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.

Muse News #5: 360 Audio Book Beta & Kiranan's Crucible "Pantsing Strategy"

There's not much to report this week, but that limited news in itself is quite exciting nonetheless  - well, from my perspective it is!

Audio Edition

My humble recording setup
[Photo: Jack Gilbert]

With the fourth draft of 360 now in the hands of most of my wonderful beta-readers, I've turned my attention to working on the audio book version.  It isn't meant as a serious attempt at a commercially available audio book.  Recording an audio edition simply allows another two beta-readers (or should that be beta-listeners?) access to it and it provides me with the opportunity to review the story from a new angle.

Reading with the inner-voice my head, I'm prone to skip missing words, miss grammatical errors and gloss over badly constructed sentences.  Reading aloud helps me spot those errors and iron out the difficult, or clumsy dialogue.

And trust me, there's plenty of clumsy dialogue.  I've managed three recording sessions so far this week and almost driven myself mad recording some sections more than a dozen times.  I fear that by the time I finish recording the whole thing, if I'd kept the bloopers they'd be longer than the book itself!

Having said that, I have already recorded 20 of the 170 scenes, so I envisage that the remainder will take another three weeks if I continue at the current pace.

Kiranan's Crucible

As indicated in other posts on this blog, I've returned to the fantasy project that I started last year, but shelved in favour of preparing 360 for publication.  I need something to keep me occupied while 360 is being read.

Kiranan's Crucible is planned be the first of a series of an as-yet unknown number of books (or it might be the title of the whole series).  What had appeared initially to the plot of the first of the series, has - following further planning - rapidly turned it into the plot for the second book and an entirely new first book has emerged along with ideas for a third (and possibly more)

I'm still only at the planning stage, and by that I mean planning of the major plot points.  I'm not a natural "pantser" and prefer to plan my plots to quite detailed levels, but I often find myself going off-piste when I actually start writing, liking what I've then written and scrambling to rejig the remaining plot to absorb the new ideas from the new sections.

I imagine that's going to be a nightmare with a series, so instead of plot planning I'm going to world build as much as I can in advance and assemble with plot of each book as I go with only major plot points in place to guide me.  It might work, or it might all go horribly wrong.  Either way the, results should be entertaining...

This week promises much of the same as this week, but you never know.  I may have driven myself insane recording and listening to my own voice for hours on end and the planner in me may have quelled the pantser in me.

Find out in the next Muse News!

Notes In The Margin #4: Over-thinking vs Inactivity

It's a relatively short Notes In The Margin this week, I'm afraid.  I've been doing lots of thinking.

Sometimes that's a good thing.  Other times it's not such a good thing. There appears to be a fine line between thinking things through thoroughly and over-thinking them.  When you're the kind of person who likes to consider every aspect of a situation before you commit to action, then it's hard to actually see where that fine line is.

I'm not sure how one combats that.  I still need to think it through some more...

So, anyway...lots of thinking and not very much doing this week.

After nearly five months of constantly pushing myself to get the fourth draft finished, spending as much time as I could editing and the rest of the time stressing that I should be working on it, I've found this past week an odd mix of blissful relief and sheer panic.

I'm relieved it's done now - although, I do still have the audio beta edition to record - but I'm also experiencing a strange twitchiness at not having anything to do.  It's like a writing low-level cold turkey.  My writing brain has learned over these last five months that inactivity is the enemy and it's wrong not to be working on the novel.  On the other hand my normal brain is saying "thank goodness I don't have to edit/write/create tonight!".

Of-course I haven't stopped all writing activity.  As if it were that easy!  As I mentioned, there's the audio book beta to record and I have a dozen ideas for novels queuing-up for my attention.  My imagination is never truly idle.  There's always something brewing away in that corner of my mind.  Like chunks of rock in new born solar system, some of those fragments will coalesce into larger moon-sized plot points, scenes, or characters.  Slowly, over time, planets of narrative will develop and the orbital plot threads will spin it all together until the whole thing is spinning harmoniously around the sun of the central premise blazing away with glorious radiance.

And other ideas will vanish into a black hole never to be seen again...

Actually, they disappear into one of my real, or digital notebooks, but that can be just as devastating as falling into a black hole!

See.  I started over-thinking things again.  I should stop now and try to switch off.  No, I will switch off now.  "Do, or do not.  There is no try" as one wise little green Jedi fella once said (Yoda, in-case you were wondering).

Before I do stop, I'll just jot down one last idea that I've just had that I think will fit nicely into the next novel...

Muse News #4: Beta Copies, Old WIP is the New WIP and Audio Book

With the completion of the fourth draft of 360, this week has felt distinctly less productive than previous weeks.  Having said that, it's not been a week devoid of activity!

As reported in NITM #3, I printed a hard copy of 360 for my remaining beta readers who don't own ebook readers.  My printer isn't the fastest and, having learnt from past experience, I refrained from printing in draft quality.  Draft quality may be the fastest way to produce a manuscript, but it certainly doesn't give the most readable results.  Some beta readers found the grey lettering lacking definition, hard to read and tiring on the eyes.  So this time I used standard quality, which is much clearer, but also took much longer.

Consequently, that filled almost an entire evening.

Producing the ebook version wasn't all plain sailing either.  Formatting a document of the length and complexity of a novel has its own challenges and pitfalls.  I'm afraid I cheated and took out all-but-one of the chapter headings for the beta-edition.

Officially, I've told everyone that it's because I'm reviewing where the chapters should start and end in the new draft, but in all honesty it's because I wrestled (and lost) with the formatting and contents tables on the different ebook versions.  I'll get them to work, I'm sure...eventually.  It's something I do need to master.

Five beta-readers now have their copies and another four will receive theirs this week, so there's no going back now!

As work finishes on one phase of one work-in-progress, so work on another starts again. In the absence of 24/7 editing in my life, I've resumed work on Kiranan's Crucible, a novel that had previously been put on the developmental back-burner.

The original plan for Kiranan's Crucible was for it to be a standalone story, my first and experimental foray into the fantasy genre.  As I began gathering the ideas into a coherent plot, it became apparent that there was enough material for more than one novel, especially if I were to keep to the target length of eighty thousand words.  It lends itself to being a series of books rather than just one, so I decided to work on 360 ahead of that as my first effort into self-publishing.  With 360 out for beta-reading, now seems like a good time to revisit KC.

It's still very early days, but I've been having fun this past week brainstorming plot ideas, characters and backstories.  It's been good to be really creative again.  I've missed that side of writing.

And finally, this weekend will see the start of work on the audio book version of 360 for my two beta-listeners.  I've been working on my character voices and I think they're very nearly ready.  The neighbours have been warned!

More news on that and everything else next week in Muse News!

Notes In The Margin #3 - The Thrill of Paper

I had intended to post a completely different NITM today, but the events of the last two hours changed my mind.

What marvelous occurrence overwhelmed me?  What startling epiphany descended?  What glorious joy overtook my soul?

The Fourth Draft in all its papery glory!
[Photo: Jack Gilbert]

I printed out the fourth draft of 360.  That may not seem like an earth-shattering event to most people, but for me it was somewhat enlightening, and I'm hoping that the writers among you will empathise.   Today saw the fruits of the last five month's labours transform from ethereal and digital scrawlings on a computer screen into words on a physical page, in order, together and whole.

It's not the first time I've printed out an entire manuscript.  This is the third time 360 had been manifested in paper form (the second draft was quickly superseded by the third and consequently was not printed) and every time holding a thick, stack of paper bearing tens of thousands of words all neatly arranged into a story that started as nothing more than scant ideas flashing through my imagination just blows my mind.

In 360's case, those same 120,000 words have existed in the same order on my laptop's hard drive (and in various back-up copies) for months now, but somehow holding them in my hand just has an affect on me that I can't explain.  I'm an unashamed convert to ebooks.  I find them so convenient and rugged in a way any number of my paperbacks never were, or could be.  Their tattered edges and creased spines bear testament to that.

And from the side... (Just so
you didn't think it was just
the title page)
[Photo:Jack Gilbert]

But every now and then I have to go back to a printed book, just because there's something reassuring and physical about it.  And yes, before you ask, I am one of those people who likes the smell of a good bookshop.  I grew-up with that smell - along with several other smells like the sooty and oily whiff of good steam train - and it's just one of those things that sends my synapses sparking.  I'm just wired like that.  However, I recognise that not everyone is.

The last time 360 went to my beta-readers was nearly three years ago, ebook readers were a novelty and the majority of them read the hard copy.  This time the majority are reading a digital copy and a few are reading the hard copy.  In another three years, the ebook reader may even be a thing of the past and some other form of book consumption may have taken over - projected into our eye line on augmented reality, or VR headsets anyone? Oh, now there's a idea...I should have put that in the novel.  It's about virtual reality!

Wherever the next step in reading consumption takes us, one things is for sure: I'm going to continue printing a manuscript of each novel I write and enjoy the sense of immense satisfaction it gives me.

I think that's the feeling a book should generate in writer and readers alike.

Muse News #3

It's a milestone day!

Finally after nearly five months of work, the fourth draft of 360 is finally finished!  I say "finished", but of-course even as I prepare the copies for my loyal band of beta-readers, I been noticing things that I want to change.

Not a milestone, but as close as I could get.
[Photo: Jack Gilbert]

Those things will have to wait until the fifth draft. I consider the fourth draft finished. I've made all the changes and refinements that I set out to make when I started this particular draft and fixed all the problems raised by various readers in their feedback from previous drafts, so that's job done for now.

I have to say that - overall - I am very happy with the fourth draft.  The plot is tighter and has better pacing while the text itself has benefited immensely from being changed from the passive voice to the active voice.  It makes total sense that an action story would be told in the active voice.  I don't know why I didn't do that in the first place.

There we go, you live and learn.  I'll know for next time.

With the fourth draft ready, I'll be distributing copies to my beta-readers this week. I can then sit back and wait with baited breath for their comments to come back (actually, I will be quite nervous).

Well, maybe not quite sitting back.  I'm not going to be totally idle.  A writer very rarely has nothing going on in their head.  I have at least three other ideas in various states of readiness waiting to fill the void that the last five months of editing will leave.  Who knows, a completely unexpected idea from left-field may strike me and demand immediate attention.

One thing is for sure: my next novel is going to be much shorter! (Why do I have to make these plots so detailed?).

I'm going to try to give myself this week off from writing...so next week's Muse News may be a little thin, but no doubt the creative pangs will overrule and I'll do some work on one project or another.

There will be there will be something to report, so do checkout how I do in next week's exciting Muse News!

Notes In The Margin #2: What's In A Name?

There is one part of the novel writing process that fills me with equal measures of excitement and dread: Naming characters.

It excites me because before I start the whole process is full of a shed-load of potential and my imagination can be let off the leash.  The rules are simple.  Find the best name for each character than I can possibly come-up with!  It sounds so simple, doesn't it?

Well, yeah.  That's where the counterweight of dread comes in.  Almost anything is possible.  When faced with a massive blank canvas like that it can become a bit overwhelming and like a child in a sweet shop with too much choice, I sometimes find myself dazed and confused by the sheer abundance of choice.  I usually feel I've made the wrong choice and that a better answer is evading me, hiding out there, somewhere in the creative ether...

Over the last two decades that I've been writing, I've tried numerous methods for finding character names.  They've ranged from looking at the premise of the piece and seeking inspiration from that to literally sticking a pin in the phone book.

I should point out that both methods have had their fair share of success and failures.  360's main protagonist, Nick Hasben, got his name from the starting point of his character considering himself to be a "has-been".  If I say "has-been" enough times, it comes out as "Hasben".

It struck me as a fitting name, so a character's surname was cast.

I'm less inclined to use the phone book these days.  The main reason being is that we don't really see them around anymore.  When I was a kid we had volumes of the things around the house.  Nowadays, I have one book and that's mostly full of area code information rather than names.  I suspect for some younger writers a phone book may already may seem an antiquated name generating tool!

Thankfully, there are Twenty-First Century tools available to the modern writer to help them when inspiration runs dry. I tried the Linux version of Scrivner recently.  Scrivner is an amazingly powerful piece of software for writers.  It's not a word processor, but an application written specifically for writers whether it be for writing blogs, dissertations, articles, short stories, or full-length novels.

Suffice to say for now, one of its many tools is a character name generator.  You can choose to generate either first names, or surnames from different parts of the world, or different time periods (like Saxon), or mix it up and have each name suggested on different criteria, or starting with a certain letter.  Even if you don't use the names it suggests, sometimes it's enough to spark the necessary inspiration for that elusive character name,

Scrivner is far more than just a name generator, so well worth a look if you're looking for something to help organise your writing projects.  It's a fantastic piece of software and warrants a NITM post of its own sometime (other writing software is available of-course).

At the other end of the scale is another, more low-tech, method that I've tried recently. I wrote names that were in the ball-park of what I thought my character should be called on small sticky notes.  Once I had good number of each, I mixed and matched forenames and surnames trying the different combinations, or adding new ones to the mix until something jumped out at me.  As I say, it's very low-tech, but it was a fun way to explore the possibilities.

Also remember, however you find your characters' names, until you publish nothing is set in stone.  They can change at any moment (search and replace permitting).  So even if that inspiration strikes three quarters of the way through the first draft, you're perfectly free to change your mind.  One of the characters in my previous work in progress, The Wickedest War, spent several years called Murray.  A friend pointed out that there were several characters whose names began with "M".  I struggled with the idea that this character that I'd become so used to calling Murray should be called something else.

But reason won the day and Murray's not Murray anymore.  He's Tamblyn. It suits him far better.  It's the name he always deserved.

If you're struggling with finding suitable names for your characters, relax and try to enjoy the freedom to create rather than dread the possibility of messing it up.  Use software, sticky notes, an old phone book, or your own form of creativity.  If you have your own methods, let me know.

Either way, have fun with your name making and you might surprise yourself with the results!