Every so often I read something where an author is talking about their writing process…. and invariably the topic of world building comes up. Recently I heard a bit about how for some people its outlines and for some its a quick written recap and then I hear about the person who consistently does about 800 pages of world building until everything seems so solid in her mind that main characters and plot lines stand out clearly.
And it occurred to me… is that why I’ve not been writing as much? My worlds aren’t as clear? My plots are too vague? I don’t know my characters well enough?
See the first book I wrote wasn’t set in anything that needed world building. And the fan fiction I wrote already had its worlds all nicely done. But the current books I’ve plotted and half started (there are 6 of them now, although 3 are a series) haven’t really taken over my every waking moment like that first book did. At least with that one I not only finished it, I wrote a sequel. But the characters.. well, they were very, very clear and it was set in today not in space or another made up world.
Of course the other reason for not writing so much was instead doing a love of LIVING and that took up more of my mindset.
Now I have a bit of a plus on my books. Almost every book I’ve plotted has been started from very clear characters in dreams I’ve had. (I dream the most interesting strange stuff!!) But I will admit that the space book’s dream main character became a supporting character as I wrote out the plot line which was surprising. And a case in point for how world building changes your initial writing conceptions.
But, my God, World Building is it taxing!! There is soooo much thinking to do in it. So many choices to be made. How much science to put in the space novel. How much history in the fantasy novel. How much damn computer tech to put in the modern day Satyr novel! Gack! The decisions are endless and often just screech me to a halt. I spend endless minutes playing plot points out in my head, sentence after sentence to figure out what will work there and seem logical and dammit… am I pulling science now outa my imagination!?!
I’ll be at a decision point in a story and stop to stare into space trying to figure out where the character goes next. And I stare and I get distracted and then before I know it I’m checking Facebook and the dating sites… ANYTHING cuz I’m not in the writing zone over all these little details which seem trivial but also seem important to the story. It makes the entire process arduous.
So the point of this blog is to (1) bitch about what’s currently frustrating me and (2) encourage myself to buckle down and really do some serious world building to crystallize the books in my head and (3) to ask… just how much to I even bother to EDIT when its just World Building?! But the difficulty becomes which of the worlds do I focus on?
The Satyr one won’t take as much as its set in modern times, but since it ends up a sort of Hogwarts for the mixed Fey Human which is where the action begins it could easily be turned into a series. The biggest pain will be researching all the fey. Research tend to bog me down.
The Slut book is a clear single book as she gets the boy in the end and story done. But its a Fantasy and I have to build two kingdoms, why their societies developed so differently and what the hell happened to the psychedelic radiation zone that our hero can sort of control. And did I mention this was a pre-industrial society? Horses, wagons, gowns, swords, etc.
The space book…. well, I’ll be honest… I’m gonna mine all my own reading to come up with that.. but I’ll have to set up SOME sort of government system that our intrepid Firefly like captain and her crew live in. Borrowing heavily from the amazing talents of Elizabeth Moon and maybe David Weber.. not their plot lines or characters… just their space schematics! haha And I’ll try not to invent too much implausible science along the way! Although that actually turned into a main plot point when I plotted it (and myself) into a corner. :/
The 3 book multidimensional world series is problematic because the first one starts with the God world and not the Magic world and that one is more complicated to build. One would assume it wouldn’t be since basically all the God’s went to war with each other and all I have left to deal with are the demi-gods and humans with god ancestors. But holy crap there have been a LOT of Gods in human history! And decisions like do the Roman and Greek ban together since they’re the same Gods and battle the Incan and Aztec Gods and who does the Egyptian Gods fight or do they start it all? Like I said, so many choices and decisions!
It’s this level of world building that is both fun and insanely difficult! Some of the answers come easy and some make me want to do research to get it right. But research takes oh so much time and usually I have so little of it. But maybe, just maybe, I can squeeze enough world building pages out of me onto my computer so when I have the time to spend, like I did this past weekend, I can read over what I have and submerge myself into the world I’ve built enough to smoothly get those characters moving down the writing road.
Can’t tell if that’s a logical theory or just be procrastinating!