I talk a lot about elements of worldbuilding, but rarely about what it is. To me, it all boils down to this: Worldbuilding is the art of creating a...
Worldbuilding Philosophy
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Worldbuilding
Worldbuilding: Money in Your World
"Excuse me sir, I'd like to buy that sword, a shield, and I'll be needing salted meats and bread for a five-day journey." "That will be $343.49."...
Get the Earth Out of Your Fictional World
When you write secondary world fiction (anything set on a world you made up), people expect to it to be separated from Earth. To do this, you need...
Worldbuilding: How Does Your World Tell Time?
Unless you write in a very strange setting, people are going to keep track of the passage of time. It's a fact of life that we take for granted, but...
Steampunk: the Engineer in the Writer
As I wind my way through the final stages of getting The Mad Tinker's Daughter ready to publish, I thought it might be a good time to reflect on my...
Worldbuilding: Creating Fictional Cultures
When you create a world, you need to create its inhabitants. If you are writing in a historically accurate version of Earth, you have established...
4 Ways to Measure in Fantasy
How much? How far? How Heavy? How long? You've taken your readers into a brand new world, painted landscapes and cities with your prose, and devised...
20 World Building Questions for Authors to Ask Themselves
World building is the art of convincing a reader that a fictitious place exists. What do you do if you don't know where to start creating that...
50 Types of Minor Characters (Part 5, 10-1)
You've got your heroes and your villains. You've even got a sidekick. But who inhabits the rest of the world? World-building is as much about people...
50 Types of Minor Characters (Part 4, 20-11)
You've got your heroes and your villains. You've even got a sidekick. But who inhabits the rest of the world? World-building is as much about people...
50 Types of Minor Characters (Part 3, 30-21)
You've got your heroes and your villains. You've even got a sidekick. But who inhabits the rest of the world? World-building is as much about people...
50 Types of Minor Characters (Part 2, 40-31)
You've got your heroes and your villains. You've even got a sidekick. But who inhabits the rest of the world? World-building is as much about people...
50 Types of Minor Characters (Part 1, 50-41)
You've got your heroes and your villains. You've even got a sidekick. But who inhabits the rest of the world? World-building is as much about people...
Worldbuilding: Science in Fantasy
So you're going with fantasy as your genre of choice? I guess that means you don't need to worry about science. WRONG! Just because you presuppose...
City Mapping
In my earlier blog on Amateur Cartography, I covered the basic concepts behind how to draw a map to go along with your fantasy story. Mainly I...
Whimsy or Physics? The Hidden Rules of Magic
Magic is one of the defining characteristics of fantasy. Whether you are looking at "high" or "low" magic, it's going to be in there somewhere (I'm...
Earth: A Failure of World-Building
There are many elements that go into making a world fit for fantasy storytelling. World-building is a skill any good fantasy writer needs to...
Speech: The High Road and the Low Road
You hear a voice over the phone, a complete stranger. Within moments there are a lot of things you can tell about that person on the other end, even...
Amateur Cartography: the Duty of the Fantasy Author
View a larger version of the map From the Shire to Mordor, the Wall to King's Landing and every journey in between, readers have been dragged hither...
A Storm is Coming: Weather in Fiction
I sit here at the time I write this, being buried beneath the snows of winter storm Nemo. This No-Name storm got me thinking about weather in a more...
The Power of Fantasy: The World is Yours (even if it’s still sort of England)
I recently heard someone complaining that all fantasy seemed to be set in medieval England. While obviously there are plenty of fantasy stories that...