1.2 Progress

[augustphoenix]

And what about today?

On a side note, after some discussions with cypher and others on the comm, I wanted to recommend a few of articles by Holly Lisle that address a lot of the things I've heard you folks talk about. I don't agree with everything she ever says and have modified some of these methods over time, but I found many of her articles practical and helpful (and most importantly: successful) when I was working on my early novels.

Now that I'm coming back to writing, I also find myself gravitating toward them again.

Notecard Plotting (cypher is going to get sick of me mentioning this.)
Setting (Writing) Goals
Creating Conflict
Middles
And, finally: How to Finish a Novel

(And mind you, she's very geared toward writing for publication. Try not to get hung up on that right now.)

Comments

[augustphoenix]

I kind of want to try this 30 Day Worldbuilding thing, since I tend to be so light on my world-building and more couldn't hurt.

Having used it for a little while, do you think it can be altered for urban fantasy as well as whole new worlds?

[cypher]

I've been poking at the site a bit, and I think...probably you could? You'd wind up skipping the very first few steps, or altering them, since those are where she has you starting to build the physical world itself (especially true if you're doing urban fantasy in an altered Earth). But the later steps start asking things like "how does your magic work? what can't it do? what kind of races live there? how much education do most people get?" And stuff like that would be useful anywhere. :3

[penny]

Echoing Cypher. The geography days would have to be altered but could still be very helpful for both finding your setting (if you're torn between a couple of locations) and getting you familiar enough with it so you know what kind of liberties you want to take with street geography and such. And, I think the later days, when the focus is more on society and the mood of your story don't require too much tweaking.

[freezingrayne]

I kind of want to do it too, though the world I'm creating is more a universe, in the way that it is a bunch of different worlds. I kind of want to do it just for this one city, though, since the main characters spend the majority of their time there.