We…need worldbuilding?

Seth Dickinson · 30 Aug 2013

Seth Dickinson did not write this page.

Every claim below was made in this piece, quoted word for word and numbered in the order the piece makes them, so you can read it there rather than take our word for it. The sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording. Each quote was checked against a stored copy of the page at build time; where the two differ, the quote is the fact.

Our reading
Readers should discover a fantasy world’s magic with the characters, not from an index at the back of the book.

Their wordsI don’t want to learn about your magic system from an index at the back of the book. I want to discover it with the characters.
Our reading
Fantasy’s greatest sin of the past fifty years may be its bland, invariant, faux-medieval European backdrop.

Their wordsIn the past fifty years, fantasy’s greatest sin might be its creation of a bland, invariant, faux-Medieval European backdrop.
Our reading
Writers who rely on their automatic defaults will produce sexist, racist writing, because the culture they absorbed has those tendencies.

Their wordsIf you stick to your easy automatic tendencies, you’ll produce sexist, racist writing – because our culture still has sexist, racist tendencies, tendencies we internalize

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