Great Balls of Fire

Monday, my sister in law calls out of work because her throat is sore. Turns out she's come down with strep throat, and was kind enough to share it with me (thanks sis!). My lymph nodes are the size of golf balls, and my throat is on fire, I have large doses of antibiotics and decongestants coursing through my system.

Therefore, comprehension is briefly suspended from my posts. You have been warned. :D

Monday, before my throat decided to do it's flaming razorblade impression, I managed to get some really crucial details about my setting worked out. Worldbuilding is personal to every book and every story. My other three novels didn't require this much worldbuilding because they were set on Earth. It's amazing how many details we take for granted. What kind of food is served, how the materials for the buildings arrive, how the technology continues to function when the entire structure of civilization has come crumbling down around the character's ears. Little details like that.

I am being very careful about not over building, since that is how many fantasy writers procrastinate actually starting the novel. But Monday, I worked on several pieces of the "special physics" that most of my plot works on. Crime procedures, how magic applies to ghosts, what it can and can't do, these are important details when you're writing something close to a murder mystery.

The best method I've found to not over do any aspect of working on a novel is making a list of what I absolutely must know. What I have to know about the world, what I have to know about the characters and the plot. Everything else can sort itself out. Life's been a little crazy lately, so I've been moving much slower on the pre-writing aspect of my WIP, but I only have a few more details to build on before I can start.

What do you guys to do prepare for your novels? How do you balance between knowing enough that you don't stare at the blank page, or knowing too much that you're bored?

On the other hand, you pansters out there, how do you pull all your details together after writing your novel? I wrote a book without knowing enough about the setting once, and it was the biggest pain in the neck to go back through and add all those details.

And who thought up gargling with salt water? Salt? Really? Normally salt hurts wounds, not helps, but somehow it works magic on a sore throat.

Keeping a Series Bible

Yesterday while working on the plot for my WIP I realized I didn't know enough about the setting. 

I've run into a few snags along the way with this WIP, but I kept trying to press forward. Over building a book before you write it can be problematic. You're tempted to keep everything you're built, even if the book veers off into uncharted territory, and it can be a really great way to procrastinate actually writing the book.

So this time around, my intent was to go very lean with the worldbuilding, only stuff I absolutely need to know to make my story work. But as I am getting to plot events, I keep running into walls. I am having a huge issue figuring out where the planet would be technologically speaking. Prior to a massive series of wars, the planet was slightly more technologically advanced than we are on Earth. 

After a couple hundred years of ongoing war and plague that culminated in an event tantamount to an apocalypse, civilization is scraping by. I just can't figure out if they would still have electricity and indoor plumbing, and whether or not they would have lots of fuel leftover, or none at all.

People that I have talked to seem to think contradictory things as well. Some people think all the fuel would be rare, since there is hardly anyone around to produce and refine it. Other people think there would be tons of it laying around, since there are far fewer people using the fuel.

After trying to tackle this, and other setting-related plot problems, I broke out the big guns. I made my series bible. I took a binder, and put some tabbed dividers into it. I set up tabs for characters and plot in the front, and tabs for the culture in the back. 

Sometimes I just work better when I have something I can see and touch. Now that I have made my series bible, I will go through the sections of culture I need to develop. I figure if I know more about the past, more about the cultures before they crumbled away, I can make better decisions about what technology they still have and what new innovations the people have made after the apocalypse. 

What is a series bible, you might be wondering at this point. Basically, it's a binder or a notebook, or a file, where you keep all your notes on a book series. My WIP is the first book in a series, so I figured I would just make it now, instead of having to comb through my WIP for the right information. A well kept series bible will save you time when you're trying to remember the name of your character's third aunt you mentioned in passing in the third book. It's a way to organize all the information you need to make your books run.  


Some authors swear by them, and some don't bother. I plan to use my series bible as a reference for the culture as well, so I think I will get a lot of use out of mine. 


I printed up an index, and made notes about my filing system (cribbed from Holly Lisle's Create a Culture Book) so I would always know where to file the information as I was creating it. Keeping a consistent filing system allows me to add stuff to this for the rest of my life, and I will always know where to find a bit of information.

Series Bible: Name of Your Series

Filing Code:

Mark in upper right hand corner:

Number or Letter: Category

Lower case letter: information type

Page number

Example: A POV character's bio would be filed as 1/a/1

A major, but non-POV, character’s bio would be filed as 1/b/1

INDEX

I. Book Information:

1. Characters

a. Point of View Character

b. Secondary Characters

c. Minor Characters 

2. Plot 

a. Theme

b. Genre

c. Calendar

d. Life Events

e. Ongoing Conflicts

f. Reoccurring Places

g. Inventions/Special Powers

h. Rules of Law

II. Worldbuilding Information:

A. Home Life

a. Basic Information

b. Arts and Artifacts

c. Cultural Library (books, scrolls, oral history)

d. Music and Dance

e. Housing and Architecture

f. Science and Magic

g. Other

B. Community

a. Basic Information

b. Arts and Artifacts

c. Cultural Library (books, scrolls, oral history)

d. Music and Dance

e. Housing and Architecture

f. Science and Magic

g. Other

C. Religion

a. Basic Information

b. Arts and Artifacts

c. Cultural Library (books, scrolls, oral history)

d. Music and Dance

e. Housing and Architecture

f. Science and Magic

g. Other

D. Government

a. Basic Information

b. Arts and Artifacts

c. Cultural Library (books, scrolls, oral history)

d. Music and Dance

e. Housing and Architecture

f. Science and Magic

g. Other

E. Language

Basic Information

Phonology

Word Pool

Grammar

Names

Some of you might be thinking I am crazy to go to all that trouble at the moment. In reality, it was no trouble at all to print this out, and I will simply file the information away as I develop it. You don't have to fill each section out either. For my WIP, I am not planning on doing too much with the Religion and Home Life sections, but focusing my efforts on the Community and Government sections, since that's what my book deals with.

You could also modify this series bible, and use it for a stand alone book. Folders like this when it comes time to edit and revise and you're not sure where to put all your hand written notes on editing.  

The idea isn't that you now have all these sections you have to fill out, but simply a cohesive filing system.  For example, under the Plot section, there's a divider for Reoccurring Places. I don't know what those places are yet, I haven't written the book! But during revision, I might notice they hang out at the Drunken Cowboy Saloon an awful lot, so I might create a page with some quick details about the lay out of the place, the names of the wait staff, and anything I might do the saloon.

If my main character accidentally sets fire to the saloon during the course of the first book, I think it would come up if they frequent the saloon in the next book. A statement from the bartender in the vein of "Please don't set half the saloon on fire this time, okay?" can add extra realism to the readers who have been reading along with the series. 

With so many tiny details to keep track of while writing a book, keeping a book or series bible can be a life saver. 

Have any of you ever kept a series bible? How did that work out for you? Where they any sections that you had, that I don't?

The Goldilocks Method of Setting

Have you ever read a book where the world felt…thin? It feels like if you skipped ahead of the characters in the story, you’ll see the stage hands setting the props up. Or the setting itself felt like one giant cliché? Or maybe not a cliché, but it didn’t really bring anything to the story? Characters went around and did plotish things, and the landscape was always a vague forest, with taverns, inns, and the occasional wolf?

Or, on the flip side, have you ever spoken to someone who is writing historical fiction/fantasy/science fiction or any other genre that requires you to research or make up the setting who has been working on said setting for years?

Been there, done that on both accounts. I have read lots of fantasy books where the world barely felt real, and I have talked to numerous authors who are still “researching” for that book they are going to write.

Madness I say. There’s a better way. A way to develop your world that you know enough about it to make it come alive around your characters, but not let worldbuilding/research bog you down so you’re making up every single country in the world and every language, and the history for the last 500 years, and so on.

Today we’re going to talk about how to worldbuild a culture enough so that it feels real, and the rest of the world around them feels real, but you don’t spend weeks getting there. It’s kinda like those two for one deals you see at shoe stores. You get to build your culture, you get to make things seem real, but you get to side step Wordlbuilding Hell where you toil for years on a setting (I think this toiling is partially where we get so many infodump in fantasy too…the authors thinks, Dang it! I spend time making this up, now the reader should know all about the intricate weasel trading policies of the four colonies of Fantasyotopia).



First, let’s answer the question: Who needs to worldbuild?

I use the term “worldbuild” to include historical fiction author who’s primary goal is to research their setting, not make it up.

So if you’re writing a story set anytime other than right here, right now, you need to worldbuild your culture. Even if your story is set twenty years ago, you will need to do a bit of research. We all know how much technology has changed over the past few years. If you have lost perspective, go watch a movie from the eighties.

Go ahead, I’ll wait.

…

Hilarious, wasn’t it? And that was just thirty years ago. Less than one person’s lifetime. Not just technology, but hairstyles (A side pony tail? Really, 1980’s? Really?), makeup, and music (who could forget Hair Bands? I love me a good power ballad. That is actually one of my favorite genres of music, I am not afraid to admit it. In fact, I think I will play some eighties music right now…) have all changed in a sort span of time.

You need to give your readers the impression within your novel that the world your characters are living is as fleshed out and developed as our own world. Without actually doing all of the development necessary to make your fake planet as diverse and developed as Earth is.



Yeah…that pretty much sounds impossible, right?

Not exactly.

The trick is you divide and conquer. Before I start worldbuilding I make myself a short of list of the areas in the character’s lives I am going to be moving around in the most.

So if the character is a cleric, “religious hierarchy” will be on that list. If the character isn’t a cleric or particularly religious, no “religious hierarchy”. “Weasel trading” or “hairspray for musicians” perhaps, depending on their professions.

You also need to include what aspects of culture will affect their daily lives. So if they live in a country similar to America, you might add “schooling systems” “common professions” “modes of transportation” etc…

The point here is to figure out what aspects of the culture will directly impact your plot. If your characters are weasel traders, then you’d better figure out how those weasels are breed, the going market values for rodents, if the weasels have magical powers, how the weasels are transported, how one gets into the weasel trading business, etc.



If your character has nothing to do with the weasel trade, then you probably don’t need all of that specific information. If the country is a major weasel exporter, you might figure some of that information out, but again, the point here is to figure out the most important information you need to know.

I like to start with these personal details, and work my way out to the country in general, but you could go the opposite way, and figure out general facts about the country you’re setting the novel in, and move into the city your character is from.

Developing plot and worldbuilding usually happen simultaneously for me. I sort of go back and forth. I might decide while brainstorming my main character has inherited a weasel farm (or a nursery? What would you call where weasels are raised?), which in turn leads me to developing the specifics of the weasel trade.

When I decide I need to know more about the world in general, I do what I call “broad strokes”. I figure out what countries neighbor my main character’s country. If they are friendly or hostile. If they trade weasels for marmosets with the main character’s country. I figure out the trade triangle, and if there are weasel bandits that sail the four seas. I could create a ring of pirates, with a Weasel baron in the middle, who believes that weasels are gods incarnate, and he and his pirates seek to free all weasel kind. These development would then give me ideas for plot complications. What if the Weasel Baron stole the main character’s cargo? What if she chased him to get her cargo back, because she’s bankrupt without the money the weasel trade will give her?

The key here is to develop the information you need specifically, and have a vague feel for the rest. It’s not that you can’t develop more of your world. I tend to develop lots of different stuff for a story that never sees the light of a manuscript, but I don’t spend years working all of this out. Usually I have a good feel for the state of the world, I know some specifics crucial to the plot, and then as I am writing the first draft I make more stuff up in my free time.



But then, I am a weirdo who LOVES worldbuilding. That’s just me. You can always fill in more information about the world as you need it too. Let’s say you are a major pantser, that is, you write without plotting a single thing. And somehow your character winds up on the other side of the world, far away from her weasel farm and the Weasel Baron. You can either fake it, and add details upon revision, or you can stop writing to spend a little bit of time to worldbuild what you need to know (like, How does a person sneak into Port City without the proper papers? How does a character get out of Port City jail after being caught without papers?). Personally, I prefer to stop and do some quick worldbuilding, just because every time I wing it, and worldbuild later, it totally changes the story.

My last bit of worldbuilding advice is to find some pictures online, via Free Digital Pictures.net or Wikicommons that looks like where you want to set your story. I am extremely visual, and just having some pictures of the area my story is set in makes it feel real.

These pictures that have been scattered through this post? That’s my next setting, the place I am worldbuilding.

What else? What do you guys do to make sure your setting feels real enough to vacation there?