I’ve mentioned some of the projects I’ve been involved with elsewhere, but this time I’m going to be involved with one that will unfurl right before your eyes. ^_^

Tomorrow, I will start participating in an event called ‘World Building Month’; the brainchild of the awesomely talented author Eliza from Tales of a Fantasy Scribbler. (Her blog is also snugly nested within my tanglebrush of links->)

What is World Building Month?:
Quote from Eliza’s blog:

So if this sounds like something you’d also like to participate in, by all means, join. It should be lots of fun and there are many talented writers participating.

I’m joining partly because Eliza has been around here since post #1, partly because I missed out on her ‘Villains Month’ last month, and because I decided it can’t hurt to take one more month aside to reinforce the world I’ve built. I’m hoping to discover many additional things about the land my characters are destined to traipse through, and I’m looking forward to sharing some of it with you.

It’s hard to appreciate how huge a job world building really is. I know I didn’t truly appreciate it until I found myself neck-deep in it. There are websites out there dedicated to world building, with sometimes hundreds of members, whose sole purpose is to work together, building a single, collaborative world…. An entire world is a lot for just one person to take on!

Synonym for M Night Shyamalan:

Due to some of the commentary on the last post, I’ve been putting more thought into the name of book three.
Naming a book Peripetia does seem a bit like a gamble, don’t you think? 

If someone were to a see a book titled Peripetia and knew what the word meant, it could have a similar effect to someone picking up a movie noticing it was written and directed by M Night Shyamalan.

I like M Night Shyamalan a lot. But I think he writes screenplays that assume the audience is going to be oblivious there will be some sort of surprise at the end.

He’s not harnessing the power he holds!

When your audience is expecting some big revelation to happen, it can work to your advantage—keeping their interest soaring while simultaneously keeping the suspense high—or it can backfire. Terribly. Horribly.

I guess the key is to assume your audience is intelligent, first and foremost. If your very name is synonymous with the phrase ‘surprise ending’, it’s probably time for a bit of a change.

If I were in this writer/producer/director’s precarious situation right now, I’d do something unexpected.

Knowing your audience expects something, he should be dropping a few red herrings, making us guess incorrectly what the revelation will be.

And imagine how tripped-out audiences would get if the movie—with all those red herrings—had no twist! Then he’s got us in some sort of masochistic mix-up mind game, where we are no longer 100% sure if there’ll be a twist or not in his future movies. But we’d watch ‘em anyway because he keeps us guessing.

I figure I want the opportunity to harness that kind of power (without resorting to getting my name legally changed). I still wouldn’t name a stand-alone book Peripetia, but more strongly than ever, I feel it will work for book three.

But, as we all know, titles are subject to change. I might fall in love with a totally different title before I’m through.

Fun with titles:

One thing to do when you have a titles figured out is conceptualize what they might look like on the cover of your book.

See? Kind of fun ^_^;

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