Now you have a story and the characters in it, but what about the rest of your world?<\/p>\n
Most people think that only fantasy or science-fiction writers have to create a world for their writing, but even writers who create contemporary stories create their worlds. They just create a fictional world based more closely to our real world, which is pretty subjective in any case.\u00a0 I’ve been assuming that you are following these posts in order this month, but there’s certainly no reason that you should start with a story and not your world.\u00a0 I know that I often start with a setting when I’m thinking of stories and, especially when I’m thinking of fantasy stories, a map is often a great place to start.\u00a0 In fact, in How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy<\/a>, Orson Scott Card writes about starting a novel by essentially doodling a map.\u00a0 And, thanks to the internet, there are an almost endless number of pages about making maps.\u00a0 Let’s start with A Guide to RPG Mapmaking<\/a>.\u00a0 It’s focused on fantasy role-playing games, but everything in the guides and tutorials are applicable to other kinds of fantasy maps.\u00a0 And, if you like that, check out Observations of the Fox: Map Tutorials<\/a> for even more details on creating detailed maps.\u00a0 Most of the techniques there are pretty applicable to any tools you might use, and there are many to choose from, but if you’re serious about making maps and aren’t a professional artist, I highly recommend ProFantasy’s Campaign Cartographer<\/a>.\u00a0 It’s not incredibly expensive, and there is a bit of a learning curve, but I think it’s worth the investment in time and money for some of the results.\u00a0 To see what some of those results can be, with practice, as well as Campaign Cartographer specific tutorials, be sure to visit Ralf Schemmann’s site Maps and More<\/a>. Of course, you may not need a map at all, but want to create some other details about your fictional world to make it seem more real.\u00a0 For that, I humbly submit Fantasist.net’s own World Building resources<\/a> for your use, which includes, among other things, an on-line Timeline Generator<\/a> to create a little history that your characters can refer to in conversation.\u00a0 It also has a link to the incredibly complete Fantasy Worldbuilding Questions by Patricia C. Wrede<\/a>, who covers pretty much every detail you could ever ask yourself about a fictional world.<\/p>\n As much as I love worldbuilding, in recent years I’ve realized that I can easily get so lost in world and setting creation that I never get around to actually writing fiction!\u00a0 Don’t fall into that trap!\u00a0 Make enough world to get your story going and then let the world create itself as you go.\u00a0 For some more helpful worldbuilding ideas along those lines, take a look at Chuck Wendig’s 25 Things You Should Know About Worldbuilding<\/a>.\u00a0 It’s a very up-to-date approach and I found it quite helpful!<\/p>\n So, now you should have characters, setting and plot nailed down and you can start letting that marinate before actually starting National Novel Writing Month in November.\u00a0 But, come back next week to see what final tools I have for you before you launch your NaNoWriMo project!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Now you have a story and the characters in it, but what about the rest of your world? Most people think that only fantasy or science-fiction writers have to create a world for their writing, but even writers who create contemporary stories create their worlds. 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\nAnd, if you just want some inspiration, check out Fantastic Maps<\/a> or Fantasy Cartography by Sean Macdonald<\/a>.<\/p>\n