While worldbuilding, I often found myself wondering, “Do I have enough information to continue writing? Too little? How much worldbuilding is too much?” It’s a pretty common worry amongst first-time novel writers. I see similar questions a lot.
The definitive (read: canned) answer seems to be, “When it hurts the progress of your novel; all the planning in the world won’t matter if you never finish your novel.”
((A comforting thought: You don’t need to know every minute detail before you start writing. But the major ones are very important. Especially to fantasy.))
Those answers used to be good enough for me. But they left me doomed to wonder if I had thought of everything without having to rewrite my whole novel halfway through. I didn’t want to find out the hard way if everything I invented out of thin air was going to work well with my plot, but a rewrite was a plausible, scary possibility.
Enter ‘Fantasy Worldbuilding Questions’ by Patricia Wrede–an excellent checklist for the aspiring worldbuilder. I am so glad I came across this internet gem! Any worldbuilding issues I didn’t manage to think of on my own seemed to be covered here. I loved this list so much, I saved every question to a word document to access them anywhere.
It’s simple to use: Peruse the questions, think about the answers. If you have no idea about how to answer something, just copy and paste the troublesome question into a word processor to think about later. If you can answer a majority of the questions, you’re probably in good shape!
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Comment by makenaringera — May 20, 2008 @ 7:13 pm
This has been an invaluable resource for me. Mostly, it’s just about what not to do with anything fantasy-writing-related. Have a look-see. :)
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Comment by Steph — May 21, 2008 @ 1:08 pm
Limyaael’s rants are from someone who *clearly* has read a LOT of fantasy; whose mission is to convey to authors out there what has been done to death versus what hasn’t.
How valuable, especially for someone like me who is just getting their feet wet with the
genre.
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Comment by cirellio — May 21, 2008 @ 4:58 pm
By the way, I don’t know if you write short stories or poetry, but since you’re into writing, I thought I’d let you know about a a new e-zine that me and a few writer friends are putting together.
It’s called The Oddville Press. Granted, our website is still under construction but the bare-bones of it are up.
http://theoddvillepress.com/
You should check us out if you’re interested–or better yet, submit something!
Thanks, and good luck with your writing. :)
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Comment by Steph — May 22, 2008 @ 8:47 am
I see this as a great opportunity and will probably submit something sooner or later. Since I’ve really only started writing, I’ve only submitted one short story to one contest my whole life. It was at my college this year. Unfortunately, it was up against poetry, non-fiction, and even research papers (I mean, what kind of guidelines are those, anyway? You can’t really judge completely different genres and styles against each other!!! /end rant) for only one grand prize, a measely 100 bucks. But I guess what was important was, I finalized a short story and turned it in within a deadline. That’s gotta be a big and important step for a writer. I wonder if every writer gets that tingly, yet alien feeling when they reluctantly turn in something they are forced to deem ‘finalized’…
If you look around this site, you’ll find I occasionally write a poem or two and post them here. I wrote one today, in fact, but didn’t post it. :)
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Comment by cirellio — May 22, 2008 @ 10:05 pm
Peace,
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Comment by misterbooks — May 23, 2008 @ 6:32 pm
It’s funny you mention that about the contest you were in. The first short story I ever wrote was done for a contest. I didn’t win, and in hindsight, that was such a crappy story. Oh well, you gotta start somewhere, right?
I’m going to add your blog to my blogroll, is that alright? I’ve been surfing through so many blogs lately, it’s getting hard to keep track of the ones I actually want to keep checking. :P
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Comment by Steph — May 27, 2008 @ 1:54 am
I’d be honored if you add me to your blogroll. Most of the links I have here are to the sites I like to visit most. (I like clicking links better than using bookmarks or favorites)
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Comment by cirellio — May 28, 2008 @ 8:48 pm