Oct

27

Scrivener for Windows

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At some point, you have to stop the worldbuilding and research and start putting words to paper. The most basic tool you need is a word processing program of some kind. Even something as simple as WordPad would suffice. But using other programs, ones designed for writers, make the process easier. I’ve tried yWriter and StoryBook just to name a few.

One of the best writer’s software out there is Scrivener. For years, it was only available for the Mac. However, that is changing. Here’s a bit of the blurb from the Scrivener for Windows site.

Scrivener is an award-winning program for writers which has until now only been available for Mac OS X. Whereas the main tools of page layout programs and many word processors are predominantly focused on the appearance of a document, Scrivener’s tools are focused on generating content. It is not intended to completely replace a dedicated word processor but is used for structuring and writing those difficult first drafts of long texts such as novels, scripts and theses.

They are currently in their Open Beta phase, and are asking the public to help test the software to find as many bugs as possible. I’m using it now, and even in it’s incomplete form, I’m liking it a lot. I’m definitely looking forward to seeing the full featured version.

For those of you who participating in NaNoWriMo, this ought to interest you. If you participate in NaNo this year and you win, you’ll get a 50% off coupon for when the software is released early next year.

Oct

25

NaNoWriMo Starts Next Week.

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Are you ready for it?

I don’t think anyone truly can be, unless you normally work at the breakneck speed. I’ve participated twice before, but only “won” once. You can just type away madly and write whatever comes to mind. I know I did, and I really wasn’t too happy with what I ended up with. A big part of that was due to simply the speed at which I wrote. I didn’t care what ended up on the page, so long as I got the daily work count.

I hope to change that this year by doing a bit more in the way of planning ahead of time. I need more than scene descriptions. I found those to be incredibly limiting, and was fighting myself to make sure I did only what the index card for the scene said. I’m not going to do that anymore.

Oh, I’ll still be doing up index cards for each scene, but I’ll try not to do more than just a single sentence for each one. Stuff like “Alex gets angry with Jared because he went to the museum without her” is what I’d be aiming for. Leave the paragraph summaries for after the thing’s written.

I also need to give a good thought to the worldbuilding I’m going to need for what I’m going to write. Having something in place ahead of time makes things so much easier. Your results are often better than what you’d get when you’re staring down that 2000 words per day deadline and you’re stuck.

This worldbuilding doesn’t need to be incredibly detailed. In fact, you could do it on index cards, or in a spreadsheet. Consider the kinds of things your characters will be doing or encountering before you start writing. And make sure you actually get this stuff down on paper (or in a file on your computer), because if you’re like me, you’ll be unable to remember what you’d decided when the chips are down.

Here’s an example of some stuff I’ve done for a fantasy novel that’s really only in the very early stages of writing:

scene what happens why is it important
they find a body hidden in the cellar the body has had its’ eyes sewn shut they believe the soul escapes through a person’s eyes upon death, so they want to ensure the soul will move on, or the body will become one of the undead. Only the worst criminals – or a murder victim whose murderer wants to be sure they’re never identified – have their eyes sewn shut.

Very simple, but very effective. You don’t have to use those exact columns, of course. Customize it to meet your needs.

And remember, if you do any worldbuilding on the fly, write it down when you do it. You don’t want to be coming back weeks, or even months, later and forget why the heck you wrote that.

Oct

23

The Web on Worldbuilding

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Every day, I get an email from Google with new things it as found in its searches of the web on the subject of worldbuilding. Sometimes, some valuable stuff comes up. Yesterday’s email contained several interesting things:

A blogger who goes by the handle “theferret” wrote about what writers actually need to do for worldbuilding. He believes Tolkien’s massive exposition of description should be the exception, rather than the rule. You can check out what he said in his Worldbuilding Musings post.

There’s a thread that has started at rpg.net about getting your climatology right. That’s one of the things I think is important – your world needs to be believable, so unless your stories take place exclusively indoors in a climate-controlled building, you need to make at least a token effort to getting it right.

An article at ezinearticles.com has an entry about worldbuilding that outlines some very basic steps you need to go through.

Oct

20

Prep for NaNoWriMo – Worldbuilding Resources

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When you’re reading fiction, especially works with fantastical elements (science fiction, fantasy, etc.), you’re asking the reader to suspend her disbelief. For some stories, it’s pretty easy. Near future science fiction, for example, with active, prevalent nanotechnology, is believable. That kind of stuff simply makes sense based on the direction technology is going. Other aspects, like alien cultures (and I don’t mean Barsoom – anything not whatever your culture is qualifies as alien for my purposes right now), need to have some internal consistency. Things need to make sense, at least from the big picture, otherwise you risk pulling the reader out of the story and make them wonder what-the-heck.

If you’re a pantser, you make these decisions as you go. If you’re a plotter, you do some (or all) of the work ahead of time. You can make it as detailed or as broad as you want or need. To be able to do that, to make your world so believable the reader can immerse themselves completely, you really need to do some research.

There’s a thread over at the NaNoWriMo forums someone started yesterday, and it got me thinking about great books we as writers all ought to read (from a worldbuilding point of view). Here’s a couple to start you off:

The Dressed Society: Clothing, the Body and Some Meanings of the World (Published in association with Theory, Culture & Society) – I haven’t read this one personally, but it has been recommended to me. While not written specifically for writers, the book deals with clothing and its place in society.

Why We Eat What We Eat: How Columbus Changed the Way the World Eats – I own an earlier edition of this book, and I found it fascinating. It talks about what we as people eat and why, and how the introduction of new foodstuffs can drastically change everything. Early cultures are so defined by their food sources. A coastal culture would have vastly different traditions (and taboos) than a mountain-bound culture. This is a book I’d recommend to everyone.

The Curious Lore of Precious Stones – I have this in an earlier edition. If your story involves gemstones where the meaning of the stone (or it’s purported magical abilities) is important, then check this book out. It’s an excellent book with lots of useful information. Lots of potential for inspiration too.

In the interest of full disclosure, the links to the books above are affiliate links, so if you buy something one of these links takes you to, I get a little something.

Oct

18

Prep for NaNoWriMo – World Building (Fantasy)

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November approaches, and with it comes National Novel Writing Month (aka NaNoWriMo). For those of you unfamiliar with it, the goal is to write 50,000 words in 30 days. If you break it down, that works out to 1667 words per day, if you write every single day or 2273 if you take weekends off. They don’t have to be good words; just words written. Nor is it edited words (which is what NaNoEdMo is for in March – 50 hours in 31 days). Every word must be brand new. It can be a brand new novel, part of an existing work, whatever. The key is that you write.

To be able to write that much that quickly, you really need to have a game plan in place. It can be anything from a completed outline to “I think I’m going to write a story about X”. Part of that plan really needs to involve world building. For a traditional fantasy novel, you’ll have to consider races, nations, magic (yes, no, or what kinds) and cultures, just to name a few.

If you’re a pantser (someone who writes by the seat of their, well, you know :) , then you’ll likely be making it all up as you go. If you’re a planner, you’ll want to have stuff done up ahead of time. Patricia Wrede’s Fantasy Worldbuilding Questions is a great place to start.