World Building Part 2
So, I didn’t go into great detail with the town of Bolero. Mainly because I didn’t want too much overhead to keep track of. I’m learning the hard way that the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) principle applies to world building as much as anything. A lot of times, scenery is more effective when you provide the high points and let the reader fill in the blanks. That sounds counter intuitive, I know, but if you try and meticulously fill in every single detail, you’ll end up with way more to keep track of than you want.
Simply put: would YOU want to literally keep track of a whole city? Of course not. That’s why you keep yourself limited to a few physical buildings. For example, so far in Bolero, we’ve seen the building Deb and Rob worked at, their apartment building, the local hospital, and a description of the CDC campus downtown, including some of the geography. Of course, there’s also the mysterious trucks to nowhere.
That’s not a lot. If you look at any single book, there’s only a few places that get truly in-depth descriptions. Of course there’s always exceptions, and when you get into book series, for example the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher (http://www.jim-butcher.com/) have dozens of locations simply because there is ten books in the series! Highly recommended reads, by the way.
Of course, by that time, you want to be REALLY good at keeping track of your world. That’s where I tend to fail a bit. I’m not very good at organization. I’m getting there, but it can still be a struggle. That’s why I think I went overboard here. I’ve got maps of southern Colorado, of Durango itself, the track of the Animas River, etc. It is serving me well, however. For me, I’d rather be over prepared than under, especially when it comes to world building.
With the Ghost Story world, I’m still in the building process, but being a mythology as well as a world, there’s quite a bit more to lay out. Of course, in this case I’m doing it more on the fly, which goes against most of what I’ve been saying! Of course, it’s not really the case, as a lot of these stories are flowing through my head all the time, so the setting and mythology unwinds from that.
So, anyway that’s my thoughts on world building. To my mind, it’s the most difficult part of writing, because the actual words flow much easier than the world concept. Now, back to the still-untitled first story, I think.
Until then!
Simply put: would YOU want to literally keep track of a whole city? Of course not. That’s why you keep yourself limited to a few physical buildings. For example, so far in Bolero, we’ve seen the building Deb and Rob worked at, their apartment building, the local hospital, and a description of the CDC campus downtown, including some of the geography. Of course, there’s also the mysterious trucks to nowhere.
That’s not a lot. If you look at any single book, there’s only a few places that get truly in-depth descriptions. Of course there’s always exceptions, and when you get into book series, for example the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher (http://www.jim-butcher.com/) have dozens of locations simply because there is ten books in the series! Highly recommended reads, by the way.
Of course, by that time, you want to be REALLY good at keeping track of your world. That’s where I tend to fail a bit. I’m not very good at organization. I’m getting there, but it can still be a struggle. That’s why I think I went overboard here. I’ve got maps of southern Colorado, of Durango itself, the track of the Animas River, etc. It is serving me well, however. For me, I’d rather be over prepared than under, especially when it comes to world building.
With the Ghost Story world, I’m still in the building process, but being a mythology as well as a world, there’s quite a bit more to lay out. Of course, in this case I’m doing it more on the fly, which goes against most of what I’ve been saying! Of course, it’s not really the case, as a lot of these stories are flowing through my head all the time, so the setting and mythology unwinds from that.
So, anyway that’s my thoughts on world building. To my mind, it’s the most difficult part of writing, because the actual words flow much easier than the world concept. Now, back to the still-untitled first story, I think.
Until then!
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