Day 12: A Late Start

     Look! I'm actually writing! What with the conference and not being able to decide whether or not to really do NaNo this year, I got a late start, but started I have!

     I spent the first 8 days character-sketching and outlining. Inventing the major plot points was the hardest part, and now that it's over…I still have the whole mountain to climb! I'm a slow writer, and 50,000 words is a lot.

    But, I am glad I'm at the point of writing. I'm glad I decided to try this. And now that I've begun, I hope the rest will come easier.

     The novel I'm writing is about Wynna, the dragon-rider. As part of my pre-writing I studied the driving factor of fantasy novels: conflict. This is something I'm bad at writing. I tend to take recycle the same conflicts (war brewing, the people unhappy with the monarch because of heavy taxing), or I just keep my characters happy and far from discomfort.
     This blog post: Conflict in Fantasy, was really helpful in establishing that conflict is necessary and in showing what it is, the different types it can be broken down into, and how they all work.

   Even if you're not writing fantasy, check it out! And let me end with an inspiring quote for this frigid Wednesday:

"Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly."

--Robert F. Kennedy

Jumping Hurdles

     For me, world-building is the best and worst part of writing fantasy. It's the best because writing fantasy means that the details of the world are entirely up to you. If you decide that only royalty eat with their hands or that mermaids inhabit all freshwater lakes or that the Northeastern hillsides are smattered with little white flowers called yipparis, then that's how it is. But with creative freedom comes a few hurdles.

Hurdle #1: You might not have to look up facts in a book, but you do have to make up all those facts out of your own head.
Jumping the Hurdle: Everything is based on real life, so look for inspiration. For example, every culture has music. I got a lot of ideas for instruments in Wynna's world in my World Music class.

Hurdle #2: The world you create has to be plausible, if not possible. Readers notice and get pulled out of the story if things don't work in a logical manner.
Example of plausibility: In C.S. Lewis's Horse and His Boy, the two horses Bree and Hwin journey across the desert. As Bree says, galloping all day and night isn't horsely possible, so although it might seem less dramatic, they walk and trot their way to the other side (it's quite thrilling in the end).
Jumping the Hurdle: Maybe you do have to look up some of your facts.

Free image courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net

Hurdle #3: Since fantasy is such an established genre, if you don't do something very unique your story will end up generic, like a cardboard props. But sometimes those clichés seem unavoidable. Take Wynna as an example. Travel cloaks are one of the same-old same-olds of medieval fantasy, but I can't get rid of it! Wynna needs a cloak when she's blasting through the clouds on dragonback at over sixty miles an hour.
Jumping the Hurdle:  Weave the cloak from the threads of glowworms, because it makes Wynna stand out from the Coal Lizard riders black camouflage. Give it details that make it specific to your story and your world.

Hard as it is, world-building can be done! J.R.R. Tolkien is a classic successful example. K.M. Weiland who wrote Dreamlander is also a fantastic world-builder. So, there is hope.

What do you find hardest about world-building?