Welcome back! How did everyone do with the worldbuilding exercises from last week?

I don’t know about YOU, but I am nowhere near finished with even my most basic worldbuilding yet.

Stained

So far, I’ve got my story set on a large island (small continent?) with two distinct geographically-based societies. Magic users come from the mountain-based society only. I have some rules governing the magic wielded by those people, including boundaries and limits. Additionally, I’ve got a society based around the fact that Stained exist. What does it mean to be a society that periodically produces magically-inclined folk?

I have some religions and a social caste system, as well as an understanding of the trade between the mountain-folk and the lowlanders. How do the mountain-folk survive? What food and goods can they provide on their own and what must they trade for? I also have a primary export and warring factions within the mountain folk.

Additionally, this is just one rather smallish country in this world. Thankfully, I have my husband and roommate to help me do the worldbuilding (and by “help”, I mean they’re doing most of the work. *winks*)

We have a seafaring society, an “alien” society, a vague history with highlights that goes back approximately 10,000 years, multiple other countries and a few different-but-related magic systems within those societies. We had a recent plague in the southeast that’s causing a lot of friction between the human denizens of that area and their warlike non-human parent country.

We also have a growing threat to all of these countries and societies – one that our desert-dwelling folks thought they’d locked away thousands of years ago.

Why So Much?

Why do so much worldbuilding?

A couple of reasons.

• My husband loves to do worldbuilding, and he’s pretty flippin’ fantastic at it.
• The more your world lives and breathes before you start adding characters to it, the easier it is to come up with plots and conflicts. Just based on what I’ve got above, I can think of at least three trilogy plots and one plot that would tie multiple series together into one massive climactic battle.
• Myself, my husband, and our roommate are all planning on doing NaNoWriMo this year. We decided to build a single world and each of us take a fragment of it to write about. Stained is mine, the seafaring society will be tackled by Mr. Moore, and He Who Lives In The Second Bedroom will be taking on the warlike non-human “alien” society.

How Much Will Be Used?

All of it, but very little of it.

Every piece of worldbuilding has affected this world. The addition of the primary export from the Stained mountain society has had a ripple effect on the other countries, peoples, and magic systems on this planet.

I have a rough map of the mountain society – where people live, how their political system is shaped, the specific types of brooches used to identify people of various castes – but my current plan has most of my novel taking place in the lowlander setting.

My novel will likely not even mention most of the other societies we’re worldbuilding for. It may not even mention this primary export, I’m not sure.

But because that building has been done, I know that my world will make sense. I know that my plots and conflicts will be closely tied to the setting. And best of all, I know that this world has MORE than enough room in it for a ton of books. Trilogies, series, the whole shebang. All of it should make sense as it’s revealed because all of it is THERE.

Homework

I’m not ready to move on to character building yet. I still have too many world details that I want to hammer out before I move on.

This week’s homework is the same as last week’s homework. Build your world. Shape it, craft it, mold it, and sing sweetly to it until it begins to thrum back at you. Let it live.

More Questions

Last week was BIG questions. This week is going to be smaller questions.

I have my list of societies. Which of those people are likely to show up in Stained? Which are highly unlikely to show up? Of the ones that might, how will the mountain-folk and the lowlanders react to seeing them? What happens if a Stained shows up in a lowlander country? How are they treated? If my character walks through the gates of a lowlander city, what will she see?

I might even draw out a few rough city maps if I feel up to it. Where do travelers stay? Are there slums? Prisons? Bars? Is there an industrial area? How about residential?

Next Week

Next week, we’ll get started on characters. I’m enjoying the worldbuilding, but I am REALLY looking forward to meeting my main character.

What is This?

Weekly Wordcount posts have two purposes:

• Personal accountability, to nurture a writing habit throughout the year
• Encouragement for others to do the same

My weekly wordcount goal is set to 2,000 words.

How Did I Do?

Specific wordcounts for me will be put on hold until HTRYN is complete. Talk about a time commitment!

• Choose installment written.
• Song of Binding – HTRYN work continues. We are on Lesson 8 now.
• Worldbuilding for Stained.

How Did YOU Do?

How is your writing coming along?

Roadmap 1

Once upon a time, I thought getting published went like this:

1. Write a Book
2. Get Published
3. Quit Job and Write Forever (possibly from the back of a rainbow unicorn)

Roadmap 2

Then I wrote a book and my road to publishing changed slightly.

1. Write a Book
2. Fix that Book
3. Get Published
4. Quit Job and Write Forever (I traded the unicorn in for a dragon in this particular fantasy)

Roadmap 3

Then I spent a long time watching movies, playing video games, etc. Before I knew it, YEARS had passed and would you believe it? That book hadn’t actually fixed itself, nor had another, BETTER book magically appeared under my pillow like a gift from the Tooth Fairy.

Bemused, I started to do some research. Mind completely blown, I erased my imaginary roadmap to publishing and rewrote it.

1. Write a Book (this is still VITAL. You are guaranteed to suck when you start writing. You have to practice writing to get better at it, and you have to FINISH what you start in order to learn all the necessary lessons about writing.)
2. Learn the craft of writing. Seriously spend time learning how to plot, characterize, revise, etc. Learn those pesky grammar rules that buzz around my manuscript and drain it of its readability, like thesaurical mosquitoes. Create a writing habit. Read, not just for fun, but also critically. Learn to see the nuts and bolts of what other authors have done that I like, and that I despise. LEARN.
3. Write another book using what I’ve learned. Finish it. Polish it till it gleams. Learn from it.
4. Write a query letter and synopsis for that book.
5. Enter the query or excerpts from the book into contests on blogs (such as AuthoressAnon or KOrtizzle or Jodi Meadows) WHILE seeking agency for the book.
6. Immediately begin writing the next, totally unrelated book (NOT the second book in the series to which the first book belongs).
7. Repeat steps 2-6 until I get published.
8. Repeat until writing brings in enough money for me to quit my job and write forever OR I retire and am able to write regardless of how much money I make from writing.

Where I Am

My roadmap will continue to change as I grow and learn. Becoming published, for example, isn’t the edge of the world, beyond which lie sea monsters and treacherous pirates. Right now, being published is far enough away and the publishing industry is changing fast enough that further speculation would be tentative at best.

Even though the endpoint on my roadmap keeps moving farther and farther away from where I am, I am content.

I am exactly where I need to be in my writing career. I am not ready to be published.

If an agent or publishing company had picked up Song of Binding at the point when my co-author and I finished the first draft, we would have published a crappy book.

Furthermore, we wouldn’t have realized what was wrong with the book and taken the steps to fix it. And if we hadn’t tried to fix it, we wouldn’t have realized just how little we actually knew about writing and revising.

Arts and Crafts

Writing is an art, but it’s also a craft. It takes creativity, but it also has nuts and bolts and technical rules. Back when I was in the mental space of that first roadmap, the thought that writing was WORK would have been repellent to me. Depressing, even.

Now, it’s a relief. A balm. Thank heavens I don’t have to flail about in the dark trying to fix my novel. There are rules and exercises and guidelines. Other people have had these same exact problems, and the fact that I have them does not mean that I am a terrible writer and I should just give up.

Writing is work. Writing is effort. Writing is practice.

And that is a wonderful, amazing thing. I am not stuck with just the meager amount of talent I was born with. I can hone and nurture my writing talent as much as I want. I can do ANYTHING.

It’s heady stuff. Powerful. Freeing.

I enjoy writing MORE now than I did back when I was writing purely on instinct. I’m no longer plotting blindfolded or relying on the fickle whims of my imaginary muse to drop down from the heavens and imbue my fingers with fairy dust.

The Temptation

It would be easy to fall into the trap of never moving past where I am now. As Iris pointed out, I could keep telling myself “I’m not ready” for another decade or three before I get moving further along my roadmap. As my husband pointed out, I can keep going back and revising existing books forever without actually writing new ones and moving forward.

I could stagnate here, learning. Finishing a manuscript is dangerous, because then I have to let it go. Can it fly on its own? Will it be rejected time and time and time again?

I will never know until I try. Best case scenario, it’s picked up and published and I’m the next J.K. Rowling (ha!). Worst case scenario, it gets rejected and I write a better book next time, and it gets rejected and so on and so forth …

Even in my WORST case scenario, I’m still writing. I’m still doing what I love.

NaNoWriMo 2010

This – this roadmap, this plan, this dream – is why I’m pouring so much effort into NaNoWriMo this year. I don’t have to wait for November and NaNoWriMo. I could start writing today. But I want to join in the fun of the event, and I want to make sure I don’t rush the writing. The NaNo preparation posts on this blog are for you, but they’re also for me. What have I learned? What mistakes have I made in the past and how will I keep myself from making them over and over again?

NaNoWriMo 2010 is my final exam. Am I ready to move on to steps 3 and 4 of my roadmap?

I think so.

I hope so.

I’m looking forward to finding out.