Complications of a Non-Human Race

Hello friends! I've put about 2000 words on to The Neif this week. That probably doesn't sound like much, but I'm glad to have any progress. I fleshed out the bits of outline remaining in the story, rearranged some pieces, cut others. I'm still a ways from done.

One of the most difficult parts of writing about my sugar people is the fact that they aren't human. They still experience the full range of human emotion, but they express themselves differently. They don't have lungs. They don't eat, so they don't have teeth. They don't have hair or eyebrows. They don't have internal organs. They live in a pre-industrial society so many of our turns of phrase would be lost on them. They don't speak English. Their hands function as their reproductive organs and they don't have the genitals we would recognize. Basically I'm writing them like they're an alien race.

The problem with this is that if I write them exactly like they would be if they actually existed then no one would be able to understand the story. And that's besides the fact that it'd be in an invented language. I'm balancing the other-ness of Neif culture with the accessibility that is necessary for my target reader to "get it." I'm doing my best, I promise. You'll have to read it and tell me how I did.

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Non-Traditional Plot Structure

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Research: Combining Sciences to Create Fantasy

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