Comments on: World-building wanderings

By: Reesa

Reesa — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 01:46:24 +0000

@Derek - This was for a different idea entirely, and I’m not taking on any new projects until I clear a few off my drafting table, hehe. But CC is still kicking around the noggin and I’m still brainstorming ways to re-purpose it with a new creative team. It was a good first try, and we learned a lot that will usefully apply to its rebirth as well as future collaborative multimedia projects.

Figuring out where the focus points need to be on a large project is usually fairly challenging. I know that’s a large chunk of what I’ve been struggling with in the whorehouse novel. And remember, worry about coherency during the revision stages, not the creation stages!

@ Pamela - The few times I’ve started with a world idea instead of a character idea, I found that there was only so far in the world development I could go without also having characters living in it. If I tried to push past that point without the characterization, the world took on a 2-dimensional feel rather quickly. I could get broad conceptual themes, some background world specifics, possibly even some of the current socio/econo/political climate…but once it got down to specific factions, or a particular city, or figuring out where, ya know, the story was, then I had to find the characters. Thanks so much for sharing your perspective, I always enjoy your comments!

By: Pamela Dean

Pamela Dean — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 19:23:47 +0000

I always start with the character. This is less a policy than a law of nature. When I was asked to write for the shared world of Liavek, in fact, I really panicked, because the world was already there and things were the wrong way around. It was not natural, trouble would come of it! I had to come up with a character who hated Liavek and didn’t want to be there, before I could do anything. She came around eventually, after five stories.

I have tried, cautiously, to start with a world, but it never works. There has to be a character, who, once involved, usually begins explaining why whatever concept I had painfully come up with about the world is Just Wrong. It’s easier not to try that approach.

By: Derek

Derek — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 16:07:27 +0000

Aha! World-building! =)

Figured I might as well chime in here as I am smack dab in the middle of building a very complex world. Just out of curiosity, is this for the Continuous Coast or a different project entirely (and I will understand if you do not wish to discuss the details)?

As you know, ours is most definitely a magical/fantasy world. Our beginning point was really a kind of mixture of both of your proposed approaches. I would say we started more with a vague idea of the events that created the world and then Kevin created an epic poem centered around one of the world’s first heroes as a jumping off point. After that, work on a time-line of events up to present day has really helped to give the world more solidity and has sparked a lot more ideas than anything else at this point.

As for what is difficult? It is ALL difficult! LOL. That is the reason it has been a long time in the conceptual stages of development because we had to scrap almost all of our original work on the project as we felt it was just too “slap-dash”. We were trying to take on too many different things at once and had to finally stop ourselves and take a step back for a while to make absolutely sure that this project was of the highest quality we could produce.

And you hit the nail on the head too: COHERENCY!! Sometimes, that can be the most tedious part of the process is finding creative ways to interlock different stories and creating fluidity.

Thank you for the link as well, I’m going to eat some breakfast, then check it out! =)