World building and Back story

It’s an amazing thing when you look down at your own ideas and realize you’re creating a world. It makes you feel much more like a ‘real’ writer, even when you’re, like I am, so far from even trying to be published. It’s not something I expected from myself. I always thought my stories would jump around. Worlds weren’t for me. I wasn’t that creative.

I did try to create worlds, fantasy ones, as a child, but the task was always overwhelming. There’s so much TOO a world that you have to think of, and this has plague even great fantasy and sci-fi writers to this day. In fact, while I dislike his writing personally, my biggest admiration and praise for Tolkien is that he managed to create such a large, realistic world. So, a few years ago, I gave up medieval fantasy when writing. It was too hard for me and I couldn’t see the big picture that well. I also gave it up because after 16 years of medieval fantasy I had grown bored with the genre.

So I turned my eye to modern fantasy. (I still love my magic.) I figured, here we go, no need to worry, the world is set up for me. I don’t have to worry at all. Then, to my utter surprise, when the pressure is off, I started to build my world.

This might not work for everyone. I don’t know, I can only give advice for what worked for me. The other day I learned that someone published a novel five years after she started. I always assumed if you were one of those people that said you spend x years working on something, of course it wouldn’t work, you let the project drag out too long. What do you know?

But for me, when world building, it’s nice to start small. Magic Quarter started small. At first, I just had the Themes. One word that your magic gathered around to varying strength depending on the person. Then I decided, how can this magic work with the world at large, so I decided on the magic quarter. When I sat down to actually write Jokers, I worked on it a little bit, enough to understand the setting better. I thought about what would work and how. As my characters evolved, my setting had to evolve to make sure their backstory still made sense.

Then I made a Knight character for an RP with my muse, Astrid. I wanted to use him in a story and I was trying to think, “What could motivate a knight to exist in modern times? Why would one exist, especially with the level of motivation and backstory my character has?”

That’s how my magic users got an enemy, the Knights. Now I have two sides of an ancient war. Best of all, I could switch sides as the stories demanded. Magic users were selfish and cold as a whole. Knights were over driven and close minded. Both could be villains and heroes. I like the idea of that, no clear good and evil.

The point is, I would have never come up with such an enemy for the Magic Quarter without letting the idea comes as it may. If you start small, with a set of characters and a simple setting the setting may grow as your characters grown. I believe a naturally grown world is best, it comes off as more natural.

Try not to push anything in your writing. Pushing forces blocks. While sometimes you’ll have to push yourself, you shouldn’t have to push your writing. You’d be amazed at the gifts your story can give you, so long as you treat it right.

Themes

So while I was editing today I started thinking a little about a different project I currently have on hold so I can edit. I wrote in Jokers that every Theme has its opposites. Taking Jokers as an example, there's a reason Chaos and Control were born at the same time. The world without both would be unbalanced and it's a risk to have all the power on one side.

In my other story I'm thinking of having Dawn and Shadows. (Which is different from Light and Dark by term of power, Light and Dark are special and I'll explain about the different kinds of Themes in a different entry). I realized that I wanted Shadows to be much older, so I wondered how that would work.

Then I thought, well, it'd be silly for every opposite to be twins. I mean, not that many twins are born. There are a lot of Themes. Then I realized this explains why most Theme users are born to magical families but why sometimes someone born to a human family gets a Theme. (Which I'll have to explore someday)

When someone with a Theme dies, that Theme becomes 'open' for a new baby to get it. If the opposite Theme still lives , that Theme needs to be reborn pronto. Obviously whatever assigns Themes can't just make life, (Unless I wanted to make Gods, which is getting WAY too big), so they have to give it to about to be born baby, as soon as birth as possible. If there isn't any available among the magic folk, which is more natural for a Theme, then it will have to go to a more open human.

For you wondering just what Themes ARE, Themes is a brand of magic where people can do anything relating to a single word Theme. Taking my heroes from my last post:

Clara has a Dream Theme, (rhyming ftw) and can make people live out their greatest fantasies naturally. With control, she can manipulate dreams and make people see whatever she wishes. Stronger Themes can also communicate though dreams, and enter sleeping people's minds.

Korbin has two Themes (VERY rare, three Themes are impossible), Chaos and Emotion. With Chaos he can gather it around his skin, it's like a mix of water and electricity running across his skin except it's a dark purple. This allows for an random affect to happen to both him and whose attacking him. Chaos sometimes favor its host and sometimes it doesn't. When it does, in general it will hurt who ever is attacking (or whoever Korbin is attacking) and help Korbin, but it can make everything worse too. Obviously unstable. It always makes it impossible for Korbin to live too structured a life and he has a high risk for insanity later in life. Emotion is a bit more stable. He can see people's emotions as colors that surround them and manipulate them with his mind. He can grow or suppress a person's feelings but he can't create or destroy.

Phoenix has two Themes two, Manners and Control. Manners is a suck Theme. All it does is force you to be polite, always. He can never be rude, or so he thinks. Phoenix is a bit of a defeatist and has a very self-fulling prophesy personality. I'll explore that more in his book. Control is much more fun, for him. Control allows him to control anyone he choses. Well, it could, depending on how strong it is. Problem is that it's very rude to take control of someone so Phoenix doesn't get to use it much and even then, only with permission. Side affects include a high chance for OCD and he can't get addicted to anything or get that high or drunk (all include loss of control). He's also good at a lot of sports, and surprisingly, video games. Not that he'd ever play them.

Rachael's Theme is Lust, part of the special Seven Sins Team. Her Theme is kind of sucky too, but only because she doesn't want to be a slut. Lust is attractive to everyone the host is attracted too. (I.E, straight people? Just opposite gender. Gay? Just same gender. Bi? Everyone! Whoo!) It works stronger when person does want someone and is semi-activated by puberty. (It gets stronger thanks to hormones). Problem is, that if it's strong it tends to just encourage molestation without proper control and people being aware. Rachael is human born so....yeah. But that's a story for another time.

Alignments

So this is just for fun. I was discussing with my muse Astrid possible DnD alignments for my characters for Jokers, my novel I'm editing (slowly, damn you laziness!). Ether way; this novel has Clara (main character), Korbin (her love interest), Phoenix (Korbin's twin) and then for the sequel, Rachael (Phoenix's love interest, hence sequel).

Clara is definitely Lawful Good, she Catholic (though lapsed) and kind of a coward, which means she feels better toeing the line. All forms of establishment calms her, and while authority figures tend to scare her, she also is drawn to them.

Korbin is obvious. It's in his Themes. XD He's Chaotic Good, can't stand establishment and authority figures makes him thumb his nose at them. He tends to break rules and patterns for the hell of it but you cant rust him while breaking those rules and patterns that he's doing a good thing on the side. Ironically he'd make a good knight, since they tended to wander around saving girls.

Phoenix must be opposite of Korbin always! So he's Lawful Evil. I think in my edited version this becomes more clear, since I'm not so eager to get him and Clara close, but when I orginally thought these two up, Phoenix was supposed to be the 'evil' twin. (I thought these up for a soap opera mocking RP, hence why they're a little cliche) I wanted him to appear good and Korbin to appear evil while being good. So while he ended up becoming a good guy for me, and hero of his own novel, I still see him as evil.

Then Rachael, which no one knows because the small bit of Phoenix's story I posted before I took everything down had Eve. Rachael is her stronger replacement. Eve was a little too wish washy, and it became uncomfortable to write such an unbalanced relationship. Rachael is Lawful Neutral and with much more of a spine than Eve. She's also not that into 'good' or 'evil', but definitely obeys the law because she feels she owes it to her 'parents'. Her story will be reveled eventually.

So it's been a while since I posted here. Sorry, school hit me hard and I've been quietly working away. I'll try to post things here, like new projects, what's been going one, ect. I'm not quite sure what to use this for, I'll be honest, when I don't have much to update writing wise. A part of me feels I should use it to give lessons on writing like many writers do, and make it less all about me, me, me and perhaps I'd get more readers but that requires work and effort and I'm bad at both. XD

Ether way, I'll try to post more fun stuff like this.

Oh, and editing is going okay. Not as good as it should. I have finished my first edit of chapter '3' of Jokers.

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