My Finished Maps :: My Challenge Maps :: My Tutorials :: The World of Ashlon- My Obsidian Portal/World BuilderProjects
WIP :: Carian Round... Who knows...
Back Burner :: World Map
Software: 99% Adobe Photoshop (CS4), Geo Control 2, Wilbur Every so often I use another program!
Over the last decade I have written a lot, but the only stories I have ever completed were short stories that aren't related to fantasy/sci-fi worlds. I only started with serious world building and detailed maps over the last two years, and my efforts have been delayed and forgotton due to college.
Well, college is over, and I am going to start a regular working life. So maybe, for the first time, I will get somewhere. I have narrowed down my possibilities to three worlds, and only one keeps coming back to me. I might start with serious writing to accompany my serious world building for the first time. Though I am still stuck with my lack of confidence in my ability to write something more than several pages long.
But I suppose a novel is only a series of short stories in the same setting, ordered chronologically and tied together with a common plot element. If I treat different chapters with the same characters as sequels, I might just get somewhere. Slowly... but somewhere is better than nowhere.
Becoming an author and musician are two life goals of mine... I never expect to live off of it, but simply having people enjoy something I create is a good feeling.
I've been developing the setting for my novels for about 7 years, on and off, while working full time and juggling a bunch of other RL responsabilities. About two years ago, my computer crapped out on me, leaving no salvageable data behind and pretty much bringing me back to square one (you know how it is, you always intend to make backups but never get around to it, and the few boxes of hardcopies I had were sadly outdated). I finally got back in the game about 3 months ago, after a yearlong string of personal tragedies that kept me away from the keyboard, and I'm loving every second of it!
I can definitely relate to you Ryan K, because I can't think small either! Whenever I work on one series, I always end up getting ideas for other series that I need to write down immediately so I can flesh them out later. I've come up with 5 or 6 sister series since I started over from scratch, all set in the same world, but with their own individual styles and locations.
Thanks for the tip about fmwriters.com magicalbookworm! I'd never heard of that site before and from what I've seen so far, it looks very interesting!
Thanks Malken
My reasoning for the scale is that I have been working on the protagonist for so long, I felt the need to write about who he is, where he came from and the people who shaped him to be who he is, and of course, what path his life takes and the repercussions of his choices; all on the back-drop of his country going through tough times. When I tried to break it down into neat plot arcs, I came up with 5 trilogies :S As I think I said before, it's a good project to keep me out of my partner's hair
I get what you mean with losing data. Whenever that happens to me, I feel like I could die.
Regards,
RK
I love writing And world building. I do both pretty often; what prompted me to join this site was actually working on some maps for a source book I'm making for the world of my novels. The main focus for writing right now is mostly on a trilogy (that started out as one book and just..exploded) titled The Sacred and examining five main characters through curses, leading a rebellion to regain the throne of the Holy Land and sorts of other things. Its been very fun. After I wrote the majority of the rough for the first of the series --80k -- I decided I wanted to get the world fleshed out more to enrich it. So I started doing that, and working here and there on the second one which is about 45k right now. So I edit the first, write on the second, world build, research, ponder. A good world takes so many things! Some I would have never thought about before.
Well. I just recently started pointing something down on paper that had been in my head for about 4 years. I decided to start with an outline that would give a brief history of the things involved. Well, ten thousand words later (and 25 footnotes demanding further explanation) I managed to start an outline for the plot of the actual story. I just finished act 1 not too long ago, so I think I'll begin the actual writing phase.