WIP & World-building
Jun. 6th, 2019 02:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sankseasTrying not to feel too bad about how little I've written in my WIPs, lately, because I have cleared some big (for me) hurdles in one of them! It's all world-building stuff, which I always found grossly intimidating. Will put the tips I figured out in a proper advice post, later. For now, I'm want to gush about that one WIP:
How do you handle world-building? Anything you're particularly excited to have thought up?
PROJECT BB – original, fairy tale, comic – 2nd draft, refining structure, polishing details!
[ Magic System ] Love to read 'em, hate to write to 'em :') mostly because I always feared I was ""too stupid"" to be able to write a good one. Turns out, I just needed to think of at a different angle. What I came up with was sweet and simple enough.
BB's magic is wielded through a person's (or creature's) personal focus - Mind, Body, Heart. That influences the what / how / why of their magic. It's nothing fancy, but whether a person (or creature) is more Thinking, Acting, or Feeling impacts their magic and reveals character so I'm pretty dang proud of that :'D Something simple that still lends a lot of potential to the story!!
[ History & Culture ] Again, big intimidation factor. But!! Read a few meta posts about stories with big in-universe histories (mostly LotR lol) and that helped me brake down how to think about writing up a fictional history & culture. Again, sweet and simple wins the race.
BB's world is a post-post-apocalyptic fairy tale setting. The apocalypse still influences the "now" of the story, but it's not the "now" - that's the trick of it. The past has impacted, lingered, and distorted through the years. The past was full of huge things, not just the "now." The past informs superstitions, traditions, settlements, traveling, etc. From the apocalypse, BB's world has certain fears, certain cautions, certain terms with certain context. It can all be shared through set dressing, shared phrases, little everyday rituals that only some start to question.
So, yeah, not feeling too bad about my other WIPs. Now that I've cracked the code, I expect writing (on each project) will go much more smoothly! Getting hype again!!!![ Magic System ] Love to read 'em, hate to write to 'em :') mostly because I always feared I was ""too stupid"" to be able to write a good one. Turns out, I just needed to think of at a different angle. What I came up with was sweet and simple enough.
BB's magic is wielded through a person's (or creature's) personal focus - Mind, Body, Heart. That influences the what / how / why of their magic. It's nothing fancy, but whether a person (or creature) is more Thinking, Acting, or Feeling impacts their magic and reveals character so I'm pretty dang proud of that :'D Something simple that still lends a lot of potential to the story!!
[ History & Culture ] Again, big intimidation factor. But!! Read a few meta posts about stories with big in-universe histories (mostly LotR lol) and that helped me brake down how to think about writing up a fictional history & culture. Again, sweet and simple wins the race.
BB's world is a post-post-apocalyptic fairy tale setting. The apocalypse still influences the "now" of the story, but it's not the "now" - that's the trick of it. The past has impacted, lingered, and distorted through the years. The past was full of huge things, not just the "now." The past informs superstitions, traditions, settlements, traveling, etc. From the apocalypse, BB's world has certain fears, certain cautions, certain terms with certain context. It can all be shared through set dressing, shared phrases, little everyday rituals that only some start to question.
How do you handle world-building? Anything you're particularly excited to have thought up?
no subject
Date: Jul. 18th, 2019 09:44 am (UTC)i totally get the intimidation on world building, you want to make it cool and unique and right but i know both of us are bad overthinkers who let the planning get in the way of the doing, so. you're fine! it's fine! :D
magic system: i love what you came up with!!! as you said, it's sweet and simple and it helps inform the reader on a character (which you can totally take advantage of), so you basically killed two birds with one stone! congratz!!
history/culture: yes yes yes, good. tbh i love nothing more than when you get little glimpses of that through like, one offhand line by a side character. as you said, the past influences the present *___*
super happy to hear that you got over that road block!! wish you all the motivation and energy to keep writing on your sweet projects! they deserve to be done! C:
asdhgfas tbh i've been a bad oc mom when it comes to that. for my long lasting oc verse i've always kinda hand waved it to the point i can't even tell you what's happening. but i also feel like that's not the focus of what i'm trying to achieve with such a character driven project
as for my dragon story, i've never been a huge fan of high fantasy (the rules always seemed too much for me) and i'm very intimidated by that, but now i just do whatever i want with it and i love that
no subject
Date: Jul. 20th, 2019 09:12 pm (UTC)magic system: ahhh I'm glad it reads well to others, too. It sounded good to me, but ... that sweet validation lol.
history/culture: yeah!! that kind of ""subtle"" world-building is the best. Was afraid of the dreaded info-dumping-in-the-middle-of-things, so I'm super proud to finally wrap my brain around it all.
Thank you!! & hand-waving is sometimes needed, imho. If everything is explained, in detail, rationalized, etc. then I actually loose interest ^^; Suspension of disbelief, I guess?? Sometimes it's nice to just go along for the ride; you only need the railings / outlines so you don't get lost along the way.
no subject
Date: Jul. 25th, 2019 08:47 am (UTC)omg the info dumping. i'm SO struggling with writing my chapter 2 bc all i could think of in the past for it was exposition, and now i'm questioning the very fabric of who would even read that *drags nails down my face*
yes YES YES!! oh god, i don't know if you know the nds game "ghost trick" but it was SO GOOD until close to the end they started to explain the supernatural elements and i wanted to cry from how bad it was. thanks for ruining a great thing, really appreciated
no subject
Date: Jul. 28th, 2019 04:46 pm (UTC)Like, BB's 1st chapter is technically all exposition, but it's spaced it out into scenes of different people telling different parts of slightly different folklore, and scenes establishing the MC's character & drive. For REWRITE ... I'm still figuring out how to handle it X'D thinking about making the chapter titles superstitions a la "Do not call spirits in vain, lest they be listening." I'm hoping that balances the reveal & mystery factors, but we'll see lol.
Ooh, haven't heard much about Ghost Trick, but yeah I can imagine :O I've played a few games where the unlock-able content almost completely ruins the main story for me lol like?? You didn't need that in there!! It totally breaks the tone & suspension of disbelief!!!
no subject
Date: Aug. 2nd, 2019 11:26 am (UTC)ooh yeah that's a good trick in BB! as for rewrite, see, you're on the same page as my struggle xD it's really hard to estimate as the author who knows what's happening and what's going to happen, how the audience reacts to it. what's too much? what's too little? i kind of gained some more confidence after showing ch1 to some friends who don't know my projects as well. sometimes i feel like i'm overthinking taking the steps instead of just... walking...
NOOOOOOOOOOO, omg that's awful
no subject
Date: Aug. 4th, 2019 08:31 pm (UTC)Yeah ... I guess the only way to get past the worrying is to just write everything out & then run it by some people, and make adjustments as you need. Glad you're more confident, now!! Good luck, going forward!!
& yeah, it sucks lol but at least I can avoid the ""special content"" in that situation. It sucks even more when it's part of the normal story stuff ... no escape ...
no subject
Date: Aug. 7th, 2019 12:35 pm (UTC)yeah, sometimes a second opinion can really help out. aww thank you so much! right back at you <3
oof, i feel this
no subject
Date: Aug. 7th, 2019 07:46 pm (UTC)