Archive for World-Building
Today I would like to introduce romance author Annie Seaton to Smash Attack Reads , who will be sharing her world-building process with us. She is a research nerd like me. Win!
How I build my worlds…
by Annie Seaton
Ever since I can remember, I would pick up anything that had words on it and read. Whether it was the newspaper, a flyer, an advertisement, a billboard, a book or a magazine…I would read it. A thirst for knowledge, a desire to know what was happening in the world and the opportunity to experience other worlds, lives, and times was available to me through the written word.
Move forward to the second decade of the twenty-first century and the internet is at my fingertips. Oh, what a delight for an author. To be able to research exotic places far away, to be able to verify facts and dates and to look at images of exotic settings.
Stuck for a character’s name? Log on and research names. Stuck for a physical description? Log on and look at the millions of images available to you.
To create worlds which spring up in your imagination.
Is this love of research a trait common to all writers? I’m not sure…
My love of reading and research melded into a highly satisfying career when I left school and studied to be a librarian. During my twenty-year career with books and the written word… I worked in a variety of library settings and honed my research skills.
My training and experience as a librarian has been a marvellous asset as I have turned to my lifelong dream of writing. The ability to carry out effective searches on the internet and separate the wheat from the chaff on the myriad of sites out there, as well as being able to recognise fraudulent sites was honed in my early years as a research librarian. Now that love of research and the amazing search engines and images on the internet all contribute to my creation of alternative worlds…of course, it also helps to have a very vivid imagination to kick it all off!
Come on over and read some of my bizarre creations—Winter of the Passion Flower has some unusual machinery in an alternative setting. Summer of the Moon Flower where the Scottish government refuses to let those English steampunk inventions across the border. And my exotic settings—Holiday Affair has some gorgeous tropical settings. And mythology combined with witchcraft and country and western music in Blind Lust. And currently being researched and written…a most exciting story about ley lines, time slips and rock music.
All verified through painstaking and most enjoyable research!
I love research and I love being an author and sharing my stories with my readers!
Come along and live in my worlds!
Meet the Author
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Annie Seaton lives on the beautiful east coast of Australia, where she loves sitting in her writing chair, gazing at the ocean and writing stories. She has always been fascinated by all things historical and has found her niche writing romance, ranging from contemporary, paranormal and a foray into steampunk, where strong heroines and brooding heroes fight together to make their alternative world a better place!
Her debut full length novel, Holiday Affair, a contemporary romance set in the South Pacific was released as part of Entangled Publishing’s Indulgence line in March, 2012 and has been a best seller on both Amazon and Barnes and Noble. The sequel Italian Affair is out on 10 June. Watch out for the story of Tom and Brianna, the sex therapist who spices up his life! Outback Affair is due to be published soon after. Annie also has a romantic suspense Dangerous Desire novel with Entangled in September as well as a three book series in the Bliss imprint with Worth the Wait releasing in November.
Blind Lust, a paranormal novella was released in June 2012.
Winter of the Passion Flower Book one of the de Vargas family series, and Book Two, Summer of the Moon Flower were self published early this year as well as a book on promotion for aspiring authors. Promotional Tips and Tricks for Aspiring Authors in the Digital Landscape
Annie lives with her husband, and ‘Bob’ the dog and two white cats, in a house next to the beach in a small coastal town of New South Wales. Their two children are grown and married and she loves spending time gardening, walking on the beach and spoiling her two grandchildren.
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ATTENTION AUTHORS: If you would like to write a guest post for World-Building Wednesdays, please contact Ash at ash@smashattackreads.com or on Twitter @SmashAttackAsh. We would love to hear your thoughts!
Today, I would like t o welcome Eleri Stone to the blog. Eleri writes fantasy and paranormal romance stories, and is sharing something really kick ass with us today. She is delving into archaeology to describe her world-building process in her series, Lost City Shifters.
Using the archaeological record in world-building
Public Domain Image
So this place is incredible, and there are so many incredible sites all around the world. The question is how to incorporate some of that archaeological record into a modern-day story.
Ask “what if?”
What if the priests truly could turn into jaguars? What if this center of trade and ritual was simply a small outpost of a larger kingdom? I mean, the caiman and jaguar aren’t local to that area. Those are jungle creatures. What if the true heart of the civilization was in the Amazon rather than the Andes? Anyway, you get my drift. You start with the facts and then let your imagination take over.
Public Domain Image
These are the things that ground your story in reality and make it more believable. Study the artwork and artifacts. Learn as much as you can about the things that were left behind and what they were used for. More importantly, consider what those artifacts meant to the people who used them. Things will pop out at you as unusual and if they seem interesting to you, they’ll likely seem interesting to a reader too.
Explore the mystery
Archaeologists are extremely good at the “what if” game too, but it’s rare that scientists can interpret an artifact with 100% certainty. Often there are competing theories. As an author, it’s great to play with these mysteries. Aliens? Shapeshifters? Conspiracy theories? Consider the implausible.
Don’t be afraid to look beyond the borders of the archaeological record
I’m not talking about changing facts, especially if you’re actually setting your story at the site. But if you’re not setting your story at the site or during the same time period, you have a lot more leeway. The archaeological record tells about a civilization’s past and things will have changed since then. How?
Public Domain Image
Resources
http://www.world-archaeology.com/
http://www.archaeology.org/
http://www.panoramas.dk/7-wonders/index.html
My favorite – http://archive.cyark.org/project-world
Meet the Author
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Eleri Stone was born and raised in New Jersey. She graduated from the University of Iowa, married her college sweetheart, and settled in the Midwest where she still lives with her husband and their three children. A lifelong fan of fantasy, she started reading romance as an adult and was instantly captivated by the strong female protagonists, character-driven storylines and guarantee of a happy-ever-after. Writing fantasy and paranormal romance, she is the author of the Lost City Shifters series (shapeshifter paranormal romance), the Twilight of the Gods series (paranormal romance based on Norse mythology) and Threads of Desire (a secondary-world fantasy romance).
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ATTENTION AUTHORS: If you would like to write a guest post for World-Building Wednesdays, please contact Ash at ash@smashattackreads.com or on Twitter @SmashAttackAsh. We would love to hear your thoughts!
Lorena Bathey is visiting us today to discuss world-building for her current work in progress about Marilyn Monroe, as well as past and future novels. She is set to write historical fiction next, which involves all the fun research! 
How I Make My World
by Lorena Bathey
The world an author paints is usually quite vivid. As we create stories and develop the characters within we step into a world of imagination and make-believe. Oftentimes this place is a version of a world we either once lived, wish we lived in, or currently reside.
In my books it varies on what comes first, the world or the character. In my style of writing they are closely connected and whichever comes first the other follows quickly behind.
I get the idea of my worlds many times from places I’ve been. My next novel, Coaster, was created when my family and I went on a mini-vacation to Magic Mountain in Los Angeles. Standing in line I got an idea for the book and wrote the premise on the drive home.
My books show like movies in my head so I have to see where I am. That usually means, I’ve been where I am writing about or I can go and set the scene. My first two novels, Beatrice Munson and House on Plunkett Street were places I had been or lived in, so it was easy for me to create the world the protagonists inhabited. I just embellished to fit the world to the character.
The novel I’m working on now is about Marilyn Monroe, so I took a road trip to Los Angeles so I could get a picture in my head of Marilyn’s world. I visited her home, studios, cemetery, and even went to one of her favorite restaurants. It greatly aided in the feel and integrity of the book. Before that I had been pasting things together from the internet and books. Don’t get me wrong, we are so lucky as authors to have the internet to be able to look something up when we need it. But there is nothing like being in a place where your character either was or could’ve been. It makes it easier for me to write them there.
So far all my books have been set in current or recent past times, but my next book is a historical fiction. This has meant I have become very enamored of research. I had a taste of this wonderful tool with my Marilyn Monroe novel, but with the next book it is imperative that I do exhaustive research on the time of Thomas and Martha Jefferson. This research has given me a whole new respect on the way these people lived. It was HARD work living in colonial times and women and men had to be partners in a way I think we’ve lost along the way. But what’s so important to me is that the facts of where the book is set are accurate.
Whatever world an author creates it has to be believable. If you, the reader, don’t feel that the character would live there or that the world is credible than the book isn’t going to work. That is why writing has so many levels. You have to read your stories and make sure that the setting works or the characters won’t evolve and your book will fall flat.
Giveaway
Meet the Author
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Growing up in Northern California, Lorena Bathey attended St. Mary’s College in Moraga graduating with a degree in English. Lorena started writing her first book, Happy Beginnings: How I Became My Own Fairy Godmother when her world fell apart and she needed to process the massive changes in her life. Lorena found characters were visiting her mind and wouldn’t leave. She was introduced to Marissa, Andrea, Lily, Deidre and Beatrice and her first novel, Beatrice Munson, came to life. After finishing that book she was inspired to write more novels and she knew that pursuing her passion was the best way to live her life. So a writer she became. Today Lorena has written three novels, Beatrice Munson, House on Plunkett Street, and The X. She has two more novels in editing and beginning research on a historical novel.
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ATTENTION AUTHORS: If you would like to write a guest post for World-Building Wednesdays, please contact Ash at ash@smashattackreads.com or on Twitter @SmashAttackAsh. We would love to hear your thoughts!
Today’s world-building experience comes from author Nina Croft, a writer of romance in speculative fiction. She is bringing us the dirt on her new series, The Order, that takes place in London! WIN! Listen closely for a chance to win a copy…
Alternate Realities…
I write all sorts of romance, but usually with elements of paranormal or science fiction and sometimes with both. And I’ve come to realize that one of the things I love about writing speculative fiction is that absolutely anything can happen—as long as you make it believable.
That’s where the world-building comes in.
For me one of the pleasures of reading is to suspend reality for the duration of the book. I need to believe that vampires are real and other worlds exist. The last thing I want is to be pulled out of my new world by something that can’t possibly happen. So the world-building has to be consistent and convincing.
But whereas I’m a total plotter—I spend ages getting to know my characters and I outline my novel scene by scene—I’m going to admit that I only do the bare minimum of world-building before I start to write. That minimum usually includes just the where and the when. Most of my world-building is done as I go along or even after I’ve finished the first draft. Often, I find I have to go back and change facets of my world throughout the story so that things don’t seem contrived or worse—impossible. I also usually have add in descriptions of my settings as I tend to get caught up in the action as I write and skip over anything that might slow me down.
My latest release, Bittersweet Blood (book one in The Order series) takes place mainly London, a city I lived and worked in for a number of years. I think it can give a real sense of authenticity to write about places you know well. Then all you have to do is give them a little twist to create an alternate reality.
When I started Bittersweet Blood, I had the urge to write a vampire story, but I also wanted the book to be part of a series and I didn’t want to limit myself to vampires only. So my world had to include a whole range of supernatural creatures to give me lots to choose from in later books. But London might have gotten a little chaotic with all those paranormal races battling it out and so The Order of The Shadow Accords came into being. The Order is the organization that polices the supernatural world and makes sure the other races, mainly demons and the fae, don’t misbehave too badly and bring attention to themselves or destruction to mankind. The Order is run by vampires but they’re willing to employ a few other things as well, witches, warlocks, werewolves…
So I guess my world-building process is; I decide what I want to do, and then I build a world that enables me to do it. Of course things get a little more complicated as the series goes on and my characters have to remember the rules developed in earlier books. But that just makes things more interesting.
What do you think should come first—characters or world?
Let me know for a chance to win an ecopy of Bittersweet Blood.
International eBook giveaway. Ends 4/5/13. Winner chosen randomly.
Congratulations, Mary P!
Tara Collins just wants to be normal. Everyone else wants her dead.
Tara’s eccentric aunt raised her to be fearful of the world and follow the rules. But after her aunt’s death, Tara is ready to take control and experience life for the first time. But she quickly discovers that everything she’s been told is a web of lies. Determined to solve the mystery of who she is truly, she hires private investigator to help her uncover the truth.
Christian Roth is more than your average PI. A vampire and ex-demon hunter, Christian lives among the humans, trying to be “normal.” But recently, things seem to be falling apart. There’s a crazed demon hell-bent on revenge hunting him down and a fae assassin on the loose with an unknown target. Plus, the Order he abandoned desperately needs his help.
As the secrets of Tara’s past collide with the problems in Christian’s present, she finds herself fighting her attraction to the dark and mysterious investigator. Falling in love does not fit into her plans at all, but Tara soon learns that some rules are meant to be broken.
Buy Links: Amazon | Barnes and Noble | Books On Board
Meet the Author
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Nina Croft grew up in the north of England. After training as an accountant, she spent four years working as a volunteer in Zambia which left her with a love of the sun and a dislike of 9-5 work. She then spent a number of years mixing travel (whenever possible) with work (whenever necessary) but has now settled down to a life of writing and picking almonds on a remote farm in the mountains of southern Spain.
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ATTENTION AUTHORS: If you would like to write a guest post for World-Building Wednesdays, please contact Ash at ash@smashattackreads.com or on Twitter @SmashAttackAsh. We would love to hear your thoughts!
Author Jess Macallan is here today to talk about the world-building in her urban fantasy series, Set in Stone. One of the reasons she likes to write in the UR/PNR genres because of the world-building! It is one of the huge reasons I love to read those genres! ♥
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Thanks so much for having me at Smash Attack Reads today! I’m celebrating the release of the second book in my Set in Stone series, Stone Cold Revenge. The world-building process was interesting and challenging from the start.
One of the reasons I write in the paranormal and urban fantasy genres is because of the world building. It’s one thing to create characters, but setting up an entire world is another matter. Authors like Patricia Briggs, Kim Harrison and Julie Kagawa have always inspired me with their edgy worlds that seem to blend the everyday with the otherworldly. Fantasy authors like Maria Snyder and Tamora Pierce create new worlds full of intricate details. The Set in Stone series is of the former variety.
Shadow elves, gargoyles, oracles and phoenix coexist with humans, although without their knowledge. One of the reasons I did this was so Elle, the heroine, would feel the conflict of being pulled from her preferred, yet ordinary life, and thrown into a world she’d been magically influenced to forget.
I wanted to blend magic abilities and mythological creatures with current day surroundings so readers wouldn’t have to stretch quite so far to escape into it. I also wanted Elle to be like you or me so I could challenge myself with the question: what would we do if we were suddenly thrown into a paranormal society where our version of normal didn’t exist? (Normal being a relative term, of course). I knew I wanted gargoyles, but the shadow and light elves were a later addition. I cast my heroine in a potentially dark role to see how she would handle it, and where she’d eventually go with it.
When I go to coffee shops to write, I’m mostly there to people watch. Each new face offers an unlimited potential in a new world. What magical abilities could they have? What drives them to cause harm or help? My imagination also kicks into overdrive when I see abandoned buildings, old houses, or even a shiny new high rise. What creature would live, work, or hide in any of those places and why?
World building is challenging for the sole reason that it’s only limited by the writer’s imagination. Which also happens to be our most dangerous and powerful weapon. The fun part is slowly building the parameters of those worlds, adding mythological and supernatural beings, giving them abilities, and creating their territories. I’m constantly jotting down ideas for different worlds, some of which I may never use, and some of which I may ultimately blend together.
I hope you’ll read about Elle’s world and follow her as she learns what being a shadow elf and weaver is all about.
Thanks to the readers at Smash Attack Reads for letting me share the Set in Stone world with you.
Meet the Author
Jess lives in the Inland Northwest with her husband and three children. She thrives on creative chaos. Curiosity drives her to try new things as often as possible. When not writing or chasing trouble, she teaches yoga, writing classes, reads, experiments with new recipes, and gardens. The only things she takes seriously are chocolate, tea and world domination. But mostly chocolate.
I love connecting with readers, and I hope you’ll find me on
| Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads | JessMacallan |
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ATTENTION AUTHORS: If you would like to write a guest post for World-Building Wednesdays, please contact Ash at ash@smashattackreads.com or on Twitter @SmashAttackAsh. We would love to hear your thoughts!
