Some Things To Think About
October 5th 2009 12:27
This post is just to highlight some things you should think about at least a little bit before starting to plan your novel. The workshop will begin next Monday, the twelfth, and it will be eighteen days of planning and writing for prompts.
You'll want to do some thinking about what you're going to create in terms of world, story and characters before we actually begin the workshop.
Here are some questions to ask yourself over the course of this week:
~How much time can you afford to spend planning your novel?
To figure this out, think of the time you spend bored or doing things that you can very easily skip; think about what you can easily cut out of your schedule and what you don't want to but can cut out of your schedule. Depending on how detailed you want your planning to be, you might need more or less time than others. You also might have less time if you are either in high school/university, or if you work full-time, or have kids, or some combination thereof.
~How much detail are you willing to go into?
You need to figure out how much of your world you want filled in and how much you want to know about your characters, their culture, religion, and history. Several exercises in this workshop working on character building, or building religion, culture, and history can be done multiple times for multiple characters/countries. You need to decide how much you want to know before you start writing, and then use that to help figure out how much time you can afford to spend planning your novel.
~What genre do you want to write?
Figuring this out might impact how much world-building you do and what your story looks like. For example, if you're writing urban fantasy that takes place in a real city, you might want to spend some time studying street maps and figuring out where important things are, but you won't be building your own continents and you're not likely to be building species. If you're writing high fantasy, you'll need a detailed magic system, possibly more than one for different species, and you're going to be creating your own continents, islands, and countries.
~What kind of climate do you want to write in?
Climate will have a big effect on your story and the characters in it. A character from a climate like Canada's, with long, harsh winters is going to have different survival methods and likely thought patterns than someone who grew up in a place where winters are short and mild.
~What kinds of stories do you think you would enjoy writing?
Think about the kinds of stories/genres you like to read. The one you like to read the most/read most often is probably the one that you would enjoy writing the most. Or if you have two genres that you like equally or almost equally, you might want to do a combination of the two. For example, I love reading both fantasy and horror, and so I write dark fantasy that is often borderline horror. (I classify it more under fantasy because it all takes place on worlds other than our own.)
~What kinds of characters would you enjoy writing about?
Think about the qualities you admire in other people. Think about the qualities you dislike. Someone with a lot of qualities you admire and only a few that you dislike is someone you might want to write a lot about, making them a main character, whereas someone who has mostly qualities you dislike and only a couple redeeming ones, you might still want to write about, but you'll probably end up making them your villain.
~What are you ready to go most in-depth with?
You need to figure out what you want your focus to be on when building your world, your characters, and your story. For example, when I'm working on the Jihad series, my main focus is building the religious history and the mythology of the different races, whereas when I wrote Moonshadow's Guardian the focus was mostly about the physical history, the wars that had taken place and the kingdoms that had formed; religion was not a big thing in that world as it is in Jihad's world, Tamraq.
This year the Pre-Nano workshop I'm doing focuses mostly on religion and mythology, with some history work as well. I'm planning on switching up the focus every year.
~Do you want magic in your world/story and if you do how powerful do you want it to be?
We'll go into a lot more detail with this later on, but at this point you need to decide if you want there to be magic in your world, and if you do, how powerful you want it to be. You don't need to come up with specifics, but you do want to have a general idea. Should people be able to blow up castles with magic, or should it only be useful for basic things? Should it be ritualistic or should it just be a couple words or gestures here and there with the right intention? Think about these questions and jot down a couple ideas.
Over the next week, think about each of these questions and write down some point-form notes for each.
You'll want to do some thinking about what you're going to create in terms of world, story and characters before we actually begin the workshop.
Here are some questions to ask yourself over the course of this week:
~How much time can you afford to spend planning your novel?
To figure this out, think of the time you spend bored or doing things that you can very easily skip; think about what you can easily cut out of your schedule and what you don't want to but can cut out of your schedule. Depending on how detailed you want your planning to be, you might need more or less time than others. You also might have less time if you are either in high school/university, or if you work full-time, or have kids, or some combination thereof.
~How much detail are you willing to go into?
You need to figure out how much of your world you want filled in and how much you want to know about your characters, their culture, religion, and history. Several exercises in this workshop working on character building, or building religion, culture, and history can be done multiple times for multiple characters/countries. You need to decide how much you want to know before you start writing, and then use that to help figure out how much time you can afford to spend planning your novel.
~What genre do you want to write?
Figuring this out might impact how much world-building you do and what your story looks like. For example, if you're writing urban fantasy that takes place in a real city, you might want to spend some time studying street maps and figuring out where important things are, but you won't be building your own continents and you're not likely to be building species. If you're writing high fantasy, you'll need a detailed magic system, possibly more than one for different species, and you're going to be creating your own continents, islands, and countries.
~What kind of climate do you want to write in?
Climate will have a big effect on your story and the characters in it. A character from a climate like Canada's, with long, harsh winters is going to have different survival methods and likely thought patterns than someone who grew up in a place where winters are short and mild.
~What kinds of stories do you think you would enjoy writing?
Think about the kinds of stories/genres you like to read. The one you like to read the most/read most often is probably the one that you would enjoy writing the most. Or if you have two genres that you like equally or almost equally, you might want to do a combination of the two. For example, I love reading both fantasy and horror, and so I write dark fantasy that is often borderline horror. (I classify it more under fantasy because it all takes place on worlds other than our own.)
~What kinds of characters would you enjoy writing about?
Think about the qualities you admire in other people. Think about the qualities you dislike. Someone with a lot of qualities you admire and only a few that you dislike is someone you might want to write a lot about, making them a main character, whereas someone who has mostly qualities you dislike and only a couple redeeming ones, you might still want to write about, but you'll probably end up making them your villain.
~What are you ready to go most in-depth with?
You need to figure out what you want your focus to be on when building your world, your characters, and your story. For example, when I'm working on the Jihad series, my main focus is building the religious history and the mythology of the different races, whereas when I wrote Moonshadow's Guardian the focus was mostly about the physical history, the wars that had taken place and the kingdoms that had formed; religion was not a big thing in that world as it is in Jihad's world, Tamraq.
This year the Pre-Nano workshop I'm doing focuses mostly on religion and mythology, with some history work as well. I'm planning on switching up the focus every year.
~Do you want magic in your world/story and if you do how powerful do you want it to be?
We'll go into a lot more detail with this later on, but at this point you need to decide if you want there to be magic in your world, and if you do, how powerful you want it to be. You don't need to come up with specifics, but you do want to have a general idea. Should people be able to blow up castles with magic, or should it only be useful for basic things? Should it be ritualistic or should it just be a couple words or gestures here and there with the right intention? Think about these questions and jot down a couple ideas.
Over the next week, think about each of these questions and write down some point-form notes for each.
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