Work In Progress
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Apr
29
Writing Advice from K. A. Applegate
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K. A. Applegate, creator of the Animorphs series (which both my kids loved) was interviewed on Reddit (I learned about it from The Mary Sue). In the conversation, when asked about writing, she said:
As for advice: write. That’s thing one. Write stuff that sucks. It always sucks when you start. Keep sucking, then fix it. That’s the whole job…
I love that statement. It’s so true. Nothing you ever write is perfect the first time the words hit the page.
Apr
28
L is for Loony
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The moon gives us light in the night sky, and is the cause of insanity – that’s where the word lunacy came from. In this entry of the A to Z Worldbuilding Challenge, we’re taking a look at the moon from several different angles.
Astronomy
What is the moon in your world? Is it a dead piece of rock that circles their world? If it is, do they know that? Does your world have more than one moon? If so, you’d better make sure you know what effects it will have on the physical world.
Culture
Every culture comes up with explanations for things they don’t understand. That includes, of course, what’s up in the night sky. Where do your people think the moon came from? In the Gates of Amduat, the moon is a pearl from Basret’s necklace and the stars are diamonds scattered in the sky to give the people light in the darkness.
What do your people think when they look up at the moon? Do they see a face (the Old Man in the Moon), or something else, like a rabbit?
How about the effect of the moon on people? Is it believed to cause insanity, or do “the crazies come out on the full moon”? Why do they believe this? If your world has werewolves (or other shapeshifting beings), is their ability to change their shape tied to the moon, or is that just superstition?
Apr
28
Falling Down
Filed Under Art of Writing | Leave a Comment
Oh, I’m falling down on the job here. I’m being distracted by Story Engineering
I’m going to finish reading the book, then see what I need to do to rework what I’ve written so far. I’ve got too much invested just to scrap it all and start over. It likely means I’ll have to add in about 5k words near the front of the book, but then the rest – if I follow what Brooks suggests – should all fall into place.
Boy am I glad I’ve got index cards. 
So, coming up shortly will be the next installment of the A to Z Challenge – the letter L.
Apr
26
K is for Karats
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I wish I had a wonderful story to tell you about why I’ve not posted K, L, M and N, but all I’ve got is excuses. Time for me to do some catching up.
Today’s entry for the A to Z Challenge for Worldbuilding is K is for Karats. Here’s an excerpt from the Encyclopedia Britannica:
a measure of the fineness (i.e., purity) of gold. It is spelled carat outside the United States but should not be confused with the unit used to measure the weight of gems, also called carat. A gold karat is 124 part, or 4.1667 percent, of the whole, and the purity of a gold alloy is expressed as the number of these parts of gold it contains. Thus, an object that contains 16 parts gold and 8 parts alloying metal is 16-karat gold, and pure gold is 24-karat gold.
And that’s what we’re talking about today: gems, gold, and other things that your fictional cultures consider valuable.
The first thing that comes to mind when we think of treasure is gold, jewels, and lots of lots of money. But that’s not the only thing people can consider valuable. Let’s take a look at the Aztecs (who are the culture I used as a starting point for one of the cultures in Kolrath).
The Aztecs produced gold ornaments, salt, and garments made of fine cloth. These were traded to the people of the lowlands for what the Aztecs valued: jaguar skins, tropical-bird feathers, rubber, cotton, chocolate, and cacao beans. Cacao beans were also used as currency, and there’s evidence of counterfeit beans – and that’s a really big sign of how valuable the Aztecs considered them.
Treasure doesn’t need to be something material either. The aliens in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull valued knowledge – that was their treasure.
So, what do your people consider valuable? Rare shells from the sea? The seeds of an exotic plant? A mineral or metal mined from the ground? But even as you decide what they value, you need to figure out why. Is it for the item’s beauty? Do they use it in their religious rituals? Is it extremely rare and/or difficult to get?
Apr
21
J is for Jail
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There will always be people doing the wrong things, breaking the law either willfully or otherwise. Rules to live by, be they purely social or something that’s actually codified into laws or part of a religion.
When doing your worldbuilding, you need to think about laws, crime and punishment, if only because of the conflict it can inspire in your story. What are the laws and what’s the consequence of breaking them are the two obvious questions, but you should also think about why a law exists. For example, why might a religious law forbid the consumption of a particular animal. Perhaps there is something about the animal that caused illness, so it was banned for safety reasons. Maybe the animal is considered sacred, so eating it would be an affront to the gods.
If someone breaks a law, then they will face the consequences of caught. The most common kind of punishment – or perhaps the best well know – is from the Code of Hammurabi: “An eye for an eye.” You do something wrong, you must pay in proportion to what you did. Steal a cow? You either give it back, pay for a new one or replace it with one of yours (note that the Code listed maximum penalties, not the only ones to be paid).
If the laws of your culture require penalties along the lines of locking up criminals for lengths of time, you need to figure out how that’s taken care of. Are people shipped somewhere for their sentence, then allowed to come back if they have the money to pay for passage? Are criminals locked up in equally lousy lice and rat-infested cells, or are the nobility – and those with the money to pay the bribes – give special treatment?
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