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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.

Making Stuff Up

This isn't a language making course, though one (or a dozen) could easily be created. I've got a couple of questions for you and another link I hope you'll find useful, and then we'll move on for the day.

1. Does this language use the same alphabet? Is it missing letters? Is your language made up of the same letters as ours? Is it the English alphabet with some changes? (Think of how German doesn't have a W) How are those sounds made?

2. Is it a hard language or a soft language? Do your characters speak with harder accents? Is there a focus on hard consonant sounds or soft consonant sounds?

3. What are your vowels? What do they sound like? How are they made? What do they look like on paper?

You could spend days and days working on a language, and if you'd like to, check out The Language Construction Kit.

In Other News...

I'd like to ask for donations to Nanowrimo on my behalf. I'm looking for some people to Sponsor Me I'm hoping to raise $5.00 for every 25, 000 words I write on Nanowrimo's behalf, benefiting one of the greatest non-profits out there. It's changed my life and I'd like to help it change more.

Today's Prompt: Write 500 words about Language from your main character's point of view. Post your first paragraph.

Check out yesterday's post: Prompt&Questions.
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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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Childhood

September 29th 2010 15:01
Marla
Things were simpler in my early youth. As a child of four I was not friends with little ladies my age; my parents didn't care to introduce me. My mother was not friends with many ladies her age, except of course for the Queen and a priestess or two. My mother was however friends with an old knight named Cadmon who had been her bodyguard since she was little. He and his son Logan traveled with us, dined with us, ruled our lands with us. They knew our whole family, which was not nearly as extensive as most noble families.
Logan was my best friend. One might even say he was my only friend. My mother liked to travel between all of the cities, and I didn't have time to make many friends. Logan came with us everywhere. His nanny and mine were one and the same, a kindly old woman from Lydell who had been my mother's nanny once upon a time. Logan played tea party with me and I played swords with him; gender was no barrier


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Hold Me Like you Love Me
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The Danger of Blogging

September 20th 2010 12:08
Fictional Worlds has been my blog, my writing spot, and my safehaven for expression for a little over three years now. Until recently, nobody I knew in real life read my blog; I didn't want to build readers that way. I built readers through online forums, Orble's community, and sheer force of will. The reasons why I kept my blog away from the people were several.

The first is that I wanted to build an unrelated reader base. I wanted people to find me who didn't know my name, who didn't know that I existed. My first comment on my first blog here was from a complete stranger, and that's how I wanted it to be. Part of this was also because I know a lot of people; I could have a hundred readers without having to search for them. I felt it was more authentic if I struggled to find my first reader, and my second, and my fiftieth


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Prompt of the Week: The Sea

September 15th 2010 12:50
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Thoughts and Questions

September 10th 2010 12:01
While I do have big things in progress for Fictional Worlds which I'm hoping to reveal over the next two weeks, I don't have much to say today. My first week back to school, while awesome-for a week of school-has been more tiring than I would've expected.

I've started working-albeit slowly-on my Pre-Nano workshop in October. It will consist of three weekly worldbuilding exercises-probably Monday, Tuesday, and Friday, or perhaps one on Monday, one on Friday, and one on the weekend-and a weekly prompt. I'm probably going to focus more on plot this year, with a couple of characterization exercises; this workshop will be for those of us working in a familiar world


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Prompt of the Week: Coming Home

September 8th 2010 12:13


It's funny 'cause


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We Interrupt this Program...

September 7th 2010 12:49
...To inform you that the posting schedule here at Fictional Worlds is changing. With the school year's arrival many things are changing for me. School becomes a factor taking large amounts of time out of my day. Homework becomes a factor. In spite of that, I will be increasing my weekly output.

How is this possible or recommended? I'm cutting back on partying and on social events, perhaps-probably-even socializing in general. I need to spend more time on my writing and I need to make school my second priority-second only to my writing. It's time to get down to serious business; I want to send a novel out to agents the moment I'm eighteen and can sign a contract myself. Realistically I have a long way to go before I'm ready for that; people bother me


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Insult

August 31st 2010 12:39
Insult
I love you and I always will
but I can't deal with you insulting yourself


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On my trip out of town I finished the book I've been reading for most of the summer, Woman on the Edge of Time. It's an old book but you can still find it on Amazon if you follow this link
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Prompt of the Week: Alone

August 24th 2010 12:58


I'm all alone out here


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Prompt of the Week: Losing You

August 17th 2010 12:07
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Looking in the Mirror

August 10th 2010 12:30
Mirror
Looking in the Mirror


For the first time today when I looked in the mirror I liked what I saw. She's strong and I like the fire behind her blue eyes. She's got smooth flowing red hair that's slowly turning blonde, bleached by the sun's rays. She's got long well muscled legs that someday would be great in a martial art. You can tell by her grin that she's a little bit evil, but it's easy enough to look innocent. She could sit there all day and make cute faces; she'd have the whole world kneeling before her by the time she was done. Or maybe not, who knows


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What Counts as Writing Time?

August 9th 2010 12:59
When creating and following a writing schedule, you must also decide what to include in your writing time. This will vary greatly depending on the kinds of writing that you do. For a writer of non-fiction or even historical novels, research is so essential to writing that it takes up writing time. For a high fantasy writer, worldbuilding is essential so it takes up writing time. For a blogger, sometimes even things like email are part of 'writing time'.

I have two different kinds of writing time: fiction writing time and blogging time. My fiction writing time is divided into worldbuilding, plot building, editing, and writing various short stories and novels. Blogging time is divided into writing posts, responding to comments, preparing workshops, and brainstorming. I've also started setting aside time for my other website and its blog


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Prompt Of The Week

August 3rd 2010 12:36
Today's prompt is:

Dreams
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