Two Year Novel Course: Set 3 (World Building)

By Lazette Gifford

This set of world building classes provides a few tricks for both physical and cultural world building and includes exercises, examples and many questions to answer about your own work. This set of classes will help science fiction and fantasy writers, however the cultural aspects and conflicts can also work well in modern and historical fiction.

This set includes:

Why and How
Place
Integrating with the Environment
Personal Requirements
Relationships
Community Interaction
Community Structure
Community Supplies
Community Needs
Knowledge Systems
Information Dissemination
Mythology and Religion

• Language: English
• Publisher: A Conspiracy of Authors
• Release date: Apr 16, 2012
• ISBN: 9781936507177

Lazette Gifford

Lazette is an avid writer as well as the owner of Forward Motion for Writers and the owner/editor of Vision: A Resource for Writers.It's possible she spends too much time with writers.And cats.

Book preview

Two Year Novel Course: Set 3

By

Lazette Gifford

Copyright 2018 Lazette Gifford

An ACOA Publication

www.aconspiracyofauthors.com

ISBN: 978-1-936507-17-7

Copyright © 2004, 2006, 2012, 2018 Lazette Gifford

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages.

Table of Contents

Week 14: World Building, Part One/Introduction to World Building

Week 15: World Building, Part Two/Place

Week 16: World Building, Part Three/Integrating with the Environment

Week 17: World Building, Part Four/Personal Requirements

Week 18: World Building, Part Five/Relationships

Week 19: World Building Part Six/Community Interaction

Week 20: World Building Part Seven/Community Structure

Week 21: World Building, Part Eight/Community Supplies

Week 22: World Building, Part Nine/Community Needs

Week 23: World Building, Part Ten/Knowledge Systems

Week 24: World Building, Part Eleven/Information Dissemination

Week 25: World Building, Part Twelve/Mythology and Religion

About the Author

Week 14: World Building, Part One

Introduction: World building

By now many of you will be frothing at the mouth to get going on the actual story. Remember to jot down notes, scenes, dialog and anything else you think might go into the story. You can decide not to use any of them later, but it's best to keep track of those moments of inspiration.

For the next few weeks, we'll look at world building. In my opinion, everyone should pay attention to the cultural world building section, because even stories based in this real world often have cultural conflicts -- or should.

Culture helps to define your characters, so don't think this is the last of the character building you'll do. Like everything else in this course, things must be presented in a sequence which might not be an accurate reflection of how a novel grows in your brain. Be prepared to add, change, and adapt your character, your idea, and anything else about your novel as we continue with the classes.

Why and How

World building is something I truly enjoy. This is a quote from the back of my published chapbook, Honor Bound:

A talented writer with a gift for world building...

C.J. Cherryh

This quote means a lot to me, coming from my favorite writer of all time. However, such a quote needs to be renewed with each story and book I write, and sometimes I fall short of my goal -- although it's not because I ignore the possibilities world building creates. If you want your story to be memorable it must have levels beyond the plot: The world and characters must be real.

World building is more than drawing a map and naming some towns or streets. In fact, physical world building is barely the start of the work. Done properly, world building will make certain your characters are heading on the right trail to reach the port city and also gives them realistic obstacles (creating the ever-needed conflict), and overlay a gloss of reality to something that won't be found in any Rand McNally Atlas.

We are still dealing intimately with character creation as we move through World building and Outlining. While main characters and their closest companions are often best created early in the process, it's sometimes more helpful to wait before peopling the rest of the book. This way you create people to fit the story and the world to which they belong.

This is very hard for character-driven writers (like me) to keep in mind. We love character creation and making all those fun people to romp through the pages can draw a writer away from the other parts of the story creation process. I have found creating some characters via the world building gives them a more stable base and a better reason for existence.

Some world building will come naturally to all writers. They see their world, at least with some of the details sketched in, and while they may not know why something works the way it does, they do know this is what they want for the story.

Learning the whys can add depth to your story you never expected. Having a solid basis for a story doesn't limit your story options. In fact, it will open unexpected doors and make your work more believable. For instance, if you are working on a fantasy story, the more solid background you can work into your novel, the more acceptable the magical divergences will be.

After this section on research and physical world building, we'll go into cultural world building, which is something everyone should examine, whether you are basing your book on an alien world, in a fantasy land, or right here on real earth. We live in a world of diverse cultures and using ones appropriate to your book will add depth and create conflict. If you are starting to plot your story (and many of us are starting to get a feel for how the story will flow), please realize there is a great deal more we will cover, so don't consider anything you do now as unchangeable.

The setting for a book is rarely frozen in one place. However, the longer a character spends in one location, the more detailed the location will become. If your character spends a lot of time sitting in a bedroom (which, well, may not be the most exciting story in the world), then we should know the bedroom from the cracks in the wall to the sound the bush outside the window makes when the wind blows. The less time spent in other locations, the more superficial the details will be. We don't need to know every rock on the path to school, but the school room where the character sits for hours at a time will have more detail.

Gathering Research

In several of the upcoming sections, I will be mentioning books that I recommend. There are, of course, thousands of others to choose from -- along with magazines and websites. Finding the information is not the hard part. Deciding what to do with it, and how to keep track of what you need, is another matter. I can only give you suggestions and tell you how I manage it.

Having a set way to take notes and keep track of them can be one of the most important gifts you give yourself as a writer. You should do this for research as well as for notes about your story line, characters, and anything else related to your book.

I have suggested you keep a notebook with all your class material but working on world building notes may require a few more tools.

Writing notes on your phone or tablet is, of course, an easy way to keep track of things. You can use them to write notes in the line at the grocery store, and you can jot down information at the library -- and all of it can be easily uploaded to your home computer, already typed. This saves time and makes it easy to organize.

If you prefer paper, you might choose a handy, small paper notebook instead. Small is better in this case -- something you can fit in your pocket or purse and grab with ease. If the object is too large, chances are you won't want to carry it with you all the time.

There is one type of notebook which is a step up from the small stuff, but I find very helpful. I'm not certain if this type of binder is still available, though. It's made to hold hole punched notecards. You can buy the cards pre-punched, but I found my three-hole punch works fine at one end without making an adjustment.

Notecards are easy to sort. You can take them out of the notebook and file them in the proper place for later reference.

If, like me, you don't like to stop reading to take notes invest in some of the Post-It ™ flags for books. If you use them to mark a spot and don't write on them, they can be used a couple times -- put in place as you read and removed and stuck back to the base as you copy the notes out. They'll stick one or two more times.

I also use Scrivener these days, which is an excellent program for not only writing the story but also for keeping all your notes in one place with the story. With this program, you can easily keep track of character lists, world building notes, and even pictures that inspire you.

It is important to do the research for your book and not shrug it off. Some lucky people might be able to create worlds and cultures -- or know the real-world location where the story is going to take place -- without a problem. However, many of us don't know all the details. It might be easy to make up what we need, but this creates two potential problems -- laziness with keeping the facts straight, and not learning to do research you will need to do someday for a more challenging book. If possible, start with the easy ones and get the knack of it before you tackle something more difficult. If you are starting out with a difficult, high-research book, don't let it frighten you. It can be done.

It's better not to stint on the research from the start. Get used to the idea of grabbing books or wandering through the Internet looking for answers to questions. Make sure you have your facts right. Get used to taking notes and keeping things organized.

In fact, for those of you who don't read nonfiction books on a regular basis, I suggest you get into the habit of doing so a couple times a year. Find subjects which interest you. For the current research project think beyond the immediate picture. If you are writing about a small village in the forest, start studying forest types, village layout and how they governed themselves. What would it take to support such a village?

Take notes on everything you find interesting, whether you need it for a story or not. The more you learn, the more you will have to draw on later to fill out your story worlds.

In the end, how you organize your notes will depend a lot on your personal situation. Some people have file cabinets full of notes, magazine articles, and an incredible amount of background material they may never use. Others research specifically for the work at hand and organize that material in notebooks or files dedicated to that one book or story.

You might keep all your research on your computer or in handwritten notes. It doesn't matter. All that counts is you do the work and make use of what you learn.

Assignment

Write a paragraph or two about how you are going to organize your research. Once you have worked that out, list at least five things you think you need to study. You can use this as a handy reference to help remember some of the material you need.

Example 1:

I will do most of my research for this one on-line, copy things straight into Scrivener, and keep track of everything that way.

1. Corporate Structure

2. Expensive Clothing

3. Expensive Cars