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?
