My overnight learning about fantasy storytelling

[scarlettina]

Last night, amidst Merlin's bed-tumbling and Spanky's crankiness, I had a realization that will address one of my issues with the novel, which has sat dormant since I got back from Africa. The realization was that I'd been working on the characters as characters, but hadn't been working on the setting as a character, and somewhere in the back of my mind I'd wanted the setting to be a character and had been failing at creating that. It's not the thing that has kept me off the book, not the main one, but it's a contributing element. I've had this vague idea about how the incursion of magic into my world has affected society, but I've never really developed it to its logical conclusion: how the incursion of magic has affected the environment in which that society exists. It's world-building 101, right? We learn by doing, I guess, or at least I do. Heaven forfend that I actually, you know, read a book to learn about process, or listen to friends who have tramped this road ahead of me.

::sigh::

I despair of myself sometimes. So I'm note-taking and thought-processing and we'll see where this goes and if it helps to fire the process again.

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Learning Your Craft

[ladyjestocost.livejournal.com]

Some things are so obvious you must learn them for yourself - otherwise they're not part of you.

I realize this sounds terribly New Age, but it's true.