

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What are Reviews?

This post is part of a series to augment the Book Reviews by D.N.Frost available for free download.

This and other reviewed content is gathered in my Book Reviews Directory for you to explore.

Find more post tag introductions in my Spark Directory.

I only review books I like. If I'm not recommending a book, I'm not going to waste time talking about it. I would definitely watch the movie version of every single book I review.

They're all good books. But most people tend to give everything five stars, which skews the ratings and damages reviewer credibility over time. So this is how I apply star ratings to my book reviews:

★★★

Three stars! This is a good story, well-crafted and entertaining.

Three stars is the basement floor, good books that I honestly enjoyed.

These are books that I think other people might like.

I found them fun, interesting, and entertaining, and I want other people to read them.

★★★★★

Five stars! This great story delivered something I've never seen before.

Five stars is the ceiling, reserved for amazing excellence that really blew me away.

These are books I devoured and would read again this year.

I've never seen anything like them, and I was really impressed with the whole experience.

★★★★

Four stars! This great story revealed something I didn't see coming.

Four stars is the middle ground, great stories that surprised me with engaging twists and turns.

These are books I loved reading.

I would read more by these authors, and I might even sign up for updates.

Check out these Book Reviews by D.N.Frost for more story ratings!

Given only three ratings to work with, I wanted to add in some extra layers. My five star rating is pretty rare, so my four star rating covers practically all the great books I've read. Some of them aren't even the genres or subject matter I like best.

So instead of adding layers via half stars (and coming up with new critera for each rating), I settled on using a visual way to differentiate book genres within each rating:

Three Copper Stars

Good story! I don't tend to read
this type of book, but I liked it.

Four Silver Stars

Great story! I don't tend to read
this type of book, but I loved it.

Though I might award the rare five star rating to a book outside of what I would normally read, it felt silly to divide them into two categories.

I want my five star rating to shine on its own, reserved solely for books that I'd heartily recommend to any reader, regardless of subject matter. To preserve this quality of endorsement, I opted against creating a five star variant with silver stars.


That's it for this post! Check out the latest book reviews for more.

Want a review of your own book? Check out my Services for Authors.
You deserve a mindful reader and an honest book review.

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The Apprentice Cartographer of Awakening: a mapping resource

This post is Part 3 of a series to augment the Codex of the Known World available for free download. Start with Part 1 here.

This and other mapping resources are gathered in my Cartography Directory for you to explore.

Find more maps and atlas content in my Map Directory.

In Part 1 of this series, I began planning the 19 maps for my first book. I wanted my maps to look authentic, so for every Photoshop technique I employed, I envisioned how an old-world cartographer would produce the same visual result. This guidance helped me keep my style on point, and the idea of this old-world cartographer took on a life of its own.

As I used Photoshop to fade the lines and colors behind text labels, I considered how an old-world cartographer would have had to plan the whole map ahead of time, reserving space for each label before even inking the map's coastlines. I contemplated more old-world analogues for my Photoshop techniques, and I started thinking about how ancient artists would have benefited from the sort of magic I envisioned for the Known World.

Check out the Codex of the Known World for more resources!

While painting my maps in digital watercolor, I thought about how an Known World cartographer could have known a bit of water magic, allowing him to better control the flow of color onto paper. Other old-world mapping techniques became easier through magic, and magic also allowed for entirely new mapping techniques only possible for cartographers in the Known World.

I continued my map-making adventure, creating a total of 19 maps for my first book. As I mapped, I kept notes on my techniques and their applications, codifying my approach so that all 19 maps employed the same techniques and Photoshop settings. During this studious phase, I found more inspiration for my old-world cartographer - instead of a master of his craft, this map-making character was actually an apprentice.

Just as his old-world techniques mirrored the visual results of my digital techniques, his development as a cartographer mirrored my own development. When I had to go back through a number of maps in my Tales of the Known World saga to make updates and adjustments, I envisioned this apprentice cartographer remaking a number of his maps to correct mistakes and hone his artistry.

I came to imagine this apprentice cartographer mixing paints, creating rough map drafts, and agonizing over the painstaking details of his finished maps. Of course, this apprentice needed a master cartographer to study under, and I began wondering about the master's story. Where had he learned his mapping skills? What drove him to take on an apprentice? Slowly, a character emerged for the master, and his story filled in.

I envisioned my first book, Awakening, as a legend in the future Known World, with the actual text of the book written by the wise and well-traveled master cartographer. For his apprentice to hone and demonstrate his skills, the master assigned him the task of illustrating the Awakening story with 19 maps of the lands where the tale took place.

But Awakening is just one of many books, so my master cartographer must be training a number of cartography apprentices. Each book in the saga is the work of a particular apprentice, so the maps of each book are internally consistent but differ from other books in style and technique.

Update: In the prologue Scribe Ascribed, Farwen is just one of many apprentices to this old master cartographer.

When his master invites him to scribe the myriad tales of the Known World, young Farwen eagerly sets aside his studies in favor of their new project.

As the initial tale draws to a close, Farwen faces a life-changing decision: resign from the project to create the maps for the story, or abandon his apprenticeship to become a dedicated scribe.


That's it for this series! Check out the latest cartography resources for more.

Download the Codex of the Known World here, or start your adventure below.

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Rework Your Flashbacks: a storycraft workshop

This post is part of a series to augment the Tips for Writing Fiction available for free download.

This and other writing workshops are gathered in my Workshops Directory for you to explore.

Find my world workshops in the Worldbuilding Directory.

Flashbacks are pretty common in visual media like TV and movies, but how well do they work for written books and stories? If you have a strong central character and a single storyline, flashbacks can be a useful way of revealing exposition without explaining it all in real time. But I find flashbacks pretty awkward.

Flashbacks create breaks in your storytelling, where you jump back to an important point before the story started in order for the current story to make more sense. Why not just weave the prior information into the current plot? Try to find a way to tell all a flashback's relevant details in real time. This is less jostling to your readers, who are already following all your different characters as the story unfolds.

I figure that any time a character reflects on past events, there should always be fresh details revealed. Your readers want a fresh take on the event, not a rehash. This is especially important if you're referencing events from stories you've already written (and therefore, your most devoted readers have already read). Include some new information that will keep it exciting for them!

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Also remember that every person (fictional or otherwise) grows and changes over time. You aren't the same person you were last year. Your opinions have evolved, and your perspective has shifted, if only slightly. When reflecting on a past event in your story, bear in mind that your character is not the same person who experienced the event. The character has evolved by some measure since the time the event occurred.

Human memories are quite fallible. People remember incorrect details all the time. Details like the color of a sweater, the logo on a hat, which hand held the gun - these shift and amend themselves within your brain, leaving you convinced things went a certain way when others who were also there will swear by other details. Of course, don't riddle your exposition with false details, unless it's relevant to the story somehow. But keep in mind that memories are ever-changing, and that the character reflecting on those memories is ever-changing as well.

So how do you relate your flashback in real time? Let your characters reminisce about the past event, and reflect an elegant evolution in their perspectives due to the wisdom of hindsight. Your character is older now, wiser, and reflects on his younger and more foolish days. Or your character is forever changed by some event, and he uses it as a crutch to justify his failings ever since.

However you frame it, allow the reflection to add to the character's personality, and allow the character to add (or remove) details based on how he's grown and changed since the event. Then you're killing more birds with less stones - your character is better developed, the reader has a better sense of the personal growth of the character in the interim, and the reflections still impart the necessary information for the current plotline. In my Tales of the Known World saga, I strive to deliver all my exposition in a way that builds the character up rather than boring the reader with rehash, or worse, confusing the reader by jumping through time.

As for the pre-story story that you're tempted to tell via flashback...why not write it as a supplemental piece? Some stories are best told separately, so instead of bogging down your current manuscript with an extra storyline, offer it up as a related one-shot to your main tale. Or, compile a series of flashbacks for a related anthology or long-term periodical, which you can use to boost visibility when you launch your main story.


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