Monthly Archives: April 2019

Writing Exercises for Stories with a Ruling Nobility

30 Tuesday Apr 2019

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(A message from our sponsors: pre-order your copy of The Wand that Rocks the Cradle: Magical Stories of Family now, and get special Kickstarter-exclusive bonuses! A collection of fantasy short stories that range from tender, to grim, to poignant, to breathtaking, The Wand that Rocks the Cradle is a Lagrange Books anthology you don’t want to miss!)

This writing exercise is meant to accompany this post about the Nobility “polity,” in which power is divided among several autonomous nobles who nevertheless feel part of a common nation or society. If you like this exercise, read the above-linked post first and then come back.

  1. Spend five minutes thinking about your nobility. What makes the nobles independent of a central authority like a king? What is the source of their power? Do they have land? Their own militaries? Control over trade routes? Magic?
  2. What feature of this region, or your larger setting, makes it difficult for a central authority to project power and control the nobles? If there is no such feature, why hasn’t a king or other powerful ruler arisen? Or was there a ruler before, who became weak or was overthrown?
  3. Is there a nominal central ruler, like a high king or president? Is the ruler weak and getting stronger, weak and getting weaker, strong and getting weaker, or strong and getting stronger?
  4. Are the nobles organized in any sort of council? Do they have bonds of loyalty or partnership or citizenship? What ties them to each other? (If no such ties exist, then they are not strictly speaking “nobles,” but a collection of autocrats ruling over many tiny states.)
  5. What rivalries exist between different nobles? How might someone else exploit them?
  6. How might the nobles take power from each other over time? How might the nobles take power from the central ruler? How might the central ruler take power from the nobles?
  7. Does the central ruler have a “courtier” class? How are courtiers rivals to the nobles?
  8. Could any noble be tempted to ally against the others with the ruler, or with a foreign power?
  9. Thinking about all the possibilities you’ve written down, which have the most resonance with the story you want to tell?

The Wand that Rocks the Cradle—Author Interview with Joanna Hoyt

29 Monday Apr 2019

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Thanks for checking out The Wand that Rocks the Cradle! Periodically, we will be publishing author interviews or essays to help you get to know them better. Today, we are joined by author Joanna Hoyt, who contributed the short story “Legacy.'”

***

If you had to tell someone, “If you like this person’s stories, you would like mine too,” who would you pick?

That’s a hard question.  I think my short stories share some common features with the writings of Elizabeth Goudge, Edith Pargeter, and Ursula Le Guin…but when I say this, a rather loud voice in the back of my mind says “Well! Giving ourselves airs, aren’t we?” and a quieter voice suggests that Le Guin and Goudge might not have approved of each other, though I am not at all sure they might not have liked each other.  But if someone liked all three of those authors, I think they’d find something to like in my stories as well.

What attracted you to writing?

The same thing that attracted me to breathing, I think.  I craved stories as far back as I can remember—I wanted to hear them, read them, tell them. I wrote my first story when I was three. After illustrating the first page I realized I had completely misunderstood my main character…

(Read more…)

The Wand that Rocks the Cradle: a Kickstarter Campaign

28 Sunday Apr 2019

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Families are full of magic. To celebrate that magic, Lagrange Books is proud to present The Hand that Rocks the Cradle, our forthcoming anthology of fantasy short stories from a fantastic group of authors.

Pre-order with our Kickstarter campaign to access exclusive rewards, including five bonus stories only available to Kickstarter backers! You can even get your own story critiqued by the anthology’s editor, get a full edit from anthology author Joanna Hoyt, or a custom flash fiction from anthology author WO Hemsath!

Check out all this and more!

Coming this Sunday: First Look at “The Wand that Rocks the Cradle”!

24 Wednesday Apr 2019

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I’m so excited, I can hardly wait—the Kickstarter for The Wand that Rocks the Cradle: Magical Stories of Family is going live this Sunday!

We’re going to have all kinds of great content over the next month: interviews with contributing authors, dramatic readings of story excerpts, and more.

If you enjoy fantasy, and you also enjoy stories exploring family, and you definitely enjoy fantasy stories exploring family… then don’t miss The Wand that Rocks the Cradle! You can pre-order starting on Sunday, and get all kinds of cool backer rewards too.

Looking forward!

Writing exercises for regime types: the Palace

22 Monday Apr 2019

Posted by in Politics for Worldbuilders, State Formation

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(This post is part of Politics for Worldbuilders, an occasional series.)

This series of exercises refers back to this post on “The Palace,” a regime type where power is centralized in a single autocratic figure like a dictator, a powerful king, or other ruler. If you like these exercises, first go back to the above-linked post and read it, then come back and work on the exercises.

  1. Thinking about your ruler, what is the source of his/her power?
  2. What claim justifies the ruler’s legitimacy? Why do the ruler’s followers obey? (Examples: is the ruler thought to be a god? Or anointed by God? Is the ruler part of a special bloodline? Or the victor in a ritual combat over the succession? Does the ruler have the most stock shares in the corporation? Is the ruler simply the richest or most powerful figure?) How does that claim to legitimacy exclude the possibility of popular sovereignty or other forms of rule?
  3. Does the specific form of legitimacy claimed by the ruler imply certain restraints on the ruler’s behavior? Must the ruler spend time propitiating the ancestral spirits, or delivering shareholder reports, or meditating and generating magical power?
  4. Who are the members of Palace “court”? How might their power or influence be dependent on the Palace? What privileges do “courtiers” have because of their proximity to the Palace?
  5. How might the Palace prevent the growth of independent powerful figures (“nobles”)?
  6. How can the courtiers influence the ruler?
  7. If the ruler is feckless or incapacitated, which courtiers might usurp effective (but not de jure) power?
  8. How might the ruler be overthrown? Is such an overthrow consistent with the existing ruling ideology, or would it need to put forward a new ideology?
  9. Looking back over all the ideas you’ve written down, which have the most resonance for your story?

Writing Exercises on “Keeping Power”

18 Thursday Apr 2019

Posted by in Politics, Politics for Worldbuilders, State Formation, Writing

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(This post is part of Politics for Worldbuilders, an occasional series.)

This exercise is meant to apply to concepts of this post, which discusses a flexible model for quickly sketching out the key political conflicts in your setting—focusing on who the ruler must keep happy in order to stay in power. If you like the exercises below and want to use them, first read the linked post and then come back.

  1. Spend five minutes thinking about your setting, then list all the kinds of people who have any influence at all on who the leader is. Are they powerful generals? Wealthy merchants? Priests? Voters in a democracy? Voters in an oligarchy or stratified society? Nobles? Regional governors? Board directors or shareholders of a corporation? This is the selectorate.
  2. Of all those people, what is the minimum level of support a leader would need to stay in power? How many different ways are there to put together such a support coalition?
  3. What could a leader offer his/her coalition members to keep them loyal? How could the leader threaten them?
  4. If a coalition member is disloyal, how easily could the member be replaced by the leader with another member of the selectorate?
  1. If the selectorate is unhappy with the leader, how easily could a new support coalition be built behind someone else?
  2. How might policies that favor the support coalition harm people outside of it? (For example, taxing the populace and giving a subsidy to coalition members.) How might potential policies to benefit outsiders harm members of the coalition, and thus be rejected? (For example, building a port that would make grain cheaper, when your supporters are rich landowners who sell grain.)
  3. How could new classes of people join the selectorate? (For example, women gaining the right to vote.) Who would benefit from such a change?
  4. How could existing classes of people lose their place in the selectorate? (For example, a democracy becoming a dictatorship; or powerful religious leaders being displaced by a religious purge.) Who would benefit from such a change?
  5. What might change to allow the leader to need fewer supporters, or to force the leader to seek more supporters?
  6. Looking at all the possibilities for conflict that you listed above, which has the most resonance for the story you want to tell?

Coming Soon: “The Wand that Rocks the Cradle”

14 Sunday Apr 2019

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Sorry for the radio silence recently! You’ll be happy to know that it’s because:

  1. I’ve been mailing out the paperback books to Kickstarter backers of The Odds Are Against Us,  and, of more general interest,
  2. We’re getting ready to launch another Kickstarter for the next anthology!

This one is the “Family” fantasy anthology which we announced back in December. I am pleased to reveal that the anthology’s title will be The Wand that Rocks the Cradle: Magical Stories of Family.

We have a great lineup of authors for you, and the stories will take your breath away. You’ll be able to pre-order your copy soon, along with all kinds of fun bonuses; so if you want to know when the Kickstarter goes live, sign up here and be sure to check “Fantasy Fiction.”

Editing this collection is so much fun! I can’t wait to get it into your hands.