Not sure where to go now

[Daft]

I have a world I have been working on for a few years now, and I am wondering the easiest way to break into the writing phase. I have also been looking for a writing forum that focuses around fantasy. Please help me with any suggestions! I look to work on the writing during NaNoWriMo. Also I was wanting some feedback on my high fantasy work-in-progress.
My world, Aeia: http://bit.ly/17BoY9p

 

[GeekDavid]

Ask yourself a simple "what if" question about your main character (or if you have no character designated as the "main" one yet, pick one). It should be something like, "what if this character got sent on a mission to retrieve a magical artifact" or something like that.

All stories start with a "what if" question.

 

[Daft]

I will definitely have to try that! Oh, how simple the answer might be!
To make this thread more...worthwhile, my ACTUAL question is how much time is too much time when it comes to canon creation and world-making? I am enjoying doing the worldmaking so much it has stifled my progress into the actual writing of the book itself. Mostly fractured short stories are what I end up with. At this point, I am planning to compile these short stories into a compendium of this world's inhabitants. Should I feel bad that I enjoy the world-making more than the writing? Or should I have reversed my approach and create the world around the story?

 

[GeekDavid]

In my admittedly limited experience, every author is different. Some go right into the writing phase, some wait till they have a complete outline with every scene worked out... most are somewhere in the middle.

Personally, if you're doing NaNo (and so am I), wait till Nov. 1 then hit it hard. But you gotta make yourself put the world building aside on the morning of the 1st, and that might be difficult.

 

[ThinkerX]

I will definitely have to try that! Oh, how simple the answer might be!
To make this thread more...worthwhile, my ACTUAL question is how much time is too much time when it comes to canon creation and world-making? I am enjoying doing the worldmaking so much it has stifled my progress into the actual writing of the book itself. Mostly fractured short stories are what I end up with. At this point, I am planning to compile these short stories into a compendium of this world's inhabitants. Should I feel bad that I enjoy the world-making more than the writing? Or should I have reversed my approach and create the world around the story?

Yes, world building can be highly addictive. But straight up and flat out: alot of it is misdirected.

I did a *lot* of worldbuilding decades ago. I created quite a few worlds, merged them together into a mere handful, made cities and empires and histories. Yet when I actually started writing, I found there were piles and piles of little things I'd given no thought to whatsoever: like what do the people in this region wear? What do they eat? Whats a common greeting? And so on and so forth. These days, all that long ago world building serves as a sort of rough backdrop. I add a lot of details 'on the fly' so to speak.

When it comes to writing...first I envision a situation. Then I look through my characters and world details to see who to put in that situation and where it should be set. Then I start writing. Of course, most of my stuff is on the shorter side.

 

[GeekDavid]

Yes, world building can be highly addictive. But straight up and flat out: alot of it is misdirected.

This.

Until I actually finished my first manuscript, I didn't really know what I would need when building a world. Now that I have, I think (I hope) I have a much better handle on it.

There is no substitute for the experience of actually writing about the world you've built. You get a much better idea what you need to figure out in advance and what you don't.

 

[PaulineMRoss]

The trouble with world-building is that it tends to be high-level stuff: geographical features, countries, cities, ruling factions but not people. If you want to write a story, you have to start at the bottom, with the people. So zoom in and look at the low-level stuff. Pick a city/town/village, and start imagining the people who live there, their daily lives, where the conflict might be (do they live right on the border with another country? or is there a shortage of something important? are there two different religions, or is there a dominant industry that might be getting too powerful?). Once you have the conflict, you'll probably have the beginnings of a story.

 

[Svrtnsse]

Mostly fractured short stories are what I end up with. At this point, I am planning to compile these short stories into a compendium of this world's inhabitants.

This happened to me too, but I see it as something positive.
Every little short story you write about someone in the world increases your understanding of their little part of the world. To me, the short stories have become a very important part of the actual world building process. It's where all the tiny little details that bring the world to life are spawned (and at one point a big "evil" empire).

So my advice is to not fret too much about writing that novel. Go with the short stories until you meet a character you like. Do another story about them and see how that goes and if you still like them, stick with them and see what happens.

 

[Kn'Trac]

My experience so far with worldbuilding has always been through the medium of Role Playing. When we start a new game, we generally start the first session with a dot in the middle of a page, define what the world (or at least what the MC's region) is like and go from there. While roleplaying, you simultaiously invent geographic features, people, cities, empires but also people through the use of NPC's (Non-player characters), which over time become full fletched personalities with a lot of depth and players (or in the written medium readers) build a connection with. We usually adjust what doesn't work and continue developing the world and the inhabiting characters as we go. My last rp campaign gained me a pile of information a foot high and hundreds of email or other communications.

 

[Gurkhal]

I would say that think about you world Daft, and write one/1/uno/eine A4 page story about that. Don't start with a series but think about a scene set in your world and write a (very) short story about it. And then continue to do it and write more such small stories about whatever inspires you right now. I've been using it for some time and it has helped me greatly to get my writing going.