World Building

As I've established in other posts, I've thought about writing Relentless Blades for almost thirty years and seriously since 2004 when I entered the Eberron writing contest for Wizards of the Coast. I can't explain what happened in September 2022, but I woke up one morning and decided, time to stop messing around and write the damn book!

Since I'd been thinking about the book for years, I had a pretty good idea of the general story and of the characters, but I didn't have an outline or a setting, and as I alluded to in previous posts, that always seemed daunting. I knew I couldn't use anything that was proprietary to Dungeons and Dragons, so would have to create my own world.

My first thought was to "pants-it". For those who don't know, there are two generally accepted types of writers: 'pantsers' and 'plotters.' As the name suggests, 'pantsers' are writers who either don't have an outline or just have the bare bones of the story or characters and write by the seat of their pants. They let the story go where it takes them.

On the other side, are the 'plotters' who make sure they have detailed outlines and synopsis' to follow. Truthfully, most writers fall somewhere on the spectrum between the two.

I like action, so I started with Grim fighting horned lions. The first chapter was about fifteen pages. I think it turned out pretty good, except that I quickly realized I didn't know enough about the world Grim inhabited or about the creatures in it. Even within the first chapter I was constantly asking myself, what do horned lions look like? Where did they come from? Where exactly is this forest, he's traversing? Why is he going after the horned lions? 

It didn't take long to realize I fall closer to 'plotter' on the spectrum. I needed to understand this world I was working in and needed to understand where the story was headed to progress, so I set the first chapter aside and began creating my world bible and outline.

My experience is probably not typical of how most writers create their world, or at least mine was probably accelerated simply because I've spent years thinking of fantastical worlds and had a high-level history from a homebrew Dungeons and Dragons campaign I always wanted to run, but never did.

I spent the entire month of September writing a 25,000-word, world bible. I created a 6,000-year world history. I mapped out the major kingdoms, and the rulers of each. I created a map of the world, or at least the parts of it that were relevant to the story. I created the major races that inhabited the world, as well as giving the world a name: Zarune. I created several large religions and a couple military organizations. I even got down to the nitty-gritty of naming the seasons and the world currency. 

There are authors who spend much more time than I did creating their world and of course those that spend less, or none at all, in the case of extreme pantsers. In retrospect, I think I spent just the right amount of time. As I wrote the novel, I referred to the world bible often and most of the time it contained the information I needed. There were only a couple times I realized I hadn't thought of something.

That would be my advice to those authors seeking to build a world, really focus on the plot of your story so you understand how much world building you need. I can easily see how some authors spend years building their world. However, I also tend to think those that spend so long building their world, might be using it as an excuse to not actually write the story.

You may not think that makes sense, but writers, particularly newer writers, don't tend to be very confident in their writing. It can be a scary thing to put your best effort forward, only to have someone tear it apart. By continuing to tell yourself, I need to flesh the world out more, you delay actually writing the story and thus delay any potential criticism. 

So, my advice to other writers is, get down the necessities of the world, but don't spend so much time that you lose momentum of actually writing the story. I think you'll find the real world building happens when you write your story.

In-between writing the world bible, I spent countless hours talking my wife and sister's ears off about the plot. I owe them both so much for not only listening to my ramblings, but also offering great insight and feedback that allowed me to really strengthen the plot.

Next time I'll discuss plotting the story and the process of writing it, and of course if anyone has any questions about my world building process, please feel free to ask.