#writing worlds

[the-introverted-writer-for-life]

How to come up with a plot

You've got a character. Or a setting. Or one or two perfect scenes with oh-so perfect vibes that you can imagine clear as daylight in your head... But no storyline.

Hopefully this post solves that.

As a writer myself, I've struggled with this sort of thing a lot with the book I'm planning at the moment, so I'm writing from experience.

Very often, the posts I see talk about your character's motivation and goals - what they want to achieve in life, why they want it, but sometimes the characters we make don't have original goals, and therefore no motivation.

Here are a few thought processes to find a plot if your character has no original goals:

Think about how your story would start. What's normal life like for your character? Do they live in a snowy forest treehouse, and hunt food everyday, or do they live in a modern day city with shops and schools and phones?

Then think about what could change, and how that affects the character. Does a harsh winter cut off their food supply, meaning they have to go further away into the forest and then something happens? Or does a natural disaster hit some family or friends away in another town, and they have to go and check they're alright?

Think about these changes, and create some sort of problem that the character finds they could fix. Common things include family member falls ill and the character goes looking for a cure, character and Co have to flee their home because of said problem, some sort of evil has come to their home and they have to fight it, etc.

OR, you could think about what the character might do to muck things up. Maybe they accidentally (or on purpose) hurt a loved one, or they do something else that upsets a higher force, or a bad trait they have takes over for a few minutes, but at the end of it the damage is done - something the character does that they need to fix, then work out how they could fix it.

Your story will not entertain if the quest to fix the problem is easy. Think about some sort of obstacle that could hinder them - whether this be physical, emotional, or even magical (if your story includes magic), make sure you don't let them fix it without proving themselves.

MAKE SURE YOU WRITE THIS DOWN. you don't want to be reading this at 3am in the morning and then have a MASSIVE BRAIN SPARK and then forget it three hours later when you get up, and lose that information forever. Trust me. I know.

If you can't think of a problem, or any way that your character could have a problem, maybe go back to the drawing board and tweak your ideas slightly. Maybe include a slightly worse trait in your character, or think about what could happen to other characters - the possibilities are endless.

Good luck and happy writing!!

#writing #world building #writers block #Problems #main character #fantasy #writing worlds #world drama #plot #writing plots #writing problems #help with writing

[beyondth3veil]

#fountain pen #writing worlds

[the-fae-folk]

when you talked about the Vadelairn in your stories. not only did you say that the desert where they were was further from where Faerie borders our world than the distance between earth and the large magellanic cloud, but you said that the creatures can get too big to live on land and swim through space. How big is your version of faerie? And how does space work?

Ah yes, so you noticed my little secret there. For those who might wonder, the Large Magellanic Cloud is 158, 200 Light Years away from our humble planet. This means that light, which can travel the distance of 91.601 million miles from our sun to us in 8.3 minutes, takes 158,200 years to travel to that truly enormous distance. If we attempted to convert our distance from Light Years to Miles it would be something along the lines of nine hundred twenty-nine quadrillion nine hundred ninety-eight trillion five hundred thirty-four billion thirty-seven million six hundred forty-nine thousand nine hundred eighty miles (929,998,534,037,649,980mi).

To travel that distance at even a brisk 70 miles per hour on a straight highway would take you thirteen quadrillion two hundred eighty-five trillion seven hundred billion years (13,285,700,000,000,000yr). Helpfully, the Large Magellanic Cloud is among the closest of the galaxies near to our Milky Way. There are plenty more that are much further out. Now that's a very large distance, impossibly, unimaginably large. Far too large, as anyone who knows even a little bit about astrophysics, for a planet of the kind we are familiar with. Most notably, any solid type planet would have long since collapsed to become a gas giant, then a star, and finally a black hole long before it ever reached the size of what we're suggesting here. If that is the case, then we might try to imagine a different sort of realm. A flat plane that begins at the border between our worlds and reaches infinitely in three other directions. Such an existing spatial structure is, as far as we are aware, impossible in our universe. The logical conclusion must then be that the world of Faerie, as they call it, is not only another world... but another Universe entirely. Such a strange thought. Another Universe, different from our own. Of course that immediately brings up issues with the very word "Universe", which is defined to mean everything that exists. So instead we might call it another reality, another bubble of existence that is separated from our own and seems to operate by very different natural laws. For simplicity's sake let's simply refer to them as our world and Faerie. It would be difficult to determine exactly what Faerie is like. This is because it's very unlikely that any human who wanders into such a place is seeing it as it truly is. For all we know it could be a multi-dimensional construct that exists upon a multitude of levels of reality and across vast distances of space. That's not even considering that the Fae might be able to treat Time as a physical dimension and live here and there among that as well. Thus I think we might try to imagine Faerie as a flat world that goes on forever in three directions with an unknowably vast amount of space above it. But having it be like that would cause so many basic physical problems that pretty much everything would stop working if I want the world to even attempt consistency. However, there is a much simpler and more elegant solution. One that I actually introduced through some of the poetry and backstory of Faerie in my tale. The stories about their ancient King when he visited other worlds. "Across the sea he came alone o’er glass-like waters deep. While far below at depths unknown strange creatures lay in sleep." And then later when it mentioned his flight from the dying world. "The Faerie King, or so it's told, he fled back to the shore, where once he’d come from worlds so old to search for something more."

You see, it isn't so much that he's crossing an ordinary ocean to different continents. No, he's traveling outward to different realities, different universes if you will. The implication is that the Faerie are powerful, and collectively they're much more powerful than anything humanity can achieve. We don't know if their king collapsed only a single world or the whole universe he stole light from, but whatever he did it required immense power and knowledge that we do not possess. They came to the world we call Faerie, as the poem mentions at one point. It already existed. So I have a brand new reality whose laws of physics are entirely up to my direction, and a race of beings of incredible power. My solution was that they simply warped reality itself, rewove it. If planets like we know them existed, they were woven together, remade. And in the process the people themselves became inextricably woven together with the world they were making. So while the world itself is made up of many once separated parts, it is essentially endless, just as the night sky above them is equally infinite. Glamours and illusions of immense world-bending power allow for some continuity such as a sun rising and setting, while also allowing for journeys across the world to places with different suns and moons, or places without any day at all. One of the more interesting ideas that surfaces when we talk of creating things, whether writing or art or anything of that nature, is the idea that sometimes when the conditions are right... the creation itself seems to take up a life of its own, it grows bigger than its own creator's ability to truly understand or control. The same effect can be amplified by a thousand times in a creation involving multiple creators. So thus I imagined that in their remaking of this universe, they made something that became more than they intended, something beyond their ability to control or know fully. In their hubris they sought total control, and it seems as if all reality told them no and ripped it from their grasp.

If belief is all that it takes to bend a whole universe and reweave it into something that shouldn't work but does because you believe it to be, then that belief would be self limiting. Belief in fear and confusion, in forgetting and in weakness... those things become real with that belief. But there are also always those who wish to explore, to create, to wonder and dream. You cannot do those things without a horizon of the unknown, without something to be explored. So too does their belief in these things affect their reality. For all their power, they cannot simply exercise it at any given time, they are limited in every way by the very act of creation. They aren't really cognizant of all this in a way that matters. Many younger fae, born in the eons since the reweaving, don't understand at all, and thus have a very different idea of the power their own people once held and the nature of their own world. To be entirely honest, while some of this is and will be relevant to the story of Ardri and his friends, it's really not necessary to know the over-complicated metaphysical philosophy that I regularly ponder while worldbuilding. We look at contemporary fantasy these days and find that people have a desire to create big complicated systems of magic and power, to outline all aspects of this constructed reality. While that's fine, not all kinds of fantasy really need that, and some suffer from it. Some of the power that fairy and folktales have in their telling is sometimes that the magic ISN'T explained. That it lies beyond the understanding of the protagonist (usually a human), and seems to follow a set of rules that they don't know. Part of things is that they must learn something of those rules, must gain some ground, enough to move the story forward, but that there's always much more that simply remains unexplained, a mystery. This same rule of the unknown holds true for many styles of fantasy writing, even well into the world of novelization. But it can be a difficult art to balance the things the reader MUST know in order to make sense of the story, and what things the writer will need to know and decide but NEVER actually tell us in so many words. There is so much advice on how much to worldbuild and how much of that to reveal, but the truth is that the answer is necessarily ever-changing and it simply takes a lifetime of practice to become somewhat decent at getting it right when you tell a story. I myself find a great deal of comfort in excessive worldbuilding, and I will be glad to answer whatever questions about it that you ask, but all my story really needs you to know is that the world they live in is now is vast, wondrous, and strange, and that faeries once traveled between worlds and allowed their hubris to cause irreparable damage to some of those worlds.

#worldbuilding #writing #ardri's story #writing worlds #fae #faerie #otherworld #the large magellanic cloud #metaphysical philosophy

[deardragonbook]

Elizabeth’s Journal on Alchemy

 If you follow me an read all my posts (thank you!), then yesterday you got to read about taxes. I realize that probably wasn’t the most fun you’ve had on my blog so to make up for it, I bring to you Elizabeth Owen’s journal on Alchemy. 

It’s a fantasy journal written from the perspective of a character in universe about her journey learning Alchemy. It’s got some fun world building, cute doodles and some of her personality popping through. 

I highly recommend these kind of projects for world building and character development. But forget about writing for a moment. Here’s the journal up to date:

Sorry I couldn’t figure out how to flip this next image inside of Tumblr, careful with your neck! 

I stand with Elizabeth. Teas and coffees are the equivalent to magical potions. 

Forgive my scary drawing skills at times. When throwing ink on paper with no prior sketch it’s essentially a coin toss on a spectrum. 

The above page is my favourite page aesthetically fuss far. I don’t know why, I think it’s the Jikuld that I love so much. I also can’t wait to talk about fossilized tree caves in my story at some point. 

I know I said we weren’t going to talk about writing and just enjoy the journal today but... There’s something on this page that’s interesting. 

A compliment I’ve received a couple of times regarding my writing is the way characters react to the world, the fact that they don’t act surprised or weirded out by fantasy aspects because... well, it’s their world. 

However, it’s fun to remember that we don’t know everything about the world we live in. We’ve all heard at some point a random animal fact that’s shocked us. In this page we see that with Elizabeth, she didn’t know satyr had eggs, it shocks her, and she reacts to it. Knowing what things are common knowledge and what isn’t, is another fun world building exercise! 

Who and how was this figured out? If you really want to know, I googled “most muscular fantasy creature” with the intent of including them in the symptom relief of muscle pain in some way. Minotaur of course showed up and my first through was fur but this made more sense. 

Within the universe how was this figured out? Valid question. I don’t know and I don’t think I need to. 

And this final page (for now) actually contains a tinsy of foreshadowing for later on in my main series. I’m not going to say what though. 

If you enjoyed reading through this fun little project of mine and would like to read more about the character writing it or the world she’s in, I recently added Oppida Institute for Reformation to Book Funnel so you can download the first Act for free in several formats (it’s an ongoing series, I’ll be uploading each act as it’s completed). 

You can find that story as well as my main book series, social and more, here! 

I believe when this post comes out I’ll still be looking for ARC readers for my second book so check that out. And if you have any questions or would like a post on how I “research/force inspiration” for this journal, tell me and I’ll see what I can do! 

#fantasy journal #fantasy journals #fantasy world #world building #worldbuilding #writing worlds #writing world building #fantasy creatures #fantasy medicine #writing tip #writing trick #journal #journals #character #characters #oc #ocs

[hekatepoetryxxwriting]

The Time Weaver: The Story of Airships

Despite Sanduhr (the world of The Time Weaver) using airships and zeppelins as the primary transport across the world, the countries and islands are also surrounded by vast, beautiful oceans and seas. However, only Badhari and some of the south-eastern continents continue to also use seaborne ships as a method of importing goods and travelling.

This is because of the creatures that reside within the waters of Sandurh, primarily, the myths of what lies beneath the Azarell Ocean and the Sinriden Strait.

Historians of the continent of Tahva have recorded sightings and marine discoveries of large monsters lurking in the waters. The Azarell Ocean in particular is well known for its large population of Sea-Wyrms.

These giant, sharp-toothed monsters of the deep tormented travellers for centuries, crushing smaller boats in their long bodies and devouring survivors left stranded in the oceans. Many hunters have attempted to rid the ocean of these hellish creatures, but have only succeeded in killing Sea-Wyrms that scientists around the world believe to be babies. The true size these Wyrms can grow to is unknown.

These are not the only creatures to be found terrorizing the waters of Sanduhr. Other creatures include venomous crab-like insects buried beneath rocks and sand, humanoid merrows with cannibalistic tendencies, giant crocodilian horrors with teeth the size of a man's forearm, and even long-limbed, white-eyes women that emerge from under icy lakes to drag small children to their deaths.

After many centuries, and thanks to the industrial takeover in Tahva that followed Yelaborg's revolutionary war, airships and zeppelins became the primary source of travel, guaranteeing a much safer way of moving over the oceans without disturbing the things that lurk beneath.

#worldbuilding #writing #creative writing #the time weaver #writing community #write #writing tips #writing advice #fantasy writer #science fiction writer #writing worlds #writing inspiration #worldbuilding 101 #worldbuilding ideas #fantasy worldbuilding #animals #sea creatures #wyrms #monsters #myths and legends

[sluggishdawn]

THE CLICK // summary

a group of kids go to school as usual on monday. as the clock strikes twelve, without a warning or trigger, they are transported to a mirror (alternate reality, parallel) dimension where they are left to their own devices. no one is there besides them. they are faced with many challenges and have to overcome them.

seventeen 8th grade kids, alone.

my friends version

character profile index

chapter index

#writing inspiration #female writers #flash fiction #short stories #short story #stories #story #writers of tumblr #writing blog #fiction #chaoscore #writing #writing advice #writing community #writing resource #writing world building #writing worlds #writeblr #creative writing #writers #teen writer #summary #blurb #story prompt #shortstory #narrative #fictional #character #original characters #my characters

[mamaangiwine]

I don't think many people realize how much they've been turned into a bunch of casually cynical jerks.

Someone may come to their parents and say "I want to write a book" and their parents will say "it's really hard to get published".

Someone might confide in their sibling and say "I want to sell my art on "x" platform" and that sibling will say "do you know how many people you'd be competing with? Do you know how many shops are even on that platform?"

I know a kid who once told his best friend "I think I wanna start a dnd podcast" and the friend was like "do you know what the word "oversaturation" means?"

Personally, I don't know why any of that matters? And even if it did, perhaps your response should be "Do it! Do it and see where it goes!"

#i am literallly lamenting the world we live in #not magic #creativity #art #writing #creative work

[bluejay757]

#ao3fic #ao3 #ao3 memes #fan fiction #fan fic writing #fan fic writers #fan fiction memes #those 16 bookmarks mean the world to me #this is literally me

[lgbtlunaverse]

Nothing will dispell the "the curtains were just blue" myth faster than writing something yourself, because the amount of pretentious symbolism i am putting in my silly little fanfics is ridiculous. I mean SO much with these words, literally every single one of them. This fic has twenty five typos and zero correct uses of punctuation but if there's curtains you bet your ass I put thought into what colour they were.

#writing #fic writing #like this is stuff i'm doing for fun with my perfectionism meter turned down as far as i can get it #and i am still thinking about it A LOT #talk to me about how in red string fic jgy perceives the memory block both as syrup and as mud but nmj thinks it feels like blood #it's just a thing in their heads that mentally feels kind of thick and sticky but they both made something different of it #it's about issues with cleanliness / lies as a way to craft an illusion of a better lopking world vs the constant violence nmj lives in

[enchantingepics]

Story Prompt 37

In a realm far away, where castles touched the sky and rivers whispered ancient tales, there lived a ruler with a swagger that echoed through the kingdom. He wasn't born to a royal lineage, yet destiny had a peculiar sense of humor, bestowing upon him a crown that sat more comfortably than any noble bloodline.

One day, as the sun bathed the land in golden hues, the self-proclaimed king strolled through the market square. Merchants paused, and peasants hushed their conversations, feeling the confident aura that surrounded him.

His eyes caught a glimpse of a maiden with a twinkle in her eye, wearing a gown adorned with shimmering fabrics. The king, undeterred by social norms, approached her with a grin that could charm the grumpiest dragon.

"Ever danced with a king?" he quipped, extending a hand.

The princess, startled yet intrigued, hesitated before accepting the unconventional invitation. As they twirled and laughed, the kingdom watched in awe. The king's charisma was infectious, transcending the boundaries of royalty and commonality.

As the day unfolded, the unlikely pair embarked on a series of adventures, from crashing the royal ball to scaling the castle walls just for the thrill of it. The king's unorthodox approach to life and love shook the foundations of the traditional kingdom.

In the quiet moments, when the moon hung low, the king shared his philosophy with the princess. "Forget about titles and crowns," he said, staring at the stars. "Life's about seizing the moment, not waiting for someone to validate your existence."

The princess, initially resistant to the king's audacious ways, found herself captivated by the liberating spirit that enveloped him. Their escapades continued, challenging the norms and rewriting the narrative of their world.

#story prompt #creative writing #writing ideas #fiction challenge #plot inspiration #story generator #writers community #imaginative prompts #storytelling ideas #word prompt #writing exercise #plot idea #character prompt #writing adventure #prompt list #storytellers guild #narrative inspiration #plot journey #writing fuel #unleash your imagination #creative prompts #writing worlds #character saga #story building #writers block cure #imagination flow #unexpected twist #plot crafting #inspired dialogue #world building ideas

[tariah23]

The manga industry, especially JUMP, needs to hurry up and do away with weekly scheduling for mangaka. There needs to better regulations put into place for their health and safety because this is pitiful. Two weeks - monthly updates should’ve already been the standard for the manga industry at this point. These money grabbers will only continue to put the lives of these artists at stake for the sake of capitalism unless some serious changes are implemented.

#it’s just??? #at the end of the day all these people want to do is draw and write their stories and share them with the world #why is death from stress the end game for so many of them #this should not be part of the package when finally deciding that this is what you want to do with your life #rambling #I still never got over miura’s passing man #and Togashi is still here but he’s been suffering from the consequences of overwork #it’s just… all so bleak #fans just need to learn to be patient if these changes are ever made and to be respectful #your fav series is not gonna die just because you can’t get it right now #I’m glad that gege does this now like he takes a break every 2-3 chapters and that’s good #this should be normalized

[justgottafinishthischapter]

This came across my Facebook feed, felt I’d share it.

#worldbuilding #Fantasy Writing #fantasy map #world building #fantasy worldbuildiung

[rexalogy]

Every Taylor Swift song

#I truly truly cannot empathize with anyone in limerence with her in fact it feels betraying. #all of the interesting beautiful art in the world and the only thing you can blow up is another implicitly conservative value white woman? #having to write narratives about her hypothetical dykeishness to feel comfortable with that dissonance? as if that would even absolve her #it’s not that I hate Taylor I just hate this unwillingness to engage with where her worldview has serious limitations and it seeps #throughout her discography. I think loving art comes with being able to recognize where it fails #what politics are present in it. it’s not deep it’s not subtext it’s all just right there

[animentality]

#twitter #writing #writers on tumblr #spilled ink #world building #writing prompt

[hansoeii]

Do you think of me?

#I am not ready to witness these two longing for each other in season 2 it's gonna ruin me #stede writing love letters to ed while on his way to win him back #and ed stealing the wedding toppers and imagining marrying stede during quiet and vulnerable hours #yeah I'm very much not ready #these two are my favorite thing in the world #our flag means death #our flag means death fanart #our flag means death 2 #gay pirates #ofmd #ofmd 2 #stede bonnet #edward teach #ofmd fanart #ofmd 2 fanart #david jenkins #rhys darby #taika waititi #my art #fanart

[prideprejudce]

there should be a sub genre of books that were originally written to comment on the evils of capitalism and how greed and wealth corrupts society as a whole and how those popular books were subsequently made into hollywood movies and were marketed in a way in order to mass produce as much merchandise as possible so the companies behind the movies can make as much money as possible and thus completely erasing the original meaning of that story while also unintentionally proving the point of the original novels themes

#the hunger games #jurassic park #jurassic world #> among some of the examples #i feel like i could write a thesis on this #it’s just so fascinating to see