World building mini guide
A sketchy sketch
Over the weekend I found myself sketching out some thoughts on world building, and how I’ve approached it in Tales from the Triverse. I think it ended up being something somewhat useful and rather fun:
If you want to dig into any of this in more detail, I’ve got a bunch of more detailed posts:
My 7 Pillars of World Building
When I was in the early stages of preproduction on Tales from the Triverse I ran into a problem. The serial is structured as crime fiction, with each storyline focusing on an investigation by the detectives. Sensible crime fiction writers set their novels in the real world, so that they can borrow from reality for their world building.
World building for fantasy stories
Aah, world building. Is there a more satisfying way to spend you creative time than to dive into a fictional space of your own making and detail it with a sprinkling of reality? It’s also a dangerous tempatation: a hole you can forever fall down, never to return, with no written words to show for your efforts.
How to do exposition without it turning into an infodump
I was in conversation with the inimitable Elle Griffin earlier this week, discussing the difficulty of explaining things to a reader without killing the story dead in its tracks. As Elle put it:
