Writing Guide

Note: You can always break the rules. Just run it by someone before final drafting.

Pronouns, Gender and Sex

• Gender/sex terms - No humans here, do not use man/woman or words derived from either. Use male, female, enby, or species name. You can use terms like lady for the vibes, but do so sparingly or try to find an alternative, not as a replacement term.
• Mate - For most species, use pairbonding for marriage and mate for husband/wife.
  • Exception: Montrose still use "marriage" and "husband/wife".
• Transgender/Nonbinary, etc. - Yes, every species with gender has these concepts somewhere. Different species have different practices regarding these situations. Species without sexual/gender differentiation do not experience these or experience these in an entirely different way from standard.

While normally you simply use pronouns as you see fit, various traditions and species in the setting have specific focuses.

• • Ringel: No gender, technically. Ringel in their own speech do not use gendered language, but rather might directly refer to sexual characteristics, and it is not seen as crude. This can still be transcribed as male/female/enby where appropriate. Use pronouns for ringel based on vibes. Ringel who change sex might not even change pronouns, but they might.
    • Use mother/father in a technical sense--the one who gave birth is a mother, the one who sired is a father, even if they have changed sexual characteristics since then.
  • Ssarith and Turek: No gender. Turek have both male and female characteristics. Ssarith are fully agender. Neither differentiate between roles.
    • Within ssarith/turek POV, choose one pronoun for ssarith/turek and stick with it to indicate uniformity in gender. You can use he, she, or they.
      • If you have multiple of the species, it's sometimes better to avoid they due to plurality confusion.
      • Ssarith and turek do not need to refer to each other by the same pronoun; they are outsiders to one another.
    • Outside of ssarith/turek POV, go by the POV character's local conventions or vibes. Non-ssarith/turek might still refer to different members by different pronouns.
    • Since neither have an innate concept of gender or sexual roles, they may easily get confused by other characters' genders.
      • For instance, montrose local conventions are to perceive ssarith and turek as feminine, so would trend toward using "she" exclusively for both species.
  • Ulayavi: Gender is chosen at age of majority and tends to reflect sexual roles, but is not exclusive to them.
    • Children are either referred to genderlessly or by the gender they expect to pick.
    • Ulayavi will typically seek to change their sexual characteristics to fit their chosen gender, but don't have to.

Terminology

• Hands/Feet - Ideally, use paws, claws, or whatever is appropriate to the species over hands. Or if writing an anup, don't mention them at all, pervert.
  • That said, if you can't go without using hand/foot without making it extremely awkward, go ahead and ignore this.
  • Exceptions - Words like handed, handling, handsome, handedly, etc. If it's a handy verb or adjective, probably doesn't need adjusting.
    • Exceptions to the exceptions - Punning is pawesome.
• Measurements - Metric system is preferred.
  • Exceptions - Beer can be measured in pints because metric doesn't have a convenient term for 470ml.
• Nose - Functional, but consider snout, muzzle, beak, etc. as appropriate.

Transcription

• Accents - Nothing so heavy as to be indistinguishable from gibberish. Differentiate characters by register and light use of inflections.
• Languages - If the character cannot speak the language being spoken, it is perfectly appropriate to skip over it. Don't do what I did in Traitors, Thieves and Liars and have an untranslated dialogue at length unless it's meant to be read into, and even then you should still probably skip the gibberish.
• Puns - As many as you can! Make Gre7g suffer!
  • No seriously, even though these characters are technically speaking in a non-English language, do not get hung up on whether or not a term rhymes, can be made into a pun, or another play on words. Just pretend it works for the language being spoken.
• Time/Calendar - Use as is appropriate to the culture of the setting.
  • Use years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, seconds as can be most closely translated; it's preferable not to use neologisms for these as readers prefer familiar terms to organize information. In case there is a discrepancy between two cultures, just note it.

Culture	Clock	Format	Rollover (Hour Zero)	Week	Month	Year	Approx. Relative Time	Additional terms
Lio Empire	20 hour, 100 minute, no AM/PM	HH:MM	Meridian Sunrise	8 days?	Varies	?	1 lio year = 8 krakun months
Krakun Empire	24 hour, 60 minute, no AM/PM	HHMM	Meridian Midnight	5 days?	30 days	12 months, 360 days exactly	1 krakun year = 0.95 earth year	Major-year = 60 years

• Untranslated words - Don't call a rabbit a smeerp. You might get away with calling a smeerp a rabbit if it has enough rabbit-like characteristics, but it should still get some kind of differentiator to not put "literal earth bunny" in their head.
  • If a word a character is using is difficult to translate, you can use their word for it, or a near-equivalent if it is explained to the reader.
  • Only italicize an untranslated word if it is a word that the POV character doesn't recognize.

Typesetting

• All Caps - Use for signage if applicable; otherwise emphasize using italics.
• Bold - At your own risk. In other stories, bold is sometimes used in standalone centered text like reading out signage, but it's preferred not to use it in-line.
• Drop Caps - Don't use while drafting, this is final polish formatting.
• Italics - For emphasis, titles (books and ship names, not personal titles), thoughts (without quotations), alternative communiques (lip reading, chemical signals, flash [morse] code). In a line of italics, un-italicize to indicate emphasis.
  • ex: We need to infiltrate the White Flower II in order to acquire their delicious fruit pies, she thought.
• Scene break - Use a separator like ### to indicate a scene break in the middle of a chapter; it is more clear than just three returns in a row. Use anything while drafting so long as it's consistent.
  • It's better not to use a word processor's horizontal line for a scene break as this might not be find/replaceable in their own software, for whatever reason.
• Small Caps - Used to denote the beginning of a chapter or passage depending on layout style, with the first x words put into small caps for visual weight. Don't use while drafting, this is a final polish formatting.
• Underline - Underlining is not preferred in general fiction for any reason--traditionally, underlining text in manuscripts told the typesetter to italicize the text. Since now we can just format directly in word processors, there is no need to do this anymore.