Wednesday 20 June 2018

WRITING: Worldbuilding and Wiki Worries

Am I world building enough? (to be clear, I mean updating my world wiki) The answer, is a bit of yes and no.

I feel like the progress and strides I made the past few weeks have completely stalled. My focus has been with trudging through the list of wanted pages (pages which are linked to but don't exist yet) and bringing them to life. This usually means writing a sentence or two, creating a parent page, and adding tags. It's made me feel accomplished, in a way, but I think what's unsatisfactory about it is I have no other goal right now other than completing the list.


When I started the wiki, it was recommended to me to start with a small place, like a bar, and then expand outward, asking questions like "what street is it on?" "who are the neighbours?" and moving outwards like that until you're at the continent level, then planetary level, and etcetera. Instead, I started with a city and moved outward from there. As a result, I have the name of the continent and the twelve countries, as well as the Empire and some politics. But ask me to walk you through Amherst and I'd have trouble telling you where the cheapest meat vendor is.

Did I make a mistake? No, I don't think I did; after all, I could always pick a building in some town and try the recommended process like that. What I've found most useful for my writing is actually the names I came up with for the countries. The more I write, the more solid these countries feel. 

I did write another story (for class) taking place in fantasyland. Writing is the simplest, most organic form of world building, but in the first draft I included far too much back story. On the stripped-down second draft, the town, a border, a road, a supply chain, a city and a country become more fleshed out than ever in my wiki. This is the most progress I've had in a while, and I'm now satisfied.

What's the next step? I'm not sure. I have a general sense of the world now, countries, names of towns. Is it so important to establish 700 years of supply chain routes and guild leaders? Maybe not, if it doesn't come up in the story. Not sure how I feel about this sentiment since it might mean a world that feels less lived-in. 


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