Monday, August 6, 2012

How I Write Fantasy...

I'm going to be writing up some posts in the next several weeks in regards to my views of writing fantasy and more importantly how I write fantasy. Things I have worked on, things that took me a long freakin' time to create. Now, this may or may not help you if you are a fantasy writer, time will only tell. Most fantasy writers take so long in writing their work because of all the world building they have to do. Others just wing it.

So what, first of all, does world building include? Well, that depends on how far you want to get into it. Here is what my world building included:

* Magic

*Kingdoms

*Laws

*Creatures

*Characters

*Money

*Gods and Goddesses

These are just the main things. In each of those categories, there are numerous sub-categories. I had to make lots of decisions regarding the list above.

In making decisions on my world, in general, I had to start out with some pretty mundane stuff regarding the sun, moon, stars and so on.

Might sound silly to you, but in writing fantasy, you're here to think outside of the box. I literally came up with several choices on those basic things and rolled the dice. Not kidding! I used to play Dungeons and Dragons, so I pulled out all my dice. Six sided, four sided, twenty sided and I rolled, baby!

My world has two suns. If you think this might be a hot climate, it isn't really. The second sun is really, really tiny when you look at it up in the sky of my world.

I have one moon in my night sky and of course, my stars make up their own constellations which had to be written down in folklore and the like. I even have a story about the moon. I'm still working on the constellations and the stories associated with them.

So, over the next several weeks, I'll be posting things about my world and choosing from those categories above. Bear with me, as I worked on this world for well over ten years and it still isn't done or is it perfect. I'm constantly adding to it and changing things, but most of what I have is set in stone and is here to stay. So I hope you enjoy what I have to share!

5 comments:

Alex J. Cavanaugh said...

Pulled out your D&D dice - awesome!
I don't have twin suns, but I did end up with twin planets similar to earth.

Mel Chesley said...

Hey, when in doubt, roll a 20d. Haha!

Unknown said...

Sounds like a blast - can't wait to hear more.

I find it funny that more often than not sci-fi stories have twin suns, and fantasy stories have twin moons.

Jamie @ Mithril Wisdom

Mel Chesley said...

It does seem to work that way, doesn't it? I figured twin moons had been done before. A little cliche, so I thought I would do the opposite. lol!

Anonymous said...

I have so much admiration for writers of high fantasy. The world building for my urban fantasy is hard enough, but to create something from scratch is amazing. Love reading about the process behind it.