Posts Tagged ‘World Building’

Timeline: Age of Myth

Posted: July 14, 2009 in Sharael, World Building, writing update
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At some stage I plan on redoing the whole blog, including expounding a bit more on the background to the stories and how they all fit in together.

To start off with I am going to do a series of post tracking through the time line as it stands now for the world of Sharael. No exact dates are going to be given, as none have been fully finalised.

They will also be done from the point of view of the Maedari, the people whom most of the stories revolve around.

The first one relates to the time before man, the Age of Myth, as told by Professor Halir, son of Aenir, in his treatise The Ages of Man.

The Age of Myth

In the time before man, in the distant past, there was the Age of Myth; a time undreamed of, when the world was young and fertile and rich in life.

There dwelt in those times the Earthborn, that is the ancestors of the Arduq and the Lifeborn, the Dragons. And they did did prosper and their cities were like unto jewels across the verdant lands of Sharael.

Yet to all things comes an end and war came to the fair lands from beyond the world, and the Powers of the Otherworlds did struggle for dominion.

Yet did the Earthborn and Lifeborn raise heroic challenge, but such were the powers arrayed against them that they were brought low and the fair lands marred and broken, and the remnants of those that lived upon it were scattered.

Thus was Sharael reborn into the harsh and desolate world that we know and the Arduq were left a diminished people and the Dragons remained a shadow of whom they were, seldom seen by any.

Yet their lingered in the world relics of these ancient battles, creatures from the Otherworlds, foul and fierce, to haunt the days of the coming of man.

The ages wheeled and past and within time the lands recovered enough that once more life could return, and thus it did, with the coming of the younger races, from where none could tell.

And thus ended the Age of Myths, the accounts of its days forgotten and it was no more, and history past into the Age of Stone.

Background Progress

Posted: July 13, 2009 in Tears of the Mountain, World Building, writing update
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I didn’t get a whole lot of writing writing done over the weekend, but I’m not too concerned because i did get a bit of background writing done, working out details that should have been done some time ago.

One of my main flaws is keeping all the details floating around in my head without really committing them down. The other one is lack of any real planning – I just write going on what is in my head.

Not exactly the best method. So when I actually did a plot synopsis for Winter Wolves it resulted in an actually finished story. One that is likely to be put aside and forgotten, but a finished one none the less.

Which just goes to prove I need to change my methods.

So over the weekend I sat down and wrote out all the plot points I had in my head and now have an outline, if only so far in point form. It is still basic, and needs expanding on and the order worked on, but it is there. One of the points simply reads ‘Party crosses desert following journal’. Nothing about what is written in the journal and how it helps them yet, just a simple note.

I’ve got an old cork board kicking around, and I’m thinking of getting some notepaper and using it for a plotting board, to really nail this plot down.

Ah, but that was not all that happened. I also worked on mapping. Maps seem an integral part of fantasy now – its rather rare to find fantasy books without a map in them.

I must admit to drawing maps myself all the time, and many times I have started one for the part of the world I’m writing in, but always keep doing major renovations on it. It never quite worked.

Oh, in the stories, I knew roughly where things lay in relation to each other and a vague sense of locations, but I could never nail it down properly. Part of that has to do with knowing too much about tectonics, the ways climate and winds work, rain shadows and deserts and the like – I always kept seeing something that just didn’t make sense.

But finally I got down something over the weekend that looks decent, everything fits in roughly where it should (though I may need to make a few minor modifications to stories here and there) and doesn’t offend too many rules of nature. It still will require a bit more tweaking, but it is close now, and has even clarified a few things for me.

But that wasn’t the end of things.

I also have a rough working timeline, for the first time ever it seems. Still finalising matters, but it spans four thousand years, from the time spoken of in The Cahuac Cycle, when the stone age began to give way to the bronze age, through to the events of The Tomb of the Tagosa Kings.

More to add to it, but the various stories written, and planned, and various other events are pinned down roughly.

There are also events that predate this history, the Age of Myth, but they predate the humans and other new races and the exact dates for them are rather vague, so they are remaining separate for now.

All in all though, I’m rather happy how things turned out. With that done I’m on a bit of a high and can eagerly return to the actual writing for the rest of the week.

Getting The Numbers Right

Posted: July 2, 2009 in General
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In building realistic fantasy worlds, one error that people sometimes fall into is not getting the number right.  By this I am mostly referring to populations and armies.

Often the numbers involved are based more on modern times and not what could be expected for the equivalent time frame.  Million man armies just did not exist, no matter what the Dark Lord may want.

Populations were small, and predominately rural, living in small villages and involved in farming.

Armies, except for rare instances, mostly numbered only in the thousands.  Tolkien is one that gets this right, at lest for the good guys.  Their forces only number in the thousands, even at the Battle of Pelennor Fields, Hornburg and the Black Gates.  Of course the Uruk always number in much larger numbers…

I came across a couple of interesting article on the web dealing with these matters, and offering helpful advice on dealing with realistic numbers.  They will certainly help me in my world building and writing.

Medieval Demographics Made Easy

Keeping Your Fantasy Armies A Little Less Fantastic

Where To Begin

Posted: May 20, 2009 in writing update
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Once more I am having quite an old debate with myself – where to begin. It is an old, old debate. There are many stories I want to tell in my writing about my worlds, but I want to choose a good one to begin with, to garner interest in the world and to share some of the concepts behind the world, as well as introduce secrets that will gradually be revealed.

As I may have mentioned before, I am a big history buff. A lot of that is evident in my world and my writings. I want to show the passage of time, as characters and events become myths and legends over the course of history. Yet at the same time I don’t want to spoil some of the surprises in store.

Which all brings it back to – where to begin.

There are four main periods of time, so far, that I have focused on for ideas, scattered over a broad period of time. I want to explore them all, in short stories and longer stories and whatever else I can.

Logically you would start at the beginning, but in this case it really won’t work. The beginning here is the pre-human world, which I refer to as the Age of Myths. It is heavily influenced by such works as the Silmarillion, various creation myths and even the Old Testament. The Silmarillion is perhaps my favourite fantasy book of all time and I would really like to write a book in that style for this period. Problem is that you would never do that as a first book – it would never sell. It would be a book written for myself and, in the unlikely event of major success, the die hard fans. Cahuac and the Sun is an example of the style of work I am aiming for, though chronologically the story dates from after the period in question.

Following on from that we move on to what I call the Age of Heroes. It deals with bronze age human cultures, specifically early Maedari and Chelosians, and the wars between them. This draws on and is influenced by the ancient Greek works, such as the Iliad and Odyssey by Homer, Herodotus and Thucydides and by the ancient Celtic tales, such as in the Mabinogion. It is a period of chariot riding champions, as exemplified by Awn in The Bronze Man. It is certainly a less commonly explored area for fantasy, which is both a strike for and against it. Also, while I do have a few short story ideas for the period, there are as yet no ideas for a novel.

The next period, and really the one I started out with, has no name. It is a much more conventional fantasy period, straddling the late medieval/early renaissance, with the burgeoning of science and exploration, the invention of printing presses, experimentation with gunpowder. it does not, nor will it have, Knights and heavy plate armour. It doesn’t fit the climate nor cultures. This would logically be the place to start, but there is a problem. There is a story I want to tell first. It has been in my head for many many years. If I tell some of the other stories planned for that period, it will spoil some of the plot. The problem is that I really want to do this one properly, but your first book is normally not your best one. Hence the dilemma.

The fourth time period also has no name, but it a bit further on, with the advent of Napoleonic era technology into a fantasy world. Very much so different than your standard fantasy. I am very much looking forward to writing in this time frame, but the worry is that once more it may be too different from conventional fantasy for a first book. Plus there is a chance it may give away some of what is going on in the aforementioned book.

So, there you have it. My dilemma. I am going to have to have a long think and read through of notes to figure this one out.

Dwarves vs Elves

Posted: May 11, 2009 in General
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Dwarves or Elves. It is an old debate, and one, like Dogs or Cats and Pirates or Ninjas, is endlessly debated with no resolutions. On one side you have those who know the truth and on the other the recalcitrants that refuse to acknowledge what is obviously the truth. On one hand you have a race that is honourable, hard working, loyal, dependable and on the other is an arrogant, proud, xenophobic people with delusions of superiority.

But now that debate can be put to rest. The Dwarves and Elves themselves debated this very topic, and the winner is obvious for all to see.

For myself I have always been a fan of Dwarves, ever since I can remember. Early influences were of course Narnia, The Black Cauldron and of course The Hobbit.

Dwarves, unfortunately, have never had the respect they deserve, unlike those upstart Elves, and have become more and more likely to be used as comic relief, and as badly stereotyped Scotsmen.

In the early days, back when I was a teen, I also liked the Elves. But as I got older the more Elves began to annoy me, until now days I hate them with a burning passion. Why the change of opinion? It is because I grew up in my opinion. Elves appeal to teenagers, as they share the same superior, know-it-all attitude. Lets face it Elves, as normally written, are arrogant, angsty and superior at everything. (The Inheritance series is a classic example of this, and, not surprisingly, written by a teenager. Vegan elves who wear leather? Think a bit harder.) The there is the fact that Tolkien’s Elves have been ripped off so badly and often it is beyond a joke.

Elves of today are a far cry of Elves of mythology, which is why I like Pratchett’s Elves, whom are vicious and evil and malevolent, just the way Elves should be.

When I started writing in my world, my aim was to have Dwarves front and centre, to make them in my world what Elves were in Tolkien’s – the superior race. Looking back, I probably overdid it a bit, but I was young then, and since then have wound it back a bit until the current situation where they are no longer Dwarves as commonly seen, but a race called the Arduq, ancient and mysterious, spirits of earth who emerge rarely from the deep deserts on tasks few understand or can fathom. Hairless and beardless, their skins are the colours of stones and metals and they also work alongside the dragons. They are sometimes called Dwarves, but that is a result of a mistranslation of one of the names they give themselves – The Diminished.

Elves also existed int he early days of the creation of the world, and were, sadly, clones of Tolkien’s Elves. As my opinions of Elves changed, so did their place and role in my world. I am still deciding exactly how, if at all, to use them. Their current role is that of of a race called the Aelfir, a race not of the world of Sharael and who fill a role somewhere between that of a Vampire and a Wraith. Not a pleasant people, but there are exceptions.

World Building: How It All Began

Posted: March 18, 2009 in World Building
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This is going to be the first of a number of post relating how the world I call Sharael came into existence, and the changes and alterations – often radical – that became made to it.

Sharael is only the current name for it – there have been other iterations of the world’s name, some best left forgotten.  It is also the name the Maedari use – other races and peoples have their own names for it too.

It all really began with just the kernel of an idea, way back in 1986.  Yes, that is quite some time ago.  In the back yard of the house we lived in back then I had a tree house.  Well, sort of a treehouse.  It was half an old door lodged in between a fork in the tree and nailed into place.  But it was a treehouse to me in my vivid imagination – and I had a good one.

One day, an old friend and myself were playing in it.  For whatever reason that I can no longer remember, we came up with a fictitious race of people that we pretended to be, a race called the Tree People.  Not, you will admit, the most well thought out of names, but we were only twelve at the time.

These Tree People lived in trees, and ate products from trees and had the names of Trees – we were Ash and Oak.  It was a lot of fun, and may have come to nothing, except for an event that occurred the following year.

It was my first year of high school, and for our English class we were set a task or writing a story.  At the time I had just finished reading The Hobbit, and my story was called The Battle of Red River Ravine.  It drew heavily on The Battle of Five Armies from The Hobbit, plus bits of whatever else I was reading at the time, like Narnia.  The main two protagonist of the story were Ash and Oak Sycamore, a pair of Tree People brothers.  There was even a map at the back of the story.

From there it sort of gathered pace.  The map kept expanding – up to 25 A4 sheets of paper in size and I kept on writing history and adding elements from whatever I was reading at the time – Lord of the Rings, Belgariad, Pern anything and everything.  One culture was heavily influenced by the Roman legions, another by the Dragonriders of Pern, and a third was pretty much a clone of the Rohirrim, but with elves and dwarves and gnomes thrown in.  There were even genealogies and languages in the works as well.

It was a hopeless mismatch of cultures and histories that made little sense, but it was a beginning.

That was how the world began, but it was soon to change and for the better.

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