World Building

How do *you* world build?

There's nothing I love more than a fantasy world. I imagine most people would agree that a story's ability to transport you somewhere else is its greatest value. Personally, I like that somewhere else to be a place full of magic and adventure, so, naturally, I try to craft my worlds in a similar fashion.

In The Nephilim, Sophie and her cohorts exist in a modern world, much like ours, with layers of fantasy on other planes of existence. But those layers are largely based on Judeo-Christian and Zoroastrian mythologies that I've doctored a little (or a LOT) for my own purposes as opposed to creating an entirely brand new world from scratch. I suppose we never TRULY create any world from scratch--I firmly believe every thought has already been thought, that the bake an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe and so on--but there is a lesser degree of difference between the world of The Nephilim and our world than most others that I've written.  Despite that I've created their world, I don't consider it formal world building (that's probably dumb, but it's just a classification for my mind only). Of course, it's got its magic, its creatures, and most importantly its rules, but it felt a bit more natural to me. I knew how things worked on instinct. That's probably because I grew up largely without religion but surrounded by Catholics (What? How? Don't ask me, I don't know!), so I've had a vague idea my whole life that things like Heaven and Hell, angels, and some dude named Satan existed somewhere that I couldn't see, and I just wrote The Nephilim's world to be the place I came up with to process all of that incomplete information. (And then I sprinkled in vampires because, why not?)

Now I'm working on a more classic fantasy quest tale, taking place in a medieval-esque world with elemental magic, elves, knights, and all that fun stuff. I have been attracted to the genre my whole life, but always felt, I guess, "left out" of it because I was a girl, but I didn't want to be saved: I wanted to go on the adventure (more on that in a future blog post), so I took to writing my own. I've crafted a number of fantasy worlds, some purely for my imagination, some based heavily on existing ones that I tweaked for my own liking, and some I've even actually put down on paper (who would have thought?). But they all start the same way: with a character.

I don't initially build around a concept for magic, a creation myth, or a specific history, but a person. I like character-driven stories and I always felt strongly about focusing on relationships and internal struggles even before I knew what that was. A character presents herself to me through a dream, an overheard conversation, or even the face of someone at the grocery store, and I start in on her life. She gets a vague backstory to start with and then a purpose. The *thing* happens to her. I let her come alive through a scene, typing it up and putting in random details that sometime I don't even understand at that moment. At the end, I don't always use that scene or I rewrite it so completely that it's unrecognizable, and sometimes it's the beginning to my story, but that is almost always my base.

Then I take a step back. I ask myself what kind of world would she live in for these things I've just written to be true. I do a lot of social construction at this point because I like creating a world where my characters have to defy a norm to complete their objectives. Society is a good, passive antagonist, and I believe fantasy should always hold up a mirror to our world and make us stare at what we've done. I work on socio-economic classes, gender roles, and race relations, and that usually helps me form some supporting characters that either adhere to, enforce, or defy those roles. Then those characters get fleshed out in a similar way to my main character. They may not get a free-written scene, but I give them a patchy backstory, a purpose, detail their relationship with my main character, and give them a place of origin. Then I have to ask myself again: in what kind of world would these people exist?

Maybe that seems backwards? It sounds like cheating, but don't be fooled: if a character wants to do or be something, it has to fit within their world. There won't be any computer hackers in medieval Imaginaria, but if a character presents herself with the qualities of one she may be employed to, say, resolve a cryptogram. And when multiple characters start coming to life, so do the rules. And by "rules," I do not mean social expectations, but the natural laws of the world: things that cannot (for the most part) be broken or changed. Gravity. Weather. Childbirth. My rules usually first pertain to magic and its true origin. That origin may not be what some or any of the characters are taught or believe, it may never even be revealed, but it is vital to know because everything else must harmonize with it. Magic use may look like chaos, but once revealed its existence must harmonize with its genesis. Again, the characters must fit. Are you a sorcerer who can stop time? Sorry, buddy, you're actually not because no one can do that. Perhaps instead you can hypnotize others into thinking they've lost time, or your can paralyze them so that you can sneak about unnoticed, but I know the truth, mister!

From here I typically start filling in the plot of my story. My main character's purpose and goals give me a skeleton to start with, and the supporting characters make up a nervous system of meetings and partings and conflicts and love, but here I add on the muscular system of the plot. The thing that keeps the story moving. I still consider this world building because I learn a lot about my world from plotting the story. Oh, they run into mountain trolls? So, wait, mountain trolls exist here in Imaginaria? No, there aren't humanoid creatures like that here, but there are shapeshifters, so perhaps they'd be more likely to be accosted by a band of rogue stagmen. The plot also allows me to flesh out the map. Because, again, even if my character doesn't know where she is, the location of everything else in the world must be relative to her and makes sense if and when revealed.

I then go what you might call "a little crazy." This is the part where I step away from the computer on a day when I'm home alone and I cook or clean or do something that keeps my hands busy, and I talk to myself. A lot. Animatedly and loudly. Bonkers, I know, but I am most productive and imaginative when words are spewing out of my mouth and I'm hearing it back, like live-action editing. I talk through some of the ideas in the world, like how the most popular religion works, and ultimately try to explain it the way a certain character would to the main character as that's typically how my reader will learn new information. Sometimes I write this dialogue down, sometimes I don't, but it's a good way to wade through the shit ideas and get to the good ones.

At this point I have likely begun writing. I make myself a lot of notes as I go (GoogleDocs is awesome for this) so that I can remind myself that a certain place needs a name, or to ensure a magical occurrence follows the natural laws, or to give a character a name that has similar phonetic sounds to the place they're from, but since I know that ideas about my world will evolve as I write, there is no reason for me to put the story itself on hold until every detail of that known universe is carved in stone. I usually get too excited to hold back anyway, and I've actually learned a great lesson in editing by doing this: before I hated removing sections and rewriting plotlines because I would become way too attached to what was on the paper, but now I write with the expectation that things will change, and it's considerably easier to let go.

Of course, world building is exponentially more involved than all of this, but that is my basic method. So how do you world build?

Self Publishing with Amazon KDP

It's a lovely, sunny Sunday here in Florida. The light is streaming in on the back patio, and I can just glimpse the edge of our bright pink hibiscus in full bloom. But I'm inside, curled up under comforters on the daybed with an anxious cat trilling at my feet. Husband has just started playing League of Legends, so I think I've lost him until dinnertime. It's pretty much the perfect setting to write my first blog post.

I thought for my first post I would talk about the ease (and, surprisingly, the fun) of self publishing with Amazon. The Nephilim: Book One has been out for a few days, and I loved every minute of getting it ready and clicking "publish." Okay, maybe "love" is a bit of an exaggeration. Trying to figure out how to put in a live table of contents almost made me cry, but looking back on myself raging at the computer it's like "awww, baby Bridge, don't be so upset--it'll all work out!"

I decided I wanted to self publish for many reasons, chief among them that I don't like to wait. I also like the idea of people writing and publishing exactly what they want to say. This, of course, means the story will be much farther from perfect than if a couple of professional editors had their eyes and red pens all over it, but maybe it's just a little bit like when you buy something handmade as opposed to mass produced? A little bit more love and sweat and blood in there? Anyway, this isn't to say I don't love me some professionally edited writing. A typo or a plot hole or confusing dialogue can ruin the greatest of stories, and I know I've been guilty of these, but my impatience and romanticized notion of indie publishing won out. And who's to say a publisher would ever want to pick up anything I'd ever written? (Don't let me fool you--that's the biggest fear right there.)

So self publishing it was, and I have not been disappointed. Amazon makes it very easy. After you've got your content, you just need to format it, preferably in Word it seems, and they've got fabulous directions on how to do that. Husband's computer has Word Starter 2010 (not the for-realsies version), but it still worked out for me. Then it was basically inputting the information onto Amazon's website (which included reading the Terms and Conditions VERY carefully) and committing to putting my work out there for all to see. Yes, I almost hyperventilated, but yes, I'd do it again.

I found, after the book was published, that there was a Teen and Young Adult category, but when choosing my own categories, it wasn't available. I emailed customer services, expecting to not hear back for a few days and to get a nonsensical answer, but in less than 12 hours I had an incredibly kind response, and they'd moved my book into the category I wanted. I was shocked and thrilled with the service for something I wasn't really even paying for. I suppose Amazon profits from the book selling, so it's in their best interests to get it put in the right place, but they'll profit so much more from a billion other things that I was surprised by their helpfulness to little old me.

If you go the KDP route, you get a couple other great perks like 70% royalties, inclusion in a sharing program, much like a library, and access to the global market (the anglophile in me got all excited to see my book listed in pounds), but my favorite thing is easily the sales tools. You can list your book for FREE for five days every 90 days. That's fabulous access to readers, especially for a no-name like myself. I've used one free day already and will use the other four over the long weekend coming up, Valentine's Day through President's Day. It's just working out perfectly. Now, if only I could get a fabulous review up there before it goes on sale again! There are plenty of other great little advantages too like real-time reports on sales and the ability to edit details on a whim if you find a mistake. You get a lovely author page as well.

Of course, marketing is essentially all up to you. Your book gets the benefit of the "readers who bought this also bought" links below other titles which can be helpful, and Amazon reserves the right to market your work at any time, so there is the possibility they might throw you up on the front page, but if that happens you're probably already selling off the charts. I've only been doing my own marketing for a few days, but it's actually kind of nice. I love Twitter largely because it feels a little like a community, and I try to find other self published authors to retweet and get the word out about their stuff as well. And I'm hoping karma will pay me back in the long run.

No matter what the outcome of all this, I'm glad I did it. Publishing, well, just FINISHING a novel has been a dream of mine for as far back as I can remember, and now I've done it. Of course, it's just the jumping off point, but I consider myself incredibly lucky to be living in a time when we can self publish with such ease. Huzzah to the indie author!