Muse News #9: More Audio Beta Recording & Kiranan's Crucible Ideas

After my week away, I'm settling back into the old twin-track routine of recording the audio beta edition of 360 and brainstorming ideas for Kiranan's Crucible.

It hurts my head a little, trying to think about two different projects at the same time, but it does seem to be working.  Here are the highlights of both.

Audio Beta

[Photo: Jack Gilbert]

Progress on the audio beta continues at a steady pace.  I'm getting used to the different character voices now and I'm making mistakes far less frequently than I did when I started.  It's still not all plain sailing, but I'm getting into the rhythm of recording a couple of scenes each day and I'm enjoying it.

I'm still not sure what the neighbours think!

I'm about a third of the way through, so it looks like it's going to take a bit longer than I first expected (sorry, neighbours).  But then, I'm not rushing it.  When it's done right, it's sounding really good (even if I do say so myself...), so I think it's worth taking a bit of care to get the quality.

Kiranan's Crucible Ideas

A mountain of ideas!  Well, a mountain
to represent a mountain of ideas!
[Photo: Jack Gilbert]

The rush of ideas for the new project didn't stop when I got home from the trip to Scotland.  If anything, it's gathering pace, which is really encouraging.  I must have hit a veritable vein of creativity!

And any ideas I do have are very welcome.  I have an entire world to build and three (and maybe four) books to tell the story the stories of that world.  

The notebook is starting to fill up nicely and I don't think I can have too many ideas.  I won't use them all, but it's always better to have more than you need than have a half complete world.

So, there you go.  It's not been a majorly busy week, but it has been a week of progress.  Hopefully this week will be more of the same.

I hope you have a productive week too!  

Notes In The Margin #8: Inspiration Everywhere!

One of the lessons I learnt during my recent trip to Scotland was that even the smallest, most mundane things could provide the inspiration for my writing.

I'd expected to be inspired by the big things like the mountain vistas, the sweeping glens and the majestic waterfalls, but I was utterly surprised to find small details in the most unlikely of situations triggering my writers' sense for a good idea.

This gave me the idea of the "Lightning Tree"
which will be a totem that my intrepid
heroes will come across in their travels.
[Photo: Jack Gilbert]

Like crossing a car park and dodging through a coach party of tourists.  I've channeled the frustration that created into an idea for a scene set in a busy market where a character is trying to follow someone through the throng.

Like crossing a bridge across a wide river.  Despite being a sturdy metal bridge, the structure flexed and bounced with each step.  That set me thinking about the kinds of primitive bridges my characters would cross in their journey.  One of them may not like how the bridge moves under them, especially if the river beneath is wide and fast flowing and they can't swim.  That might add to their anxiety about what lies on the opposite bank.

Like setting down heavy bags upon finally arriving at a destination and feeling muscles complain and celebrate simultaneously.

Like a weary traveler feeling the cool, soothing relief provided by a trusty family recipe ointment when its been applied to numerous and immensely irritating insect bites.

Those are just a few examples of the ideas that struck me last week.

Then there were the not-so-mundane situations that have obvious connections to my current work in progress.

The sense of utter fear that I felt as I navigated my way along a ridiculously narrow section of mountainside path on the climb up to the waterfalls overlooking Glen Coe has been given to the naive Prince in Kiranan's Crucible.  He too will feel that gut-churning sensation as he drag his royal backside through the dirt in an attempt to stay as far away from the perilous drop as possible.

A nice spot to stop for lunch.  Such a Relief!
[Photo: Jack Gilbert]

The relief at stopping for a welcome rest and refreshment during a lengthy walk along a rocky path on a hot summer's day and the resignation at having to set off again afterwards will also feature as my characters make a daring escape into the mountains.

I could go on.  My notebook - I took an actual notebook with me on my trip because pen and paper don't need recharging via a USB cable half way up a mountain - is full of little snippets of ideas that were inspired by many moments during the course of my holiday.

But the good news is that you don't have to go on holiday to get inspiration!  It's still happening to me now that I'm back home and back in the old routine.  There was a stale and inhuman smell in the subway passage down town today.  Whenever I need to describe a foul stench, I will recall that to mind (and there will be plenty of those in medieval Kiranan).

I could go on, but you get the idea.  Inspiration can come from anywhere at any time.  People interacting, the world around us, the things that you and others do and the feelings those actions generate.  Record those sparks of awareness.  Record them all because they will help you and your writing either directly, or later with further development.

Oh, sparks of awareness.  That's given me an idea!

See, you never know when inspiration will strike...

Notes In The Margin #5: World Building With Wild Ideas

One of the advantages of writing a fantasy, or science fiction novel is that for the most part the writer gets to create the world in which their story is set from scratch.

On the one hand that can seem like an incredibly easy thing to do.  I mean, how hard can it be? They've got the freedom to do whatever they want in their world, unconstrained by the real world limitations, geography or rules.

On the other hand creating an entire new world can be a daunting and complicated task.  A whole world.  From Scratch.  That's no mean feat.  Think about it.  Designing a world.  That simple sentence covers a wide variety of aspects that have to be thought through in order for the resulting world to be credible and workable.  The writer has to set down how the society works, the hierarchy, the technology, the geography, the environment (and how that works) and place names to name but a few.  Add in to the mix magic for a fantasy novel and how that works, who can perform it and how to limit it so that every dilemma thrown at your characters can't be simply cured by casting a spell, and the writer suddenly has a huge job on their hands.

A new world! The Vale of Tremorn and the Lonely Road
from Harbith Hiln to Wickershore...or, is it? No, it's Glen Coe
on a wet Friday afternoon, but the Vale is based on it.
[Photo: Jack Gilbert]

You might sense from that last paragraph that the brittle voice of experience was speaking there.  I'm currently brainstorming ideas for my next project which will be a series of fantasy stories and I'm finding the creation of this new world a little more complicated than I first imagined.

It's not my first attempt at world building.  I had to do it for 360.  In that story, the main characters are immersed in a virtual reality system that has three different games each set in its own "world" (A war game, an alpine resort and an enchanted forest).

Each game has its own characteristics, goals and features, but all three run on the same basic principles that are universal across the virtual system.

That meant that I had to lay down common rules that would apply to the overall system as well as invent the locations and characters encountered by the protagonists in the three games.  And like the magic of my fantasy novels, I had to make sure that the rules governing how the players operated in the games didn't make overcoming dilemmas too easy or too hard.

I had to rewrite those rules several times, I can tell you!

And that was just for one story.  When it comes to writing the series, I'm going to have to be extra careful to ensure that I keep things consistent across all the stories, or at least work out credible reasons as to why things change mid-way through if they do.

That's where keeping a story "bible" or wiki can help.  Some TV shows have them so that their writers can refer to them to maintain continuity and get the facts right ('cos there's nothing like getting a fact wrong to wind-up the fans - including me!).  It might be in the form of a notebook, online wiki, or other note keeping program like OneNote, or Google Keep among others.

I use a mixture of a real A5 notebook and Evernote to keep all my notes and ideas, although I'm trying a new system of sticky notes and two large sheets of card to mind map my ideas for Kiranan's Crucible.  I'll let you know in a few weeks how that goes.

But facts and ideas are only half the equation.  Sometimes you have to cater to real world limitations even in a fantasy world.  If your story features a city that's got a population of 50,000, how big would that city have to be?  A square mile may be too small (unless it's a city inhabited by halflings), but twenty square miles could be very sparsely populated for humans.

Or if you have two cities a thousand miles apart, how long would it take to ride between the two? A week?  Only if your horses can cover around hundred and forty miles a day at twenty miles an hour for ten hours solid (Or perhaps your characters use magic...?)

Factors like that will affect your plot.

The approach I'm using for Kiranan's Crucible is to think big, imagine everything, note it down, then filter through my grand ideas and temper them with some real world limitations where necessary.

That way I hope to create fantastic worlds that work for my characters, my plots and for my readers.  We'll see how that goes too!

So world building can be a huge amount of hard work, but it's also be a lot of fun and when it's all done and everything works, it can be very, very satisfying.