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Apologies and Final Notes

October 29th 2010 12:14
On Sunday night, in a park just a couple blocks away from my house, my boyfriend and I (and a friend of ours) were robbed at gunpoint. I spent a couple days away from the computer and I've been too tired to do much other than go to school.

The workshop is over not by choice but by necessity-it's the end of the month, time to put the finishing touches on your preparations. There isn't a specific exercise today, but it's probably a good idea to do a general brainstorm for your story, maybe write down a couple of things you're sure you want to happen.

Stay tuned for a 'Why Everybody Should Try Nanowrimo' post and a 'October 31st: Preparing for Nano' post tomorrow and Sunday. And get ready to novel!

Today's Prompt

Write 1, 000 words from ANY character's perspective about fear.
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Religion 101

October 8th 2010 12:04
Religion is an important part of our world and our history, and it will probably be a major factor in yours as well. Religion is used both as a tool to liberate and as a tool to oppress all kinds of people throughout history and even today. It's used as an excuse for various wars that are really about land and resources.

People have a great need to believe in something greater than themselves, especially people living in rough times. Those who endure the most suffering often have-and really need-the most intense faithfulness. As living conditions for people in general get better we stray away from religion and find different paths, some along various spiritualities and others in science, but most of us have a spiritual root of some kind.

Today's exercise is to create a Basic Religious Profile for each of your major Gods/Goddesses. The Basic Religious Profile is very similar to the Basic Character Profile with a couple tweaks obviously designed to accomodate the Gods' special status in our worlds.

Basic Religious Profile

Name:
Age: (When the deity first appeared in myth)
Preferred Gender:
Preferred Height: (Most deities have multiple forms; the physical description in this profile is designed to only include one form)
Preferred Weight: (Ballpark figure here...)
Distinctive Facial Features: (Eyes, any scars they like to have, high cheekbones and narrow noses or otherwise)

Personality: (A few sentences about their personality in myth, then their personality as it applies to the story)

Religious Orders: (Which temples follow them)

Basic Mythology: (Deity's birth, general reputation, possibly a couple specific stories, general interactions with other deities)

Today's Prompt: write 500 words from your villain's PoV about happiness and post the first 75 words. (If you don't have a villain, use any side character you do have.)
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A Prompt and a Question

October 7th 2010 12:43
Recommended Reading

Today's recommended reading is about religion and education:

~Fantasy Education Rant: Some General Ideas

~Creating Convincing Religious Characters

Question(s) of the Day:

1. How do people tell time? Do your people have actual clocks? In a more industrial society, your people will probably use clocks to tell time and have things like hours and minutes. (I usually have clocks with hours but without minutes counted in my world) If the majority of your people are farmers, odds are they'll judge time by the sun.

Perhaps even more important is how they judge months and years. Are years short, each one being just a season? Are months judged by the moon? My worlds usually have 'mooncycles', each new month starting on a new moon. How many months make up a year? I usually go for between ten and fourteen. We'll be coming back to this point. Remember that religion will probably be highly tied in with time-there might even be a religious myth or three surrounding the new year.

2. How much industry is there in this world? Does this world have things that allow them to create things in factory? Does steam power exist? Railroads and the trains that travel on them?

The main question that this brings up is whether agriculture or manufacture is more valuable economically. In our world today manufacturing is where the money is, but once upon a time it was in land and farming. How time based your society is, how well educated, and general quality of life is extremely dependant on industrialization or a lack thereof.

Write 500 words about History from your MC's point of view and post the first 75 words in a comment.
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Language 101

October 6th 2010 12:48
Today we're going to talk a bit about language. Unless you're writing a book that takes place here on Earth in either modern or historical times, odds are your characters won't be speaking English. You probably won't want to create an entire language for your kingdom, but an idea of how their language works and a few words might be helpful.

As a start, briefly study some languages other than English. Look into grammar rules such as word order and punctuation. As one example take a look at some information on Irish Gaelic, one of the most interesting-and most ancient-human languages. I'll throw out a link for some Japanese Grammar too while we're at it


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Prompt and Questions

October 5th 2010 12:10
First, since the prompt is likely to take you away from this blog, let's tackle today's questions.

Today's questions will be about religion, which is crucial to understanding the whole culture that your characters live in. Religion is of varying importance to varying cultures throughout the world and throughout history. Your world might be predominantly non-religious, but it might be like ours a couple hundred years ago, almost entirely ruled by religion


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Culture 101

October 4th 2010 15:00
Today's exercise is designed to help you give the culture you're working on depth and realism. There are many different levels of culture building, things like language, religion, history, law, and social custom. Today's post is divided into sections: reading recommendations, religion, and law.

Reading Recommendations
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Welcome to October First!

October 1st 2010 12:51
Well, folks, it's October first, that time of year again. What's so special about October first here at Fictional Worlds? Well, it's time to officially begin preparing for Nanowrimo, and it's time to start this year's Nano Prep writing workshop. For those of you who aren't participating in Nanowrimo, it's still a great way to start building a novel, and I hope you'll stick around.

For this year's workshop you need to already have a basic idea for your book-an idea of what kind of world you're working in, an idea of who your characters are, and a vague idea of your plot-but when I say basic, I really mean basic. While last year's workshop was designed more for the epic fantasy novel, this workshop is meant for books focused more in one place


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