Worldbuilding
This page almost didn't make the cut to my new website platform.
Earlier incarnations have been fatuous or embarrassing--often both. But these are questions I'm still turning over in my head... so... it's not time yet to leave it behind.
Earlier incarnations have been fatuous or embarrassing--often both. But these are questions I'm still turning over in my head... so... it's not time yet to leave it behind.
Where do writers of fantasy get their ideas? This is a question that I have been asked repeatedly over the years. One answer (for me) is that my books grew out of the childish and largely unfinished or uncompleted stories, drawings, and games that I developed untidily and undirectedly from the time that I was quite young. At some point my constructions becomes more consciously about storytelling, and then more consciously about a single fantastic world. At some point well after that I began to start working deliberately on plot lines that could be turned into the form of writing that we recognize as a novel. So--the novels came about a long time after my world had begun to be formed.
These experiences primed me to believe that reading, writing, and fantasy don't necessarily have the direct link that we currently assign them. I value my reading--but it was my experiences pushing an extended dynasty of toys around among block-built towers and castles and outdoor games--and much later gaming--that were the early triggers of my imagination--not rows of sentences printed on a page.
The more I learn about the canon of fantasy--those writers whose works endure over time and continue to be read--the more I am struck by the wealth of material they produced--often related to their constructed world--that wasn't writing. T.H. White's The Sword in the Stone was produced with original drawings that White had done himself, J.R.R. Tolkien produced his own maps, illustrations and covers--the list goes on. Even today, writers like Terry Pratchett and Robert Jordan clearly delight in collaborating on maps and heraldic designs and even small gamers' figurines that further flesh out their worlds. It isn't just about franchising. It's about an impulse to give their imagined world depth. Once you start building a world for yourself, it can't all be fitted onto a printed page. The imagination simply keeps coming up with stuff that doesn't fit into this post-Guttenberg format.
These experiences primed me to believe that reading, writing, and fantasy don't necessarily have the direct link that we currently assign them. I value my reading--but it was my experiences pushing an extended dynasty of toys around among block-built towers and castles and outdoor games--and much later gaming--that were the early triggers of my imagination--not rows of sentences printed on a page.
The more I learn about the canon of fantasy--those writers whose works endure over time and continue to be read--the more I am struck by the wealth of material they produced--often related to their constructed world--that wasn't writing. T.H. White's The Sword in the Stone was produced with original drawings that White had done himself, J.R.R. Tolkien produced his own maps, illustrations and covers--the list goes on. Even today, writers like Terry Pratchett and Robert Jordan clearly delight in collaborating on maps and heraldic designs and even small gamers' figurines that further flesh out their worlds. It isn't just about franchising. It's about an impulse to give their imagined world depth. Once you start building a world for yourself, it can't all be fitted onto a printed page. The imagination simply keeps coming up with stuff that doesn't fit into this post-Guttenberg format.
In 1993, there was an exhibition of the J.R.R. Tolkien notebooks and incunabula at the Bodliean Library in Oxford, from which a beautiful illustrated catalogue was produced (see Tolkien-Catalogue). Full-color reproductions included Tolkien's trench-maps from W.W.I, his illustrated letters to his wife, the watercolors he did for his children at Christmas, his maps--and illustrations of his fantasy world. Whatever one thinks of Tolkien's writing, this glimpse into the integrated world that he built for himself is fascinating and imaginatively inspiring. Whether one wants to look at Tolkien's beautifully drawn trench-maps and overlay them on his later maps of Middle Earth--I'm not sure that I do--or just see how wonderfully ACTIVE and inventive Tolkien was when he was thinking about his world, it's a rewarding and really quite wonderful book.
When I was a child, I read with envy of novelists who wrote their first complete story at age nine, or thirteen, or eighteen, and wondered if I would ever produce something complete and finished that I would be able to show to other people. The things (pieces of writing and drawing) that I produced seemed ephemeral, unfinished. It was thrilling and exciting when I finally did produce my first big, finished piece of writing (see my "books" page). After years of wondering if I would ever find the focus to complete any big writing project, the focus finally came.
So--before the finished writing, I'd been mucking about in my own fantasy world for years. I was an early map-maker (there are a couple that I created as a sentimental 11 year old that are somewhat embarrassing to revisit now--the various "commodities" that supported the local economies were often printed in the key--mostly highly bred hunting dogs, perfumes, and other oddities that I suppose might have been important to a small segment of the population--in Northern Europe, circa 1183).
When I was a child, I read with envy of novelists who wrote their first complete story at age nine, or thirteen, or eighteen, and wondered if I would ever produce something complete and finished that I would be able to show to other people. The things (pieces of writing and drawing) that I produced seemed ephemeral, unfinished. It was thrilling and exciting when I finally did produce my first big, finished piece of writing (see my "books" page). After years of wondering if I would ever find the focus to complete any big writing project, the focus finally came.
So--before the finished writing, I'd been mucking about in my own fantasy world for years. I was an early map-maker (there are a couple that I created as a sentimental 11 year old that are somewhat embarrassing to revisit now--the various "commodities" that supported the local economies were often printed in the key--mostly highly bred hunting dogs, perfumes, and other oddities that I suppose might have been important to a small segment of the population--in Northern Europe, circa 1183).
This image is less about the development of my world than of my development as a Gamemaster. Initially, I imagined that the most exciting thing would be to produce artifacts that looked like they were from my world to hand over to the players (this one employs a simple substitution code and a system of 'runes' that were definitely inspired by Tolkien's example). To some degree I was right, but the success with the above inspired me to what I thought were greater things....
This document uses the same runes as the first. My players loved the way it looked--but didn't appreciate having to do the full translation in real time, only to discover that it was a piece of highly florid and really rather awful gaming-poetry that told them where to look for the next 'adventure' while being of no relevance to the 'adventure' in which they were currently acting.
A brief roll of the important Bissanty nobles. This was my first experience ever with computer graphics and MacPaint 1.0 (colored by hand, rescanned back in). Also gives a good sense of what it's like to be an obsessed college-attending Gamemaster with too much time on her hands... I got interested in Tarot symbolism some years into my campaign, and decided that my world needed to have some sort of magical deck of cards. From this idea (and from some bad drawings to start with) I developed the idea of creating a new, more animal-based set of cards called the Rhaasan. Later, I decided that the double 'a' was a bad way to make a fantasy title and changed the deck to simply the 'Rhasan' (which still has the immature fantasy-titler's extra 'h', but at least looks easy to pronounce). The 'doves' card (twin doves standing perched on a sharp sword edge that is cutting their feet) symbolizes--among other things-- voluntary self-sacrifice.
At some point I read in a role-playing instruction book that a good way to make city maps was to color-code blocks of buildings (red for commercial, blue for religious, yellow for residential and so forth). I produced these two maps, which were good looking but fairly useless in terms of exciting players and drawing them into my world.
At some point I learned that simple images were sometimes the best to create atmosphere --particularly for players with short attention spans! This was from an adventure into a primitive part of my world.
Finally, I started trying to produce portraits of characters. This one is of 'Columba Neronatale' --Collie for short-- a light-fingered warrior woman I myself played in someone else's campaign.
I did a series of portraits of characters (what could be called 'non-player-characters') in my world. I spent a lot of time looking at paintings and drawings by old masters for faces to steal, and wasted some time looking in modern magazines, where I seldom saw any faces that were worth pinching and transposing to my fantasy world (most twentieth century magazine portraits just don't have 'character' that looks convincing in a fantasy world). Towards the end, I started feeling I was getting something right. This character is a female gladiator who, after working her way up to triumph in the ring, suffered several years as a slave.
This document uses the same runes as the first. My players loved the way it looked--but didn't appreciate having to do the full translation in real time, only to discover that it was a piece of highly florid and really rather awful gaming-poetry that told them where to look for the next 'adventure' while being of no relevance to the 'adventure' in which they were currently acting.
A brief roll of the important Bissanty nobles. This was my first experience ever with computer graphics and MacPaint 1.0 (colored by hand, rescanned back in). Also gives a good sense of what it's like to be an obsessed college-attending Gamemaster with too much time on her hands... I got interested in Tarot symbolism some years into my campaign, and decided that my world needed to have some sort of magical deck of cards. From this idea (and from some bad drawings to start with) I developed the idea of creating a new, more animal-based set of cards called the Rhaasan. Later, I decided that the double 'a' was a bad way to make a fantasy title and changed the deck to simply the 'Rhasan' (which still has the immature fantasy-titler's extra 'h', but at least looks easy to pronounce). The 'doves' card (twin doves standing perched on a sharp sword edge that is cutting their feet) symbolizes--among other things-- voluntary self-sacrifice.
At some point I read in a role-playing instruction book that a good way to make city maps was to color-code blocks of buildings (red for commercial, blue for religious, yellow for residential and so forth). I produced these two maps, which were good looking but fairly useless in terms of exciting players and drawing them into my world.
At some point I learned that simple images were sometimes the best to create atmosphere --particularly for players with short attention spans! This was from an adventure into a primitive part of my world.
Finally, I started trying to produce portraits of characters. This one is of 'Columba Neronatale' --Collie for short-- a light-fingered warrior woman I myself played in someone else's campaign.
I did a series of portraits of characters (what could be called 'non-player-characters') in my world. I spent a lot of time looking at paintings and drawings by old masters for faces to steal, and wasted some time looking in modern magazines, where I seldom saw any faces that were worth pinching and transposing to my fantasy world (most twentieth century magazine portraits just don't have 'character' that looks convincing in a fantasy world). Towards the end, I started feeling I was getting something right. This character is a female gladiator who, after working her way up to triumph in the ring, suffered several years as a slave.
