I’ve said this before, but there are many ways to approach creating a fantasy world (or sci-fi world). Should you work outside-in or inside-out? Should you use vignettes? Beyond the basics, what is the best order to take things in? Those are questions that are going to be unique to each writer (and potentially each world), so I can’t give you a concrete answer, but in this post I’ll show you a few of the processes I use for my own worlds. Continue reading “Worldbuilding Process: Three Examples”
A couple of weeks ago, I had the strange idea to write a post about why we don’t have flying cars. “Well that’s random,” I thought. “Where in the world am I going to post that?” And then the idea rattled around in my head for a couple of days and I realized I could associate worldbuilding principles to my reasons for our current lack of flying cars. So… here we are. XD Continue reading “5 Reasons We Don’t Have Flying Cars (and the Worldbuilding Takeaways)”
In the interest of full disclosure, I’m going to start off by saying that I’m a Christian and thus don’t agree with the lifestyle choices of the LGBTQ+ community. I won this book in a giveaway, and if I had read the reviews to see that Once & Future had heavy LGBTQ+ themes, I probably wouldn’t have entered the giveaway at the time. However, I respect the individuals who identify with the LGBTQ+ community and decided to read this book out of a desire to better understand those individuals. Unfortunately, this turned out not to be the best book for that as the writing didn’t do the community justice (in my opinion, as an outsider). Continue reading “Book Review: Once & Future by Amy Rose Capetta and Cori McCarthy”
There are many methods you can use to build a world. I mean, many. Everyone is going to have a different way they go about worldbuilding, and I personally tend to use a broad variety of methods. One method I’ve found a lot of fun while working on Deseran (my huge “desert fantasy” world, which I finally get to share a piece of with Caithan) is what I call “vignette worldbuilding.” The way it works, I select a piece of the world that I’ve been developing recently, or I latch onto a cool new concept that doesn’t have an official place yet, and I write a piece of short prose around it. Caithan, for instance, was an exploration of the mix of cultures in Teraco, an empire that’s something of a cultural melting-pot. I’ve also written short pieces to further develop races, or to show how certain groups are treated in differing countries, or to showcase the unique traits of the wildlife of the world. There’s really no limit to what you can explore with vignette worldbuilding. But what are its unique benefits? Continue reading “The Benefits of Vignette Worldbuilding”
At the beginning of this year I set a goal to read all of the Phoenix Fiction Writers’ books that I could get in paperback, by the end of the year. If I remember correctly that list was 25 books long, and so far I’ve read three off the list (as well as four PFW books that weren’t on my list, including a reread). I’m looking forward to significantly growing that number over the next few months, but for now I’m happy to focus on the lovely book that is The Traveler.
First off, I was immediately struck by how atmospheric Continue reading “Book Review: The Traveler by E.B. Dawson”
