LIKE WHY IS IT SO MUCH FUN?
I am a total sucker for fantasy, and if that fantasy has one of those special, hand-drawn ancient maps like so…
then, by George, it’s even better than it was!
I love fancy fantasy maps so much. I actually made my own (I would show you, but I already started coloring it in) for my world, Kethaltar, the world in which The Chronicles of Salt and Blood and a new gypsy story I’ve started are set in. Creating that map was a ton of fun!
I also figured out basic traits and economics, as well as geographies, of a few of the different countries when writing the pirate story so that I could keep all of the areas and trading straight.
I never planned on really developing the world very deeply (I never plan to do anything in writing, really), except naming the countries and making peoples, but after deciding to create a language (with rules and everything!) called ‘Woanasy’ for the gypsy story (a language of old they would speak that not many others understood), I started to piece together more bits of my world.
A self-published author I follow (whom also writes for the StoryEmbers website), Hope Ann, is always posting on Facebook about world building, and I had to say, it looked pretty darn fun.
-Welp I just looked through her Facebook page for 10 minutes and I can’t find any of the world building pictures she shared that looked super fun and cool like constellations or a 3-D model of her planet on baseball, so here’s an otter.-
‘Knight Otter’ yielded better Google search results than expected
So, anyways, world building looked fun, but I never much felt like trying it. I did create, like I said, the basic profiles of countries for their geographies and ‘personalities’ and economics. I had all this information in this absolutely amazing folder binder (he’s my favorite), and it made me feel all official and creative.
Isn’t he so nice?
As I was creating the gypsy story, while bored and lonely at work, I decided I was going to have to fully flesh out a language, and absolutely all of the information I could about each and every one of the countries in my world. Learning French was actually helping me understand how rules of language worked, and I was ready to take on the challenge!
This gal holds all of the language, she’s actually a 2017-2018 planner that’s useless to me and I bought because I thought she was a notebook, so it works!
This was going to be a super official world!
World building is sooooo much fun, let me tell you. Coming up with names and customs and just everything is so amazing, and it helps so much when planning out how characters interact and how things happen in certain places in the world!
(Now I understand why so many people left Great Britain to start their own countries. It’s awesome!)
I have a map on my wall, like I said, and I’ve been frantically coloring it in with my brand new pack of 30 colored, scented pens I got for $8 (they’re my pride and joy right now, heh). I’ve been mapping out the agricultural areas, mountains, forests, oil-rich Northeastern front, the caste, trade routes, and the major rivers in my country, Avondella, the peaceful, neutral country that hires pirates to pillage countries they don’t agree with, so they cannot be seen as attacking, so they don’t have to raise a large army, and because pirates usually aren’t affiliated with anyone, so they’re not under much suspicion
(This is actually what Captain Guy from The Chronicles of Salt Blood is. He is a hired pirate captain, so he’s also a bit of a lord in Avondella. Cool, right?)
Below is the comprehensive list I have of everything I want to flesh out about each country.
Rulers:
Capital:
National Flag:
National Symbol:
National Song:
Motto:
Peoples:
Official Languages:
Government:
Customs:
Festivals:
Geography:
Climate:
Environment:
Military:
Education:
Provinces:
Currency:
Economics:
Religion:
Major Cities:
Major Bodies of Water:
Position in the Great War:
Constellations:
Drawing the symbols, coming up with ideas for them, creating customs, looking at other countries and landscapes, and creating all of the possible places and problems is proving to be so much fun! I don’t even know why, but it really is a fantastic way to get the creative juices flowing, and really helps me understand my own people and how things would work!
I’m actually going to post each country as the lists come out, so be sure to follow and be on the look out for those! If you sign up for my newsletter, then you’ll get the first sneak preview at Avondella, as well as special offers in your inboxes for discounts on my self published story, My British Bear. (Your birthday isn’t necessary, it just lets me treat you for your birthday!)
Have you guys been doing any fun world building? Do you think there’s any other important information I should have my lists? How have you all been doing in general?
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