Building Worlds

Speaking generally, a good percentage of the authors that I enjoy, and admire, are those who a spent a good deal of time on their world building. Even if the bulk of what there is doesn’t amount to more than one or two lines of text (or some large appendices) I still appreciate the thought that’s gone into it.

World building has been on my mind with regards to my own scribbling lately. Obviously (or I hope it’s obvious), I put together a bit of world building when it comes to my House Valerius. Unfortunately due to the length of time since I started, I must admit I don’t quite recall how far into it I’d written before I started keeping notes on it. And now, I’m thinking about book 3, I’m pretty sure I’ll need to look them over in case I’ve contradicted myself somewhere.

But this week I’ve been playing about with a couple of unrelated items; currently saved as Untitled Fantasy Piece and Untitled Science Fiction Piece. I haven’t written a great deal of either, more on the UFP, but I have already begun wondering about the background of each of them.

So at what point do I start building these worlds?

I’m of two minds on this one, as I frequently am. On the one hand, as I’m writing I’m getting notions of what should or can go into these worlds. On the other, I’m not sure I want to devote the time to histories, especially if I don’t know if either of these pieces are going anywhere beyond the brief scenes I’ve thought up so far.

I’m leaning towards beginning the world building right now. Even if these particular pieces go on to become Works In Progress (hmmm. there might be another post in that), I’m sure that it will be good for me, in terms of exercising my creativity. And so long as I make sure I keep any notes, there’s nothing to say I can’t make use of them at some point in the future.

Anyway, I did a quick Google search the other night and I found this which I did think will come in useful. I’ve included the link in case it can be helpful to others.