How To Incorporate Worldbuilding Into Writing
A SWC Workshop

Introduction

Worldbuilding is essential in all types of writing– whether it be a land far away, another galaxy, or even your hometown… there is worldbuilding in every style and genre. You can know every nook and cranny of your world, but that doesn’t always translate to the page. In this workshop, I’ll be going over how to incorporate worldbuilding naturally into your writing!

Why is worldbuilding important?

There are so many reasons why worldbuilding is crucial, but the main one is it allows the reader to see and understand your world, whether it be fantastical or based in reality. Each place in the world is slightly different, and it is the individuality in a setting that allows it to shine!

When adding worldbuilding into your writing, you never want to burden the reader with information. In many cases, less is more when it comes to worldbuilding. Readers only need to know the things that directly affect your characters and plot.

Worldbuilding in fantasy writing

Worldbuilding in fantastical writing often encompasses the entire world. Magic systems, if they exist, government structures, customs, cultures… When writing a fantastical piece, there are many things to cover!

The main thing to keep in mind when describing things in fantasy settings (and many other types of settings as well) is that even though readers might not know what exactly you are talking about if you compare it to something they are familiar with, then you can get your point across more quickly.

For example, if you are describing a species in your world that resembles a wolf, but has scales like a dragon, you could say:

The beast was four-legged and about the size of a small log, with a wide snout and sharp teeth, and covered in thick, armor-like scales.

That gets your point across, but is a lot of words and actually quite vague overall. Instead, you could say:

The beast was the size and build of a wolf, and covered in scales, not unlike a dragon

This gets your point across in fewer words and gives an overall clearer picture!

Keep in mind that often, short and snappy descriptions are the way to go about introducing your reader to your world. You can very simply describe a mermaid, and you can describe a bumblebee in great detail. Even if the reader isn't innately familiar with your creatures, magic system, or setting, it is easy enough to get your point across by comparing it to something the reader is familiar with.

Of course, this is by no means the only way to go about writing in description of creatures or things in your world, but it is a way to clearly introduce it to the reader!

Worldbuilding in contemporary writing

The term ‘worldbuilding’ is usually associated with fantastical worlds, but even contemporary writings have worldbuilding in them! While readers are familiar with the world as a whole, there are still small bits of an individual world that make it unique. When thinking about worldbuilding in contemporary stories, I’d recommend thinking about the vibe that you want your story to have and incorporating it into the setting and word choices you use to build your world.

For example, if you’re writing a mystery, you’d describe your setting using darker, moodier words that build suspense! The end goal is still the same as in fantastical writing– allow the readers to see and understand your world!

3 things to consider when adding in worldbuilding

How much would your character know?

In stories like Keeper of the Lost Cities or Harry Potter, where the character is brand new to the world, this question is easy: they don’t know anything. This way, you can add in more general sections of information, as your character is noticing every little detail that is different from the world that they are used to. In Harry Potter, Harry doesn’t know anything about the wizarding world– the currency, the customs, or even the basics of magic– so the reader learns it along with your character.

If your character is a native to the world, however, then incorporating worldbuilding is a little harder, but certainly not impossible. If your character has already been in your world for some time, then they don’t notice anything, they just take it to be normal. For example, if you got into your car, you wouldn’t think: “The technology of today has improved, so we can use these four-wheeled vehicles to get around to places faster.” Since you wouldn’t think it, why would your character?

Does your reader need to know this information now?

Readers care about your characters– even if you have a wonderfully well-built world full of unique intricacies, it is the characters that give your story life. When readers pick a book up, they want to escape and be able to feel something– be able to care about your characters. They begin to care about the world when it affects your characters.

Even if there is a part of your world that you love, if it doesn’t advance the plot or affect your characters, then readers don’t need to know it, and it doesn’t need to be included. If the government in your world doesn’t affect your characters or advance the plot, you don’t need to explain the whole government structure!

Show, don’t tell

Chances are you’ve heard this advice before, so I won’t touch on it too much. However, this is very important to keep in mind as you go about introducing worldbuilding into your story!

If the kingdom in your story is full of crime and has a strong military presence, don’t simply tell your reader this, instead, consider showing the officers stationed at every corner and the way that the character scans the crowd to check for any pickpockets or thieves!

Of course, this advice is in no way all-encompassing, for there are certainly some times when telling your reader something is the easier and more direct way to convey information quickly to your reader!

Ways to incorporate worldbuilding into your writing

Daily interactions

When incorporating worldbuilding into your story, a lot of it can also show things about your character as well. Going back to my previous example of a place riddled with military and crime, you can show your character being stopped by an officer on the street and asked if they’ve seen a thief. If your character simply gives the straight answer of “No, I haven’t seen them” and continues with their day, this shows a lot about what is ordinary in their world, and how they react to situations!

Along with that, characters can also notice other people interacting. Are the interactions mostly cordial, or are they more hostile? What are the people around them wearing, what are they talking about? Just these simple daily interactions and your character's reaction to them can reveal a lot, both about the character and the world around them!

Introducing something out of the ordinary

Another way to add worldbuilding into your story is by introducing something that breaks the status quo and draws your character’s attention. For example, if most people in your world have short hair, introduce somebody with longer hair. This draws your characters’ attention, as this isn’t something that they are used to. Through this, you can also compare your new character to what the character considers “normal.”

Diary entries, newspaper clippings, etc

The last way I’m going to cover in this workshop are things such as diary entries, newspaper clippings, and the like. These can be inserted between sections or chapters, revealing more information about the world around the character without the character directly interacting or noticing these things.

Examples of this in pre-existing books include the diary entries in Scythe and the search results in Aurora Rising!

With this method, however, be careful it doesn’t come across like a textbook– it still should advance what is currently happening in the plot and be relevant to what the reader needs to know about your characters! A fun way to help with this is to give the author of these sections an unique personality– if you include newspaper clippings from a newspaper that exists in your fictional world, give the “author” of these clippings an interesting personality that has the reader enjoying these sections just as much as the regular story!

Conclusion

And with that, this workshop comes to a close! I hope that through reading this, you learned something new and can tackle incorporating worldbuilding into your writing with a little more confidence– best of luck and happy writing <3

Main Sources

• https://www.bookish-delights.com/how-to-introduce-readers-to-your-fantasy-world-without-info-dumping/

• https://amiekaufman.com/podcast/season-1/episode-3-how-to-show-worldbuilding/

• The Kate and Abby Show (Podcast) – Demystifying World Building (available on Y0utube, Spotify, and several other audio streaming services!)

(sorry for the delay, I asked for an extension and got it granted <3)

Using Incorrect Grammar Purposefully In Narrative Writing
A workshop

“In the writing world you can only get away with breaking the rules, if it is obvious you are doing it on purpose.”

Introduction

Welcome, SWCers, to another workshop! In this, we will be going through why we use incorrect grammar purposely, as well as how to implement it while keeping a balance–all in narrative writing. However, please keep in mind that you should use this only if they fulfill a purpose in your story, and not only for the sake of it. That being said, let’s dive in!

Reasons to implement incorrect grammar:

1 - Using incorrect grammar as a form of characterisation


This essentially means deliberately using incorrect linguistics as a way of making characters more distinct, or different. In this itself, there are several ways to set characters apart from one another.


Way of making them more ‘human’, showcasing how people make errors.

Example: “I don’t know what I’m gonna do! He—he just left and now, what do I—what do I even do now? It's like, everything was fine and then—then it wasn't!”

In this, the character speaks using inconsistent tenses, incomplete sentences, repetition of words, run-on sentences, and lack of proper structure to showcase this, creating an impact or an effect that truly shows us how flustered or worried they are. This could work better than using complete sentences and consistent grammar.

A way of showcasing the impact of mental health disorders

Example: ‘In a community college English lit class, we read a book told from the perspective of someone suffering from PTSD. It was non-linear. The story jumped through time as a representation of the main character’s mental instability.’
(Taken from a website)

The non-linear structure of the story, jumping through time, reflects the main character’s mental instability, mimicking the fragmented, disjointed way someone with PTSD experiences time. This shows the character’s chaotic, jumbled thought processes, displaying their emotional turmoil of living with trauma.

A way of displaying illiteracy

If you’re working on a story narrated in the first person, and the narrator is uneducated, you could plan on writing their voice that way–with poor grammar, or even spelling mistakes.

Example: Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is probably the most famous example in American literature of sustained deliberate bad grammar. There are a few misspellings, with words that Huck himself doesn't know how to spell. He says "The Widow Douglas she took me for her son and allowed she would sivilize me".

You could also use it as space for character development. For example, in a book about a girl named Claireece, who struggled with illiteracy and had limited knowledge of English, the story shows her growth. As Claireece progresses , her grammar improves, and her vocabulary steadily expands, showcasing her character development.

A way of showcasing traditional customs

In a story set in a more rural community, people might have a different traditional style of talking.

For example: “We don’t do them things like the city folks do. In our ways, we learn from the land and listen to the winds, and them winds don’t lie, no sir.”

This dialogue intentionally uses incorrect grammar to convey a sense of regional dialect that truly convinces the audience that they're from that particular place. For example, instead of having your character say ‘I come from Texas’, you could have them say ‘I’m from Texas, ain’t no doubt.’ This makes us clearly understand which place they're from, another feat that the use of intentional incorrect grammar fulfills.

2 - To create an effect

We can be deliberately ungrammatical for effect— to be folksy, humorous, emphatic, etc. as in an example when a person uses ain't. This extends to effects such as sensational spelling and exaggerated pronunciation like Tony the Tigers cereal catchphrase ‘They’re grrrrrreat!’ and ‘Our computer is so sloooow.’

Using limited punctuation to create urgency/anxiousness

You can't get that creative with semicolons or colons, but you can play around a bit with commas, dashes, and periods. You can also see what happens when you neglect punctuation altogether, though this technique should be used sparingly and for a very clear purpose. If your protagonist is enduring emotional turmoil, and your story is being told from their perspective, you might omit some punctuation to reflect a state of mind during a key event.

For example: Before I knew what I was doing, I was running up and down the aisles of the store, my sandals slapping the cold tile with each pounding step, and I was yelling—no, screaming—for my son. My mind was racing, my breathing hard. Oh God what have I done where is he my son please God I can't have lost him oh God I lost him I lost him I lost him.

Fiction can be enhanced by the deliberate misuse of grammar. Plenty of writers use fragment sentences to create urgency. Run-on sentences have gotten a work out in fiction, too. Faulkner wrote individual sentences that lasted pages. Jack Kerouac often used run-ons to create rhythm and momentum, creating the definitive style that is showcased in On the Road.

Creating a gentle, aesthetic or dreamy effect

Sometimes, in a story, you might want to create a moment of vulnerability where the character reveals their thoughts, or you might be capturing a dreamy, fantastical scene. In these cases, you might want to consider dropping capitalization and using only lowercase letters. This is because using capital letters could just collapse that vulnerabilty and feel too harsh for the gentler aura you're trying to go for.

For example: she gazed at the starry night, padding softly in the lush green grass as she hummed a sad tune: the world outside, blurry and distant. she laid down on the ground as her thoughts drifted, unearthed, like the wind. maybe in another life, we would've been something more, she thought as tears stubbornly dripped down her face. something more.

In this, lowercase helps create a world that feels more fluid and immersive, blurring the lines between the real and the imagined. It gives a sense of weightlessness, making the story feel like a journey through an unfamiliar, magical realm where the rules don’t necessarily apply.

Throwing special attention to a certain scene

Breaking grammatical rules can create an intentional pause or stumble, drawing attention to certain moments and forcing the reader to slow down and reflect.

For example (after paragraphs of normal grammatical structure): the sky—so dark, so endless—wasn’t supposed to be like this. there should have been stars. there should have been something. but all there was, was this empty blackness, swallowing everything. and she stood there, frozen, staring. frozen.

After a series of normal grammatical sentence structures, fragmented sentences can help draw more attention to specific scenes, as well as the emptiness of the moment. Again, the lack of capitalization in this sector makes it feel more vulnerable and gentle, which enhances the event immensely.

How to implement intentional use of inpropper grammar.

Now that you know most of the cases in which to use incorrect grammar in narrative writing, it's time to implement it. It's vital to know that you're using this to achieve a particular goal, and before you start writing, spend a few minutes to think about it.

Is your character going through literally development? Are they from a place where the dialects spoken have a traditional twist? Are they in a sort of emotional turmoil that puts them through something? Are they going through mental instability or disorders? These are all things that you need to consider before using incorrect grammar, as well as more factors like the ones explored above.

Now that you've done that, it's almost time to wrap it up. However, before you go, along with the above advice–keep your incorrect grammar consistent. This is extremely integral towards the writing of your story. Using English as an example, a New Yorker with bad grammar wouldn't make the same mistakes as a South African with bad grammar, who wouldn't make the same mistakes as an Irishman with bad grammar. Some things might be closer in different countries, but never the same. If you suddenly switch traditional dialects in the middle of a dialogue, that just doesn't make sense!

Conclusion

Congratulations, you made it through this workshop! In this, you should have learned why and how to use incorrect grammar intentionally in narrative writing. Head back to your weekly and complete the designated task–I hope you had fun learning about this. Good luck, campers–we can't wait to see what you come up with!

I got a 48 hour extension, so apologies for it being a bit late <3
I hope it looks okay, I haven't written a workshop before. Did I add enough information?




Introduction

You’ve probably heard of all the different writing rules from teachers, videos, SWC, articles, and books. Some common ones that we are told include “show, don’t tell,” “don’t use said,” or “avoid adverbs.”

But today, we’re going to be breaking those so-called rules.

Which rules of writing can you break?

To put it simple, you can break any rule that you'd like! After all, the story is yours.

But, some authors like to keep their audience in mind when writing the story. If you want your readers to understand what's going on, you'll want to make sure you don't overuse the rule or break it too much.

Finding a Balance

You don’t need to have an all or nothing mindset when it comes to writing rules. Instead, find an in-between.

For example, when using the “don’t use said” rule, you don’t need to always use other words. But, that doesn’t mean you should always use said either. Find a way to vary in dialogue! You can use said, adverbs, synonyms of said, actions, or nothing. It doesn’t always have to be “she said” or “he said”, but it should also not always be “he shouted” or “she whispered.”

Find an in-between!

When should I break the rule?

Each rule varies. For example, use adverbs when you’re describing something to convey emotion in your writing, tell something to the reader when passing time, or use said every so often.

You can also read your writing out loud or ask a friend to critique it if you are unsure if it sounds good or not.

Make sure that if you were reading it from your reader’s perspective, they’d still be able to follow along and know what’s going on. In the end, it all comes down to how you want your ideas to be seen.

Why should I break the rules?

Breaking the rules causes variety in your writing! It'll set your writing apart from others and give you your own unique style.

Conclusion

To summarize, you can break rules as much or as little as you’d like! It is your story after all. But, if you want to make sure it’s understandable for your readers, make sure to have a good balance in-between.

When in doubt, ask a fellow writer for feedback or critique!