If you're looking for examples, the first one that always comes to my mind is Dune, where the beliefs of both the Fremen and the broader galaxy aren't just window-dressing setting details but are critical for the development of the plot. The Actual Star by Monica Byrne is another one where the religion is woven in, and it also uses a long timeview that explores how traditions and beliefs shift over thousands of years, which makes it a particularly fun read for folks with an interest in mythology. On the fantasy side, Ann Leckie's The Raven Tower and Kerstin Hall's Star Eater are two I've read in recent years that employ religion and mythology in a very interesting and effective way. In the horror realm, V. Castro's Goddess of Filth twists real-world religions into new speculative plot threads.

Creating a religion wholesale might sound like a very daunting task, and it can be if you let it be. But just like with creating your own language, you don't necessarily need to make a religion fully practice-able for it to come across as real on the page. Here's the steps I take when I'm creating a religion for one of my story worlds, as someone who has done a significant (what some might call excessive) amount of research into both real-world and fictional religions.

Step 1: Establish who or what adherents worship.

Every religion or spiritual system has something at its core that is the primary target of prayers, rituals, and other activities related to the religion. This can be literally anything, if you're inventing a religion of your own, but there are a few common categories among extant religions:

• Monotheistic - Have a single, central deity who is typically also seen as a creator figure. The Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) are the most obvious example of this from Earth religions.
• Polytheistic - Have a set of deities, which often have their own internal hierarchy or regional affiliations, and are frequently assigned specific areas of dominion (e.g. the sea, the earth, death, rain/storms, etc.). Familiar examples of this include Hindu gods or Norse, Greek, and Egyptian mythologies.
• Animistic - Belief that spirits inhabit or govern aspects of the natural world, which can include landscape features, weather, celestial objects, specific locations, or living things like plants and animals. Many religions from Asia and Oceania are examples of this, including Ainu, some forms of Shinto, and Aboriginal Austraian and Pacific Island traditions. The beliefs of the Sami people of northern Europe also fit this category, as do many beliefs from across the Americas.
• Pantheistic - A single “god” that is amorphous and seen as synonymous with the universe, reality, or nature. Some Hindu and Taoist traditions can be seen as examples of this.
• Ancestor veneration - Real historical people are the target of prayers and ritual practices. These could be immediate ancestors who are remembered by living practitioners or distant, semi-mythologized figures. Examples of this can be found in Shinto and Japanese Buddhism, as well as many indigenous religions from across continents.
• Object veneration - You might also see this called fetishism or idolatry, and is when a physical object is the target of worship. Usually the object is seen as having supernatural powers or origin. Pure object-based religions on Earth are fairly rare, but some form of this can be seen in things like the icons of Greek Orthodoxy, the treatment of relics in Catholicism, or the shintai in Shinto.

...this is certainly not a comprehensive list, and you'll see variations or combinations of these practices, too, but that at least a place to start.

If you're going with a pantheon or animistic system, then it's also smart to establish roughly how many spirits or deities the religion has and whether those are seen as universal or regional, or a mix of both. In the ancient Greek pantheon, for example, there were some core gods like Zeus and Athena that had adherents just about everywhere it was practiced, but there were also many localized gods seen as the patrons of specific areas or cities.

Another thing to think about that can help to shape the other aspects of the religion is the distance believers see between themselves and the subject of their devotion. In other words, how much do the spirits interact with the physical world? Again, there a few levels of this in Earth religions:

• Deism – “God as clockmaker,” where the central deity created existence but doesn't involve itself in day-to-day affairs
• Distant deity reachable through intermediaries – The central deity (or deities) can't be directly accessed by humans, so humans instead ask for other figures to intercede on their behalf, often lesser deities, ancestors, or supernatural beings like spirits, angels, daemons, etc. It's also common for specific humans to be capable of more direct or higher-level interaction with the spiritual realm, like if some prayers can only be made by trained priests. Yoruba is a prime example of this, as are Christian concepts like praying to saints.
• Direct prayer to nontangible deities – A very common model in extant world religions, seen in most Protestant Catholic sects as well as Sikhism, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and many, many others. Individuals can directly make offerings or prayers to the target of worship.
• Deities or spirits are physically present on Earth – This is typical of animistic religions, where spirits are seen as being physically embodied by aspects of nature, but is also common in polytheistic traditions. Ancient Greek gods were thought to regularly come to Earth and interact with people, while Hindu deities regularly manifest on Earth.
• Spirit mediation/mediums/shamans – A variant of intercession, where trained individuals are able to interact directly with the spirits, deities, or ancestors. Examples of this can be found across Asia and the Americas, including the Sami noaidi, the Buryat and Mongolian böö, the Korean Mudang, the Vodou Houngan/Manbo, and the Candomblé Babalorixá/Iyalorixá.

....basically, you want to figure out if regular people can interact with the target of worship, who does it on their behalf if not, and how likely they think it is that supreme figure(s) will intercede (or even care).

Step 2: Choose and sketch out their holy texts.

Note that these don't have to be written texts, if it's an oral tradition, but that's a shorthand for the broader concept here: every religion has some kind of scriptures, liturgy, mythology, or other core set of words that are used in prayers and religious ceremonies. This text often includes stuff like:

• Creation or origin stories about the world, humanity, and/or the religion itself
• Explanation of the cosmology (e.g. any heavens, underworlds, spirit worlds, etc.)
• Afterlife structure and beliefs
• Legends or myths about the gods, ancestors, spirits, saints, prophets, culture heroes, etc.
• Apocalyptic narratives or end-times prophecies
• Geneaologies or hierarchies for ancestors, deity pantheons, or major figures like prophets, priests, etc.
• Doctrines outlining the core beliefs
• Rules or tales to establish the religion's moral compass, sins, virtues, and good vs. bad behavior
• Commandments or laws followers are expected to follow (forbidden behaviors, family/marriage rules, dietary restrictions, etc.) and the rewards or punishments for adhering to/breaking them
• Instructions for or descriptions of rituals, prayers, ceremonies, initiations, rites, festivals, offerings, etc. and any other strategies for interacting with supernatural beings
• Calendar for sacred days, important festivals, or other religious observances
• Descriptions of and rules related to sacred objects or locations
• Prayers, hymns, or incantations used during those things above
• Direct accounts that are attributed to gods, spirits, prophets, founders, or other figures related to the religion
• Descriptions of (and rules for) religious offices and practitioners

It's important to note here, you definitely don't need to include all of those things among an invented religion's texts. A lot of real religions don't include all of them, either. Look at this like a menu more than a recipe, and pick and choose the things that will be the most useful for your world and story.

As far as whether to actually write them or not, I would say that's a story-by-story question. If the religion's practices directly impact the day-to-day lives of the characters or are central to the plot, then it likely will be helpful to at least write their core tenets or commandments as a reference, even if those never get directly included in the story. But that doesn't mean you need to write out the religion's equivalent of a Bible. For most stories, just knowing the mythology's big-picture arc, major players, and core beliefs will let you build it into the fabric of the society. If you do plan to have characters quoting scripture or saying prayers on-page, you can write those on a per-need basis then compile them into your notes for future reference.

Step 3: Decide where, when, and how the religion is practiced.

A lot of these details are things that might be included in those religious texts from the last step, but they're also something you want to solidify independently because this is the physical manifestation of the religion that you'll actually be able to portray on the page. A lot of these things are going to flow organically out of the other things you've already decided about the religion. If it's an animistic belief system, for instance, then it's logical that their rituals would take place in nature, and would likely follow the rhythms of that landscape, aligning with things like weather patterns, the position of celestial bodies, or the lifecycles of local plants and animals.

Some questions you can ask yourself that can be helpful at this stage:

• Are there specific buildings where this religion is practiced? If so, what do they look like and where are they located within communities?
• Do certain members of the religion live in designated places? (e.g. a monastery for monks)
• Do individual members of the religion have altars or religious iconography in their homes?
• Do prayers or rituals need to happen in a specific place?
• How often do religious ceremonies take place?
• Are similar steps repeated in every ceremony, or are there different traditions for different occasions?
• How do people dress during religious ceremonies?

Again, you don't need to spell out every little detail, but you want to go deep enough that you have a sense for how belonging to this religion impacts the rhythm of your characters' daily life. It can also be useful material to mine for story beats or world details that can add depth to the story for readers.

Step 4: Identify the religion's symbols and sensory details.

Speaking of mining things for world depth, these are the details you can really make some hay with, as it were, more than the big-picture concepts. The symbols associated with a religion become a shorthand for those beliefs, and you can sprinkle them in selectively to quickly give readers information about characters or locations once you establish what those symbols represent.

Sensory details, meanwhile, are what really give the religion that lived-in feel. This includes sight details, like ritual attire, the architecture and decor of religious spaces, or iconography that believers would display or wear. Sound is also a common aspect of religious ritual: specific hymns, chants, or music that accompanies rituals, the use of instruments like bells or horns, or regular sonic rituals like a call to prayer are common examples.

And don't neglect smell and taste, either. As someone who grew up Catholic, smelling certain kinds of incense immediately transports me back to Christmas mass. Catholicism also hits the “taste” point with the Eucharist ritual, and other religions have similar practices. Integrating the typical food or aromas associated with the religion into the story adds another layer to the reader's immersion into the world.

Step 5: Place the religion within the broader cultural context.

No aspect of worldbuilding exists in a vacuum, and how the rest of society works around the religion you've built is key for how you'll present it in the story. The first thing to decide is how much influence the religion has in the society of the story's world. This is another place where you can see things on a spectrum:

• Governing - The story takes place in a theocracy where religious figures either are political leaders or have direct influence over them, and the religion's moral laws are also encoded into the legal system
• Dominant - The majority (or all) of the people in the story belong to the religion, and as a result it has a profound influence on culture and society, though it is not officially linked to the government
• In a melting pot - The religion is one of many that are practiced in the world, and is one of two or more that have a significant reach or influence
• Fringe - The religion is practiced by only a small portion of the population, and may be little-known or seen as a cult (whether or not that is fair)
• Persecuted - The dominant society actively opposes the religion by forbidding its practice, discriminating against its members, or attempting to eradicate it

...and, again, things won't necessarily fall along those cut-and-dry boundaries, but you can use that as a guide to figure out where the religion falls relative to the broader world you've built around it.

History is something to think about here, too. Is this religion ancient or more recent? Did it start from scratch or branch off from another faith? Did it originate in the place your story is set, or was it brought here by immigrants? All of these things can influence the way people engage with the religion (and characters who practice it).

That's really the bottom line when you're creating a mythology or religion for a fictional world, whatever the context. The most important parts of it are the things that directly impact the characters, because those are going to be what shape your story and give you points of tension and conflict to exploit. Those are the places you want to focus your time and energy when you're creating one for your stories.

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For some context, the term “cozy” is borrowed from cozy mysteries. While the style the term describes has its roots in the 1920s, the term wasn't coined until the 1980s. It describes a mystery that focuses on solving a crime rather than the dark, gritty details. There are other typical tropes of the genre, like that they often have an amateur detective as the protagonist and typically take place in an isolated or secluded location, but the pertinent detail that earned the nickname “cozy” is that the stakes and the violence and both relatively low. The initial crime can be a murder, but it usually happens off-screen and to someone that neither the reader nor the protagonist care about too deeply. 

This is the spirit that the term “cozy” represents when it's ported over to other genres. In a sense, it's become like the ”-punk” suffix, carrying implications of a specific tone that can be mixed and matched with other terms to create new subgenres. And, just like with -punk, different people seem to have different interpretations of exactly what it means. In the case of cozy, its use outside the mystery genre is relatively new, which adds to the confusion.  But it's becoming enough of an established trend that the borders of the genre, and just what editors are looking for when they put out calls for it, are becoming more defined.

The rise of cozy fantasy

Cozy mystery's rise in popularity in the '80s was a reaction to the trend toward more realistic and violent fiction in mystery and crime writing during the '60s and '70s. Readers who enjoyed the stories of writers like Agatha Christie were eager for a return to stories that invited readers to solve puzzles rather than focusing on the grim details of the crime itself or its broader emotional implications. 

The rise of cozy fantasy had more to do with readers' emotional states than their literary tastes. It started to gain prominence in the 2020, in the heart of the pandemic, when the world was on fire in more ways than one and many people were operating at a baseline level of stress and anxiety well above their norm. Readers didn't want to deal with heavy shit in stories. They wanted to escape to somewhere pleasant and peaceful, and cozy fantasy stories perfectly fit the bill. 

As is the case with many speculative subgenres, work that fits the label existed before anybody gave it a special name. In the case of cozy fantasy, it existed well before. The earliest stories that can be seen as laying the foundation of later cozy fantasy date back to the early twentieth century, books like The Wind in the Willows, which includes things that have since become key tropes of cozy fantasy like a focus on community and an idyllic setting that often focuses on homey things like meals instead of descriptions of epic battles and world-scale stakes. Other early precursors of the subgenre came in the 1980s, like the novel Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones and movies made by Studio Ghibli. 

The book that many see as the seminal work in the genre is the 2020 novel The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune. What's interesting is that it was published in mid-March of 2020, which means it was written and slated for publication well before that. In other words, it's the genre's readership and popularity that were influenced by the pandemic, not the book's writing. People have been writing this kind of quieter fantasy for years, but it wasn't until the 2020s that there was a strong enough interest in them for people to actively seek out other stories that share those traits, and justified forming a new subgenre for them. 

Common tropes of cozy stories

I mentioned some of these in passing already, but each of the cozy subgenres has its typical set of tropes and traits that readers expect. This doesn't mean that every story includes all of these things, but if it doesn't have at least a couple of them readers might question whether it really belongs to the genre. 

A cozy mystery can be generally defined as a lighthearted story centered around a crime being solved by an amateur sleuth, and which doesn't show any on-page gore, graphic violence, or explicit sex. Typical tropes of the genre include:

• A setting that could be described as quaint or charming, like an English village or a bed-and-breakfast on the New England coast
• A protagonist with a comforting, quiet, or hobby-related job, like librarian, antique dealer, cafe owner, or baker
• Protagonist often has a side-kick best friend to help them solve the case and share sarcastic banter
• Protagonist frequently has a love interest, though it's often complicated (a love triangle, a re-appearing ex, etc.)
• Cast of quirky secondary characters, often including archetypes like a local gossip, nosy neighbor, absent-minded professor, charming outsider, wealthy old eccentric, etc.
• A pet frequently features prominently in the story, either as a comforting companion to the protagonist or as a plot mover that notices clues or otherwise helps with the investigation
• While a murder is often the central crime, it takes place off-page 
• The crime often takes place during a community or social gathering like a local festival or a major event like a wedding
• Active investigation scenes are usually interspersed with the protagonist's daily routine, which involves comforting, calm activities like gardening, cooking, or having coffee with friends
• Several false suspects are introduced, each with a believable motivation to comimt the crime, then ruled out in the course of the story
• The investigation often unearths the gossip, feuds, and scandals happening in secret in the small town
• Law enforcement often gets involved, and may be friendly toward hte protagonist or tell them to keep out of the investigation
• The perpetrator is caught at the end, and is usually someone who was introduced early from among the town's residents or the victim's friends, family, or neighbors
• The perpetrator is revealed in-scene, with the protagonist talking through what happened step-by-step, often explaining it to a group
• Often riff off of themes like found family, community, and contrasts like tradition vs. change or appearance vs. reality

For cozy fantasy, it can be defined as a kind of “feel-good” subgenre of fantasy, with a focus on more everyday activities and less on global, good vs. evil, let's-save-the-world type plots. The setting is often similar to what you'll find in high fantasy, and it may use a lot of the same character archetypes, but without the violence and epic journeys. Some common traits include:

• Hopeful and optimistic tone, with an emphasis on teamwork and kindness
• Focus on community and character relationships, particularly found families
• Frequently feature queer characters as the protagonist and/or in the central cast
• Protagonist often runs a business like an apothecary, bakery, or similar type of shop
• Protagonist may have a love interest, but it's not the central plot and there's little to no on-page physical romance
• Cast of characters often includes archetypes like a gruff mentor, awkward apprentice, cheerful innkeeper, absent-minded wizard, etc.
• Often take place within a single town and feature locations like tea shops and inns
• Setting is usually a calm, charming, and close-knit community 
• Food and drink are usually worked into the book, especially comforting foods like tea or pastries
• Does have conflict, but the stakes are at the community or individual level (renovating a home or business, organizing a local festival, resolving a feud between neighbors, etc.)
• The world is magical, but magic is mundane and everyday, including things like sentient houses, magical knitting needles, enchanted gardens, etc.
• Features kindly fantasic creatures like friendly house spirits or talking cats
• Frequently riffs on the theme of rebuilding or recovery, and the protagonist is often in the process of starting a new life in the town when the story opens

...so you can see from comparing the two that there is a lot of overlap here, and that overlap is the space that I see the term “cozy” inhabiting. Cozy stories are character-driven and chock full of comfort, whether that takes the form of a garden-ringed Victorian inn or a festival in fairy town. 

This same idea can be applied in other genres, too. There's cozy horror, which at first glance might seem like an oxymoron but describes stories that have low-intensity jumpscares or an ominous atmosphere but stop short of major violence and end with all the major players still safe and sound. Cozy sci-fi is the same idea as cozy fantasy but with technology instead of magic, usually set on a space station, colony, or alien planet. I've also seen the term cozy romance, which in my mind is a bit redundant but specifically describes a sweet romance set in a small town that features similar protagonists and settings to the other cozy genres. 

Now, there are some who would define these subgenres more narrowly than I've done here. The must-haves for each of these genres vary depending on who you're talking to, which is honestly the case for any subgenre. But if you check those big-picture boxes, you'll write the types of stories publishers of these genres look for. 

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Read this if you like: Storytelling cycles, urban fantasy, paranormal mystery

tl;dr summary: High school friends who were members of a magical club reconvene twenty years later and get caught up in a new mystery. 

See the book on Bookshop

The format of Wordsmith is one that I adore. It's a collection of stories that are linked together by a contiguous narrative running between them. In that narrative, protagonist Kat was part of a group in high school called the Wordsmiths. When they got together, they could tell each other stories that would come to life and seem completely real to the people in the room. They disbanded after one of their members died, and haven't been back together for over 20 years, but have reassembled for one last story cycle after their old teacher's death. The short stories interspersed between the narrative sections are the ones that the group members tell each other during this last story cycle. 

From the jump, this concept pulled me in on multiple levels. The idea of people who can create living stories is a fun one on its own, then layering in the background mystery of what happened to Cassie (the member whose death broke them up all those years ago) adds more intrigue. And Kat has her own personal challenges she's coping with on top of that. Her father is suffering from dementia, and her one-time friends don't seem particularly happy to have been pulled back together. In fact, she's barely spoken to them over the last twenty years, and though some of them seem ready to pick things back up where they left off, she feels like the others are in their own little clique that she's now on the outside of. 

That's a lot of great tension established early on, and by and large it's managed very well over the course of the narrative to keep it moving forward. The balance of the main narrative sections with the interjecting short stories was also very nicely done. There are a couple of places where things in the main storyline are getting pretty tense, or Kat and her allies seem to be edging closer to solving the mystery, and a story is interjected, creating a kind of cliff-hanger-ey feel. The insertion of other storytelling voices is also a nice little palate cleanser. Other authors were brought in to write each story, which also helps to give each character's story its own cadence and feel, reinforcing the in-book conceit that they're all told by different people. 

The only thing introduced toward the beginning that I feel gets a bit neglected in the course of the book is Kat's relationship with her father. Memory and the loss of it ends up becoming a thematic thread that runs through the main narrative, so it feels like there's potential for resonance there between that background thread and the main plot that doesn't get fully utilized. 

From a worldbuilding standpoint, I found the mechanism by which the Wordsmiths enter and leave their immersive stories intriguing. Each story needs to be tethered to an object, which they then break when they get to the end of the tale. This will also only work within one specific room on the high school property, a small cement room connected to the stadium, and they all have to be assembled for the magic to function. I appreciate that these rules aren't over-explained. That's always a tricky balance to strike with this kind of magical world. Here, the fact that it's left a bit mysterious helps to maintain the mystique, and it makes sense for the characters, anyway, since they don't fully understand why the storytelling happens the way it does, either. I was a bit curious about the location specifically, and what was special about that place that allowed this magical storytelling to happen there, but wondering about that didn't detract in any way from me enjoying the story. 

I also have to give a shout-out to the individual stories, because they were all very enjoyable to read in their own right. My favorite, I think, was “Can't Be Afraid of the Dark”, which follows a kid who finds a bogeyman under his bed, one that has a very inconvenient fear. A close second is “Pink”, which is what I would say is the darkest story in the book, and exists in a kind of atmospheric horror space. It's well-placed, too, close to the end and during a very tense point in the main narrative where going into a more spine-tingling direction feels like it keeps the right energy through the break in the primary plot action. 

I'm sure there were a lot of extra logistical things that the authors and editor had to do to make a collection like this come together. But you can't tell from reading it, and that's maybe what impressed me the most about it. The work of 10 different writers comes together here into one cohesive whole, and one that is a very entertaining read from start to finish. 

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In Voyager, we learn more about why an all-powerful being like the Q would take an interest in puny humans in the first place. In the episode “Death Wish”, a renegade Q comes to Captain Janeway seeking asylum. He wants to leave the Continuum and become human so that he can die. Being immortal, he feels, has made the Q go stagnant. The viewer gets a tour of the Continuum rendered in a format our inferior human minds can understand: a highway through the desert, next to which stands a run-down house where bored-looking people are lounging around, some reading, some playing games. No one is talking; the Q seeking asylum explains that they've run out of things to talk about. Everything has already been said, and all the Q have already seen all there is to see in the universe. The Q feels his life has become futile. He finds it intolerable to keep on living, but he can't stop. 

This episode is, for me, one of the best depictions of immortal beings in fiction because of how it recognizes the full implications of immortality. I've seen or read other stories that do this well, too, like the movie “He Never Died” or the novel The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break. In both of those, the protagonist is a mythological figure that has persisted into the present day, and living for thousands of years has taken its toll. Their brains are wired for a different time; they find themselves out of sync with modern society, living at its fringes. Both characters live alone and rarely socialize. Theirs isn't the opulent immortality of the Greek gods or the elegant long lives of Tolkien's elves. 

Granted, none of us really know what it would be like to be immortal, so I suppose it's not entirely fair to criticize any depiction of immortality as inauthentic. Maybe the better critique is to say this isn't the most interesting way a writer can treat it. If you have a character who's lived for hundreds or thousands of years, you're missing an opportunity to give them a worldview that's very different from the average reader's.

My current work in progress involves a lot of very long-lived characters, so the question of how to capture this kind of extensive lifespan on the page has been front and center in my mind of late. These are some of the main things I’ve been thinking about as I’ve been working to build these characters in a way that will read as real and interesting on the page.

1) They have a different relationship with time.

Mortality gives any life an inherent sense of urgency. Time becomes a limited resource that can't be wasted. But the more time a being expects to have, the less true that will be. And if time isn't quite as precious, that will have a few likely impacts on their behavior. They're likely to be more patient, less reckless, and more thoughtful before they act. Think of long-lived cultures from fiction, like the Ents in Lord of the Rings or the Ogier in Wheel of Time. 

Long-lived characters are also likely to take more of a long-view. The math of short-term gains versus long-term consequences balances out differently for someone who's still going to be around in a few centuries. Immortal characters can absolutely still do things that are self-serving, but they're much less likely to make decisions that would sacrifice the long-term stability or health of their environment. After all, they're going to need to keep living here for a very, very long time. 

For characters like vampires, that start out mortal then gain immortality later on, their relationship to time is likely to shift the longer they're alive. A vampire that was just turned 20 years ago might still have that inherent urgency of a human, but if your character has been around since ancient Egypt, their outlook is likely to fall more on the Ent side of the spectrum. This can be useful if you have a cast of immortals with a broad age range, helping you to give them traits that differentiate each other. 

2) They've experienced a lot of loss.

This is especially true for any immortal beings that live among mortals. Any mortal that they form a friendship—or more—with, they do so knowing that they're going to lose them. And this isn't just true of relationships. They've likely seen landmarks crumble and civlizations topple. The town where they were born might no longer exist, or maybe now it goes by a different name; depending on how long it's been, their culture of birth could have been completely forgotten. 

Some of this is likely to be true even if your characters live in a society where everyone is very long-lived. Loss doesn't always need to mean death, for one thing. Even in a world where everybody is immortal, the relationships between those individuals can shift over time just like they do for people. A certain number of tragedies are going to accrue in the course of a long life, however charmed. Think of the narratives around the various Greek gods. Yes, they are immortal and powerful, but they still experience grief, betrayal, and heartbreak. 

This is naturally going to influence how an immortal character interacts with their world. They may be less willing to form friendships with mortals, for example, to spare themselves the inevitable pain of losing another person they've grown close to. Or maybe they've developed a thick shell in general as a defense mechanism, or are particularly skeptical or pessimistic in their outlook. They might also become less inclined to take risks, an effect that can stack with their shifted relationship to time mentioned above to make them very cautious characters that are difficult to put into motion toward a goal.

3) They're from a different time—but they're not necessarily stuck there.

People in general develop a lot of their habits, preferences, tastes, and other core aspects of their worldview and identity during their formative years. For a character that's hundreds or thousands of years old, that formative period happened during a very different time setting than the present of your story. Whatever world your story is set in, it's very likely that a lot of things have changed in the interrim. Think about how many cultural changes someone who was born in 1800 would've seen between their childhood and the present, and that's just a couple hundred years ago. Music, fashion, food, transportation, communication—just about every aspect of the character's everyday life will have changed, likely many times over, in the course of their life. 

Different immortal characters are going to deal with this in different ways, of course. But, for most, there are going to be some ways they've adapted, and some old-fashioned habits or tastes that are going to stick around as core tenets of their identity even through all the changes around them. Part of this comes down to practicality. If your character lives intermingled with a broader society, they'd want to keep up with the times enough to live their life, which probably means updating their wardrobe every few decades and staying on top of technological developments. But they might not bother staying with the times in other aspects of the culture—maybe they still listen to the same music that they've used to relax for hundreds of years, for instance, and don't bother listening to any of that new-fangled stuff. 

Now, if you're writing about a society of long-lived beings that are cut off from other cultures, then that culture is likely to stay more consistent and evolve less over time. In this case, their old-fashioned-ness would likely be more immediately visible once they're brought out of that isolation. I mentioned the Ogier from the Wheel of Time before, and they're a good example here, too. They live in self-contained communities and have rarely engaged with humans for decades, when the story starts. Because of that, they still hold to old traditions that other, faster-moving cultures have abandoned, and a lot of their dress and speech seems old-fashioned to the people who interact with them. 

4) They've kept themselves alive this long for a reason. 

This is less of a factor if you're writing about characters that are both immortal and invulnerable. If it's a being that can't die—like, say, someone that's been cursed to live forever—then there's still a reason that they're still alive, it just doesn't have a whole lot to do with their behavior. 

In most cases, though, you're going to be writing about characters that can die, even if not from natural causes. This is true even of gods in many mythological traditions, and most long-lived fictional creatures can be killed in the right conditions, even if it's not quite as easy as it is for we delicate mortals. Because of this, a certain amount of self-selection happens in their populations. Just because an individual is given the option of immortality doesn't mean that they're going to make the right choices to hang on to it. Individuals inclined to make dangerous enemies, seek out violence, or put themselves in very risky situations are, statistically, less likely to be the ones who are still alive to celebrate their 900th birthday. 

There's a second point to this, too: the character has something that they're continuing to live for. This is the antidote to the kind of existential boredom that is at the heart of that Q storyline I mentioned earlier. Just because a character can live forever doesn't mean they'll always want to. That takes some kind of driving purpose that keeps them pushing through all of the losses they've accumulated, and all of the changes they've had to adapt to.

5) Eternal life doesn't guarantee an infinite memory capacity. 

This is another point where the type of being you're dealing with is going to make a difference. If your immortal beings are Data-style androids, then it is feasible they could maintain an exact record of memories stretching back across hundreds of years—it's just a question of storage capacity, at that point. But for most characters, memories are naturally going to fade with time. Exactly how much of their very long past they can recall with any detail is something that it's smart to figure out from the start when you're working with an immortal character.

Granted, these characters are superhuman by default. Even so, think about your own memories. More recent ones are likely to be the most complete and vivid on average. The ones that you hang on to the strongest from earlier in your life are probably major moments connected to strong emotions. So maybe you have a lot of great memories of your favorite family vacation when you were five, but just have a few spotty memories of first grade. The everyday stuff tends to fade away pretty quickly, and once you get a few decades away from the memory, only the most intense ones are likely to stick around. 

I think this is one of those places where writing a long-lived character that feels real means finding the right balance. On the one hand, it's likely they would have a wide variety of experiences and accrue a lot of skills and knowledge. But unless they're a machine, or an actual god, then they still need to practice skills to keep them, and knowledge can fade over time if it's not accessed. So if you want to have a character read Egyptian hieroglyphics, it's helpful to show the reader that they still use the language, at least occasionally—it's going to strain some readers' suspension of disbelief if the character hasn't seen hieroglyphics for 2,000 years but can still read them fluently.

I think if there's one connecting thread to all of these points, it's that a long-lived character still needs to feel fully developed and consistent. Immortality isn't just a superpower. It's the kind of character trait that's likely to dramatically influence the character's entire identity and worldview in ways that go much deeper than how hard they are to kill in a fight. And it's also not only a good thing. There are potential downsides that would come along with a very long life, and those are things you can use to add more complexity and depth to a character that might otherwise end up being too perfect or powerful. 

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With short fiction, worldbuilding becomes more of a challenge, especially if you're using a completely secondary world. It's especially challenging when you're working at a flash length and really don't have any extra words to spare, though I would also  say there's one advantage to having an under-1,000 word constraint: you're less likely to have info dumps because there's simply not space for them. When you're working in the 3,000-8,000 word range, the temptation to info dump is strong. 

There is a place for the occasional info dump in short fiction. You need the reader to understand the world you're working in. Sometimes the most efficient way to accomplish that and get on with the story is to just state it outright, as smoothly and unobtrusively as possible. That's the key. Info dumps are best when short, and need to be placed strategically. And, as a rule, I would say they should only be used when there really is no smoother choice, and to avoid them whenever possible. 

As an editor, I can say we often get sci-fi and fantasy stories that have a cool premise and an interesting world, but they take too long to get started because too much of the opening pages is devoted to worldbuilding and, in many cases, the author was so focused on building the world that they neglected to give the same attention to creating characters or developing a plot—in other words, the things that actually keep a reader reading. That's the problem with info dumps in short fiction: they distract and suck up valuable real estate. 

What constitutes an “info dump”?

In case you're not familiar with the term, an “info dump” is when a writer drops a whole ton of information on the page at once, in a way that's not integrated into the plot or the movement of the character through their world. Usually this is focused on the history of the world or explaining things like the magic system or technology, but it can also be a lengthy explanation of the character's background, their relationship with other characters, or their current circumstances or role in society. 

While the core information being conveyed in an info dump usually is necessary for the story, very often they go into far more depth or detail than is really useful. When this really goes overboard, it distracts from the story instead of enhancing it because the reader learns things that don't end up being relevant. Granted, not every detail you include about a world needs to be “productive” in the sense that it has a direct impact on the plot—there is definitely value in including world details that set a certain mood or tone, or that reinforce a theme or recurring image, or even that are just fun and will bring the reader joy. But there's not as much room for these details in a short story as there is in a novel. The shorter the piece, the more every detail needs to serve multiple functions to earn its place. 

I'll also say that info dumps don't just happen in narrative. One “cheat” writers often try is to shift the information into dialogue. This adds more movement to the delivery of the info, but it doesn't automatically pull it out of info dump land. An entire scene can be an info dump if all that happens in it is two characters talking about how some piece of technology works. If a reader's sole takeaway from a passage is worldbuilding or backstory, then I would say it's an info dump. Usually, especially for short fiction, that will mean you want to look for some other way to convey that knowledge to the reader. 

How to not info dump

It might seem like the solution to info dumps is a simple “cut them.” The problem is, you need to introduce the reader to your world somehow, and showing usually requires a lot more words than telling. I've come up with a couple strategies to excise info dumps from my stories (or stop myself from writing them in the first place). 

#1: Identify which details the reader actually needs.

This is my step one when I find an info dump I need to cut, and is also something I try to ask myself when I'm writing a fantasy or sci-fi story. I love to worldbuild, so when I'm brainstorming the world I'll usually come up with a lot more of it than will realistically fit on the page. Usually, I'll end up including some things that really aren't necessary in my rough draft, then once I know more about where they story starts and ends, I can go back and pare out the parts of the world that didn't end up being relevant. 

There's a deeper question here, which is how to figure out which details are actually necessary. For me, the filter I use is:

• Does the reader need to know this for the plot to make sense?
• Does this detail of the world have a direct impact on characters' actions or motivations?
• Is this detail necessary to convey an underlying theme or meaning that you want readers to take away from the story?

If the answer to all of those questions is “no”, then it's likely the detail is not really necessary for the story, however much I like it.

#2: Tweak existing scenes to integrate the information organically.

The smoothest way to build a world is always in the course of the action. A lot of times, this can serve as a good litmus test for whether the info really belongs, too. If it fits in the story, you should be able to find a place that you can convey that piece of information in a way that feels natural. On the other hand, if it feels shoe-horned in everywhere you try to put it, that's often a sign that detail isn't really essential for the story you're telling. 

I'll give an example of what I mean here. Say your story starts with an info dump explaining that the characters live in a far-future society where everyone is under constant surveilance. You won't need to tell the reader that if you show your character walking down the street, noticing the cameras watching from every corner, or getting stopped by a surveilance drone demanding to scan their ID. Adding those kinds of details to a scene that's already in the story is an easy way to eliminate the info dump without losing the necessary context. 

#3: Make it personal. 

In many cases, info dumps take a broad or global view. They explain how the entire society fuctions, or give the reader a tour of the entire continent and its various factions and conflicts. Even if the reader is interested in this kind of thing, presenting it in a global way doesn't give them a compelling reason to care. 

The best way to do that is to put a face on it by linking it to one of your characters. Instead of explaining the world-at-large, shift the focus to how it specifically impacts that individual, or how that individual engages with that aspect of the world. Once you've identified that, you can integrate the information into character descriptions, thoughts, or dialogue in a similar way to the advice above. 

How this looks in practice will depend on what kind of info is being dumped. If it's information about the society and culture, this is often best conveyed in how the character navigates their world or interacts with other people. So in that example above, you can convey that society is oppressive by having the character view the other people they pass with suspicion, or move through their world furtively and hyper-aware of their surroundings. 

To smoothly give details on the world's history, you can take the same approach of linking them to your character's backstory. So if it's important to this setting that two kingdoms were recently at war, give your protagonist a personal connection to that conflict—they fought in it, or lost a family member, or were otherwise directly impacted. Then you can drop this information in the character's internal monologue or dialogue in an organic way: an old war injury flares up while they're dismounting their horse, or they see something that reminds them of their dead relative.

If it's information about technology or magic systems, the smoothest option is usually to show it in action. This could be the character using it directly or a background element—maybe that blacksmith the character passes on their way into town has a fire elemental instead of a forge, for instance. The character doesn't need to intimately understand how it works, and neither does the reader. Again, think about what details are necessary for comprehension, and don't try to stuff in much more beyond that unless it's doing something else for the narrative, like showing the character's level of expertise. 

Do you always need to kill your info dumps?

I always try to eliminate info dumps when I find them, but there are times that massaging the necessary details in elsewhere in the story just feels ham-fisted or interrupts the flow. Sometimes you do need to set the scene. There's a genre based expectation at play here, too. If you're writing in a fairy tale mode, for example, then starting on a brief info dump is an expected trope.

I think length is the biggest thing to keep in mind. Most readers won't have a problem with a short paragraph that's written in an entertaining way and gives them information they genuinely need to know. It's when an info dump goes on for too long, doesn't fit the voice, or feels like it's taking readers on a tangent that it starts to detract from the story. 

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Read this if you like: Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, Haruki Murakami, Greek mythology

tl;dr summary: The Minotaur (yes, that Minotaur) works as a line cook and lives in a trailer in the American South.

See the book on Bookshop

I'm a sucker for stories that bring ancient mythology into the modern world, so I knew I needed to read this book the second I saw the title. What really hooked me into it, though, was the voice. The opening scene paints a very effective picture: the Minotaur on break, smoking a cigarette on an empty pickle bucket behind the restaurant where he works. The sparse yet specific description of the setting puts anyone who's worked in food service right there in the moment, showing the scene in a stark kind of realism. Then there’s beautiful lines like how the Minotaur describes his feeling for cigarettes: “The Minotaur doesn't like to smoke but smokes anyway, smokes menthols because he likes them even less.”

It's a depressing but evocative contradiction, and one that I think nicely encapsulates the Minotaur's worldview throughout the book. He continues to exist after 5,000 years, though he isn't completely sure why. And, while the years have changed him to a degree—he no longer eats human flesh, for instance—in other ways he remains a relic of his time, out of place in the modern world in a very painfully lonely way.  

I've read plenty of other stories that incorporate mythological figures into modern, everyday life, but none of them take quite the approach that's used in The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break. Typically, they go in one of two directions. Either it's more of a send-up, with the ancient figure's oddities highlighted for comedic effect, or it's an action-adventure superhero kind of deal (or a combination of the two, a la American Gods). In either case, though, they nearly always lean heavily on the supernatural, magical aspect, where the ancient figures have power and abilities that humans don't.

Immortality is the Minotaur's only trait that could be seen as a super-power—and, for him, it's more of a curse than anything. When it comes to his ability to navigate the world day-to-day, he's really at a disadvantage compared to the humans. This book leans into the reality of what it would be to navigate the world as a human body with a bull's head. And, spoilers, it isn't great. His mouth isn't formed for speech, making communication difficult. He also lacks full peripheral vision and his horns are a potentially deadly annoyance. There are a few times that his non-human traits are used for comic relief throughout the book, but the overall tone of the book isn't a comedy. The main focus is on how the Minotaur's unique traits have contributed to his soul-aching loneliness. He is ultimately a tragic figure, a singular being who has roamed the world alone for thousands of years with no real purpose or companions.

I was also intrigued by the way the world was built around the Minotaur. The world-at-large seems to generally accept his existence without much comment. People don't run or scream at the first sight of him—some kids stare, here and there, and there are times he's mocked or ostracized, but this seems to be driven more by his difficulty communicating and the fact that he's different from others. The reactions to him seemed analogous to how many people respond to those with visible disabilities or deformities—he's othered, but in a muted way. Again, this isn't the approach I think most writers would take with it, but I found it a very smart choice. It gives the Minotaur potential to serve as a metaphor for a variety of things and makes him highly relatable for anyone who has ever felt othered because of their physical differences. 

There were times I found the Minotaur's lack of motivation and self-awareness frustrating, but that's not an indictment of the book. I felt these moments were very intentional and authentic to the character as he's established. His primary flaw is that he hasn't managed to understand himself or the humans around him, despite having had thousands of years to figure it out. We can see that he's changed since his time in the labyrinth from his occasional flashbacks and ruminations on how he's mellowed. He doesn't respond to insults by goring and eating someone anymore, for instance, which arguably is positive growth. But this growth hasn't brought him any fulfillment. If anything, it reads more as a long-lingering depression; he's abandoned this violent identity, but never found a new one to replace it. 

I tend to enjoy books that are difficult to classify into a genre, and that's definitely the case with this one. It's really a literary story at its heart, telling the tale of a sad, lonely man desperately seeking some kind of connection in a world that wasn't built for him. It just happens to be that this man is the Minotaur, a fact that adds layers of metaphor and expands the story’s world. If pressed to put a genre label on it, I'd call it “magical realism without the magic”—things are different from reality, but they're also painfully the same, and this book exploits the energy in that contradiction well.

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The right level of worldbuilding and description is a tricky balance to strike for writers in any genre, and I think particularly so for those in speculative worlds. Not every type of story lends itself to lush, lengthy descriptions, either. In some modes, sparse details are a defining characteristic of the genre. Stories that stem from an oral storytelling tradition tend to fall into this category, which includes genres like folklore and fairy tales. Mythic voices give more flexibility for detailed descriptions, but even so it can break the effect to spend too many words grounding the reader. There are other genres that need this kind of deft hand, as well. Magical realism is one example—the rules of the world need to be established enough that the reader isn’t confused, but if you explain too much then it can lose the “magic” part of the name, or start to read like a different type of fantasy.

What's especially challenging about fairy tale writing is that a vaguely defined setting is a common genre trope. Fairy tales often take place somewhere “far away” and “once upon a time”, intentionally placed outside of a historical context. There are exceptions to this rule, of course, but the more solidly a story is tethered to reality, the less like a fairy tale it seems.

When writers are creating their own legends and folk tales, whether as stand-alone short stories or to integrate into a broader fictional world, there's a minimum threshold of details that they need to provide. There needs to be enough of the world defined that the reader can picture the setting, understand the rules that govern the characters, and navigate this reality without getting completely lost in the mire. The more a story world differs from our reality, the higher this threshold goes.

And that’s the rub: how to provide this needed context without bogging the story down with descriptive language its form doesn’t support. The answer, I think, comes down to weaving the worldbuilding into the fabric of the story. If you can do that, the reader won’t need lengthy descriptions or backstory that can break the voice and pull them out of the story. Here are some strategies that I've found to create this kind of integrated world.

1. Be precise and thoughtful in the details you include.

When you don't get much space to devote to descriptive passages, you need to make the ones you do include count. Seek out the details that really show the things that make the world what it is—ideally, things that are unique to this place and different from what we’d expect in reality. The details you can skip over are the ones that are expected, or that readers would assume from this type of story or setting.

The specific details that define a world aren’t always obvious right away. When I’m trying to find these, I’ll often start by brainstorming all of the world’s details—every little thing that I’m picturing in my head goes down on the list, however mundane or seemingly small. Once I’ve written all of these out, I can see more easily which of those details are the most useful, unique, or interesting, and those are the ones that actually make it onto the page.

The best details to highlight are ones that can do double-duty, not just filling in the physical present of the world but also helping to show its history, adding stakes or tension, or giving insights into characters. These are the details that can single-handledly replace whole paragraphs of description because they serve as short-hands.

This is highly useful when you’re writing at a flash length. I also feel like this approach works well in fairy tale type voices at any length. Zooming in tight on the little details keeps the big-picture setting more fuzzy and vague, which helps to reinforce that “once upon a time” type feel.

2. Let the language and voice do the heavy lifting.

How things are described can matter as much as which details get included. The way details are presented on the page gives readers insights into the broader world—what’s considered normal in this world, how characters fit into it, and the worldview, culture, and history of a place’s inhabitants can all be conveyed through word choice and phrasing decisions, without needing to spell it out directly.

One thing that great fantasy writers excel at is using the intrusion of the strange to convey what’s normal by contrast. This spares you the need to write out mundane details of the character’s day-to-day. Instead, “normal” can live in the white-space around what’s actually on the page, and the reader can infer it from how the character reacts to, thinks about, or describes the abnormal.

The first step to using this approach is to try and put yourself in the mindset of your world’s inhabitants. What kind of vocabulary fits in this setting? What metaphors or figurative language would they use? Tone is a big part of this, too—whether a character sees something as positive or negative, views things with hope or dread or indifference, tells you as much about them and their world as the thing itself.

Also think about what other associations or frames of reference from the real world you can bring in—again, this is a useful potential short-hand because the reader will make the leap themselves, without you needing to devote on-page words to defining it.

3. Give characters objects to interact with.

This is one of the biggest things in my view that separates well-written vague settings from a lack of grounding. Readers can still navigate a setting that’s non-specific. The problem often creeps up when the setting feels like a set-piece—it lacks dimension and realism, so it’s hard to imagine the characters actually inhabiting this space. Often, when I get this sense in a story, I read through it and realize the character has just been passing through and observing their surroundings, rather than actively engaging with them.

In this context, physical objects serve as anchors. They’re something tangible for the character to interact with, which helps to root them in place within that setting. The types of objects that are in their world can also convey other things about it. It’s an easy way to show the world’s level of technology, the resources or materials they have access to, the economic or class divisions, and the culture and history of the setting. These are all things that add realism and depth. You can also use objects as a sneaky way to explain the world’s rules, both in a law-and-order sense and when it comes to things like magic systems or speculative elements.

Objects are equally useful tools for characterization. It tells you a lot about a person to know what things they keep close at hand, which items they use most frequently or rely on for their work and life. This relates back to the last point, too, because how characters feel about objects they own, use, or encounter can also be deeply telling.

Giving characters objects to engage with can also be an easy way to add movement and activity to otherwise stagnant scenes. If there are moments in your story that are just two characters sitting in a room talking—or just one character sitting there and thinking—this is a perfect place to insert some physical thing for them to handle. Doing that keeps both the character and the reader connected to the physical present of the scene, rather than feeling like they’re just floating around in thoughts, memories, and dialogue.

Really, I think the ultimate answer comes down to mixing all 3 of these approaches: using physical objects and precise, unique details, described thoughtfully in a way that further illuminates the world.

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I have to give the usual caveat for a post like this, which is that genre definitions aren't set in stone. That's even more true with genres that were recently invented, like a lot of the punk subgenres. That being said, here's a run-down on the various literary flavors of punk, and how they relate to the term in a broader sense. So, to kick things off...

What does punk mean, exactly?

Looking up “punk” in the dictionary yields a variety of potential meanings: 

1. A style or movement characterized by the adoption of aggressively unconventional and often bizarre or shocking clothing, hairstyles, makeup, etc., and the defiance of social norms or behavior. 

2. A loud, fast-moving, and aggressive form of rock music, popular in the late 1970s and early 1980s

3. To trick or deceive

4. A hoodlum, ruffian, or useless person

...and there are more ways that other dictionaries phrase it, but this establishes a baseline, at least, for what most people mean when they say the term. Punk entered the popular lexicon via the music genre and its associated fanbase. The way they engaged with broader society is how we think of “punk” today: it's rebellious, nonconformist, and in-your-face about it. 

This is the first way the core meaning of the term “punk” today has split. In a music context, it still mostly has the second meaning on that list above: music that's loud, fast, and hard, and probably aims to give a big middle finger to some kind of established authority. In other creative contexts like books, movies, fashion, etc., it tends to have a more intangible meaning. In the broadest sense, it can be seen as somehow resisting or defying the status quo (though even this very broad commonality is a bit of a stretch in some of its applications).

When did “punk” become a literary term?

The answer: earlier than you might think. The first of the “punk” subgenres was cyberpunk, whose origins are in the New Wave sci-fi movement that started in the 1960s. Authors like Samuel R. Delaney, Harlan Ellison, Philip K. Dick, and J.G. Ballard wrote dystopian worlds featuring near-future technology, extreme surveillance, and economic inequality, themes often central to cyberpunk narratives. Many consider the 1975 John Brunner novel The Shockwave Rider to be the first cyberpunk novel (though it wasn't described that way at the time, seeing as the word didn't exist yet).

The term “cyberpunk” was first used in the title of a Bruce Bethke short story published in Amazing Stories in 1983. It was then seized on by Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine editor Gardner Dozois, who described the subgenre as “bizarre, hard-edged, high-tech stuff” in a 1984 Washington Post editorial. William Gibson's Neuromancer, arguably the most famous early cyberpunk novel, was published that same year.

The use of the word “punk” in “cyberpunk” totally makes sense. It developed right around the same time as the musical genre, for one thing, giving it that time period resonance. It was also a radical departure from the sci-fi of the day, so it fulfills that aggressive rejection of the status quo that is integral to the punk ideal. 

There are some quibbles about exactly how to define cyberpunk (as there are with most literary subgenres), but a down-and-dirty definition is a story with a dark mood, usually set in a near-future, tech-heavy dystopia ruled by an oppressive government or corporate overlord (e.g. “the haves”), whom the downtrodden and/or mildly criminal antihero protagonists (e.g. “the have-nots”) are in conflict against. They are often the kind of stories where a punk rock soundtrack would feel completely appropriate, so at this early stage in the history of the term it hasn't yet diverged too far. 

Modern punk variants

Here's where things start to get a little bit more squirrely. All other ___-punk subgenres can be thought of as spin-offs from cyberpunk in some sense. Because of this, the degree to which they retain that “fight the man” spirit of punk varies widely, depending on the context where the term is being used. 

The first to spawn was steampunk, which was first used as a term in the mid-1980s by author K.W. Jeter, to describe his own work and that of authors like Tim Powers and James Blaylock. A rough definition is a story set in an alternate-history Victorian era where steam power and gears are used for anachronistic technology like robots and computers.

From here, the punks branch into two directions. On the one side are further literary subgenres defined by shifts to the themes or technology typical of cyberpunk. The other branch is a series of aesthetic labels that spiral off from the idea of steampunk.

Literary punk subgenres

Cyberpunk novels tend to feature a specific type of technology. They’re heavy on surveillance, simulations and virtual reality, along with augmented reality and the intrusion of technology on the physical world through the use of gadgets. Typically, this technology is external—they're tools that people use, not modifications of the human form itself. 

But of course, this isn't the only kind of technology that exists. Writers who played with other types of tech but in a similarly dark, dystopian world coined some new terms to describe their work, like biopunk (stories that use biotechnology, genetic engineering, virology, etc. to explore similar themes as cyberpunk) or nanopunk (same deal but with nanotechnology). Already with nanopunk, the subgenre is starting to get a “copy of a copy” feel. They don't necessarily take place in a dystopian world, for one thing, and also differ from cyberpunk in that the implications of the technology itself tends to be a primary focal point.

Then, in 2008, this evolved a step further with the dawn of solarpunk. In some ways, solarpunk is the polar opposite of cyberpunk. Instead of cyberpunk's dark dystopias, solarpunk offers optimistic utopias. In cyberpunk, technology and society are at odds; in solarpunk, technology and nature work in harmony. What solarpunk still retains is the feel of resistance and rebellion. It's a different flavor of counter-culture, one much more focused on collectivism—as James Machell says in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, “It is a rebellion against a rebellion, born out of dystopia fatigue.”

The newer hopepunk was born out of a similar sentiment, and is a subgenre that heavily overlaps with solarpunk. It's been described as “weaponized optimism”, and can be generally applied to any sci-fi or fantasy story that involves characters fighting for positive change. And solarpunk has already spawned a direct subgenre: lunarpunk, which are stories set in a generally solarpunk kind of landscape but focusing on the nightlife or underbelly (because writers are, as a rule, very bad at embracing optimism entirely). 

There are a few other ___-punk subgenres that have spawned outside of this direct lineage. One that's nearly as old as cybeberpunk is splatterpunk. Unlike other early variants, this one isn't defined by technology—it can be as low-tech or high-tech as the writer wants. The defining trait of splatterpunk is gore, and lots of it. The term was coined by David J. Schow in 1986 to describe horror using extreme, graphic violence. It also tends to make use of counterculture themes, embracing the rebellion inherent in punk along with the aggressive in-your-face shock value of it. 

One trend you'll see across literary punk subgenre creation: the terms tend to be first used by writers to describe their own work and other work like theirs. This is different from many genre terms, which are often defined by critics (and is another thing that does feel more inherently “punk”). Modern examples of this happening include mythpunk, which describes stories that use folklore tropes to challenge storytelling norms (a term coined y Catherynne M. Valentine about her own work in 2006), or silkpunk, which are stories that use organic technology alongside magic (term created by Ken Liu to describe his own work).

Aesthetic punk subgenres

The punk subgenres that spawned from cyberpunk all retain some kind of “fight the man” energy. In fact, you could say this is the primary unifying thread between them (and really the only thing that could be said to connect, say, splatterpunk to hopepunk). 

This resistance aspect is less integral to the aesthetic “punk” subgenres, and that's the main reason I see them in a separate category. The subgenres in this group can all roughly be described as “anachronistic technology imitating a time period”—in other word, they're riffs on the underlying concept behind steampunk.

To give you some examples, these include: 

• Stonepunk – Set during pre-technological periods, where advanced machines are made from stones, sticks, and other basic materials
• Clockpunk – Steampunk for the Renaissance era, with anachronistic technology often based on gears
• Cattlepunk – Steampunk but western
• Decopunk – Retro-futuristic version of the 1920s
• Dieselpunk – Industrial-era (1930s and '40s) pop culture and baseline technology
• Atompunk – pre-digital, post-WWII (late '40s and '50s) as the baseline
• Transistorpunk – Cold War and '60s era as the baseline
• Steelpunk – late 20th-century baseline, often featuring rivets and mechanical machines (hardware over software)

...you may also hear people using terms based on biomes, like oceanpunk or desertpunk, which are a predictable variation now that you know the theme. 

With all of these, they tend to be more common in visual creative mediums like movies, TV, fashion, and art than they are in books. This makes sense given that these genres are more about embodying the look and feel of the era they’re set in, but with modern technology interjected into it. I also feel like these subgenres are the least inherently “punk”, by and large. The suffix really is just a riff on the steampunk format and doesn't necessarily mean anything beyond that.

I'm sure I missed a whole slew of new ___-punk designations, because they pop up like mushrooms. But this at least gives a broad overview of how the term punk has evolved over time and what it means in a literary context. 

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Read this if you like: The Wheel of Time, David Eddings, character-driven high fantasy tl;dr summary: Three magic users in a world where magic is dying set out to avert war, solve a murder, and avoid bringing about a prophecied doom.

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I can be very picky when it comes to my sword-and-sorcery. I’ve read enough fantasy that too many familiar tropes bore me quickly—but I’m disappointed when writers drop or subvert the typical tropes entirely, to the point it no longer feels like high fantasy.

It’s a delicate and difficult balance to strike, and I’m always excited to find somebody who does it right. And I got really excited about The Dying of the Golden Day from pretty much the first sentence. The way this opens is smart. It teases with a little fake-found-text-ey intro that tells the reader this is a fully developed world, with its own history and mythology. That’s something I like seeing early on as a fantasy reader because it’s a sign this world is going to be unique and immersive, and that definitely held true throughout this novel.

I also like how this gets into the story. Starting with Aurelia on her own lets the reader get to know her outside the context of her bond with Renfred. The opening also sets up a nice mystery around Brennus’ identity that adds a lot of productive tension to the first half of the book.

Aurelia is the best-developed of the characters, which stands to reason, and for the most part I felt like the secondary cast was developed to the correct depth relative to their role. There were a couple of characters I found myself wanting more of—Minerva for one, and also Mira, both of whom had a lot of presence on the page when they graced it. I’m hopeful they’ll get bigger roles in future books, because I didn’t feel like their potential was fully realized in this one.

That said, this really wasn’t their story—the main focus was on Aurelia, Edana, and Brennus, and it does make sense to keep the reader’s focus there for the first book. Their story had a nice quest arc, and the way that wraps up at the end is enough to give it the feel of conclusion. I almost wish it had ended a bit earlier. I understand the logic of a cliffhanger ending to pull readers into the next book, but honestly I feel like this book did enough to get a reader hooked without needing that kind of device, and it did leave the ending feeling a bit unresolved.

I tend to read fantasy for the worldbuilding as much as I do for the characters, and overall The Dying of the Golden Day doesn’t disappoint. The device of the heartfriends I very much enjoyed. It had shades of the Aes Sedai/warder bond from Wheel of Time but different enough that it didn’t read as derivative. I also enjoyed the building of the prophecy and the play with translation from an in-world language. The only place I found myself wishing for a bit more was with the magic system itself. I like the division into 3 types of magic, which kept individual magic characters from being too powerful while still allowing for magic as a concept to be broadly useful. That said, I felt like the healing magic in particular came across as too weak. Most of the times Aurelia is shown healing someone she does it using herbs. While I appreciate that she can’t heal everything, I was looking for maybe one or two on-page examples of how her magic healing goes beyond what the physicians can accomplish. Granted, it does seem like all of the gifted’s powers grew stronger over the course of the book. Possibly in future books her power will expand. Still, so much is made of her being gifted that I felt like it should be used more.

This book is a great example of how to creatively subvert tropes to keep them fresh. The big one I’ll cite as an example is the prophecy. Usually when there’s a prophecy in this kind of book, the main character ends up being the prophecied chosen one—not the dark force whose arrival portends doom. While the prophecy around Aurelia is a bit more complicated than this, I appreciated that there were at least characters in-world who thought this was the case. It added another layer and a bit more depth to the traditional prophecy plot line.

I’ll definitely be reading the rest of this trilogy. It’s made me feel like I need to know what happens next, and that’s a sign of success from any book in my opinion. A strong recommend for other writers and readers of high fantasy.

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This is also what I’ve come to love about writing flash fiction, though. It’s a valuable exercise in focus and economy of language. Any flash story is condensed in some way, but that’s especially true for fantasy, sci-fi, or historical—any genre where you need to establish a world the reader doesn’t know yet. It takes a deft hand to immerse someone in a new reality, introduce them to a character they care about, and give them an actual plot to follow, without letting the story sprawl beyond a flash piece’s limited real estate.

As I’ve been working on whittling my natural storytelling inclinations down into a more compact form, I’ve come across a few tips that I’ve found very helpful. So I figured I’d pass those along to other writers out there who are seeking tips on how to write better speculative flash. 

Tip 1: Tighten the scope before you start writing.

I’m usually a pantser. I like to wander alongside my characters on rough drafts, following their steps and letting that tell me the best plot movement for the story. The problem is, that kind of exploratory wandering takes a lot of words. The more steps there are in the story’s plot, the harder it’s going to be to tell it effectively in a flash length.

This isn’t to say I go full outline when I write flash. But I do usually take a second before I start writing to sketch out at least the big-picture steps and make sure I’m not biting off more than I can reasonably chew within the word count limits. I’ll focus especially on things like:

• How much in-story time does this plot cover? It’s definitely possible to cover a long timespan in a flash length. That said, the broader the time scope, the more you’ll need to zoom out to fit it all in. That means less time in-scene at the key points along that timeline. As a rule, the shorter the in-story time, the easier it will be to fit into a flash piece.
• What is the story’s driving conflict and what scenes are necessary to show it? I tend to aim for the fewest scenes possible, and favor flash pieces that have a single scene when I can manage it. Again, this is just about making the most of limited resources. The fewer scenes you have, the more words you can devote to each of them.
• Who is the main character and what is their driving motivation? Building three-dimensional, relatable characters takes space. Giving them a single clear objective or problem can help to quickly define their identity and focus the story at the same time, both very helpful in a short length.
• What parts of the world does the reader absolutely need to see? Whatever your story’s setting, there won’t be time to show the reader all of it. Instead, you need to pick only the specific locations, technology, history, culture, rules, and so on that are directly related to the story you’re telling.

Tip 2: Be exacting in your details.

Focusing on specific, unique details is a great way to enhance the realism of a story at any length, but I’d argue the shorter the story, the more important it is. A well-worded description sneaks in worldbuilding that would take a lot of words to explain otherwise. Describing a place as “the long-abandoned, carbon-scarred outpost” implies a lot of history and puts the location in a broader context while it sets a scene.

I try to make every descriptive passage do this kind of double-duty when I’m writing speculative flash. I also try to bring as many of the senses into play as possible to take that reader immersion to the next level. Smell and touch details can be especially useful for bringing a setting to life in a small space.

It’s not just about the details included, either, but also the language used to describe them. Voice can be another powerful tool for packing the maximum meaning into the fewest possible words. It’s kind of a backdoor form of worldbuilding—by replicating the worldview of a character on the page, you plop the reader right down into their reality. This gives the reader insights into how this world works so you don’t have to spell it out for them in narrative. 

Tip 3: Make full use of your title.

I’m terrible at titles as a rule, which isn’t so much of an issue when you’re working on long things like novels—there’s a solid chance, if it gets published, someone else is going to write a new title for it, anyway. Even for full-length stories, I feel like titles aren’t hugely important. They can help to set the context for what’s coming and put the reader in the right mindset, but even a bad title tends to have a more neutral effect; it’s more forgettable than a drain on the reading experience.

Working in flash lengths has forced me to up my title game. When you use it right, the title can do a lot of heavy lifting to set the story up, letting you jump right in to the action from word one.

There are a lot of different ways you can do this. Sometimes it can be useful to use a longer, explanatory title—something like “The Day After the Sasquatch Army Conquered Portland” gives the reader a whole shit ton of world details before the story even officially starts.

You can accomplish the same thing with a shorter title, too. If you call your story something like “The Changeling” or “The Selkie”, the reader will assume this describes one of the characters, and you’ll only need to drop in a few words to flag which one rather than explaining the whole conceit.

Writing flash is a challenge for me, but I’ve found it’s worth the effort. Keeping speculative stories under 1,000 words forces me to think about worldbuilding, plotting, and language in a different way, and I’ve found that practice has improved my writing overall.

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