Category: research

World building level two

Let’s talk magic and religion. They are not always symbiotic. Is it that way on your world? How does the magic work? Do you need ingredients to cast a spell or just a word? Are there more difficult rituals that must take a longer time to perform?What are the limits for your magic? How many spells can you use before you’re “empty”? (Make sure you take into account the difference of using many simple spells up to more than one difficult spell.)How does one gain magic power? Do they gain it from a higher power, by reading and learning from books, from genetics, or some other way? (You can always gain help with this area from D&D player’s handbooks.) Are there forbidden spells or forbidden paths of magic? Some good examples of what is usually seen as a forbidden path or magic are necromancy and blood magic, or Demonology/pact magic. For the higher level spells, why are they more difficult? What about them makes them more difficult? The amount of magical power or prowess needed? The necessary ingredients? The time period needed to cast the spell?Is magic illegal in your world? Would your character(s) need to hide that they have magic? If it’s illegal, what happened to make it illegal? What are the main religious beliefs on your world? Is one more recognized than the others? Why?

Religion is a big part of every culture that can influence the daily life of large groups of people so it’s important to define it if present in your world. The other thing is that is a good way for world building, you can define the life of people, the way cities are built and the way of thinking of the population.-

Polytheist or monotheist: choose the type of religion that fits best in your world, it’s important because polytheist and monotheist religions have some differences that have relevance when you write. (not only the number of gods but for example how gods are worshiped or how are the followers building temples)

Read about real religions: this is a good base for understanding how religion works and you are going to see a lot of how to write the followers.

Decide the characteristics of the God/s: After have a clear idea of what you want to do (example: religion similar to Romans’ one or a mix between Egyptians and Greeks gods) you have to clear up some points:

  1. Is you god/s good or bad? : so how are they seen by the people, what are they famous for, how is their temper, are they revengeful or are they forgiving, if they are feared or loved or both. If you create more gods then you can decide to make them represent something.
  2. Are your god/s in contact with mortals?: The relationship with mortality; If they don’t meet mortals you have to decide if they communicate with them and how.
  3. Physical appearance: if they have a physical appearance describe it or describe characteristics that the god have when in physical form.
  4. Worship: While the points before where about the point of view of the God/s, you have always to define how mortals venerate God/s.
  5. Is all the population religious?: This is important because there you can determine the relationship between who believes and who does not or between different religions. Or say if is imposed.

Other points of interest :

  1. What role have religion in the State: So if religions have a political power, how much power do they have and if is used for good or for bad.
  2. What are the religion institutions: Is there a leader of the religion, what are the offices and how they are built, how much the institution influences the population.
  3. Where: where does the faithful worship God/s (temples, groves, churches, or at home)
  4. HOW: this is probably the most important aspect. Here you need to define how people practice their own religion, so if they only pray or do make sacrifices, if there are rules that influence the daily life, if there are festivities or particular ritual, if there are symbols that are worshiped.

World Building

I plan to do a whole series of posts on world building. This is the first of several. In future I will likely be including some links to assist you in your  writing endeavors.

The beginning of world building is asking  questions about your new locale.

Start with some basic details.
1. How big is your world. (Is it about the size of earth? Or Jupiter? or is it small like Pluto)
2. How is your world laid out? (Do you have an earth clone? or is it completely different? what is the terrain? Is your world a water world style or a desert planet (Aka Arakkis via Dune.) this is where you plan the general flora and fauna)
3. How is your world populated? (Is there just humans? or is there more races? If so how many are on there?)
4. How does the sky appear? (How many suns? How many moons?)
5. How far from the Star/Stars is your world? (This affects the temperature and weather on your world.)
6. How is your world as far as technology goes? How is it as far as magic? This affects how your cities are. Is it Steampunk? High magical fantasy? Diesel punk? Cyber punk? or perhaps Stellar traveling fantasy? This helps to set the expectation for the genre.

Once you have those details let’s get slightly more in depth.

*How do people get water?
Is the water sanitary and if not, how do they sanitize it?
*How does agriculture work?
Is it large corporations or individual farms?
*What sort of agricultural technology exists in your world and how does it affect food production?
*Are farmers wealthy or poor?
*What sort of natural resources does your world/country(ies) have and how are they obtained?
*How does this affect the average wealth of the country?
*How does this wealth affect the culture?
*What livestock or beasts of burden are most valued? Least valued? Why?
*What is considered a luxury good vs. a regular good?

Think clearly on each question. Visualize your answers. Go deeper.

  • How does your world keep time (i.e. watches, sundials, water clock, etc.)?
  • Does your world have a currency system, barter system, or something else?
  • If you have multiple countries, do different currencies have different values across said countries?
      • How does this affect travel?
  • Do you have banks in your world and if so, how are they run?
    • Who owns the banks? Government? Wealthy? How does this affect the economy and/or class system?
  • How does credit operate in your universe?
  • Does your world operate more on big corporations or small business? Something in between?
  • How are workers/laborers treated in your world?
    • Are there workers unions and if so, what are common views on unions?
  • Describe your tax system. If you don’t have a tax system, explain why and how your world is affected by that.
  • Can certain social classes not own property, certain livestock, certain businesses, etc.? Why?
  • How are business records kept? Are business records kept?
  • If your world has technology, does your world prioritize developing entertainment tech, communications tech, transportation tech or something else entirely?
    • What does this say about your world?
    • How does this affect your economy?

This speaks to the way society runs. This speaks to the way  people function on your world.

Government / Politics/ Racial Divide

  • How many races are there?
    • Does the races intermingle? can breeding happen between them?
    • Are there wars  that go on between races? If so then why? what started it?
  • To the closest approximation, what type of government does your world have?
  • How are rulers/presidents/nobles put in place?
  • How much power does an individual ruler have?
  • Is there a veto process?
  • If you have multiple countries, do they have different types of rulers?
  • Describe any large-scale alliances (i.e. countries, factions, etc.) that are present in your world.
    • How did they come about and how are they maintained?
    • Are they strained or peaceful?
    • How does it affect the greater politics of your world?
  • Describe how wars are fought both internationally and nationally.
    • Do methods of war differ between countries/races?
    • What about philosophies about war?
  • If there is a military, what is its hierarchy structure? 
    • How does the military recruit?
    • Is the military looked upon favourably in your society?
  • What weapons are used by each country/type of people during warfare, and how does that affect war strategies?
  • Describe the sentencing system of your world.
    • Is your accused innocent until proven guilty, or guilty until proven innocent?
  • How are lawbreakers punished?
    • If you have prisons, describe how they are organized and run, and who owns them.
    • Does differing ownership change how the prisons operate?
  • What are the major ways in which laws between countries vary?
    • Do laws between cities vary? If so, how and why?
  • How does citizenship work in your world? What rights and privileges do citizens have that others do not?
    • Can certain classes or races not become citizens?
  • Are there certain taboo subjects or opinions that artist/authors/musicians are not allowed to depict (i.e. portraying the official religion in a negative light, explicit sexual material, etc.)? What does this say about your society?
    • How do people get around these censorship laws?
  • What is the official hierarchy of duty in your world? (i.e. is family the most important, or patriotism? What about clan?)
  • How many languages are there in your world, and how many languages share a common origin?
    • How many people are multilingual?
    • Which language is the most common?
    • How is multilingualism viewed?
    • How are different languages viewed? (i.e. is one language ugly/barbaric while another is romantic and sensual?)

Gather the answers. Next time I will link to a couple  of good map making resources, But this is enough to get you started. What world will  come of the answers? Will you create the next fun game? or will  you use it to write a Novel that everyone will want to read. I will be adding more questions next time as well.

Teaser Tuesday

Serena has been very busy. As of Sunday her nano word count was around 7500.

My current volume of poetry was at 56 poems. I have not been able to work on Attack on Shoe Mountain.

Oh… And I will be this month doing some world building exercises for my Facebook group {Fantasy, thrillers, and horror, oh my!} One daily. If I get enough interest I will also post it here.

Splitting hairs

Ok. So I think that I have separated pattimouse from my other stuff . I will continue to discuss my poetry and kid’s stuff here.  I will continue with the posts about life and spiritual things (including tarot readings)  here . However anything related to Serena or the publishing I have been setting up to do,  or the crafting I do,  will be oon my other blog. Serenitystudioscraftingandpublishinggroup.wordpress.com

Please don’t hesitate to follow,  as I will be updating both frequently . I think that this will result in better posts .

Links to Happiness: Using Universal Links to Sell Your Ebook…

Poetry, rules and rebellion

I have a confession…writing poetry with certain constraints has always made me antsy. I have felt like I was somehow not good enough to write following the rules. So, I have written copious amounts of free verse…avoiding the structure of any fotms.

Then, as I grew as a writer and a poet, I found myself saying I don’t write that way too often. Well why the Hell not? Am I a Poet? Or do I just pretend I am?

So, when presented with a form/structure poem idea, I start by looking up the rules. For me, this is my go to site.

Believe me, I feel like a high school student again. In high school I knew the rules and felt my style was better as free verse. I think that if anyone tried to tell me that I needed to follow rules with my poetry I even would blow it off with poetic license.

The rebel nature of free verse still appeals. I will likely never be the next Haiku or Sonnet genius. Poetry speaks from the heart, and mine is often chaotic and unstructured. The meaning remains though.

So, just out of curiousity, what is your favorite types of poetry? Why?

Indies who are looking for an editor: DO YOUR RESEARCH. PLEASE.

My editor shared this (written by another of her authors).  It is really good advice,  so I decided to reblog it too. 

http://wp.me/p6paVl-8T

Awareness

I read something last week that has been bouncing around in my head. As I was not planning to write about it,  I did not save the blog link,  or I would refer to it.  I enjoy reading and on any given day read a dozen different blogs. Most do not stick around taking up head space.  This one did.  The gist of the blog was that though it had been a bad year,  perhaps it was not as awful as it seemed.  It spoke about how we are exposing ourselves to news in a constant barrage.  The blog likened it to an assault on the senses. Now it is that idea that has been bouncing.

Is the level of available information a bad thing?  As a writer I enjoy being able to research anything whenever I want. However,  I have had days where opening social media was oppressive. Simply because of the horrible things man does to each other. I remember that my grandma did not watch the news and did not read the paper. She was able to be blissfully ignorant unless she chose otherwise. She was one of the most intelligent people I have ever known. Now we assault ourselves with the news and wonder why we are depressed. I can’t help but think that there must be a better way.

 

Aesthetic ideals 

Each person views aesthetic beauty differently. As a writer I tend to struggle with the concept. Physical beauty has a different description depending on the narrator. So describing a character with a flair in many ways requires a narrator who is fleshed out and real in the writer’s mind. The narrator’s voice will also affect the character’s beauty. For example, if the narrator speaks of a woman “Her mouse colored hair hung limply over dull eyes of chocolate brown.. ” most will see her as unattractive.  However,  if the narrator instead says “Her lovely mouse brown hair sheilded her large chocolate eyes,  which were dulled with pain.” we feel an attraction to the character. 

So when writing one must keep the voice of the story in mind. We writers often see our characters as children,  and thusly love them all. My issue is that i am inclined towards gorgeous villains. I usually like to believe that most great villains have a backstory that explains why they are. The readers often do not get to read the villain’s story. Perhaps that’s why we judge beauty so harshly….because we see only part of the tale.

Practical versus sensual

                  Over the years,  I have become very practical about how I write. Due to low money, I started writing more digitally.  I convinced myself that I enjoyed it just as much, if not more because of the fact that editing was easier in digital. I forced myself to forget the lovely sensual pleasures of a pencil in hand. Or the smell of lead as one writes. The joy of seeing your own handwriting on paper. Still digital allows easier editing,  and I  do loose things written on paper far easier.  However I think it is something as the digital age progresses that we are loosing.  As we stretch for practicalities,  we too often pass on just the sensual aspects of what we do.
                       I enjoyed my tenth & eleventh  grade years in high school,  mostly for the teachers who encouraged unique minds to be themselves. One class in particular, creative writing. The class was an English /language arts option.  The teacher was laid back and easy going.  The first two days of the week were reading. Her rules those days were only that you read, she didn’t care if it were comic book or novel.  We had four books assigned (one per quarter ) but otherwise we had freedom of choice.  We did have to do a report on what we read,  basically review it for the teacher. Then the last three days were writing.  Those days she wheeled in a huge A/V cart. There was various types of paper (construction,  college ruled, kindergarten lined, tissue,  etc) and various writing implements (pens, pencils,  crayons,  colored pencils,  etc) on the cart for us to use.  Rules for the writing days were simple.  Each quarter we had to finish one project.  That meant a rough draft, a edited and proofread draft (by a classmate ), a draft proofread by the teacher, and a final draft.  That opened up the whole class for creative learning.  I truly believe the ability to use so many different mediums helped. Which mediums catch your fancy?  Do you create best when you use just one type?