Halfway!

I know it’s a few days late but I’ve surpassed the halfway point of NaNo. I believe I’m at about 28, 614 now; hopefully crossing 30K today.

Counting the words already written on this WiP before, I’m over 40K. I think this novel’s going to be around 70K, at least in the first draft. It will probably end up being somewhat longer after it’s all edited (assuming I get that far!) and do all the proper world building, etc.

Making up an entirely different world is so much harder than I imagined too. Trying to figure out the history, the religions of the world and the mechanics of what little magic exists here is beyond difficult. Maybe I should’ve stayed with historical fiction–then I could’ve just been up to my ears in cultural research instead. You know, something that already exists rather than making it up on my own.

So, props to fantasy writers today–you all are amazing. Of course, all writers are amazing but coming up with a new world? That takes some serious creative juice. I’m not quite sure I have what it takes but we’ll see. If not, I will always go back to historical, my beloved and recently neglected genre 🙂

 

 

World Building

So, I’m facing a new challenge this NaNo season. As I’ve only ever written historical, or historical fantasy set in this world, I’ve never had to envision a completely different earth. Until now 😛

My NaNo project for this year is essentially set on a place similar to Earth, since I’m pretty much borrowing aspects of different cultures for my planet. But I had to draw a map to see how the planet’s set up. I’m not an artist by any means so this proved challenging. However I did end up sketching a rough outline of the continents and some of the geological features of the main continent on notebook paper. One continent looks eerily like the Arabian peninsula although I really wasn’t planning it to look that way–it just happened. Then I have some islands that are supposed to be similar to England, with some having the ragged coastline of the Scandinavian countries.

 Maybe I’ll go out and buy some graphing paper and attempt to make the countries a little more…realistic looking, rather than blobs on paper. But for now it works.

If you’ve ever come up with a different world, have you ever drawn maps for it or do you just view it in your brain?

BTW, I finally decided on a title. Ready….

Beyond the Dark Divide.

That may change eventually too, but I’m more satisfied with it than I was with any of the other ones I came up with.