History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

Anthropology and World Building

| July 22, 2019

There are many ways in which anthropological studies can help authors with their world-building. This lengthy and detailed review of a book about anthropology includes many bits of information that an author could use when they’re considering questions of worldbuilding, including cultures, learning, and more!  

Shade and Light in Worldbuilding

| May 27, 2019

When you’re world building, how much thought do you give to places that have shade and places that are brightly lit? And how do your characters react to the same? In this article, which talks about the lack of shade in Los Angeles, and how it is a marker of economic disparity, there are all […]

Fun for Friday: Color Etymology

| January 11, 2019

Why doesn’t anything rhyme with purple? Or orange? It might have to do with the origins of those words. This article on Gizmodo talks about the etymology of colors, or how they got their English names. But did you know that not all languages have words for every color? And there’s also the belief that […]

Culture Building

| July 23, 2018

I came across this graphic (rendered at larger than my normal graphic size here to make it more legible) related to the aspects of culture that are easy and difficult to see. It was originally posted by a music teacher talking about multicultural classrooms. But on Twitter, Fonda Lee pointed out how useful it could […]

August recap

| September 3, 2013

By the numbers: Stories out at the beginning of the month: 3 Acceptances received: 0 Rejections received: 2 Stories withdrawn: 0 Resubmissions: 3 New Submissions: 1 Stories out at the end of the month: 5 And we’re back in the short story saddle, with a new story finished, polished, and submitted! On top of that, […]