If you don’t know what NaNoWriMo is yet, here is a quick answer. National Novel Writing Month takes place in November and it is a contest to write a 50K first draft of a novel. Even if you don’t win you at least you can meet some great people and develop an idea. I have taken part in a few smaller events called Camp NaNoWriMo in April and June, but this is my first big event with the group.
What is worldbuilding and why is it important?
Worldbuilding is a word you hear a lot when it comes to writing. Lucky for me with my past novels (Fire series) I didn’t have to do much worldbuilding. I had to know a location and I built scene locations like Travis’s house, Tony’s apartment, and Anna’s shop/apartment.
But for this new series, I am having to build a whole world alongside our own. So what is worldbuilding? It is the process of creating a fictional world with government, social structure, population, language, beliefs, history, and sometimes magic.
How the heck do you get started with something this massive?
Well of course first I went on and scavenger hunt searching through Pinterest and search engines. And then I remembered that one of my favorite writing YouTubers had done a few videos on worldbuilding. This was the best thing I ever found.
I started this journey way back in September and long before Preptober because I knew it was going to be a monster task, and I wanted to save the month of October for the plot.
How does your world stay hidden?
Was the first question I tackled. I decided that my secret world stays hidden because they use disbelief as their chief weapon. After all, when the government knows that the paranormal world exists and controls it to keep the general human population safe from it, they can tell someone who wants to out the world to go ahead and talk to the press about that werewolf (actually they prefer wolf shifter) in an alley. Because who is really going to believe this deranged human other than the tabloids, right. Their next weapon is magical coverup; it is easy to have a mess cleaned up when you have people employed to handle cleaning up messes with magic. Lastly, they keep the magical world quiet with fear, after all, humanity has proven what they are capable of when they hate/fear something over and over again throughout history.
Social structure and basic functions of society?
I found something the secret world would consider of value based on mythology and folklore around fairies and elves. Favors and/or your word. Favors are such a big deal that the government organization handles them like the human handles marriage certificates.
How the hidden world fits in the narrative?
Governments all over the world have their own version of oversight except for North Korea. They work with these government versions of FBI, Homeland Security, CIA, and local police. Not all of these employees quite understand why they need to call a number if something seems a bit off or unusual but they know that these people handle it and they don’t have to.
Races or Population of the hidden world? I based this on realism and the belief that these creatures have always been with us and have evolved in some ways to blend in and survive and often changed by belief and culture, since the ’50s and the rise of Wicca, Tolkien, and other fantasy media. They migrated with humans around the world.
Worldbuilding History -History is complicated-
What actually happened in History?
Identifying anchors in history with elements you care about or events necessary for the story.
The Six Pillars of History
Politics, culture, technology, economy, geography, and religion.
I spent a lot of time finding moments in history from before their world was rediscovered by humanity and till the start of the book series and how these six things anchored and impacted their world.
Picking between Hard vs. Soft worldbuilding.
An example of Hard worldbuilding would be The Lord of the Rings
And
An example of Soft worldbuilding would be Spirited Away
I choose a soft worldbuilding style. So I will focus more on the atmosphere, tone, and mood. With unknown flexible worldbuilding rules, imaginative involvement, and otherworldliness quality. This type of worldbuilding has fewer requirements to rationalize worldbuilding choices means you can focus on the meanings you want to put into the world.
Character-driven story
Figure out the essential lore
Create the rest with more profound things in mind.
Magic system choices
I choose a hard magic system to make seem that it takes more intelligence, and ingenuity to solve problems than just wave a wand at it.
That is all I am going to show you of the rabbit hole journey today. If you are writing a story and need to work on worldbuilding or have any other writing questions go check out this YouTube channel, subscribe and enjoy.
T-minus 3 days till the start of NaNoWriMo
Don't panic
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