Books and movies love disease. Whether it’s the crux of the story, like a zombie-fying outbreak, or it’s background to other elements, like in Marie Lu’s Legend. Sometimes we need to include a real disease in a historical novel, or a fake one in fantasy or sci-fi. For a real disease the method of how to write it is clear—do the research and maybe read some other books (novel or non-fiction) that include it. But to make one up is a whole other ball game. I took many courses in undergrad and grad school that discussed disease from all angles. No need for you to take an epidemiology course though, I’ve gathered my knowledge and have the top five tips for how to make up a disease right here!
 
Determine a Method of Transmission
For most zombie stories, the method is a bite. But there are many ways to catch a disease. Here are the main methods:

Person-to-person is when body fluids (wink wink) are exchanged to transmit fluid. Transmits slowly through a population, but tends to be pretty infectious. Examples: HIV, Hepatitis B, syphilis, and other STDs.

Droplet transmission is exactly what you think it is. Jessica has a cold, sneezes in your face, you breathe in her mucus droplets, and now you have a cold. These tend to transmit quickly through a population, and can range from mild to deadly. Examples: common cold, flu, tuberculosis.

Airborne or contaminated object transmission is similar to droplet transmission, except you don’t need to be close. These diseases can linger in the air or on a surface long after someone has left the room. These are also often quite contagious. Example: measles.

Food/water borne diseases are exactly what they sound like. Often, they cause digestive symptoms and place like the FDA monitor for them. These are often killed in proper cooking or boiling processes, so they tend to have a class divide. Examples: E. coli, cholera, botulism

Animal-to-person contact and zoonotic diseases tend to be rarer now that most people only interact with household pets instead of farm animals or game. Many diseases stay in animal populations and rarely make the jump to humans, like rabies. A more common disease to crossover is Toxoplasma gondii, which is transmitted by cat poop. Humans tend to be very bad at fighting these diseases because the germ evolved with a different host. Therefore, they can be very deadly to humans while natural host animals survive better. Another example: black plague (rats/prairie dogs).  Some diseases begin as animal-to-person, then can be transmitted person-to-person, like Ebola.

Insect bites (aka vector-borne diseases) transmit many problematic diseases. Mosquitoes, fleas, and ticks are the main offenders to humans. Often, the insects pick up the disease from another animal host. Ticks get Lyme disease from infected deer and mice, then introduce the Lyme to humans when they bite us later. Insects like warmer climates, so vector-borne diseases are more of a health hazard in the tropics than in arctic zones. Other examples: malaria, West Nile virus, Zika
The environment also hosts many disease-causing agents. Parasites like ringworm, hookworm, Legionaries, flesh eating bacteria, the list goes on and on. Humans catch this by being exposed to dirty water, soil, etc. especially with open wounds. As you may have guessed, rates of these diseases also tend to have a class divide.
 
 
Morbidity and Mortality Rates
Once you have your method of transmission, you should determine the morbidity and mortality rates. Morbidity is the state of being sick. The morbidity rate is how often people are catching it, you can think of this as representing how contagious it is. Mortality is the state of being dead, so the mortality rate is how often it kills the person it infects. You can think of this as representing how deadly this is. Plague-level events have both high morbidity and high mortality. Something like rabies has low morbidity, because it rarely happens in humans, but once contacted it has high mortality. The common cold has high morbidity in the winter, but very low mortality, as few people will die from it.
In your writing, you should determine how present you want this disease to be. If your fictional disease has high morbidity and mortality rates, it better be the main plot focus. Otherwise, it may be too distracting for your reader. Consider how it is transmitted in determining your rates, see the section above.
 
Symptoms
Symptoms of a disease are your body trying to fight it off. Fevers are from your body trying to boil that disease to death. Snot is from trying to get that disease out of your nose. Coughing is to get rid of the mucus that trickled into your lungs. On and on. You should think about what symptoms your fictional disease has and why. Tie the symptoms together, like high blood pressure causing headaches, a rash leading to sores, runny nose leading to sore throat. And have the symptoms escalate through the course of the disease. This is not only realistic, it adds drama to the story, and helps your characters keep track of how close a comrade may be to death. (We only have until she develops a fever to find a cure! After that, she’s a goner!)  
 
Scars
Not all diseases leave no trace. Smallpox left people with large scars on their skin. Ebola can change a survivor’s eye color (and continues to live in the eye!) Scarlet fever can weaken the heart. Chicken pox can come back as shingles. Malaria never really leaves you. If anyone is able to survive your fictional disease, consider the after-effects that may remain. It may be a somber reminder of what they endured, but it could also have social consequences, like facial smallpox scars.
 
Cure
If the plot or a subplot revolves around developing a cure, then you’ll need to figure out a cure. Even if you have a scientist pop up and do a little hand waving, you’ll want to know more than just, “you need this injection! Ta-da!” There are several places in the cycle of disease transmission in which you can stop the disease. Let’s discuss those:

The agent: Identify the disease agent; a virus, bacteria, parasite, fungus, and discover what will kill it outside the body. Bleach? A bacteriophage? Gotta identify the problem before any other solutions are found. Identifying the agent is usually early in the story. The exception is a fantasy with a historical world, pre-Victorian era or earlier, in which germ theory was not developed yet. In that case, this step and many others, may not apply.

The reservoir: This ties back to how it’s transmitted. Once that’s known, the reservoir can be handled. If it’s on dirty surfaces or in the water supply, those can be cleaned. Animals can be treated, insects can be sprayed for. If it’s person-to-person only, we’ll get back to that. Take note that hospitals will often adhere to the assumption that everything is contaminated and can transmit the disease and will be cleaning through the process of treating patients. But if you’re writing a fantasy with a historical flavor to it, maybe hospitals don’t apply to you.

Portals of exit and entry: How does the disease get out of one person (portal of exit) and into another (portal of entry?)  Once that is found, your characters will know if things like face masks, gloves, hand washing, and different levels of personal protective equipment are helpful. For anything particularly infectious and deadly, hazmat suits might be used before this information is available and once this is known, the medical teams will step down their equipment.

Susceptible hosts: The disease can only keep going as long as someone is susceptible to it. Part of disease treatment is prevention, often an immunization is developed to protect those who haven’t been infected. But it could also be as easy as hand washing and basic hygiene, like in common cold prevention.

A cure: Maybe you want a real cure that can help those who already have the disease. This will be dependent on all the other factors you have developed. Maybe you’ll choose a vaccine for your virus, an antibiotic for your bacteria, a substance toxic to the parasite, or maybe your characters will treat the symptoms until it passes. It all depends on the rest of the world building you’ve done to this point. If the disease’s mortality rate is high, the cure will be preventing it—sorry to anyone who caught it. If the mortality rate is especially low, there may be no pressing need for a cure. Just remember that the cure needs to kill the disease agent without killing the host.
 
Need more inspiration? Choose a morbidity rate and mortality rate to mimic and search for similar diseases. See how different organizations handled it, from Venice inventing the quarantine for ships with possible plague to how the WHO contains Ebola outbreaks.
 
Found any of these tips helpful? Have any fresh ideas to add? Let’s discuss in the comments!

In world building, sometimes holidays fall by the wayside. Or they mimic well known holidays in our world. But if you’re writing a secondary world fantasy, they’re not going to celebrate the same holidays, or in the same manner, as holidays in our world. Here are four tips for how to create a holiday!
 
Rather than a deity or deities, focus on history
Yes, holidays can be religious. But they usually focus on one historical event, rather than celebrating a God or Gods in general. Think of Christmas, it celebrates the birth of Jesus, not his entire life. Hanukkah celebrates when oil for one day lasted eight days. Specific events, especially events determined to be miracles, are a strong basis for a holiday.  It gives you something concrete to build the details around. Specifics also make your holiday more unique and memorable, rather than a generic harvest festival, winter festival, etc.
 
The day should match the culture
If you build a culture that is very buttoned up and conservative, the holiday you create should include traditions that are similarly conservative. A belly dancer probably wouldn’t turn up at that world’s event. A culture that loves music would probably have lots of music at their holiday. A day celebrated in the cold north would probably not include tropical fruits. Holidays also reflect other values of the culture you’ve created, for example, if they value education, then perhaps trivia is a traditional pastime. Use this logic and the heavy lifting you’ve already done on world building to have a holiday that fits your culture.  
 
Choose a color scheme
For most holidays, you can picture a color scheme. Whether it’s just one (Green for St. Patrick’s Day) or many (like the colors used in Holi). This can help with deciding how to describe it to your reader and picturing it yourself. Try to think out of the box, if you choose any popular color combination, your readers will automatically connect your holiday to something else. And not just red and green for Christmas, but think of red and yellow being linked to McDonald’s. Beyond that, consider what colors are available in your fantasy world (if it’s historical), and what would be rare, but used for special occasions. Colors often have meaning, so if you’ve built your world with color symbolism elsewhere, don’t forget to include your pre-built symbolism for holidays too.
 
Create a variety of traditions
Not everyone celebrates every holiday the same. Sure, many people watch fireworks on July 4th, but not everyone barbecues. Mostly because not everyone has access to a barbecue or grill. So be sure to include variety in your holiday. If gifts are exchanged, people may open the gifts at different times of day. If a major meal is involved, that may also be eaten at different times. Some families may gather together from long distances, some may prefer to spend the holiday with friends. Maybe a religious service is attended, but is it at midnight or dawn? Or a reasonable hour? And don’t forget, there may be traditions performed by the very devout that the more agnostic people don’t perform. No culture is a monolith, so be sure to include variations of the traditions of your holiday to add a sense of realism.  
 
Were these tips helpful in creating a holiday for your secondary world fantasy? Any ideas to add? Let’s discuss in the comments!

We’ve all seen wedding movies. Some focus on the bride, like Bride Wars. Others, the best friend, like Bridesmaids or My Best Friend’s Wedding. Even other family members get to star, like Father of the Bride. In some the wedding ends as planned, with a married couple. In others, the bride or groom is whisked away, in love with someone else. But if you’re writing a wedding story and never planned a wedding, there are some key aspects you’ll miss. Especially if your research is to watch wedding movies, because it’s not like that in real life!
I planned a wedding in 2017/2018, and it went off with just a few tiny hitches. Here are my top tips for writing about weddings.
 
1. The Entire Bridal Party Doesn't Live Nearby.
Whether it’s the bride’s cousin, the groom’s brother, or friends from college, the entire wedding party is unlikely to live in the same city—let alone state!—as the couple. And this can actually make writing the bridal party easier.
For example, rather than a scene where you introduce five new women at once, you can break it up. Two local, one close enough for bigger planning moments, and two we only see at the shower, bachelorette party, and wedding only. Much more manageable in terms of cast for you to write, and for your reader to keep track of. And more realistic anyway! It’s a three-way-win.

2. Budget Consistency is the Key to Realism
If your bride has to work overtime hours to afford the barn venue she wants, she’s certainly not going to have the eaves dripping in orchids. And if she can afford the trendy downtown loft, she’s not going to only be able to afford a few daisies. Your readers will pick up on this type of strange juxtaposition and it will be distracting. Wedding planning websites like The Knot and Zola have calculators where you enter a budget and it gives you a breakdown of what amount of money is typical to spend for every item. This can help you maintain a consistent budget throughout this fake wedding and give you insight into some of the planning problems you hadn’t considered for your characters to wrangle.
 
3. The Legal Matters Matter
Something many wedding movies and books fail to address is the marriage license. It varies state to state, even county to county, so look up the laws for your characters’ venue. Yes, the venue location, not where they actually reside. For an international wedding, rules may vary. But often, you need to have that all tied up seven days before the ceremony for things to actually be legal. Including the name of your officiant, in some cases! So, before you decide to have your bride and groom lose their rabbi at the airport, make sure you’ve looked into if this would invalidate the license. Another place for wedding shenanigans is that many licenses require seeing the birth certificates or certified copies of the birth certificates to issue the license. Haven’t seen that played up in a story, but it’s ripe for comedy. Just saying.
 
4. Trends: To Include or Not To Include
Pinterest is always ready to tell you what’s hot for weddings this year. And next year. And what’s so over. The information is usually conflicting. I’ve seen posts lauding donut walls as God’s gift to weddings. And other posts claiming those donut walls are crawling with germs and the trend can die now. So, do you include a trend in your wedding story? It could date it, but like any contemporary story, it’s bound to be dated by something anyway. What you actually need to consider is if your characters would participate in the latest trends. And if the groom and bride are on opposite sides, who would win? It’s not always the bride, and it’s not always the most assertive person, either. It’s whoever cares more about that particular thing. The groom won’t care about the bridesmaids’ dresses matching or just being in the same color story. But the bride might care less about the types of beer served at the open bar. As you write, you’ll have to figure out who would compromise—or not compromise—and when. Just be sure the wedding reflects the couple’s personalities, to make your wedding story unique!
 
5. Know the Clichés and Find a New Twist
The bride’s car breaks down on the way to the venue and she’s late! But someone in a quirky vehicle picks her and the bridesmaids up and delivers them. Or maybe the groom is having trouble with his boutonniere but everyone thinks he has cold feet. What a mix up!
No. If it can be fixed with a cell phone, it’s cliché not to fix it with a cell phone. A bridesmaid would order an Uber/Lyft/etc. The groom would text the bride. Honestly, there’s probably a wedding party group chat in which these updates are happening. Any communication snafu better have a really solid reason behind it. And dead cell phones all around—too convenient to ever happen.
Apply this logic to the other wedding story clichés. The cake getting destroyed. The wedding dress is too tight. The bridesmaid and groomsman hooking up in a closet. Whatever you’ve seen in a movie or book before, do it in a new, modern way. Throw the cliché on its head. There will still be chaos, that’s a trope in a wedding story, not a cliché. (The difference being the trope is expected to be there for the genre, but it’s always done in a different way. A cliché is done the same way every time and is no longer exciting.) 
 
6. Watch Out for Dated Traditions
Haven’t planned a wedding in a decade or more? Only seen older movies but never planned on yourself? It’s important to know that a lot of things have changed about how you do things.
Wedding websites are big, they have links to registries, venue info, and guests can even RSVP there. Physical invites usually still go out, but the wedding website has all the info guests need. And photos of the couple too.
Many registries are set up online. Sure, stores still have those fun gun things where you go around and boop items to add them. But Amazon is also extremely popular for registries. The last wedding I attended that didn’t have an Amazon registry happened when I was twelve. Spoiler alert, that’s over a decade ago.
There are lots of great bridesmaids dress websites. From renting to owning, matching to same-color-different-dress to coordinating-colors-and-fabrics-but-no-matching, most of it can be done online. Sure, David’s Bridal is still kind of around (they filed for Bankruptcy last I heard.) I’m sure there’s also an equivalent for groomsmen, although Men’s Warehouse is a solid in-store option.
There will always be that traditional bride and groom who do things old-school, but most modern couples will not do everything exactly how it was done in 1999.
 
7. Fake-Plan a Wedding
The obvious advice would be to pretend to plan a wedding using The Knot, Zola, or Pinterest. And that’s all well and good. You’ll get lots of great inspiration, see trends, and even get a sense of prices.  Read reviews left by real brides on those planning websites to get a sense of what goes wrong. However, this can often be a rabbit hole and may be much more information than you need to write a convincing wedding. Don’t let planning prevent you from getting to the writing.
 
8. The Stress is Real
Your character is going to stress about the planning process. Most of all the bride, but also the groom. No longer do guests expect every aspect of the wedding to be planned by the bride, so the groom will feel the pressure too. Time limits, finding relatives’ addresses (who has an address book anymore?), items arriving off the internet not matching their descriptions, bridesmaids getting their dresses on time, groomsmen remembering to get fitted, coordinating vendors, and the stress of just making any decision at all. This can spread to anyone helping or anyone in the bridal party who has responsibilities to prep for. There’s a lot of pressure to be Instagram/Pinterest perfect, and older relatives can often make comments too.
Don’t forget to show the stress in how the characters act, not just tell the reader/viewer what’s gone wrong.


Did this help with your wedding themed manuscript or screenplay? Any more advice? Let's talk about it in the comments!

Storm of Locusts by Rebecca Roanhorse
Storm of Locusts is the sequel to Trail of Lightning, which is the podcast's January 2020 pick. I loved it so much I absolutely had to get the sequel immediately! After all, Trail of Lightning leaves you with a lot of questions. 

Here is my disclaimer: this review will spoil Trail of Lightning. So if you haven't read that, go do it now! And then Storm of Locusts too. 

Storm of Locusts picks up about a month after Trail of Lightning leaves off. Maggie joins a mission with the Thirsty Boys to find a missing Council member. They go to the lair of a cult leader named White Locust, to find the Council member dead, and they loose a team member of their own fighting a strange woman with metal insect wings. Maggie picks up a new buddy, Ben, a sixteen year old girl. She takes Ben to Grace's bar when she hears Kai and Grace's youngest son, Caleb, have gone missing. Maggie, Ben, Rissa, and Clive head out on a mission to find them. This takes them past the wall, meeting new horrors in the ruins of the world. They run into old friends, or frenemies, like Ma'ii and Mosi. They also pick up an ally named Aaron. They find the White Locust and Kai, and the White Locust is more powerful than they feared. But Kai doesn't do a whole lot, to be honest. Maggie and co must find a way to prevent the White Locust from destroying Dinetah, or die trying.

Positives: I loved Maggie, as always she's a strong female character. Lots of agency, lots of bravery, lots of sass. She also grows and becomes more sociable and trusting. And my favorite part: she gains confidence to use an impressive weapon. I liked Ben too, she can stay. 

Negatives: If you're hoping for romance, look elsewhere. Kai doesn't pop up until near the end and there's no time for a make out scene. Maybe book three though. Not the worst negative in the world, the rest of the story is engaging enough without romance. 

Overall rating: 4.5/5 
If you loved Trail of Lightning, you'll love this too. You really don't have a choice but to read this, and it doesn't let you down. Especially that ending! Rebecca Roanhorse sure knows how to stick a landing! (Teach me your ways!!)

Have you read Storm of Locusts? What did you think?