Forums

Hey @GKWriter! You know, I struggled with this for a long time. Part of me was, "this is gonna be fun!" and the rest of me was, "wow, this is a big job, it's going to take so so long!" The thing that finally broke through for me was that I had already written a short story (10k) of an original world magic system, and I finally thought to myself, "you know, you did this thing over here. You don't have to start from scratch. You could just use what you already built!" Then it took another few months of just letting that idea sit and imagining the hp story using that type of magic. Then it took a year of going off the rails writing something completely different. And now I'm back to this.  Oh yeah, you asked me a question, haha. How much worldbuilding have I done? First off, I decided that this would be a Modern-Real-World-Adjacent Magic story. That took a lot of pressure off already. I didn't need to start from scratch. I could rely on Common Knowledge. I didn't have to explain where paper came from, or cell phones, or rebuild the political system.  Secondly, I made a list of all the magic that I used in the short story. Just finished a few days ago, actually. Good thing it's a short story, so it only took a few days. Today, I'm putting all of that in order and looking closely at what I used and how I used it, and how I can explain it all to myself so I can use it in a different story and be consistent. So tedious. But I think it's going to prevent a lot of headaches in the future. Right now, for example, I'm looking at a rune-based magic system. Don't want to use wands. (It's too close to HP) My characters basically trace a symbol in the air to activate a magic spell/charm. Then the magic does its thing. I have an ambient magic world. Magic just exists in the world like air. Very similar to HP, it's not explainable or measurable. Typical. However, there is a balancing act I'm playing with, where magic needs balance in order to remain accessible. For example, if some selfish guy goes out there and gathers together a large quantity of raw magic, it's going to affect the magic stability of other places, sometimes locally, sometimes regionally, potentially globally. So that's become the basis for my antagonist archetypes: megalomaniac, selfish powermongers. They're campy and ridiculous, and the accumulation of magic makes them mentally unstable, feeding into the camp and ridiculousness. It's a world problem, as well as a character problem. I'll be playing with themes of addiction and how that applies to mental stability, etc. The world problem will feed into the internal conflict of the antagonist. I don't have specific examples, yet, but the concept seems to lend itself to the antagonists I already have set up in both stories. I found the connection, so I'm leaning on it and building pieces of the world to support it.  Setting all that aside, I'm looking at my lists, (right now, in fact. My timer went off, so this is my brain break) I have used the words "spell" and "charm" interchangeably. I am also throwing around the words "runes", "glyphs" and "sigils" all over the place, with no indication of whether they have different purposes. This is something I would like to clarify in my magic system before I move forward. I can see how it'd become a headache later, if I decide that these words have different meanings, and then I have to go through and rename things.  Maps: nope. Real-world adjacent. I'm planning to use a global community, so I wanted this to be a Google no-brainer. Aside from the fact that there may be "invisible to the non-magic eye" locations that I get to make-up, of course, such as the island prison for Magics somewhere off the coast of Great Britain. Don't ask me. It's somewhere out there. Magical Societies: This could have been a lot going on here, but I'm keeping it loose. Right now, I have a Cursebreaker who works for the organization I'm currently calling Central Command out of New York City. I also have a Magical Enforcer (the term I replaced Auror with), who works for Central Command based in London. These people are looking for spikes on a "map" (tbd) of unusual magical activity that create local or regional imbalances. There are "rules" that Magics have to follow (tbd) and when those rules are broken, you get these "magical spikes" that tend to disrupt what law-abiding magic users are doing in their day-to-day. Let's just say that I'm following the idea of a power grid. I'm leaving it loose like this, so the stories can develop as they will. I'm imagining that each region would have their own methods and their own laws regarding what is and is not acceptable, depending on cultural norms and the magic within those cultures. I'm keeping the term Central Command for now, with the understanding that "central"  and "command" will eventually be more defined within each region as I go. I anticipate there will be differences between the way Americans and British magics use this, as well as wherever else I want to write in the world. Generally, it's the "greater good for all" concept, which, as you can imagine, is a breeding ground for all kinds of future worldbuilding conflict. So, in short (and really, when is worldbuilding ever short, right?) that's where I am. Like, right now. I'm making notes to myself as things ping in my brain, such as "hey, this concept could do that one thing in this story", sticking it on a literal index card and making a stack to physically go through before I start writing the story, to remind myself of interesting things I might consider. I'm allowing myself the freedom of not setting anything in stone yet. I'm reminding myself that anything I'm doing right now is malleable and can grow/change with the writing process... as it does. That lets me keep stock of any conflicting ideas I'm not going to readily reconcile at this stage. One of the big things that throws me off the rails is making hard and locked in decisions. Removing that from the table does wonders for my workflow and allows me to keep going, knowing that I don't have to have all the answers.    This feels kind of backwards, since I'm already dealing with fully written out plots and all, but I also remember that I didn't go off and build my world ideas first for that OF short story. I just kind of imagined and plotted short, and went with it. But I do want to get these concepts as streamlined as I can, understanding what I created, how it works, and why I did it that way before I dive back in and revise. Especially when I start replacing the HP magic system with this one. Things will start to shift and change and get more complex, and I want the room to do that within the story. This way, I'll have a structure of notetaking I can just dump it into when that starts to happen. It's a spreadsheet, which I'm planning to print hardcopy, like a little magic manual, so I can flip through it while I'm writing for easy access. My brain doesn't do well with clicking through tabs on the screen. Jotting down revisions and additions by hand in my "magic manual", or sticking things on notecards and making a stack will be a better, nonintrusive way of adding to my magic manual without breaking the flow of words as I write. I've been there, done that, and breaking flow is something I'm planning to avoid doing as much as I can this time around. (I spent a year writing this Regency thing, and the 'stop every five minutes to do research' just about killed me. Learning from that.)   How is your progress?    

I sympathise! I have some story ideas but not much of a fleshed out world for any of them. I know that I'll be able to properly do my ideas justice once I've done the world building - and probably come up with some more story ideas too - but it's not always easy to know where to start, I've found. I'm hoping to be able to make some progress over the summer and the rest of this year, but we'll see!  How much world building have you done?

I don't do as much writing longhand as I used to - I mostly write straight onto the computer these days. Maybe I should give it another try! I confess to being a bit of a fountain pen enthusiast - I think my handwriting is better with a fountain pen than with a ballpoint, although there are people who would say that it's still pretty terrible... 

Savage Love || Chapter 02 💋  

I amuse me, and that's what's important.  Also I think I have finally untangled ch 24 of Burrough House!