Worldbuilding

[Blessed-one]

how often do you do worldbuilding? how many worlds have you built so far and do you tend to spin many stories from one world or make another world for another one?

i find worldbuilding very interesting. You can put any ideas in as long as the world is realistic to the characters (hence i guess, to the readers). But there's this tendency to group people, especially when making up different nations. Real life people cannot be generalised.. individuals may have something tiny in common by living in the same area, but they don't usually think and react the same.

 

[Slina]

I'm trying my hand at it. There's one I'm developing, only my main problem right now is naming it. None of the places in it have any names yet, and it might be a while before any of them do.

 

[Vulgivagus hagiographus]

I love worldbuilding! I've got one major fantasy setting. In this one inparticular, I like to pull concepts from our real world and stick them into this one. Such as, in a part of the world that is similar to Africa, I might have a (w)itchcraft sort of religion, and so on so forth. That's just for this particular world. I guess I've got other minor fantasy settings... I guess I would only consider that one worth mentioning though.

Now I find sci-fi particularly fun. In every story you create, you have to think up a plausable form of space travel, if and how you're going to deal with aliens, how you're going to deal with interplanetary colonization, etc, etc. I guess every story I come up with it's tempered slightly differently. Sometimes I like the Star Wars (m)ethod of having tons of different alien races and planets that "convieniently" are stable for any form of life. Other times, I don't use aliens at all, and make it necessary for the atmosphere to be altered by unnatural means for life on other planets. Yup, it's a blast! One of the perks of writing speculative fiction!

 

[Blessed-one]

lol, good luck with names, Slina. It's quite a chore....

you write sci-fic as well c.d? i think that is hard to write, at least the author needs to have a minimum knowledge in science to write believable sci-fic.
aliens! now that needs imagination!

 

[Vulgivagus hagiographus]

Hmm... I don't find aliens that hard. Maybe I've just got alot of weird creatures in my head. *shrug* Yes, you do need to know something about science! Tell that to George Lucas! Often times my sci-fi stories are inspired by current scientific research that I might hear about. All you do is take it to the extreme. Fun fun!

About names, I often times use word searches and find words that aren't real words and use them. Another thing you can do if you want to seem really intelligent is use words from obscure languages (or at least ones your audience wouldn't be too familiar with) and use them for names. If anyone ever finds out what you've done, it will just make you look really smart.

I also use the website www.babynames.com for names. They've got alot that you wouldn't be familiar with, and you can search by meaning and nationality. Highly recommended for writers.

 

[Slina]

There's one problem with using obscure names. Once I was writing a fantasy, and was using obscure names for most of them. Well, one of them I named Korrina, which I had never heard before. But before long, I ended up getting to know someone named Korrina. So now I have this thing against using real names for fantasy, no matter how obscure they seem. But I do use resources like that for my "realistic" characters. (Btw, what do you call fiction that's like real-life with real-life conflicts, but doesn't seem to fit any of the traditional genres (such as mystery, romance, or historical)?)

 

[Buskanaka]

well I've never really tried worldbuilding, maybe one day when I write my novel/s

 

[Slina]

You can still start now. The sooner you start, the more complete it will be when you actually start writing! Besides, that's one less thing you'd have to do when you get a story idea.

 

[Buskanaka]

I guess I have done it but I've never tried to write it down.

 

[life_boy]

I haven't done much "worldbuilding" as far as fiction is concerned (the worlds of my fiction are usually America, in whatever permutation needed) but a while back I started drawing out an island, designing the cities, and building a history. It's mostly just an art project right now, but it may eventually find itself into a work of fiction. The cities are planned out using traditional urban planning methoids and could actually function if built in actuality. An art project based around the beauty of order and around the intricacies of maps and cities.

 

[Blessed-one]

The sooner you start, the more complete it will be when you actually start writing! Besides, that's one less thing you'd have to do when you get a story idea.

yeah, i find that so too, Slina. But then i find it hard to write with nothing to fall back on.. having a world (even a rough sketch) can help with story building, Buskanaka.

so it's a modern setting, life_boy. I guess i haven't read enough of those to comment.. but i got a question. For those types of books that are set entirely in a modern setting (no sci-fic, no leaps in between fantasy and modern.. like Harry Potter), are there books out there with made up modern setting? i don't think i've ever read one..

 

[life_boy]

Yeah, it would be modern. I don't think I've ever read one either.

 

[Buskanaka]

how would you do a made up modern setting? The only thing you could do different would be place names I guess... otherwise it would be just like real-life?

 

[Blessed-one]

um.. yeah?
perhaps with different government system, different culture and costume.. but since things like these are so diverse, making them up might actually end up being a copy of something.

 

[Buskanaka]

well yeah that's what I was thinking, if it really was a modern setting it would be impossible to make it up, cause if you changed things but said it was still the same year, for example, it wouldn't be modern would it, it would be sci-fi or fantasy? arg I know what I'm trying to say but I don't think I'm explaining it well...