This is going to be a quick blog post this week. I am going out of town later this week for a hunting trip with friends and still have a lot of packing and preparing to do. Speaking of which, I love spending time outdoors. I don’t get to do it near as often as I would like. However, those few times that I get to be out in nature, it provides me with so much insight and inspiration into what I want the worlds in my novels to become. On to the world building.
World Building Basics
When I get ready to start a novel, I have a basic idea of what I want the world to be like, a general thought of its backstory and magic system. I pull those ideas from things that i have seen in nature. All of the worlds I have created, come from a real moment or experience I have had in life. That is where it all starts. The land where Tammuz was raised in the Reborn novels is based on my home town. There is a large lake near where I live and I spent a lot of time fishing with my dad when I was younger.
I am also in the Army Reserve and I have been blessed in that capacity to have done quite a bit of traveling to places that I otherwise would have never visited. There is a beautiful area near Glasgow, MT called Fort Peck Lake that is surrounded by these small mountains and hills that will take your breath away. I have used it as inspiration in some of my stories.
Digging Deeper
This is where things get interesting. Your world has to flow and meld together. You may be able to take one location and build an entire novel around it, but if you want it to be real, if you want it to be immersive, then the setting needs to change. You have to give the readers some realism, show them forests, but also have mountains and lakes and deserts. Show them things that they would see if they traveled through a real country.
If you are writing urban fantasy, base the location off a real city that you have visited or blend of some of your favorite cities into one. I am getting ready to start an urban fantasy novel and the setting is based on a mixture of Chattanooga, TN and Huntsville, AL, two cities that I have spent a lot of time in.
Magic Systems
If your story has magic involved, then you better do it justice. A magic system can make or break a story. Magic must have flaws and danger for its use or it becomes overpowered. Make it bland, and it becomes boring. Before delving into a magic system, I highly recommend that you check out Brandon Sanderson’s Laws of Magic. You can find a YouTube video of him explaining it here. If you have never watched his creative writing lectures (such as the one I just linked to), you have got to check him out. This guy is brilliant and I have learned so much from his videos.
Summary
This world building blog is just a flash into some of my thoughts on the subject. These are my opinions only and is not an exhaustive list. As I mentioned earlier, I will be leaving later this week for a hunting trip and this is just a brief discussion about world building while I’m thinking about spending the weekend in a hunting blind. I plan to do a much more detailed post at another time.
If there is something that you would like me to talk about on this blog or if you have found something that you like or dislike, feel free to leave a comment. I will always answer them back. A quick update on the Reborn novel, the editing is almost finished. If you want to be one of the first to get updates on its progress and when it is released and any promos that are offered, you can click here to be redirected to the homepage and at the bottom there is a link to sign up for the newsletter. If you are interested in beta reading the novel, then you can apply here.
