World Building: The Planet Part II

Last week we looked at History and Geography of the planet in Part I. Today I'll show you how I go about creating plant life. I was going to include animal life here, however it turned out to be a much longer explanation than I anticipated so I'm just going to do plants.

Here I want to note something before I begin that I've already mentioned before. None of this is neccessary. Pick and choose what you want to do. The object is to write the story and if you are creating plant life just to create it, yes it will make your world more realistic, but it's... I won't say a waste of time but it's... time spent agonizing over what this particular plant (or animal, or whatever) should look like or do while it would be better spent actually writing the story.

The best advice I've found is finding a balance. But onto the post..

Flora

Name

This is something I come back to but I added here for organization purposes but for right now I'm leaving this section blank. I'm going to add it to my list of names I need to come up with. 

Biome

The first thing I look at when creating new plant life is the biome it will be located in. It will give quite a bit of insight on the plant itself. You are not going to find large trees with beautiful green leaves and flowers that bloom in the spring in the Tundra biome. It's just not going to happen. The tundra doesn't have many trees and when it does, they are usually stunted because of the lack of nutrients they receive. Have another look at the biomes and see what kind of plants normally grow there.

While doing this I would normally look at where my story is going to be located to determine which biome it will be in. If most of my story is going to be located in the desert and I choose the tundra to create this plant how is that going to work into my story? 

For right now though because I don't have an actual "area" yet, I'm going to randomly pick one. I'm going to go with forest and to narrow it down even further I'll go ahead and say a rainforest or tropical forest. 

Type

While the biome I chose has already given me a starting point here is where I choose the type of plant. There are SO many to choose from and it all depends on what your making the plant for. If you need it for something specific then choose what you need (a certain flower that cures blood poisoning when cooked with the seeds of a certain fruit?) but if your using it for plainly world building and just giving the area a foreign feel then be creative (a vine that is climbing the castle walls or a tall grass where serpents hide) Whatever you want.

As for me I'm going to say a flower.

Use

I already gave a prelude to it in the above section. This is where we will be looking at what your characters can/will be using this particular plant for. To start off think of all the things we do with plants.

1. Food - potatoes, beans
2. Heat - wood
3. Structures/furniture - wood
4. Oxygen - plants release it into the air while using up carbon dixocide
5. Medicine - Opium poppy (this is used in morphine)
6. Clothing - cotton

And that's not even all of it... we use them for paper, ceremonies, home decor, and definitely for landscaping. Can you think of anything else?

I'm going to create a flower that is used for a wedding ceremony. It is put in the hair of the bride by the groom which is later taken out and crushed and cooked and they drink it together after the ceremony ends. 

If you'll notice here now I have created not only a plant but tiny bits of information about the society just from a flower. That's the beauty of world building. 

 Description

This is the really fun part. Now you get to decide what it looks like. While this is FUN it is also really HARD (for me, at least). I find it's easier by looking up exotic plants to get a feel for something different and then making up the rest.

 My flower looks like a daisy in a way except the petals stick up in a rounded sort of way essentially making the flower look like a tiny teacup. They are usually white white streaks of pink or purple running through them but other known colors are solid white, pink, purple, or blue, or white with blue streaks. The most rare color is pink with white streaks instead of the other way around. 

The husband must find the flower so he usually goes looking for the most rare because it is said to give the couple luck.

Also another little tidbit of how this particular society works and how they think.

Other

This is nothing specific just whatever else you think you'll need or want to include. I don't have anything else to add so this section I would leave blank but here include everything the other sections didn't cover. You could explain how the plant is cooked, why it is forbidden to plant/pick/touch, the way it is used in a spell. Anything.

 Back to Name

Since I've finished this plant creation I'll now put it in my little table as "Rainforest Flower" so I know what I'm talking about.

Next time I'll look at how I create animals but until then if any of you have created a plant according to this share it with me! I'd love to see how it worked for someone else. Or share with me how YOU come up with plant life.

World Building: The Planet Part I

Sorry I didn't post last week but I just moved into a new house and just got internet back on tuesday. I could have posted on my phone.... but the one handed typing gets irritating after awhile. But anyway, I'm here now. Better than never!

Last time we went over how I world build the galaxy. Now I'm going to move on to the actual planet. This has quite a bit more information than "The Solar System" so I've split it into parts. I foresee about 4 parts but until I write them I have no idea.... so we'll see!

In this section I'll show you how I begin creating my planets history and the geography. Let's get started...

History

This is just an idea, I guess, and I only begin with it because all of the rest of things influence it so I add things as I go a long. At first this section might only be a sentence. Something like "The world began 5.9 billion years ago."  but then end up in a paragraph or ten pages. This one is really up to you. If you look up the earth history... wow. You'll find quite a bit of information. Don't worry about getting that detailed. It's unnecessary and in my opinion a waste of time. Just get what you need to know and move on.

My history for my planet is going to start off like this...

Moon 2 has been in orbit of Planet D for about 6.8 billion years. Planet D "caught" the moon when it was just an asteroid. After many years the location of the moon caused it to begin to create an atmosphere which in turn led to the development of life because of the habitable zone where it was located.

I probably could come up with something better but it works for this. I'm not sure if an astroid could actually create an atmosphere but for now that's what happened. If need be I will change it later.

Also notice I'm still using moon and planet D. I haven't made my language yet so for now that's what they are going to be. I forgot to mention in the last post, however, that I do a table with names I need to come up with later.

Geography

Composition

This section is really quite simple. Just find out your planets water and land ratio. Make something up or go into deep thought about this. Don't forget that what you do choose will have an effect on planet life. A planet with 90% water and only 10%land is very different type of life than that of earth and think about all the problems you could come up with on a planet of 90% land and only 10% water.

Moon 2 is going to be about 63% land and 47% water

Map

This is easy enough. Create a map. Paper or digital. Whatever you want. I usually make a digital one and then print it off blank and make the rest of my maps there but because this particular world is only for the blog (well so far!) then I'm going to create all my maps on here.

First create a blank map just the basic outline of the land masses. I use paint but you can use whatever you want.  Now copy this three times and then leave one completely blank for maps you'll want/need later. ALWAYS have a blank one.



Then you'll want to have an idea of the sections. I'm not really sure what I would call it but think of it as the lines we know of on the earth like the Equator, the line of cancer, the line of ..... and so on. It's just to give an idea about where they things are located.

I classify these as FACE, LINE, and SECTION. It was the easiest way for me but you can come up with whatever system you want for it.  Lines are horizontal and a section is just one of the vertical lines whereas a face is two put together. Normally I would number them but I think you'll get the jist by the picture...



After that I create the countries. Still no names but I usually give numbers and letters. A continent gets a letter and then the countries on it get a number. These also go on my table of naming things.



I would make a one blank copy of these to save as well. JUST in case. You never know what you might need them for. But I've created too many maps and lost them because I edited it without saving a copy. Not good.

Quick note here if you are going to use my example of how to do this and use paint... don't color in your countries unless you have a backup copy. I did what I did above to make it more visually appealing... however if you do so then when you do want it in complete white... say to make the terrain map (below) you'll have to change it back to white then erase they part of the number because it will leave a smudge of color.

The last map you'll create (for now!) is a terrain map. Be as basic or as detailed as you want.



This is another section you will probably come back to so make what you need and move on but don't feel like you can't come back. You probably will.

I usually make quite a bit more maps than those but those are the ones I ALWAYS make.

Biomes

Here, like mentioned before, is another place you'll use a map. Create a biome map of your country (do this both on a blank one and one with country lines. It's usually easier if your using a simple program to do it on the one with the countries and then jsut delete the lines that separate it.)

Here are the earth biomes. Depending on how you want to look at biomes there are more or less but I like that website because I think it's just the right amount. But in case you want more (or less) here are a few more websites

A kids version but has quite a bit of information - http://kids.nceas.ucsb.edu/biomes/Another kid version - http://www.enchantedlearning.com/biomes/  Here are a few more. http://www.worldbiomes.com/ and http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/exhibits/biomes/deserts.php

I came up with something like this just using the very basic of biomes.



If you know exactly where you want your story to take place you can make it more extensive. I just did forest but there are temperate and tropical. A grassland can be further divided into Temperate grassland, savanna, or steppe. Deserts can be arid, semi arid, coastal. Maybe your planet has a completely different one. Honestly the possibilities are endless.

And that wraps up Part I of The Planet. Part II will include Climate and Flora (Plants)... possibly Fauna (Animals) as well.