Wednesday, August 03, 2005

And we're back!

Must remember to update more often, the number of comments shows you must be waiting with baited breath to learn of my next rambling. Hmmm, maybe not. Hah! Nevertheless, I have passed a long weekend getting much done. I hammered out page after page of worldbuilding, and am now becoming well-steeped in the world of Worrun. (A teaser, you say!)

For myself, I need to at least work over the locations, cultures and attitudes and some of the economies involved in my new fantasy world. Next I need to detail my basic ideas about magic and a few other things. I'm kinda putting off the character development for now. It's kinda freaky, as it's probably not my strongest point and will take much, much more effort. Plot and story I probably have the easiest time of. Sort of a way of knocking off the easier bits before chewing some real background scenery.

The best way so far is to do a similar treatise to what I often do with Role-playing worldbuilding. Once I detailed the basic plot, I knew I needed at least two nations, a reason for conflict between them, and maybe some interesting geographical features. Then I start with a map. Once the map is mostly done, I start doing a gazetteer of the locations. Nothing crazy, just a sentence to a paragraph to a page, until I run out of ideas for each spot. While I'm doing that my pen is generally busy naming (or re-naming) places, and making margin notes. I've found that every step seems to form a feedback loop to the story, or characters, or places, so that the web tightens. I presume that's a good sign, but hey, I'm doing it anyway.

Well, that's it for now folks. The day job calls, and I must return to the breach! Maybe next update I'll give my idea of a timeline for writing. (if anyone tells the people I work with I said that, I'll have to smack ya. I hate timelines...)