Today’s link for worldbuilding resources comes at the bottom of this post, as the top two links are items that a) won’t take up as much of your time and b) deserve to be read, just for the sake of searching for your eyeballs later after they have fallen out of their sockets.
So, in order of appearance, we have Way Creepy link, Spit-spewingly Hilarious link, and actual Worldbuilding link.
For the first, this is just too twisted and ghoulish of a romance for even my questionable tastes. Next thing you know, this will be the new reality show. Not only we will be trading houses and spouses, but faces. I mean, if you don’t like the way your significant other looks, then ask them to get a haircut, or wear less makeup, or clean out their ear wax. But plastic surgery? C’mon! I just wonder how the kids are going to turn out when they realize what their parents did.
Now, before you click this next link, make sure you aren’t currently drinking anything, nor are you going to knock over anything fragile when you fall into a laughing seizure.
Ready?
Evil Mutant Nazi Squirrels Attack!
Oh, you came back. I hoped you enjoyed that last one as much as I did. Yes, there is a third link. Two, as a matter of fact. Since Mir was kind enough to smile my way, I’ll also make mention of her link to Holly Lisle’s website and FAQ’s on worldbuilding. Holly Lisle is a champion of worldbuilding, and one of the authors who originally turned me on to the whole elaborate process, since I saw how awesome her books turned out because of it.
The new link for the day comes in the form of Jeffrey Carver’s free Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy course. Just click on the worldbuilding portion of it to see him go over some of the basic principles and approaches to worldbuilding and why it is so important in pretty much any speculative fiction work. He covers topics such as Concrete detail versus Implied detail, and making sure you have Consistency, a part of writing that runs deeper than just making sure your character’s eye color remains the same from beginning to end. Click on the Deeper Dimensions part to see further examples of how he applied these principles and methods to his own books. I find the best way to learn is by seeing it in action.
I see that smile.
Hi, Josh. I saw that story about the Chinese man who wants his new wife to have plastic surgery to look like his dead wife. I fear that it probably happens all too often here (in the US) that men pressure their wives to have work done. (Not my hubby, he’s too cheap.) I wonder if the ex-wife was “beautiful”? This story would be quite a bit more odd if he was asking the new wife to have her nose enlarged and warts added to her chin. She did say she feared that the surgery would make her ugly.
Nice blog. Good luck with your writing!
Glad you could drop by, Robin.
I guess it’s true that a lot of people get that same pressure to change how they look to please someone else…It just seems that for the most part the subtext of “surgery to look like someone else” (whether a starlet or otherwise) is more unspoken and less specific. People go for a few characteristics, lips, botox, etc. You don’t see people going in to surgeons for the Paris Hilton special because their boyfriends had a high school crush. Maybe that’s a marketing ploy plastic surgeons could start using to boost business. And I agree, it would be interesting to see the photos involved with this story.
Sqrl attack!
Hi Josh :).
Gah! Thank all that is furry and fluffy-tailed that I wasn’t going eighty miles per hour past a cop car when you dropped in.
About the Chinese couple:
They both need counseling–the kind where the counselor looks at them and very slowly says, “DO NOT GET MARRIED TO EACH OTHER.”
About the squirrel and the man on the Harley and the cops:
Could we please send multiple copies of this story to Congress and the Senate and the White House demand that they stop whatever else they are doing and read it???!!!
I suppose we could send it to Congress, but since no one there has any sense of humor left intact, I think it would cause them to spontaneously combust upon reading. Unless that was your intention all along.