Some of what I’m about to say is a reiteration of what I commented a few weeks ago at The Plot Whisperer’s site. (sorry, Martha!)

In my post about the timeline, I stopped writing before I got to the part where I should have talked about adding events closer to the beginning of the story … mainly because I didn’t want to reveal any spoilers. But, it was bugging me. So I decided to go ahead and talk about it now. It’s a very important part of the process, after all.

The best way I’ve found to go about creating the recent events that lead up to the beginning of the story is to have at least one major character fairly well planned-out. For instance, if you know how old the character is, you’ve already got a timeline-worthy event.

ex:
We know my book begins in the ‘Year of Harmony’ 2784.
And we know Cirellio is 28 years old, so…

YH 2756:
Cirellio is born.

Voila! A starting point.
Now, to get him from an infant to the strapping young man I know in my head…

A great way to plan out these early life events is to understand that every character wants something, wants to avoid something, and has dreams. These drives are often tied together, and should ultimately steer them to their fate. This mantra works well at all stages of the book.

((This may sound wacky, but I’m going to say the next part is a spoiler. Yes, this is a SPOILER WARNING for a book that may never see print and isn’t even complete yet. :P But anyway, little tidbits about the main character’s background (without going into too much detail) will be mentioned here. Just understand a big part of who Cirellio is and what he will become has to do with his back story, which I plan to reveal to readers in small increments throughout the book. Proceed at your own risk!))

—BEGIN SPOILER—

Read the rest of this entry »

While worldbuilding, I often found myself wondering, “Do I have enough information to continue writing? Too little? How much worldbuilding is too much?” It’s a pretty common worry amongst first-time novel writers. I see similar questions a lot.

The definitive (read: canned) answer seems to be, “When it hurts the progress of your novel; all the planning in the world won’t matter if you never finish your novel.” 

((A comforting thought: You don’t need to know every minute detail before you start writing. But the major ones are very important. Especially to fantasy.))

Those answers used to be good enough for me. But they left me doomed to wonder if I had thought of everything without having to rewrite my whole novel halfway through. I didn’t want to find out the hard way if everything I invented out of thin air was going to work well with my plot, but a rewrite was a plausible, scary possibility.

Enter ‘Fantasy Worldbuilding Questions’ by Patricia Wrede–an excellent checklist for the aspiring worldbuilder. I am so glad I came across this internet gem! Any worldbuilding issues I didn’t manage to think of on my own seemed to be covered here. I loved this list so much, I saved every question to a word document to access them anywhere.

It’s simple to use: Peruse the questions, think about the answers. If you have no idea about how to answer something, just copy and paste the troublesome question into a word processor to think about later. If you can answer a majority of the questions, you’re probably in good shape!

Prev: A fictional timeline. A fantasy world. | Next: Closer to the beginning

Research and development. More research and development. Day-dreaming about the beginning and end of your story. Brainstorming. Hearing your characters chit-chat with each other in your head (Scary, isn’t it?)…

It turns out there’s an actual term for all this meandering around instead of writing. No, it’s not called ‘writer’s block’. lol
It’s called ‘composting’.
Yep, like a compost heap. Odd term for it, don’t you think? I don’t really equate brainstorming ideas with throwing biodegradable garbage in a heap of dead leaves and grass.

But ‘composting’ is what we writers do, even if some of us can be best described as ‘by the seat of your pants’ writers. It’s what I have been up to for a long time; been babbling on about here, and it’s certainly an ‘informal’ process; different for every one.

After painstakingly trying to compile a set of rules that support each other to paint the picture of a living, breathing world (world-building), I started to get an idea or two about some of the major past events it might have gone through. My focus was to create a fictional world history timeline with as few events as possible–but still manage to set the stage for the beginning of the story. And, as far as I can tell, ’setting the stage with past events’ is really all creating a timeline is. Read the rest of this entry »

A lost friend, a look again.
How Annie always tumbled in.
Lost beyond the camelsphere.
Need to find that piece of luggage.

Deities in windows, staring.
Played the harp of stingrays.
Time stretched, we carried pills.
You, me, and Ursa Minor.

Poured my wits upon a script
Drifting through a time-split.
Demon always being still.
Harboring ten-thousand tempos.

Though I thought I was just bored
And it was just curious.
Bubbled up before it’s gone.
I’ve broken through a breakthrough.

Read the rest of this entry »

A lost friend, a look again.
How Annie always tumbled in.
Lost beyond the camelsphere.
Need to find that piece of luggage.

Deities in windows, staring.
Played the harp of stingrays.
Time stretched, we carried pills.
You, me, and Ursa Minor.

Poured my wits upon a script
Drifting through a time-split.
Demon always being still.
Harboring ten-thousand tempos.

Though I thought I was just bored
And it was just curious.
Bubbled up before it’s gone.
I’ve broken through a breakthrough.

Read the rest of this entry »

A lost friend, a look again.
How Annie always tumbled in.
Lost beyond the camelsphere.
Need to find that piece of luggage.

Deities in windows, staring.
Played the harp of stingrays.
Time stretched, we carried pills.
You, me, and Ursa Minor.

Poured my wits upon a script
Drifting through a time-split.
Demon always being still.
Harboring ten-thousand tempos.

Though I thought I was just bored
And it was just curious.
Bubbled up before it’s gone.
I’ve broken through a breakthrough.

Read the rest of this entry »

A lost friend, a look again.
How Annie always tumbled in.
Lost beyond the camelsphere.
Need to find that piece of luggage.

Deities in windows, staring.
Played the harp of stingrays.
Time stretched, we carried pills.
You, me, and Ursa Minor.

Poured my wits upon a script
Drifting through a time-split.
Demon always being still.
Harboring ten-thousand tempos.

Though I thought I was just bored
And it was just curious.
Bubbled up before it’s gone.
I’ve broken through a breakthrough.

Read the rest of this entry »

A lost friend, a look again.
How Annie always tumbled in.
Lost beyond the camelsphere.
Need to find that piece of luggage.

Deities in windows, staring.
Played the harp of stingrays.
Time stretched, we carried pills.
You, me, and Ursa Minor.

Poured my wits upon a script
Drifting through a time-split.
Demon always being still.
Harboring ten-thousand tempos.

Though I thought I was just bored
And it was just curious.
Bubbled up before it’s gone.
I’ve broken through a breakthrough.

Read the rest of this entry »

Why is fantasy getting so popular all of the sudden?

Discussing it with my wife, she made an interesting observation: Maybe the popularity of fantasy is booming because our culture was getting too saturated with reality TV?
Hm. I read somewhere the more rational the world gets, the more irrational fantasy needs to be.

Fantasy is one of the oldest forms of storytelling. We used the fantastic to attempt to explain the world when science could not. But, now that science can explain a great deal of the workings of our world, where does fantasy fit in?

We dream in fiction every night. So fiction must be important to our everyday lives, somehow. My wife jokingly said, “I don’t know anyone who dreams in non-fiction!”

I fondly look back on my early childhood, remembering what it was like to live within the constraints of my imagination without impunity. As I grew older, role-models made it clear I was expected to cast aside my childish ways. The problem with that was, any innocence I loosened my grip on could not be regained. The imagination I have left is what survived being smothered by grown-ups, and what survived the harsh sting of the real world. Read the rest of this entry »