Building A Novel

I didn't blog on Monday like I was "supposed" to but for good reason. I've been "Building" my novel. I guess that's just my fancy (or not so much) way of saying I'm planning my novel out.

Most people would actually call this World Building because that's what I'm doing essentially but I have a problem with this terminology.

There are about a half a million websites on how to begin world building. There's books, courses, workshops. You name it, they have it, and each one of them calls it world building. (There is one exception that I'll mention later)

But visit one of those websites and you know what you'll find? World building tactics, yes, but something else. Culture. That, in my opinion, is not world building. It's obviously culture building.

The type of solar system your world is located in, how many planets, how many moons and so on? World Building. Your map, the regions, plants and animals? World Building.

But what about language and customs? What about Ceremonies and Holidays? That's not World Building. Those things have to do with people and their way of life. The world has an effect on it but it's not about the world. It's culture.

For this reason I've come up with a new term. Culture Building.

For most people this is really just about terminology. Who cares, right? World Building, Culture Building, whatever it's called the basic idea is the same and you still have to do it.

Well, for me, I could never get past it. I would do the basic steps and then I was burned out. God, world building takes forever, kind of mentality. I guess it's about moving on, going through the steps.

So that's what I'm going to do. Go through the steps, I'm going to "build" a novel

This is what I've come up with so far. (Obviously, there is just a basic outline. I'll go through the actual ABC's and 123's of it in a later post)

BUILDING A NOVEL

1. World Building: This includes things like the solar system, planets, moon, constellations, orbit, rotation, etc.

2. Culture Building: I'm still working on this because I think there is a lot of work that can be done. I want to have it all even if I don't use it all. So far I have things like People, Social Organizations, Commerce, Daily Life, Home Life, Religion, Government, Community Life. I'm not sure how I'm going to organize any of this yet

3. Story Building: This is pretty simple. I'm going to use Theme, Symbolism, Structure, POV, and Tense

4. *Character Building: Here is obvious. Main, Major, Minor, and Extras. Under each I'll go ahead and come up with what I need to know about each set of characters. Obviously main and major will have a whole lot more than minor. Extras I'm putting in because sometimes an extra can turn into a minor, possibly a major, so I want to at least know that person exists. This can also do wonders for culture building. An extra, a waiter, for example, in a local shop. Maybe there is something specific I need to know about how waiters act in my world. Or something along those lines.

4. *Plot Building: Here I really have no idea. I've never been much of a "plotter" I do plot but small sections at a time and usually not very well. It messes me up later which is why I'm adding it. This I will have to work on.

* Character and Plot are not really separate in the building process so unlike the others that you can pretty much do in a linear fashion this takes going back and forth between the two in both the planning stage and writing stage.

I bet most of you are thinking why go through all this work? Well, I have a couple of reasons.

1. This one is the most important: I can't write. It's just not coming to me so I'm using my writing time as building time. So far it's been working quite well. I have way more ideas about this story than I did before starting. It's actually starting to feel like a real novel

2. Other people have great systems. Most of this information I go from other websites but it's still someone else's system. I'm sure it works for many people but I wan my very own system that I created. Maybe I'll be using the information from others but it will be in a way that works for me.

3. It's really fun! I didn't use to think planning was fun. I thought it was just a thing I had to do so that I could get to the really fun part, the writing. Now, the writing is still the best part, but I think I've learned to enjoy the whole journey now.

How about the rest of you? Any of you "Building Your Novel"? How do you do it?

*****

I want to give credit for all the world building information I've been using. There's quite a bit...

1. http://steph-wordbyword.blogspot.com/p/stephs-worldbuilding-guide.html  I'm using her ideas from Off/On Planet.

2. http://www.seventhsanctum.com/www/wwwfull.htmlHere I didn't use any particular thing but some of the articles gave a few ideas on how to do what other articles just mentioned. I really liked that. Plus it's very extensive

3. http://www.novel-writing-help.com/This website is a cornucopia of novel writing advice. This is where I got "Story Building" from and just made a few adjustments to make it my very own.

4. http://hollylisle.com/maps-workshop-developing-the-fictional-world-through-mapping/Holly has a great website with so much information on how to do just about everything.

5.http://www.amazon.com/Lisles-Create-Culture-Clinic-ebook/dp/B004EYUHRE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1355921092&sr=8-1&keywords=holly+lisle+culture+clinicThis is a course, really, and yes it cost but I used this for my own culture building (plus another website) and it's really in depth. I don't like the way it's organized which is why I'm doing it myself,  but it provides a lot of ideas for culture creation. Most things I wouldn't have questioned without it.  Her language clinic is also amazing.

6.http://www.sfwa.org/2009/08/fantasy-worldbuilding-questions/I'm using this with the culture clinic to create my own way of culture building.

So those are the websites. Have fun!