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What is something each person here likes about worldbuilding?
#ProtectAdolinKholin
I have a huge collection of Google Docs for worldbuilding information. I use lots of tables and headings and sub-headings to keep things organized.
I donât really have a specific method of coming up with ideas. Usually I come up with a core idea and build out from there, filling in my standard information fields.
đ° Fantasy Writer
⨠Magic System Creator
đ Character RPer
đ Appreciator of BooksI also use Google docs and fill out the whole thing with general information, such as flora and fauna, science, tech, etc. History is by far the longest section.
Does anyone have advice for outlining magic systems? I’m looking at you, @jonas . Or really anyone. I would like to be more organized with it, but I’ve never known where to start.
#ProtectAdolinKholin
Iâll get back to you on that. I donât have too much time right now, and I want some time to type up all my thoughts. Itâll probably be Monday morning, because I donât generally use my computer on Sundays.
đ° Fantasy Writer
⨠Magic System Creator
đ Character RPer
đ Appreciator of BooksI talk about it to my siblings. XD And I keep an eye open for ideas. For instance, while at a funeral I realized I didn’t know my charrie’s traditional burials. Flash forward to when I ran across some archeology, and I decided to hunt for ideas. Now I have a detailed burial system depending on the place and/or culture in the world. Same thing happened for weddings, except then the inspiration was seeing a scene from Fiddler on the Roof. And I read about the Baltic Sea-Kings and decided I needed to have a culture that was strictly on water, and they needed to be like Rus Vikings. Sometimes though, I’ll make up something on the fly, and then wonder what it should be. (A Silverstar of Imraldis’? What in the worlds?)
There are several articles on here that really help me get through dry places when I don’t know what to do to fill a gap in the culture. Or when it feels too cut and paste.
You have listened to fears, child. Come, let me breathe on you... Are you brave again? -Aslan
@raxforge ooooohâŚ..worldbuilding. i love worldbuilding.
Except I just kinda throw together what works. Half the time it doesnât leave my brain until I write it in the story, or tell someone it for context purposes.
Also, since I write fanfics which often change the source material in some way, I extrapolate from what already exists. The fanfic I shared with your girlfriend? Each of the characters gained animal features based on what their personality was, and then I extrapolated that to their whole species. Sniper is a stereotypical Australian, and heâs probably at least partially based off the famous Crocodile Dundee in terms of design/personality. So he became a crocodilian species. Soldier is a true blue American, so a bald eagle was the only way to go. Heavy is a burly Russian and many associate Russia with bears, so a bear-person I made him. Medic is a shifty German and they have wolves and dragon legends there, so he has attributes of both creatures.
Then came re-naming the planets. This part might be a bit more helpful for you than what I previously talked about cause itâs less fanfic-y.
In the storyâs universe, each country in our world is a planet in theirs (with the exceptions of some of the larger countries, which are whole solar systems, but what Iâm about to say still applies). I didnât want to have just âFlorida planetâ or âAustralia planetâ or âFrance planet.â So I started looking through âalternate history storiesâ wikis and blogs, pocketing alternate names for the continents, countries, and US states. Some I came up with on my own. Some didnât deviate too much from our name for the country (Koryo, Australis and Tex are quite obviously the names for Korea, Australia, and Texas, for example). And some are much harder to figure out (New Zealand is named Staten, which doesnât make much sense at first glance until you do some research and find itâs a Dutch name that showed up on some early maps of the country, and Germany is Drachenwelt, which is weird but is simply the words âDragon worldâ in German, cause thatâs where the dragon species comes from)
So, uh, my advice is terrible but itâs this: take what you have and extrapolate it to its logical conclusion, and if you get stuck, re-name something that already exists and give it a fanciful purpose.
"When in doubt, eat cheese crackers."-me to my charries who don't even know about cheese crackers
This is a great topic!
Generally, I’ll write a creation story or however the world came into existence. Then I’ll keep writing little myths and legends and history and law codes of countries and superstitions and fairy tales and…you get the idea. I’ll make up stuff about the culture in each country. For example, the country “Anachroda” has a name which I found in the word “anachronism.” (That’s when something doesn’t fit into a timeline, like an electric guitar in ancient Rome.) They’re super old fashioned, and they still follow a custom which the rest of their world has abandoned, which is to wear hoods so that the Sun doesn’t see them and get mad at them. The reason the sun would get mad at them? Long story. Verrry long story.
Apart from that, I’ve drawn maps for one of my WIPs so that I get used to the geography. It’s useful to know where there are a lot of rivers or lakes so that I can figure out where people would be fishermen or where they might do a lot of agriculture, or dryer places where they might rely on mining or other resources they can trade for food with other countries, etc.
I’ve also tried writing textbooks.
None of them have been completed–they rarely exceed twenty pages before I figure out what I wanted to know–but explaining in an academic way the history, science, etc. of my WIPs helps me to understand exactly how some things work.
Pray, thou shalt simply add ketchup unto the mac'n'cheese.
FELLOW TEXTBOOK WRITER!!!
I mean…
The textbook format has been appreciated by several writers. According to a survey performed by a certain Stepheroni and Cheese, two out of two young writing enthusiasts used this world-building tool regularly.
Pray, thou shalt simply add ketchup unto the mac'n'cheese.
I’m not sure what a good process is, but here’s basically what I do.
I have a doc for each of my series that is mostly just notes about the characters, the plotline, and a bunch of random culture things. And then I’ve scribbled some things down in notebooks, but I haven’t kept up with those so I don’t really know if I have that stuff anymore. I also talk with my sister. A lot.
As for coming up with stuff…
I get a lot of inspiration from things I find in random research, like medieval burials or isolated modern cultures. Other times I sit with a doc and just brainstorm different ways things could be. There’s usually a google translate on hand to help come up with names of stuff.
And I keep my eyes open for ways to further develop. Taking a government class? Figure out the court system. Going to a wedding? Design some traditions. Cleaning the church? Build a forest chapel.
I’ve tried to get as much world building done before actually starting each story. This may not be a good choice for everyone, but it helps me get into the character’s heads, into how they think, and why.
One of the first things I pin down are what I consider the building blocks of a culture; Cold or warm; Individualist or collectivist; Rich or poor; Military or civilian; Old or young. Then I find the cultural ideals for beauty, character, morality, nobility, justice.
And then I can shape how my characters do or don’t fit in with their culture, and see how that will affect the plot. From there I develope as I like.
First Grand Historian of Arreth and the Lesser Realms (aka Kitty)
Fork the GorkI…worldbuild in the dark at night usually (I have trouble sleeping) and I rarely, if ever, actually write a comprehensive thing on my world, I just scribble things on random sheets of paper or in notebooks that I then loose in the sea of notebooks that I have already.
Yeah, I need to change some of my writing habits.
Which is worse? Angry cat Batman or Batman?
#AnduthForever (hopefully đ)
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