ScipioSmith
Sage
Has anybody else noticed that its much easier to just state some big number in the backstory than it is to actually fill that space up with events?
When I started writing I imagined that there would thousands of years of history, but now that I'm actually plotting out a chronology, so that the numbers given stay consistent with one another, and I'm finding that at the current rate the whole thing, from the arrival of the oldest gods to the beginning of the book, is going to ocuppy somewhat in the region of the two thousand years. The First Age took only two hundred and fifty, and Elvendom has risen, fell, risen again and finally imploded under the weight of its own brutality in just over four hundred.
Part of me thinks that this isn't unrealistic- some historical empires haven't even made it that far- but another part of me thinks its awfully small for a fantasy novel- in the Belgariad after all, events five hundred years past happened five thousand years after creation. But the problem is that, with events so progressive, I don't feel I can just go chucking in great gaps between one thing and the next.
Has anybody else who has bothered to plot out the backstory chronology run into this problem, of not having enough stuff to fill all the time you thought you'd have?
When I started writing I imagined that there would thousands of years of history, but now that I'm actually plotting out a chronology, so that the numbers given stay consistent with one another, and I'm finding that at the current rate the whole thing, from the arrival of the oldest gods to the beginning of the book, is going to ocuppy somewhat in the region of the two thousand years. The First Age took only two hundred and fifty, and Elvendom has risen, fell, risen again and finally imploded under the weight of its own brutality in just over four hundred.
Part of me thinks that this isn't unrealistic- some historical empires haven't even made it that far- but another part of me thinks its awfully small for a fantasy novel- in the Belgariad after all, events five hundred years past happened five thousand years after creation. But the problem is that, with events so progressive, I don't feel I can just go chucking in great gaps between one thing and the next.
Has anybody else who has bothered to plot out the backstory chronology run into this problem, of not having enough stuff to fill all the time you thought you'd have?