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.

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)!

People/Customs: Exercise for Real World Settings

You know how, yesterday, I talked about the idea of Christmas and how you might or might not have a tradition around that? We're going to focus on that idea for this exercise into people and customs today. Just because we're dealing with the real world doesn't mean that we can ignore the little customs or the bigger ones of daily life. Or the random people in our daily lives, like the very nice baristas at Starbucks who make our coffee.

Bonus points if you can guess where I'm writing this right now. Thank everything for PSL and salted caramel season.

So, for today, take one of your customs, either big or small, and think how you could fit it into your novel (if you want to). Maybe you celebrate the first day of fall by having your first PSL of the season. Maybe you celebrate something that mainstream America doesn't and, even though your characters are not of your nationally or religion, they could observe someone going through it. But try to break down one of your customs today and see if it can fit within the vision of the world you're portraying in your novel. It might send you in a different direction than you thought you were going in or it might make you realize that your own reality plays into your novel's reality more than you know.

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

Week 2: People (needing people...)

Welcome to week two of NaNoWriMo world building prep! This week, we're going to be talking about the idea of people in your world. Now, I am not talking about your main, major, or even minor characters. When we talk about people in the gaze of world building, we're talking about the average Joe or Jane that is walking about. They're not special, they're background, but they are just as important that you know about them. Without them, your main, major, and even minor characters will have a very limited group of who to speak with.

Just like last week, there will be ways to break it down into real world, Earth AU, and second world. There's an entire part of this world building that deals with mages and magic, which is very much Earth AU and second world, because, depending on who you speak to, the magic of this world is very limited in what it can do. Or what it's called, which we will not get into, but I will lightly touch on this when we get to that part of this week.

Now, people are just one half of this equation. We're also going to be talking about the customs that people use in their daily and not-daily lives. For the real world and Earth AU people, this would be something like how does your community deal with Christmas? Is Christmas celebrated? If not, what holidays are celebrated and are there any pockets of the world that try to celebrate Christmas? Now that's a very watered down version of the questions that the world building gets into but it's more to give you an idea of what to expect. Maybe there's another new holiday that everyone celebrates with glee that is more important but this is part of what you should be thinking about.

The second world people can do the same thing, but you need to take into the aspect of why. To take the example of Christmas, that's a tradition rooted in different parts of the world, with different customs, but basically celebrated within the same month / week / day. If you create something like that, then you need the background to back it up. I can go to the history of Christmas and know that it has roots in both Christianity and Paganism. Sometimes you're going to need the deep roots and with others, a simple "it was created in the honor of X hero" will be best. You need to make sure that you pick your battles with world building and customs / holidays, just like you do in writing with showing us the story that's in your head.

The reason why I brought up Christmas as an example is that, I know, for me, that's it's still celebrate in 2050. I even have a main / major character who is a C&E Catholic, meaning he's lapsed and only goes to Christmas midnight mass and the Easter mass. However, a reader who knows what that means with no explanation or perhaps a lapsed Catholic as well, can recognize that and possibly want to read more. It goes back to the little things in novels that make it something readers want to read and don't think about it while we do all the time.

In the end, people make your novel and their traditions and culture make the people. I hope this helps with making you think about the nitty gritty of your novel. Until next time, keep on plotting (and writing)!

Helpful Exercise: People and Customs from Patricia C. Wrede. If you're second world building and even thinking about magic, here's magic and magicians for another exercise if/when you have the time.

Saturday Links!

Hey everyone!  We're starting the NaNoWriMo prep tomorrow but I thought I'd share some links ahead of time.  Below is just a few links of sites that have helped me in the past and will probably help me again in the future.  I hope that they help you and that you have a great Saturday.

Fantasy Worldbuilding Questions By Patricia C. Wrede - This is an extreme, in depth, world building website with helpful tips and exercises.  It is geared towards fantasy and completely building a world from scratch but I've found it helpful when doing an AU Earth setting as well.  Especially when you get into the cultural settings because, even though you have a starting point with AU Earth, things change due to other things being in the world.  Or a change in the timeline because of what you're doing.  So while you might not want to do the full 30 days, it is great for when you need to figure out building in the world you're playing in.  This website helps to break it down into a 30 days challenge as well as gives you different file types to be able to carry around the guide with you.

World Building Through Character - I've found this helpful when I've got the world already set up but I need a little bit more insight.  It focused on five categories that you can think of as little or as much as you want.  Again, this is better for either a short story or if you're working on a sequel where the world is completely set up.  Or even if you're working on a story set in the real world and you don't need to build it up from scratch.

ThrillWriting - For all your thriller / mystery / needing your heroine to save herself.  I love this for when I'm struggling with plot, like how someone could slip out of handcuffs, and this had the answer.  There's a lot of nifty things to read on the website that can help with writing, especially if you're like me and never done things like your character is doing, so I find it great for during writing.  It can also be done with plotting before you start writing as well.

Seventh Sanctum - I believe I've shared this before but I'm going to again. This is a great generator website that can help with everything from names to character descriptions to other things that you might or might not need. This falls into the helpful world building as well as helping you figure out a character when writing.

Going Forward

Hi everyone.  I hope you enjoyed our look into short stories for the month of August.  Going forward, we've got NaNoWriMo in just two months (eeeek!) so we're going to see a bit of changes in the blog over those two months.

Every Monday, I'm going to talk about a bit of NaNoWriMo prep.  September is going to be mostly world building and we'll get into characters and outlining around October.  The rest of the week will be an exercise or prompt to help with building the novel that you'll write in November.  You'll still get the Friday Five / Friday Inspiration and there might be a few more off topic posts if I feel inspired but that's our frame work going forward.

Come November, I'm not sure what is going to happen.  The blog might go into hiatus for the month or there might be rants about how the writing process is going.  We'll see when it gets here.

Either way, I hope you enjoyed the past month and will stick around going forward.  Until tomorrow, keep on writing.

Plotting Time!: AKA How I Plot a Novel

Yesterday, I talked about pants vs plotter and showed a bit of the hybrid going between the two.  Today, we're going to go into what I usually do when I am plotting a novel and the steps I go through before I get to plotting.

Before I can even get to plotting, I like to set up what is called the basic stats of the novel.  I like to have a title in mind, even if it's mystery novel, more than any sort of real title.  I put which genre I'll be writing in, a subgenre if needed, how many words I plan to write, if there's a challenge involved such as NaNoWriMo, and a summary.  You're probably wondering how I can have a summary before I have a plot, but the summary isn't all that in depth.  Sometimes it'll just be a few lines of the idea that I have and then I'll come back to fill in the summary after I've got the plot outline done.

If you're wondering how long your novel should be, LitRejections has genre guidelines that can be found here.  For fantasy, I always try to shoot for 90,000 and to not go above 100,000.  It seems like a lot but, at the end of the novel, I'm always right in-between 90 and 100 thousand words.

After you have your basic stats, I then create the world through worldbuilding.  If you're setting something in the real world, you don't have to create a whole new world.  However, you do need to know where your characters are going to be at any given moment.  To take Chicago as an example, you'll want a map or two in order to see where your characters are going.  Are they going to travel by car or are they going to take public transport?  If it's public transport, are you going by bus or L?  So, it does take a bit of research and visiting the city that you want to set your city in.  I know that we have Google and other ways to look, but sometimes the best way to know your setting is to visit it.  How else are you going to know that the best way to get across town as quickly as possible?  You won't unless you go and see for yourself.  If you are creating a new world, I highly recommend Patrica C. Wrede's Worldbuilder Questions, 30 Days of Worldbuilding, and Anna Staniszewski's World Building Through Character.  I've used the last link a lot as it springboards into creating more of the fantasy world in different ways than the other two.

So, you've got your world, now it's time for characters.  There are a lot of character sheets that you can use out there.  However, I find it easy to boil down the characters to the following:

Name:
Age / Apparent Age:
Appearance:
Background:
About (Personality):
Weapons, Magical Ability, Misc:

Now, I sometimes do this before I get into world building.  It helps to have an idea of the characters I went to set in the world vs creating a world and then putting the characters into them.  You can write as little or as much as you want, but that's the basic formula I use to create my characters.  There are also various places where you can get appearance ideas, but I recommend just taking a look around you when you're out and about.  Sometimes you get the best ideas by seeing people in Starbucks and deciding that their mohawk works perfectly for the character in your head.

So, now we're at the outline.  You're probably all thinking "thank Deity of Choice".  Since we have everything all together before getting to this point, there are some novels where the outline writes itself.  All one needs to remember is the classic where you have a start, the middle, and the end.  I like throwing in a little curve or twist near the end, before you get the clear ending, as a way to put in a bit more plot.  It's usually used with police procedural, when they think they've got the killer, but it turns out to be someone they suspected but discarded.  It's not rocket science and this outline type has gotten me through a lot of different novels.

So, that's how I plot out my novels.  It takes a while, so I like to give myself a month or two before I sit down to write.  That way I can make sure that everything is in order and I don't need to change anything.  Plotting is a lot of work but it is nothing compared to trying to write the novel itself.  So, you want to make sure that you like what you're about to write, you like the characters, and you know the world.  If you've got those three, then you're going to be all set.

Would this method work for you?  I'd like to know, if you feel like leaving a comment, or if you've got a method that works better.  Until next time, keep on writing.