Right before crap hit the fan in my life, I was writing every day. It felt good. There were days, weeks and months when I was at the hospital and found myself missing writing.

I tried bringing a spiral notebook/legalpad/3-ring binder along to handwrite some chapters.

I tried printing out chapters to edit by hand.

But the hospital room was unforgivingly uncomfortable.

The wooden arms on the seats insisted on digging into my sides, while my legs would fall asleep if I left them up or down for too long. The seat itself was hard, leaving my butt sore. I just couldn’t win.

Which sounds like nothing but excuses, I realize. But there were also important things constantly on my mind, such as my wife’s health and well-being.

But I really wish I would’ve had a working laptop during that time period….

I couldn’t afford one without a job, though. I was at an impass.

But, oddity of oddities, I did manage to fully work out my calendar. Today, for instance, I can tell you that November 23rd is equivalent to Eighth of Tower in Lura, and the farmoon is going to be a New Moon by nightfall, therefore the Crimson moon will be full.

Which makes me sound like a worldbuilder who wants to be a writer, I realize. My only excuse for this is that the calendar was easy to write on. And I was comfy.

Once my new job got easier and I pretty much knew my child was going to pull through and be safe, the keyboard beckoned again.

I’ve been writing—a little during work when inspiration strikes and much more at home during the later hours. I hope to carry that momentum over into the next Novel-Push Initiative.

(By the way, NPI is going to be a one-on-one affair unless somebody else fancies joining up….)

Now more than ever, I want to know how it will feel to complete this project. One novel. Several revisions. It must be done.

The Tower of Babel (Etemananki) has made life that much more difficult for us story lovers. We miss out on a lot of great books that never get translated overseas. We have to get our own works translated to see the broader world market. And us writers, depending on the scale of our stories, are forced to consider that people in different countries often speak different languages and use region-based dialects.

[The whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Šin'âr, and they dwelt there. (…)

And they said, "Come, let us build us a city and a tower whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth."]

Read the rest of this entry »

How do you make the fantastic elements of your stories seem real?

Read the rest of this entry »

In an effort to get through my first draft, I put a few worldbuilding projects on the backburner. And I’m glad I did.

One of those projects was to develop a calendar. Now that I’m in the editing phase, it needs done now. Or else making fixes during later revisions will be a pain.

I first mentioned the madcap idea of creating my own calendar for Five Rings and went into detail with the actual days of the week here. Read the rest of this entry »

First of all, welcome! Forgive the mess, and thank you very much for visiting. ^__^

The look is different, but it’s still me: Nick, AKA cirellio.

The look of this site will undoubtedly change as I design a layout for my index.html (I’ve been developing one using Dreamweaver CS4. And for the record, I really like the CS4 suite; Much, much better than CS3 IMO.)

I’ve been dilligently brushing up on XML and CSS, and I’ve learned PHP. I’ve also been learning how to draw with vectors, so hopefully I’ll be able to work some of that into my design.

But for now, this downloaded theme’ll have to do. Feedback is, of course, always welcome.

Good news:

I’m over 1/3rd of the way done with my first draft, well-past the point where the main character gets immersed in the world of Lura.

I’m … not sure where the word count sits at the moment, but I’m more focused  on finishing scenes so I can get started on the revision.

Now, some bad news. (WARNING: About to blog about my personal life!) Read the rest of this entry »

Scene 7 cont’d: Originally I had the last scene and this part merged together as one scene. I was thinking of splitting them, but that’s no good to do this early in the book—this scene is the first real emotional hit and the reader might be like “Okay… so why are we paying attention to these two again? When do we get back to Cirellio?” So this scene needs to weather it through to the hit. As long as I write it quick and interesting, the story shouldn’t lose its footing.

Asyria releases her shielding, opening up the floodgates for the emotions to pass between her and whoever is on the other side of her thread. It turns out to be an older woman, horribly tortured, miserable, panicked, and abused. Read the rest of this entry »

What a beast scene three has turned out to be! (I’ll explain why in a bit.)

It involves three characters: Asyria, Larimosa, and Dahjal. (And the temple servants)

The backdrop is the Temple of Marais … actually, the rune-covered central chamber of the temple, known as ‘the convergence’, built over where the ley lines of Kassara intersect.

Asyria is a young child who also happens to be the Meiallin, the most powerful mystic in the world. She is practicing the art of projecting herself to the fourth ring from within the convergence.

Larimosa is Asyria’s mother, a giver who has shown her child the less fortunate people of the world (in hopes of showing her how to be virtuous before her title and power has a chance to go to her head), letting her play regularly with underprivileged children and giving Asyria many chances to be generous—something the troubled world of Lura has eagerly taken notice of.

Larimosa recognizes Dahjal as ‘Giver Greggor’, a famous living saint who has travelled the world performing miracles. Read the rest of this entry »

I definitely wanted a prologue that started out with something highly atmospheric.  Scene 01 was inspired by the crumbling palace in the prologue of The Eye of the World.

Mine starts with an ancient city that appears in seemingly random places on Lura, this time sinking into the ocean. I felt this would create atmosphere similar to the crumbling palace. But it turned out this scene was awfully hard to write. Here’s the first line:

“The city had settled beneath the ocean by the time Dahjal arrived.”
Read the rest of this entry »

After developing many more characters with the same thought process I showed you in the last post, I started thinking about villains. I started thinking, “Who in Lura is strong enough to actually be a threat?”

(ahead is a brainstorm’s worth of minor spoilers) Read the rest of this entry »

As I created Lura, I kept the story in mind. I even wrote my own creation story and could more or less visualize its geologic history.

So then comes plot. They say writing a plot for a novel is easier than for a short story. Heh. I don’t think the person that said that had high fantasy in mind. They say selling a novel is easier than selling a short story, too. But I digress.

The first thing to do was to figure out the beginning and the ending. I tried to play off the characters, their histories, and the world itself. I thought about how I’d like the characters to develop. I tried to make every character ’round’. (Bad, but simple example: If your main character is the ‘ultimate badass’, what kind of experiences could lead to that? After all, s/he probably wasn’t born one.) Thinking about all of those things should reveal some kind of theme, too. That theme should be the focus of the story, which should hopefully reveal some idea for a story arc. Read the rest of this entry »

Izzit the last day of world-building month, already?

I guess I’ve been taking this past week easy. Oh well…

Then today will be all about random worldbuilding topics.

Milkfin: The most common freshwater fish. Looks like a black and white koi. (see? random! lol)

Okay, let’s try this a different way.

A chain reaction. Like a game of dominoes! I’ll start by explaining something, and if I mention something new in there, I’ll go on to explain that, too. Let’s see how far that gets me before I run out of new terms in my explanations or get sick of it.  :P

What to start with? Hm… How about the ancient rules? Read the rest of this entry »

There’s a system in Kassara that tries to ensure everyone has a single, unique name (no ’surnames’). There are few enough people in Lura that it’s still possible.

Many people strive for harmony (especially the Northern Alliance) because they feel if people start sharing the same names or start adding additional names, it will bring the world one step closer to chaos, thus one step closer to a repeat of the day of discord.

So if a family has a baby, they must send a message to ‘Sky Haven’ with their requested name.

The elected officials at Sky Haven check their records to ensure that name doesn’t belong to anyone living. If that’s true, they create an ‘ID card’ for that child to use when crossing any city gates. That card will be traded in every five years throughout their life for a new card. The machine that creates the cards is large, lumbering, unique, and takes an almost unfathomable amount of energy to run. Their unusually high altitude in the mountains (closer to the arc lightning) helps them generate that power. Sky Haven uses the gates system and ID cards, attempting to keep track of the people of Kassara. Read the rest of this entry »

Next, we have biology. (I’ll admit it’s not my best subject.)

There are two kinds of creatures in Lura:
1. Transient (mystical/magical/spectral) creatures
2. Living creatures

The animals found on Lura are much smarter than the ones we have on Earth. Most have a pack mentality. They are highly intelligent; able to communicate with each other, build, and attack in a very organized fashion. This makes travelling extremely dangerous.

If there is a large, organized group of animals, they usually have a spectral creature as a leader, which will have some kind of proper name and usually be the source of many colorful local stories; sometimes even worshipped as gods. They do not die until they are slain. And when they do, they don’t leave behind even a trace of a body. They just disperse like a ghost. Wardings work against them.

• animals

The dharchu are medium-sized living creatures with four muscular legs, their hooves extending in a claw-like fashion. They have round bodies, half of which are covered by very short armored wings they hold close to their body for protection — as if it were a second ribcage. While the wings are useless for flying, they can help the dharchu glide far when they leap and also aid their swimming. They are green and brown, mostly covered in scales with some patches of fur. Their tails are long, muscular, and very curly, which, coupled with their wings, allow them to swim very quickly. Their faces have a peaceful, solemn, humanesque form. They have long snouts and maws with sharp teeth, and protruding whiskers that are thick as beards. It is said the dharchu can leap over sea-faring vessels.

• birds

Read the rest of this entry »

• historical use of divination
• modern use of divination

Because most of this is stuff I’ve already touched on, I’m going to take this section on in one fell swoop.

I guess the most important thing to know is there are plenty of ‘fortune tellers’ in Lura just as there are many nameless people out there who claim to be awakened mystics.

(The nameless are people who pretty much live off of others on the major city streets ((homeless)). In Lura, if you fail to make a name for yourself by the time you are an adult, you lose your name - as decided by the Naming Committee.)

Reading the night sky is a dying art — most of the stars are mapped (though anomalies are still considered good/bad omens).

Astronomists are primarily concerned with how the five rings react with each other, how and from where apparitions manifest, and just exactly what it is that the seven rays users see and experience in the fourth ring.

Divining rods work, but intuition is usually inaccurate. Seven rays mystics know that one of the three barriers in the fourth ring is ‘Time’. Humans can only hope to see a little bit ahead of the barrier of ‘present time’. Most animals can see much farther into the future (For instance, when a killer tidal wave is going to roll in on a shoreline, the animals ‘know’ about it hours/days ahead of time and leave the area early). Some demons and gods can also see into the future, according to Lurian beliefs. So human prophecy is very rare, and usually vague or way off from the truth.

Prev: Moving on… | Next: Not a meme! Also not worldbuilding…

Art

• literature
• music
• painting/drawing
• poetry
• sculpture
• theater
• use of art in society

Literature:
Most non-fiction in Lura is set on pursuit of those ever-important fifth rings. Jigo jisho journals are also heavily circulated, thanks to the printing press being recently invented. My timeline actually includes several publications, who wrote them, and what they meant to Lura.
Fiction is popular as well. There is no television, after all. :P

Music:
There is a counter-culture of youths in Shiira called the ‘third culture’. They have been popularizing music in the desert region, marrying their traditional heavy drum beats with modern strings and vocals called ‘nine echoes’. The music is usually performed within the cavernous acoustics of the ninth satrapy. The current most popular third culture band is called ‘Vocal Void’. Read the rest of this entry »

Okay so a Magic system, check.

World, universe, and physics, check.

Religions with zany philosophies at odds with each other, check!

What’s next?

Well, Eliza was good enough to give us worldbuilders a list of topics to consider. How awesome is that? I figure I can just work my way down. This is the way it starts->

• Architecture
• Art
  • literature
  • music
  • painting/drawing
  • poetry
  • sculpture
  • theater
  • use of art in society

Since a lot of the answers vary from city to city, for the questions that are more specific, I’m going to try and focus on one just one city- Shiira, the desert city.

(Something to understand about Shiira is the northern direction is considered bad luck. Many years ago, two northern kings warred over control of their territory. Now there’s all kinds of superstitious quirks, such as not furnishing a chair on the northern side of tables.)

Architecture:

Shiira is divided into 9 satropies, which are like provinces. Read the rest of this entry »

Mysticism:
Roughly 80% of the people of Kassara are mystics. Nearly everyone goes through a catechism for the religion at an early age.
Mystics are expected to pray at shrines and keep ‘jigo jisho’, but probably only 30% of the followers actually do.
-The prayer shrines are abundant wherever there is civilization. They are pools of water with a shrine maiden present, who is an ‘awakened’ water elemental.
-Jigo jisho is a personal journal mystics keep of their spiritual progression.

Mystics believe in what cannot be seen; they are adherent that some things in life cannot be explained with empirical data alone. Mystics and scientists work together regularly to attempt to explain the true nature of Lura. The fact that apparitions are a commonality is definitely a huge factor contributing to why the religion has gained so many followers.

The ideology of the five rings is embraced by mystics. They believe in the ‘convergience’, which is the idea that all realities intersect at the third ring. They believe they cannot communicate with the Light of Creation directly (which they believe is a manifestation of the fifth ring), and must worship through intermediary gods and goddesses instead.

However, most mystics aren’t entirely convinced the awakened really have powers. It is easy to be skeptical since awakeneds are so rare, and some people are worried their religion is using parlour tricks to keep their followers in line.

None-the-less, the wards to keep evil spirits away seem to work. Read the rest of this entry »

The only truly governing religion is ’superstition’ in Lura, but it has manifested itself in many ways.

Atheism:
There are no true atheists (as we know them) in Lura. With religion simply defined as ‘a belief’, if you tried to claim yourself as one, it would be seen as a joke in Lura. Not believing in something there is, by definition, ‘a belief’.

The existance of god-like beings is almost universally accepted.

Fatalism:
Fatalists believe everything that has ever been or ever will be is written by the ‘Pensman’. He writes high above us on the parchment of space. The stars in the sky are seen as ‘bleed-throughs’; us underneath the parchment. Hence ‘written in the stars’. Their religion is rather bleak; their minds riddled with pessimistic sayings such as “The world is a catacomb”, and they do not believe in an afterlife. Rather, they share the belief: how you felt before you were born is the same way you will feel after death.
“Do you remember what it was like before you were born?”

You do not and will not remember it, so what happens in life is all that matters. They hold you always do exactly as good as you could have—given the circumstances—in any given situation. For instance, if you are lazy, it is due to surrounding circumstances and the will of the Pensman—you simply could not have been ‘not lazy’ during that time period due to fate.

Their religion channels energy from Anima Mundi.

Prev: The World of Lura | Next: Is there religion in Lura? -part two-

To kick off world building month, I thought it would be best to introduce you to the planet itself.

Should planets really be named? An interesting debate. There’s one main reason I decided to name mine:
If you don’t name your planet, your fans will. For example, Robert Jordan didn’t name his world for Wheel of Time, so readers dubbed it Randland (’Rand’ is the name of the main character). That way, fans could more easily communicate when discussing the ins and outs of Jordan’s creation.
…I don’t think I want the Five Rings world to be referred to as ‘Cirellioland’, so I decided to name my world ‘Lura’.

Lura has a solar system and single, central, normal-sized star much like Earth’s called Sol. No one is sure how many planets there are within the solar system, but astrologists actively study the nearby celestial bodies and stars. (Of course, it’s hard to know much about the universe when even the lands within the surrounding oceans are unexplored.)

If I’m following my five rings system (which I am, of course :P), any planets that can sustain life should be between the second and third ring. Lura is just such a planet, so its elemental makeup is much like Earth’s. 
But there are a few key differences: Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve mentioned some of the projects I’ve been involved with elsewhere, but this time I’m going to be involved with one that will unfurl right before your eyes. ^_^

Tomorrow, I will start participating in an event called ‘World Building Month’; the brainchild of the awesomely talented author Eliza from Tales of a Fantasy Scribbler. (Her blog is also snugly nested within my tanglebrush of links->)

What is World Building Month?:
Quote from Eliza’s blog:

So if this sounds like something you’d also like to participate in, by all means, join. It should be lots of fun and there are many talented writers participating.

I’m joining partly because Eliza has been around here since post #1, partly because I missed out on her ‘Villains Month’ last month, and because I decided it can’t hurt to take one more month aside to reinforce the world I’ve built. I’m hoping to discover many additional things about the land my characters are destined to traipse through, and I’m looking forward to sharing some of it with you. Read the rest of this entry »