So I’ve been spending an awful lot of time lately building a world, and it turns out building a whole world is a pretty ginormous job. Who knew?
I entered into this project, as I always do, bright-eyed and bushy-faced, and full of grand and grandiose ideas, and almost immediately (as I also always do) got bogged down by the reality of it all. Progress has been slow. Steady, but slow. At the moment I’ve got the shape of the thing sketched in, but I’m still nowhere near where I thought I needed to be to start actually writing stories in the thing.
Which brings me to the big thing I’ve learned about worldbuilding – I can’t do it in a vaccuum.
You see, my idea was that I would build out this world, flesh out all the details of the people and the neighborhoods and the commerce and the culture and the everything and then, when I had a fully realized and vibrant world ready to go, I could begin with the stories.
Turns out that’s not how it works. Or at least, that’s not how I work.
What I’ve come to, through some trial and error, is what I think is a more workable process. I’ve sketched in the bones of the world, and will set up placeholders for where all the details will be( when there are details), and then I will write my stories – fleshing out the world as I go and filling in those details as my stories require them. Because it’s the stories that make the world and not the world that makes the stories. At least for me, anyway.
So expect to see some stories in the not so distant future, and a more organic approach to the building of my world (which you can see being built here). I don’t know about you, but I’m really looking forward to it.
Leave a Reply