All NaNo Eve: The Importance of Backing Up Your Work

On this day before we all start writing our novels, a serious topic must be discussed. Mostly because I've seen this happen to friends and family alike. It's happened to people that I don't know and maybe you don't even know. It could even happen to you. Your computer decides that this is the day it bites the bullet. It can happen at anytime, especially during NaNoWriMo, and, if you haven't taken steps, you can lose all of the hard work that you've done.

However, there is hope. It's known as backing up your work. In this day and age, it's not only smart but insanely easy. There's OneDrive, Dropbox, and even Google Docs. You can buy a thumb drive to go on your keys for as low as a venti Starbucks Pike's Place and you should. There is no excuse to not back up your work and to do it every night before you turn off your computer. If you can set it up so your work automatically gets backed up to an online source, even better.

Now, you might be thinking "but Liz! Those can be hacked!" to which I go "then get a freaking thumb drive". There's no excuse people. None. While I will be sympathetic if your computer bites the dust, I will shake my head at you if you haven't backed up in some way. It's really not that hard.

So, yeah, getting off the soapbox now. Rest up my friends! NaNoWriMo comes. I'm starting at midnight central, what about you? Feel free to poke me on Twitter or Facebook or even blow in the comments. Until next time, happy writing!

What to Watch While Writing

You're probably looking at the title of this post and going "really Liz?". I know, I get it, you're supposed to write in a place where there are no distractions but for light jazz or classical music. If you can do that, then I really need you to teach me your ways. My mind wanders too much while classical or jazz is on. I need some rock and lyrics but this isn't what music to listen to.

Real Life vs NaNoWriMo

This is one part procrastination and one part how not to be a dick to your friends and loved ones in November. I say this with love but, honestly, we as writers cannot completely shut out the real world. It is very tempting to do so and I get why some go off and shut themselves off in their rooms but it's not practical. It's mostly not practical because I believe a lot of us have day jobs. Even if you don't have day jobs, you have responsibilities and so on that need to get done during the day. Therefore, we're going to try and balance out real life and NaNoWriMo.

Pretend it's day one of NaNoWriMo (1 week and a day people!). You decided to start right at midnight and stayed up until 3 am writing. However, you also need to get to work at 9 am or earlier. What you should do instead is only stay up until either you have half of the day word's count (834 words) or until 1 am instead of 3 am. Now, you can do the other half on your lunch break. Or when you get home or on your commute home if you don't drive. What I am saying is not to be a hero and sacrifice the fact that you will fall asleep at your desk if you stay up until 3 am being a writing machine. Go for half of what you really want to write or cap your nighttime writing.

Another idea to try that I've touched on before is figure out what time of day is best for you to write. It might be just after dinner, before anybody else is up, or after everyone has gone to bed. You don't need to go and be a hermit. You can wait until everyone else in your family is off doing other things and write. If you have housework that you need to do during that time, then do 20 minutes on, 30 minutes off. In 20 minutes, write as much as you can and then do 30 minutes of whatever housework needs to be done. Or flip it and write for a half hour and do 20 minutes of housework. Continue to do this until you reach your goal for the day.

Now, the one big problem of November (if you're in the US) is Thanksgiving. There's two ways to deal with this. Inflate your daily word count so it doesn't matter that you have to take anywhere from 1 to 3 days off before Thanksgiving or do it at the end of the month. I highly recommend doing it before Thanksgiving as you're going to be riding high on the feeling good part of writing. You're not going to be at the hard parts of your plot or writing (the dreaded middle) and you'll be able to get more words out of your fingers. Another idea is to give up the nap that you're going to want to take after eating turkey. Power through it, possibly with coffee, and use that time of everyone else sleeping to write.

Those are the three big ways to help you continue to write as real life creeps into your writing time and your writing time creeps into real life. Unless you are cool enough that you can basically go on a retreat for 30 days, you're going to have to learn to balance the two. If you've done this before, what are your best coping methods? What hasn't worked at all? Feel free to leave it down in the comments, on Facebook, or on Twitter. Until next time, keep on writing and plotting!

The NaNoWriMo Reward System

You're going to be writing and you probably need a bit of carrot on the end of that stick. Now, the NaNoWriMo website has these nifty badges you can get on the website for doing things. Some of them are updating your word count, getting to a specific word count, validating, and so on. These are nice and they're nifty if you're really gung-ho about NaNo. I know that I liked them when they were introduced last year and I'm happy they're still there this year.

However, what if you want more reward than just that? What if you want a physical reward? Well, that's what this post is going to be about.

Time for the Outline!

We talked plot, now it's time to talk about how to do your outline. There are several ways to do an outline and I'll walk through one or two of them before I get into how I do my outline. As always, these might not work for you but I suggest that you try them.

In Order to Plot, Pick Your Genre

Happy Monday! We are two weeks and a day away from the start of NaNoWriMo. You get a few minutes to panic and then we'll start with the topic of the day. I'll time you.

....and done. Today, we are talking about plots and I know this is a weird time to talk about them. We've done the ton of world building, the characters, and now I want to talk about plot. Here's the thing about plot... when you're doing the rest of it, you might already have the glimmer of an idea in your head. I mean, you've created an entire world, you have a cast of characters, therefore, you must have an idea of why you did such a thing. Now, that's not to say that you didn't lay out your plot first and then built up everything else. It can go either way.

Let's take a baseline plot of a hero going off to save the world from something that will end it. For example, let's say that it's a evil overlord who, if he or she takes over the world, will plunge it into darkness for the next untold generations or something of the like. From that one little idea of a plot, you can do so much with it when you decide what genre you want to write in. If you're writing fantasy, then this is your good old fashioned standard plot line. You will need to do more in order to not appear stale. This is where a good what-if would come in handy. Perhaps write it from the world view of the evil overlord. Or perhaps a minion who really is the hero but works a crappy day job under said overlord. You will need to work on it.

Now, let's say you're writing dystopian fiction. You're somewhere in the darkness, possibly right after it happened or a generation or three in. You're going to need to figure out how your main character fights back against it and what he or she does to take down the evil overlord. Or, maybe he or she does, but realizes that, by taking said evil overlord down, it's going to kill off everything. So, now you're at a crossroads of what could really be done because your hero doesn't want to destroy the world. Or he or she could as destroying everything is a way to set everyone free.

For the third and final example, let's take mystery / thriller. For this one, it doesn't really need to be an evil overlord. It can simply be someone who is making the main character's life hell and he or she decides to do something about it. Or, someone else tried to, and now they're dead and your main character has to put the pieces together in order to find the killer. With this genre, you're going to want to figure out if you're dealing with the main character as the killer or as the solver. The killer needs to figure out a way to keep one or three steps ahead of the police in order to win. The solver needs to figure out the puzzle and catch the killer. Be wary of the hybrid unless you're willing to dive deep into what you're doing with your outline. Also, have a way out. I know it's cliche, but I never say no to the idea of an evil twin.

So, yes, the genre you write in will drive your plot. It's best to pick that before you fully flesh out the idea of your plot and what your story is going to be. However, you're got two weeks and a day - so not a reason to panic yet.

Until next time, keep on writing, plotting, and not panicking.

What to Write: What If's

Yesterday we talked about characters and how to build them. Today, we're going to switch off to talking about plot. Yes, plot, aka what you could write. Something that you could be writing is the what if. I have talked about the what ifs before, in the way of creating an AU Earth in world building, but this is now talking about the plots of what ifs. The plot of what ifs are taking something - either an idea, something that's already happened, or something already written but a classic - and flip it around.

For example, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is a what if of one of our most famous presidents being a vampire hunter and the Civil War being about vampires wanting to keep the status quo. Yes, it is a lot more than that, but for our boiled down example, that's the plot in a nutshell to me. There are a lot of what ifs like that around, some from the same author, and some from others.

Another type of what if is telling a fairy tale from another point of view. The most popular is taking the view of the villain and showing his or her side of the story. Wicked is a good example of this, with the story being told before Dorothy got to Oz and showing from the Wicked Witch's point of view, and there are a lot of others out there. If you want a movie version, Disney's Maleficent is a good example. It also twists the villain into the good guy, which you may or may not want to do. You can tell the villain's backstory without changing the fact that he or she is still the villain. You do not have to turn them into good or turn the good guys into bad guys.

The last type of what if you could write is about current events. There are a lot of what ifs with past events, but you could take something that happened in recent memory to twist the outcome. For example, you could take a page from the TV show Fringe and go through what would have happened if the 2000 election results were different. The only thing, with current events, is that you need to tread carefully on what your subject matter might be. I wouldn't recommend being completely recent, like from this decade or last decade, because there are raw emotions from them. However, it is up to you what you plan to write but that is something you should think about it.

So, there are the three types of what ifs that you could write about. There are ton others but these are the three that I have thought about or tried writing in the past. I hope that your prep is going well, as we're eighteen days away from the start of NaNoWriMo! Until next time, don't panic.

NaNoWriMo Prep: Characters

Today, we're going to talk about characters and how you go about creating them. There will be a three links at the end, to be helpful, but I'm going to ramble a bit on what I do. As always, this might or might not be helpful to you but I'm hoping that it will. Or that something in the links will.

One of the best ways that I've created characters is, again, from WriYe. What needs to be done first is try to figure out the motivations of your character, especially when it's your main character. That's going to drive your plot and your subplots to get things done. It means answering questions like how your MC sees the world, how do they react to conflict or successes, and how they fit in to their environment. Those three questions and how you unpack them with your main character will help with creating subplots. You can do this will all your major characters as well, if you want to, and try not tangle up in them too much.

Just Breathe

I'm writing this post around 12:30 in the morning on October 10th. I just let Cookie out so she could get in another bathroom break before bed and it was quiet outside. A chill in the air and a smell... just grass and leaves and I suddenly felt transported back to Beloit College. It reminded me of my friends, who are now scattered to all parts of the US (and world), along with the memories of walking along campus around midnight. Running for ice cream at the 24 hour Cubs Foods (no longer there) and slowly walking back. Or going for a ride to the 24 hour Perkins in Janesville that is still there (the Beloit one is gone and now a Buffalo Wild Wings).

So, with 22 days left to NaNoWriMo, I highly recommend that you go out and breathe. Take in a good deep breath of the air at whatever type of day you're reading this and brain dump your memories. From that, pick out what you love about them and see if you can't put them into the story that is slowly building.

We'll be back tomorrow with character building. For now, let's all go take a big giant breath in and out to remember our loved ones, near and far, maybe gone but never forgotten. Until next time, keep on writing and plotting.

The Extreme Bare Bones of Your Novel

This is going to be the easiest part of planning out your novel. It'll take you all of twenty minutes, mostly because of the synopsis, but you'll be fine. I will say that this is originally from the website WriYe and our NaNoWriMo planning sessions called OctoOctober. However, as much as this is basic, I never planned out the real basics of the novel until this.

Time to Write and Write to Time and Other Things

And we're back. So, last time, I wrote a sentence about how you can make time for NaNoWriMo even if you think that you can't. Yeah, you can. No, really, you can. I'm not going to talk about getting up early / writing on breaks / so on. You can find better qualified people than me to talk about that. I am a night owl, so I'm the person who would write after everyone's asleep. Anywhere between 9 to midnight is a sweet spot for me during the rest of the year and especially during NaNo.

However, here's how to make the most of your NaNoWriMo writing sessions, even if you're crunching it between everything else.

Plotting and Pantsing - Do Both

It is October 3rd. There are four weeks to NaNoWriMo, which is why we're talking about it again, and then we're going to let it go. Well, not completely let it go because there's a bunch more NaNo Prep posts to come, but we'll let it go in the ways of talking about it. I know I've done posts about it in the past, which is why this is going to be short and to the point. It's also the WriYe Blogging Circle topic for the month, so we'll be able to cross this off as well.

The Daily Life: An Exercise

For this exercise, you will need three things: yourself, a pen, and a notebook. That's all. Three simple things. Four if you're doing this when the post goes live and it's seven in the morning. If you're up that early, a "but first coffee" is more than allowed.

What you're going to do is observe yourself as you go through a day in your life. You'll catalog your morning routine, your breakfast, your commute, and so on. Or, if you don't have a commute, what you do instead. Basically, you're taking inventory of your life and what you do as you go through it during a normal day. Or maybe a not so normal day. But you're going to do it for one full day and keep the notebook close to you. Anything you do, no matter how big or small, should go into the notebook.

Now, at the end of the day, maybe after dinner or the kids are in bed, open the notebook. I want you to star the smaller things, like what you had for breakfast or what you feel is just a small detail in your life, and give an exclamation point to the bigger tasks that you did during the day. You're going to focus on the stars and that will help to give you a background into what a daily life of your character could or couldn't be.

For my second world-ers, I encourage you to do this as well. Maybe, instead of a bowl of cereal, there's something else that you come up with for breakfast. Or maybe it's just going through the motions but not describing what's in the bowl. What's important is to have an idea of how you go through a day, either normal or not so normal, and then you have a bit of background that you can use in your novel.

Mundane? Yep. But sometimes the best way that we, as writers, can make a novel richer is by going through a task like listing what you do during the day.

Until next time, keep on plotting (and writing!).

Week 4: The Daily Life

Hey guys! Welcome to the last week of world building. Next week, we're going into the characters and plot and everything else that goes into our novel for NaNoWriMo. For now, we're going to go into the ideas of daily life. You might take a lot from your own life and that's okay. Unless you're doing second world, it's going to make your novel better, especially if you're setting your novel where you live. That's going to help you with this part of world building.

The biggest problem, if you're doing real world or Earth AU, might be fashion and education. I say this because it will cut into your time if you want to focus a bit on them. You need to look up the national trends and, even then, you could be wrong. What's hot at Fashion Week in NYC could be a dud in Colorado. Best thing you can do is research, research, and then research some more. Talk to people who live there if you don't live there yourself. Now, education, like everything else, is going to vary even city to city in a single state. I can tell you that the high school education I got about sixteenish years ago was considered one of the best in the suburbs. Now, I'm not sure. So, again, research. Research is a good thing but it is a time suck.

However, you'll have a fine good backbone of a novel.

To the second world-ers reading this, your most difficult section? The calendar. Are you going to base it off of the calendar we have now (easiest), twiddle with it (medium), or create something new (hard)? You've got to think up holidays and feasts and all that other things. Now, it's not hard to do. Say you want a food based holiday that has a message of community, like Thanksgiving. You can do that and call it something about the harvest. It's not really all that hard but, like above, it's a time suck. You can research but you have to be careful not to outright copy what another person has done. You can like something but then you'll have to twist it to how it will work best for you.

So, I wish you good luck with the daily life section of world building. It is the last part of the world building that we'll be doing and I can't say if I'll be going back to it come October. Until next time, keep on plotting!

Exercise: Daily Life from Fantasy Worldbuilding Questions by Patricia C. Wrede.

Week 3.5: Commerce, Trade, and Public Life

Since I'm not really the biggest fan of this section or the social organization section, I thought I'd squeeze them together. Now, as I keep on saying, just because I'm not a fan doesn't mean that you aren't. If you think these sections will really help your novel, then take your time with them. Don't let me chase you off of something just because I'm not feeling all that 100 with it. I'm also going to give a general overview and then leave a link to the section down at the end.

So, this section deals with a lot of the factors of life in the way that we trade goods and services. One of the general questions dives into deep thought with asking if there's a trade language or an universal language for people that don't speak the same tongue. It's something we don't have in daily life, even though we who speak English think we do, but we don't. So that's an interesting deep thought right off the bat. Do you want a language everyone uses for trade or a common tongue? What is the purpose of the common tongue or the trade tongue? You could spend a few hours of an afternoon on that question alone if you want to really dive into it.

This goes into business and industry, where they ask about unions and cross-crafting, and how trades and crafts go into the different regions of your world. Do smaller cities or towns not have as much as a bigger city or do they just specialize in one trade or craft? Are there different regulations, are their unions, and so on. If you go into the unions, do you want to call them something other than unions? Do you want to say they're craft organizations or... well, you'll probably come up with something more interesting than I could. This mini-part of the larger section also asks about money trading hands and brings up the thought of smuggling. Again, you might or might not need this section. Like everything, take with a grain of salt.

It continues to go into the basis of our day to day public life on a grander scale. We sometimes don't think about how money goes from hand to hand or about unions, unless we're part of one or are in charge of a business, but this is what you need to think of when you're creating a world. You might only want to grace the surface of this section, which is easy to do and you can cherry pick what you want from these sections. For me, I know I would be looking more towards the broader ideas, like a common language, more than a question about shifting population from rural to urban living. You might not care about a common language but need to think more about urban factors. Or rural factors. So think about that as well when you go into this section, especially if you're just coming here around the start of October.

In the end, even though I'm sort of brushing these sections off, they are important if you want to make them important. Kind of like everything else in daily life. If you want or need me to dive deeper, I'm more than happy to do so and leave me a comment below. Until next time, keep on plotting (and writing!).

Exercise: Commerce, Trade, and Public Life from Fantasy Worldbuilding Questions by Patricia C. Wrede.

Social Organization, an Exercise

This is probably going to be the only exercise for this section this week. It goes back to the idea that social organization is going to be extremely individualized but also that I never spend time on this section. Sure, I'll do a quick outline of who / what is in charge but this is the part of world building that I spend the least amount of time on.

There's also the fact that, if you're doing a real world novel, this section is already done for you. Sure, you'll have to research local laws and so on unless you make up Small Town USA but it's there. I would just use the questions as a guideline. Also, you might have to call people in order to get information. I know it might seem scary - it does to me - but it'll help you a lot in the long run. Make sure you have questions ready and be willing to call back at another time if nobody can talk to you. Be as flexible as you can and do not forget to get the name of the person who talks to you. You'll want that for your acknowledgements when you finish your novel.

Now, for us Earth AU people, we've got it a bit easy but it's still hard. How much of the real world social organization are you going to use? Are you going to keep the government as is or has something changed? Is the power of the world still the same? If you're jumping way into the future, do we still have what we have now? Or has it changed for something for the better? These are just base questions and you might find more when you start to dive into this part of your world building. I know, for me, I did change power structure and government but you don't really see it in the novel right away. It's more subtle until it's called for, which is a way that you might want to go when you're writing your novel.

Now, second world writers, you have the hardest task because you're creating something new. However, that doesn't mean you can't base it off of the government structure you're living in. Or another country that you like. Let's say that you really like how England is structured with the royal family, the Prime Minister, and parliament. You could use that as your model and put your own spin on it. Or you can pick and choose what you like about your own government and laws and put that into this world you're creating.

At the end of this, I'm trying to show that, while this is the hardest section, it doesn't have to be in the end. It just feels hard because you're having to stretch in ways that you haven't before. Once you get through it, you'll probably coast the next time you need to come back to this section. I hope it helps and, until next time, keep on plotting (and writing)!

Week 3: Social Organization

Welcome to week three of this insanity that we're calling world building. This week the focus is on social organization. If you're wondering what this means, you're not alone. This goes into creating more of a government, politics, and so on. Now, like everything, you don't have to do all parts of this world building. Say you will never get into politics or a political system. Then move that to the side. However, you will need to know what type of government you have - either a monarchy or a democracy or something else - but you need to know what you have.

Let's break this down.

Your first stop is going to be the general overreaching questions about your society. This goes into ranks and titles, what type of jobs are good or bad, different ways to rise and fall in society, and so on. The last question in this section deals with a somewhat complicated question because we're dealing with the written world. It goes into what constitutes beauty in your world and, as much as I think we can, as writers, show that in our work, it's also going to be subjective. A reader might find what you think of beautiful as disgusting and vice versa. I don't think we need to break down the idea of society into beautiful / not beautiful, but it's there if you want it. I feel it's the third rail - touch it and you die for those not familiar with this saying - but it might help you. Just be careful as you can turn off an editor with this too and, unless you're self publishing, you won't even get to readers.

The next section deals with the government and figuring out a lot of the little details of your world. Unless you are doing a plot that is going to be highly political, as you might be writing a novel that deals with the king's court or something like that, I feel that a lot of these questions are not needed. I would go to the questions that really work for you instead of getting bogged down in the teeny tiny details. One of the best questions in this section asks what your basic style of government is and if the other countries are different and how that is dealt with. That's a good question to ask because everyone in the world will know that. The teeny tiny details that you could get lost in is the question about taxes. Do you really need to know that? Possibly if you're writing something with a Robin Hood feel, but otherwise? Do we even think about that when reading a novel? I know I don't, so pick and choose in this section. Make sure you have the broader strokes and, then, if you feel you need more, go back and answer the questions you skipped over.

Honestly, I was going to break down more of this part of the world building, but I'm not sure if it's going to help. I think the best advice for this section is to go through and figure out what you need to answer. Do you need to figure out about waging war? Maybe not and that's fine because that means you can skip that section. You might really need to answer all the questions in the foreign affairs part but yet need nothing with weapons. So, this week, let's pick and choose what parts we'll really work on. I'll be here with exercises for the three settings and we'll go from there.

Also, if you want me to continue on with talking about the different sections, I'm okay with that too. Leave me a comment below and I'll be more than happy to dive into the rest. I just don't feel that it is a good use of anybody's time because this is one of the most subjective parts of world building. For me, I don't need to know about waging war, which is why I used it in the example above, but I need to know what type of government system I'm using.

So that's it for today. Until next time, keep on plotting (and writing).

Helpful Exercise: Social Organization from Patricia C Wrede

People/Customs: Magic and Magicians

Hey everyone. This is diving into the idea of magic, magicians, and what impact they're going to have on your people and customs today. There's not a lot for those who are doing real world settings, but you might find something for a later novel or if you're introducing magic in another way. Let's break this down and figure out what we're doing here.

This section can be found on the world building website here.

The first section is about the rules of magic. When I think of magic, I think of it as a way of causing x for y to happen, but it's a lot deeper for that. Say that I'm using healing magic to close a wound. Where does the energy or magic come from for that? Let's say for this project, that comes from within myself and has to be replenished, either from time to time or after closing a life threatening wound. If it's a small wound, I'll be fine and I won't really need to worry about my energy levels. If it's bigger, then I will. The friction of that can be woven into your story but it also helps to know when your character will or won't use it. Also, how they will taught when and where to use their magic. So that's the first section with rules of magic and it dives deep into what you should consider.

The second section is wizards themselves. I touched a small bit on how magic effects a wizard with what I put in the last paragraph, but you should also think how it effects them long term. It also goes into how long it takes to study, what others think of wizards, and basically, making a mini society of them. It's not a bad idea but you might not want to dive that deep. That's okay and you might just want to skim the surface. Or maybe nobody thinks magic's all that special because a lot of people do it / expect it. But you should have a small idea of your wizarding society going into writing your novel and how it effects society / humanity at large.

The third section, for me, is fun and deals a bit more with Earth AU than second world. I think that's because, when I think second world, I never think of a world as technological savvy as the world we have now. However, we do need to think of how magic effects the technology that we have. For example, can a person who uses electricity magic short circuit whatever he or she wants? Or can they only do that to certain types of electrical items? The section brings up the idea of magical weapons, which I never think about when putting magic into my novels, but I might start doing that. I would also think about if wizards are mistreated / wanted because they could help with manufacturing or just making life better as well.

The last section is some miscellaneous questions but one of the ones I like asks if magic is legal in your world. It's one of those questions that I know I don't think about - of course it's legal - but for it not to be legal would be interesting. That is definitely putting plotting in your world building because you'll use that in your story. Even if your main character doesn't use magic, another might, and you can dive into all of the ways that it helps and hinder the pair. Or how the main character might turn their friend in and so on. There's also about magic abuse, magical beasts, and so on. I would take a long look at it and think about how it might help or hinder you.

So, we're done with people and customs in this second week of world building. I hope this is helping you create the world of your novel or series. Until next time, keep on plotting (and writing!).

People/Customs: Exercise for Alternative Earth

I almost didn't make this post. I felt that those who are writing for this setting are basically set. They could use the advice I gave for the real world setting and that would be that. There was no reason and I could take the day off from blog writing and just chill.

Yeah, I realized how wrong I am when I opened Mystery of the Dark to edit it. It opened at the beginning, where I use a setting that is like an AA meeting, that we need to touch on this. So, yes, you can take the real world advice and maybe even the second world advice if you're jumping far into the future, but let's talk about this a brief bit.

Depending on how much you're going to keep Earth the same, we might have the same customs. If you're just adding something, like magic or supernatural creatures, then we might keep a lot of the same customs. There might be more of customs that are not traditional, like Samhain, but you might also have something for vampires like a blood feast. Or the rite of the full moon if you have werewolves. For this, I would highly recommend looking into customs that are not of the mainstream and see if any of them would fit. It would give your novel a bit extra oomph and maybe one that you didn't think about.

For those who are either going into the past to change something or into the far future, you have to think how the actions of humanity are going to change what we do. For example, say that the bombing of Pearl Harbor never happened and we never got into World War 2. We wouldn't celebrate, even the small bit that we do now, Pearl Harbor day in June. Would we still have a Veteran's Day in November? It's some of the small things that you need to take into account when twisting our history. 

Same goes if you're jumping into the future. Is there still the USA and, if there is, do we still celebrate 9/11? Did we forget or is there something else that took it's place? How do we celebrate the long ago wars, like World War 2, or did something take it's place like World War 3? I know these are uncomfortable questions, because I don't mean to make my readers uncomfortable, but you need to think about how what we has now effects our future. It might not at all. You might decide that people still talk and celebrate a lot of what we celebrate now. You might decide that we don't but that's because something new took it's place. Or that it is just so far into the future that we just don't remember why we celebrate, just that we do.

That's some of the things to think on as you continue down this road of world building. It's going to be uncomfortable but that's when we grow as writers. So, until next time, keep on plotting, being uncomfortable, and hopefully, when you can, writing.

People/Customs: Exercise for Second World

Hello my second world people! I hope you found last week's exercise helpful. This week's is going to be a bit less lengthy, mostly because it's more simple, and also because you've got a lot to decide for this week. We're going to dive in on how you can bring one thing from a holiday or custom you love into your second world setting.

Now, some of these are going to be simple. Say you like going to a bar. Well, in the second world, a bar could be called an inn or tavern and you can go for a beer or drink there. Same can be said for those who love going to a coffee shop or tea shop but you might want to make up something that is similar. Unless your second world is going to actually have coffee beans in it and then you've got to decide where in the world those are. If you are, I recommend a brief Google into the history of tea and coffee.

Others are going to be a bit harder. Going back to the idea of Christmas, you need to break down what you like about the season. For me, I love the giving part of it. As I grow older, I realize that I like giving (and yes, sometimes receiving, even if it's only a small thing) because it makes the other person feel better. For my mom, I know that it's family - everyone being in one spot and catching up with people we only see once a year - and for my aunt, it's the cooking. For my dog, it's the tearing of tissue paper. We could get her tissue paper for Christmas and she'd be happier than having to just end up with the toy inside. She's strange (and a dog) but I'm straying from the point.

The point is that you don't have to make up your new customs completely from scratch. You can take what we have in the real world, twist it just enough or remove things enough to make it seem completely your own, and go from there. It doesn't have to be Christmas or another big holiday, you can take the small little customs of your life and go from there. My suggestion is not to do this on the computer but sit away with a pen and notebook. Write down all the holidays and little customs of your life that you love to do and then break it down into why. Take those whys and create your own holidays and customs.

I hope this helps, second world-ers, and, until next time, keep on plotting (and writing)!