It starts with a single idea. It unfurls and drips histories and maps onto paper, until there’s an entire world in which characters unveil their stories. Or in my case, a city.
It began with the main character’s story arc, the main conflict. A single “What if?” From there, I watched buildings erupt from barren ground. Religions, values, technology, entertainment– they wove around architecture and citizens like creeping vines.
I’ve learned a great many things about myself as a writer over the past year, and one of those things is that place and milieu play a major role in my stories. In most cases, the environment is one of the main characters. In Unidentified, the primary setting lives. Literally. It breathes, it speaks, it feels. It’s a beast that lives underground and digests the people trapped between its walls. It transforms characters into the people they’ll be for years to come, or kills them trying.
My new, as-yet-unnamed city, for this new, as-yet-untitled novel, is much different. Its inhabitants lean against its glass and stone as if it would embrace them back. They anoint its walls with hands dipped in ochre, and they beautify themselves to become worthy of citizenship.
I’m in love with this place too, in the way only an author can love her characters. This city whispers secrets and parables to me while I fall asleep.
How do you build worlds?
My current WIP is also set in the city that I have created. My worlds usually start with a character. I imagine them, and then a place where they belong usually comes right along. Then of course the world has to be developed in its own right. I love my city, and if I could I would live there. I can see the streets in my head, and the buildings. Now the hard task is to make the reader see that too.
This is the part of writing I’m probably the worst at. I generally set my stories in real places, but since I haven’t traveled much, it requires vague description and lots of research.
I think maybe I should start making up cities to set my characters in. I have a plan for a made up town that isn’t ready to be written yet, but I enjoyed planning it out far more than I normally enjoy worldbuilding.
All this to say, your cities sound wonderfully enticing and interesting. I look forward to reading your books. :-)
I, honestly — and shame on me as a writer — almost never do worldbuilding. The characters are always at the forefront of my attention, and the world sort of . . . makes itself in the aftermath. Or it’s made up on-the-spot as I’m writing. . . . and I rarely do research. *shame*
Worldbuilding’s important in genre fiction, for sure. So far, I’ve written very little of that. It’s coming, perhaps in novel #2, but thus far it’s mostly been literary fiction.
I love the idea of cities as animate characters, though.
I do the same thing! Although, in The Clearing, the world is actually this one, so I didn’t have to do much there. But it was more about creating a certain culture. And it all started with a “what if.” I think that’s one of the best ways to start – if it intrigues you, it will intrigue others.
Worldbuilding for a new story begins with images, for me. Sometimes it’s a photo I’ve seen, and sometimes it’s something that springs unbidden in my mind. A streak of color, remembering what wet pavement looks like, that sort of thing. :)
I’ve always loved old maps. When I start world building it is always with a map of a continent or world. Geography means so much about how civilizations expand. Rivers and large bodies of water in particular mean a great deal.