Tanya Lisle

Author: Tanya

  • How to create holidays in fictional universes

    How to create holidays in fictional universes

    If you’re looking for a way to add a little extra flavour or realism to your fictional universe, you may be tempted to use the current holiday season as inspiration. And you should! Adding holidays is a great way to make your world feel more well rounded and is an interesting way to provide insight into the way the world works.

    But what are some ways that you can create a holiday that don’t feel like you’re just copying real world holidays? Here are a few things to consider!

    When is there an influx of food?

    A very common reason to celebrate is food! Think about how food plays a role in the celebrations we have in this world, and how that might translate to the world you have created. There is a long history of harvest festivals, or even just holidays that are based on creating tons and tons of food to bring people together to eat.

    In these cases, consider what kind of food would be available that is worth celebrating! These kinds of holidays are often seasonal and dependent on the earth operating in a fairly regular manner, so there’s a lot of opportunity to use this kind of holiday as a means of expositing things like how the environment functions and if there’s been any large changes from one year to the next that are unusual.

    Environmental events

    The longest and shortest days of the year are used here to determine the changing of the seasons. Full moons and solar eclipses and first snowfall have also been causes for celebration, though they are not as regular. Does your world have any traditions around these smaller events?

    Alternately, was there a large scale environmental event that caused a great change that the people in your world want to remember? Traditions could be formed around the idea that it might happen again, or just to remember the last time.

    Ruling powers changing

    In terms of a monarchy, the changing of power can be a big deal to the people under that rule. The death of a beloved or hated monarch might kick off a celebration of some sort, or even the crowning of the next in line.

    For a democratic society, there might be traditions around the day in which the people come together to decide on their new ruler. A day off of work for people to come together, or something that the people can witness as those in the running for power compete to take the rule.

    Cultural or religious reasons

    If your world has something unique about their culture or religions, are there any holy days or generally sacred practices that occur on a larger scale? Is there a public version of those traditions for those who may not be part of that culture or religion to also participate? Christmas is a holiday celebrated by people often regardless of religious affiliation, so does your world have something like that as well?

    A combination of these things!

    Sometimes these ideas can intersect! A full moon may be the day that the new ruler is crowned, or the harvest festival coincides with a large religious holiday. Look at ways that these things can intersect and see the opportunities that you can craft to use it to help with adding a little more flavour and interest into your worldbuilding.

    Write Your Story: Unlock Your Creative Potential

    Are you ready to embark on a journey into the world of storytelling? Look no further! Introducing Write Your Story, a comprehensive resource designed to fuel your imagination, enhance your storytelling skills, and bring your characters to life. Whether you’re an aspiring writer, a seasoned author, or simply someone who loves crafting stories, this workbook is your ultimate companion.

    This Workbook Contains:

    • Story planning spreads
    • Setting and location spreads
    • Character spreads
    • Writing session tracker

    Have you created any holidays for your fictional universes?

  • Cirque du Soliel – The Spark review

    Cirque du Soliel – The Spark review

    Today in taking out random books from the library, a book about Cirque! I have never been myself, but have always wanted to go. There’s a tent that I can see from the train when they come into town, but I haven’t been yet. So obviously I had to check out a book about it, even if it looks oddly like a business book.

    It’s not a business book, though, not really. It’s a motivational book about how to improve your life, but told through the framing device of a sports talent rep discovering the world of Cirque and having the people who work behind the scenes give him life advice via telling him about the intricacies about their job and how inspired they are by it.

    It’s clearly fictionalized if not entirely fictional. There is no way that everyone in Cirque speaks in quotables, I am sorry. But I did find it to be a very effective and entertaining way of getting the message across of finding your passion and understanding that the risks are worth the rewards of happiness in the end. It is a little heavy handed at times, but I still enjoyed it.

    If you’re looking for something a little different in the motivational self help genre, this one is certainly an interesting read. It’s also a very quick read, and you’ll be able to get through it without much trouble.

    Get it now
  • November new stuff round up!

    November new stuff round up!

    I may not be able to make my brain write fiction lately, but I’ve been keeping busy with a whole bunch of other creative adventures in the meantime!

    We have jewelry!

    We have Remy’s face on stuff!

    We have a super secret thing that only the newsletter is hearing about!

    And I have a quick update! I’m going to hold off on releasing any new stuff until January, so please stay tuned and I’ll let you know when there’s more! Yes, I know Christmas is just around the corner and I should be doing more but I am trying to rest for the year, so look forward to new releases come January.

  • She Means Business review

    She Means Business review

    Do I want to try and make my art into a business? Yes. Do I want to do what I’m required to do in terms of marketing and getting an audience to do it? Do I want to create a solid brand presence, niche down, get rid of half the stuff I’m doing so I can be consistent, build a loyal following off of that, and then diversify back out later? Nope! But I will read a business book or two in order to feel like I’m actively doing something to help my cause!

    This book is very much what I expect a girl boss business book to be. It feels 85% empty platitudes about how you can do anything, you’re awesome and amazing! There’s about 5% advice that is presented with the same kind of framing, with “Put it out into the universe” language without pointing out that getting your idea written down in a way where you can look at it and revise it is actually a good and practical thing. And then there’s about 10% actual business advice that I’m pretty familiar with in terms of how to find your target audience and be a brand.

    Also, there were pitches for her course throughout it and I am not a fan of that inside my library books. Make me look you up, don’t try to grab my email address in exchange for information you keep alluding to and never getting to.

    I like a lot of very concrete and practical advice, so this was very much not the kind of book I think I was ever going to be compatible with. The little bit of useful information that’s in there is pretty widely available elsewhere, but if you need a bit of that emotional support in your entrepreneurship journey, maybe it will work better for you.

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  • How to ask your audience about themselves

    How to ask your audience about themselves

    Like most authors with a newsletter, you want more information about the people reading your books and check your newsletters out. You want to know about what other books they like so you know how to position your own books in the market, or you want more information about the demographics to know if that young adult novel is being read by young adults!

    Or, you know, if they’re actually reading your books at all.

    Here are some other questions you can ask that will help you get answers to your questions that people might actually answer without feeling like you’re being overly invasive. And also get some great recommendations from your audience in the process!

    Question: Have you actually read any of my books?

    • Which is your favourite book of mine?
    • How do you feel about [Plot point from the 1/3 point of your book]?
    • Which character do you want to see more of?
    • Tell me what you think happened after the end of [Book title]!

    Question: What some comparative titles or authors to me or my books?

    • What’s your favourite book?
    • Recommend me an author!
    • Recommend me a book!
    • Recommend me a movie or TV show!

    Question: General demographic information such as age, location, etc.

    • What was your favourite book growing up?
    • What shows did you love growing up?
    • When is your favourite time to read?
    • Where is your favourite reading spot?

    Question: How should I position or market my book?

    • What’s your go to social media platform?
    • How do you find new books?
    • On a scale from 1 – 10, how much do you hate spoilers?
    • What kind of behind the scenes content do you love seeing?

    Question: What do you want of my books?

    • Do you prefer paperback or ebook? (Or whatever you have available, such as audiobook)
    • What are your favourite tropes?
    • What disappointed you about the last book you read?
    • What was the best thing about the last book you read?
    • What makes you put a book down?
  • Be Scared of Everything review

    Be Scared of Everything review

    I’m starting to realize one of the problems with posting these reviews once a week and post dating them to the next Friday is that it’s tricky to tell where my brain is in the healing process. It is not far enough, which is important to know for me talking about this book.

    This book is a series of essays, which I have only just learned is written works on a topic and not arguments written in a very specific, teacher-approved format. The topics were variable, all of them coming back to horror, and I know that I enjoyed the experience of reading it! But there was one main problem.

    I don’t remember a single thing that I read.

    This is not a reflection on the book, but how I’ve been during recovery. Because each of these essays was focused on only a couple ideas, my brain just wasn’t able to hold onto one when I started the next. It was a fascinating experience, and one that I will hopefully never experience again.

    But I do know that I enjoyed what I read, which is something! And if you were thinking about checking it out, do it! And then tell me what I read.

    Get it now
  • My life as a research project: Establish check ins

    My life as a research project: Establish check ins

    As I healed from my brain issues (Still going through it, it’s a slow process) I started looking at what I had of my plans and processes that I’d developed so far. For me, I know it’s good to check in now and then to see what worked, what didn’t, and make changes as necessary. Since I hit the point where I returned to work at the and of September, I took some time to look at what I was doing so far and start to think about how it’s been going so far.

    Does this work for me?

    Step one, of course, was going through what I had done already and determine the things that were good, bad, and maybe needed a revision. So let’s go through some of the ideas that I had put forth and figure out if they worked for me.

    Hypotheses

    These really did not work at all. The idea I had was that these would focus me on what I needed to do to make improvements, but I did not end up looking at them at all. Many of them were also just not good. They were things I already knew would help, so they weren’t so much hypotheses as statements.

    Metrics

    These kind of worked. Some metrics were definitely better than others, but having a single place for all metrics was not a good idea. Things like my budget tracking, for instance, were just for my finances for the whole month and did not account for things like when my computer died or the levy for my building. This made the numbers look like I was over spending when I was actually just hit with unexpected expenses.

    The idea of tracking numbers and measurable progress is good, but the details and methodology is not something I think works just yet.

    Projects

    Projects are absolutely something that work for me! I like having something firm that I can do with an end date and something measurable that comes out of them. The brain tracking for recovery was a great exercise in this and I definitely saw a lot of great things come of it. On top of that, it was great to have all of my tasks organized as a project.

    Monthly wrap up routine

    I started doing things on a monthly basis almost without thinking about it. It’s a habit I picked up from bullet journaling and I really liked having a routine of at least being able to sit down once a month to see my progress and make new plans to continue the momentum, or to see where I completely forgot about things.

    What am I missing?

    In doing all of this, I naturally found that I was missing something in this system.

    Ongoing items

    There’s things like habits that I really don’t have a good method of tracking. I know that drinking 2L of water a day does good things, as does going outside for a little for a walk, but it’s not really a metric that I know how to track within the existing system.

    Check in routine

    A formalized check in routine is going to be essential for figuring out how to make this work longer term. I don’t think doing it at the end of projects is really solid enough of a timeline, and I think that doing these revisions on a monthly basis with the end of the month wrap up might be too frequent. So I need to figure out something to see what works.

    Next steps

    Of course, with all of these things, I am going to start looking into things to revise. My current plans are:

    1. Find some way to track ongoing habits within the system
    2. Revise the existing metrics to work better for nuance
      1. See if those metrics are being tracked in the right place, or if they are even the right numbers
    3. Remove the hypotheses
    4. Plan for a formal check in and revision process once every 4 months
  • The Lazy Genius review

    The Lazy Genius review

    Look. I know. But fiction is still very hard for me and these self help, how to organize your life books are significantly easier for me to get through. And I’m also very bad at sticking to my choices anyway, so I’m reading another one of them!

    And this one isn’t too bad! Unlike a lot of the other books of this ouvre that I’ve read before, this book is mostly about outlining a structure over crafting very concrete rules about how to live your life and insisting that this way is the only way. And I like a book that is open to the idea that different specifics are going to work for different people.

    At a high level, the book focuses on a very simple idea: Put effort into the things that matter the most to you, and figure out a way to make the rest as automated and lazy as possible. Some of it is letting go of what isn’t important, like not having your house set up in a way that looks like it belongs in a magazine. While her examples don’t match my own life, the ideas behind the rules that she’s created feel like they could be adapted to fit most people, which is more than I can say for some of the other books I’ve read in this genre.

    Overall, I generally like it! While it might feel like a bit much if you’re currently overwhelmed and in need of something to get your life together right now, I think this book is a good guideline to help you refine a system into something that works better for you.

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  • 5 lessons from my decade doing NaNoWriMo

    5 lessons from my decade doing NaNoWriMo

    NaNoWriMo is a writing event that happens every November where the participants attempt to write 50,000 words of a novel in one month. It’s a great challenge for anyone who wants to finally get started on that book they’ve had in their heads.

    I did NaNoWriMo for a decade and wrote over a million words in my time. This is my second year not doing it, partially because of the brain issues and partially because I just don’t need it as much to get things done. So these were some of the lessons I learned.

    Getting it done fast meant getting it done

    I had an issue before this where I would start a lot of projects, only write when I was inspired, and never finish anything off because something else would catch my attention. Putting the time limit of a month on writing meant that I didn’t have time to get distracted by an idea or anything else and I started getting things done! And realizing that was a great step forward for me as a writer.

    I need to write out the whole story, beginning to ending

    Some people can edit as they go, but I am not one of them. Getting the whole story out and making changes as I go meant that I never lost the momentum and had more of a chance to experiment with things. I could make the change, try it out for a few thousand words, and then decide that I did or did not like it and make a note to adjust things as I went. It certainly made the rewrites a lot more cumbersome, but I enjoyed the process a lot more this way.

    A loose plot outline is a girl’s best friend

    I have tried going in with absolutely no clue about what was going to happen, and I have gone in with a strictly structured, chapter by chapter plot outline. Both extremes did not work for me at all. I have found my sweet spot is a list of really loose plot points that I want to hit to get from beginning to end, as well as a few really cool scenes. That way I have a lot of flexibility to change things as I go and don’t feel either lost or trapped by my choices at the start.

    How to structure my notes

    Because I tend to make mental updates as I went, I struggled for a while with how to keep track of the changes so that I could fix it all up and make the story cohesive when I returned to it. That meant that I had an opportunity to figure out what information I needed so that I could actually do that, from character details that I needed to remember for later to whole scenes that I wanted to include earlier in the story.

    [Workbook plug]

    I made the workbook as a way for me to keep notes as I was writing for changes or things I wanted to get into the story when I wasn’t working on it at the moment, or so that I could remember details later.

    You can make friends as an adult!

    As a person who was growing into adulthood, I knew that making friends was going to be difficult the older I got. With NaNoWriMo, I was able to find people who shared my love of writing who all came from different areas and lives. It’s been the place I’ve gotten many of my friends as an adult, and I’ll always be grateful to it for that.

  • No Gods, No Monsters review

    Today in books that I’ve had on hold since before I got sick and was worried that I wasn’t going to be able to actually read because I wasn’t sure how good my brain was! I really had no idea what I was getting into and, yet again, I did not read the blurb and just dove right in and hoped that I would be okay in the brain to read it.

    This book doesn’t quite have a main character to follow, or a solid plot line to talk about. It is about a world where there are monsters hiding among humans, who fear for their lives and their discovery, and who know they will be persecuted for their mere existence. With a single video of a police officer shooting a black man that also happened to be a werewolf, their existence is exposed to the world and the different groups and individuals of this world struggle to find a way forward, to live in a world that wants them gone.

    I have looked at other reviews, but I am not quite at a point where I was able to pick up the probably very clear allegory between minority groups and monsters, mostly because many of the monsters we see were also minorities or people who were under privileged to start with which made it hard for me to put a lot together the way I think I was supposed to. We’re going to blame that on the lingering brain damage.

    As a narrative, it had a delightfully ethereal feeling to it in the way it was told. It was a little harder for me for the moment, but I really do like the idea of the story being told as what was happening to a whole lot of different individuals that happen to cross paths rather than as a core narrative with a solid protagonist. It felt like the correct choice for the story being told, and made it feel like a bigger and more complex thing than it might have told any other way.

    Overall, I really did enjoy it! If you get a chance, definitely check it out!

    Get it now