World building is intimidating.
I sit and look at the ungodly amount of work that has to go into the process and break into a cold sweat. (Big man + Cold sweat = Not pretty) Oh, I know it can be a lot of fun; the very idea of getting to play God in that manner is enough to make my shorts tight (OK, that was an image nobody needed!) but creating an entire world, culture, languages, history, not to mention workable systems of magic, commerce, religion, and government is daunting. Once I'm into it I do fairly well but getting started always gives me heart palpatations. I'm never sure where to start, ya know? Do I begin with the world or the culture? Do I start working on a magic system or figure out where people get their food from? So many decisions!!! ARRRGHH!!!!
In the case of my latest novel - working title = "Alex", BTW - I am going to start with the key elements of my story and work my way outward, fitting the world around the tale. I have always worked the other way, setting the world rules then adjusting my story to fit within those parameters. I'm hoping a new approach will yield better results. To date, I always get about 1/2 way through the world building process and let it go, opting to just make up the rest of it as I go through the story. "Alex" won't work like that though. I need a very solid structure for this story. I have to know much more about how everything works -and why- than I normally would. This story will have 5-6 sub-plots running through it and a whole lot of secret background happenings weaving between them all. On top of that the magic system and the social structure of the tale will both be very intricate and I need to have a solid grasp on how they work or the story is going to fall apart. There is also a lot of historical backstory I need to get arranged. Much of it won't appear in the book but I have to have it firmly in place to make the story play out in some logical fashion.
"Alex" may work out to be a YA novel (not sure about that though) which will be my first attempt in that area. I'm looking forward to it actually. When I was a kid I loved the sense of adventure and excitement YA books had. I'd like to try and capture that spine tingling sense of wonder and the desperate need to see "what happens next?". Besides, it's always good to stretch your horizons. (mixed metaphors are fun!)
Busy crazy night tonight. I have a meeting. The wife has a meeting. The boy is coming to one of the meetings (though he won' t be pleased!) I have to cook dinner, food shop, and do some more work on laying out the home renovations so we can fax them over to a contractor for pricing. The good thing is that I can continue the world building for "Alex" while I'm doing some of this. I'm pretty good about keeping this stuff in my head, which is why I usually give up on writing it out. I can recall the details of any given project of mine years afterward without any problems. This time though, I'm going to get it written down (no, really! I mean it!) I plan on giving myself two weeks to get all the necessary WB done before I try to start any writing at all and I imagine I'll be adding to the WB as I work through the first draft as well.
Ah well, that's enough pointless rambling for one day. I'll let you move on with your life now.
Later!
