After a hard day scribbling, I think I have most of the concepts hammered down now. In truth much of it has been only minor changes from a piece I wrote about 6 years ago as the background, but those small changes can be rather important. Still got to type up a few more bits, largely about 'magic' but that is a reasonably minor thing all told compared to all the world effecting events as mentioned above.
So, a hour or so typing, then it is a case of getting back into the world itself. I have been digging up texts about Bair the past week. I have several time lines to read through, several lists of constructed language notes to check over, and of course some maps to print off the large master copy I have (A huge 4 piece Photoshop document, which is in turn created from an old hand drawn map that was over 6 ft square!)
My plan at present is to go through the timeline, change as needed, and get a series of maps together (sketches) to sort out the history. I would like to do something along the lines of Mark Rosenfelder, an historical atlas, but my mind doesn't really think of history that way. Call me old fashioned but I still like timelines (Comes from reading the Anglo Saxon Chronicle when I was like 14 i suppose...
Then of course, I'd like to write some short stories in pieces of the history. In the first incarnation of my 'conworld' I only wrote a handful of stories, save of course some narrative history pieces. However the past few years have been ones of little world creation and almost pure writing (When of course I didn't have writers block!) so I'd like to keep that going. Short stories like this will also help me capture the cultures I am writing about a lot better as well. This is not to say I'm not going to spend hours trying to get declension patterns in some obscure created language right, I expect there will be plenty of that :P
Of course this is going to be a long project. I worked solidly for 8 years and never quite got to the present day, but then again, I was still learning a lot then. I think I can (hopefully) go somewhat faster this time!
Sunday, 20 February 2011
Saturday, 19 February 2011
Back to the beginning
Time to actually use this blog it seems. Well I am presently reading through a load of my old writing on my fantasy universe, trying to get a feel for it after four years away from it.
Since of course that will mean nothing to most of you, if anyone reads this. My fantasy world, Bair, was my sole writing project from when I first started writing in 1998 right up until 2007. It started off as, regrettably, a rather poor rip off of Tolkien's Silmarillion (Which has always been my fave Tolkien book) However as I worked at it, it became rather less 'fantastical' and has ended up much more of an 'alternative world' fantasy, with a very long history and though the 'magical' stuff was still there, it became much more grounded.
In truth each revision I have done of the world has reduced the fantasy angle more and more. At present then I am fighting a bit of a battle with myself over the magical/fantastical elements and the more grounded ones. The old story, as I left it, was that a war from another dimension spilled into Bair, bringing the peoples of both sides of the war into the world, which then became the battleground. That is alright, I like these people, (I won't burden the blog with names yet) However when one side (the baddies) nearly win, I pulled a minor Deus Ex Machina to stop them, which basically 'removed' the most powerful. That I've been having issues with and it is made worse by the old concept that those 'most powerful' beings come back right at the end.
I'm still not decided on this, and it is something which I need to think about some more. It is perhaps different to me than most. For me, I've always been someone who has made a world for enjoyments sake, which I can then write stories in, and not someone who writes stories and just needs a world for background. Hence any change here is quite important.
True, one idea I had way back is to play the background of this way down. The entire lives of these beings are shadowy to the peoples who live in this world, so it can be semi secret.
*ponders*
Since of course that will mean nothing to most of you, if anyone reads this. My fantasy world, Bair, was my sole writing project from when I first started writing in 1998 right up until 2007. It started off as, regrettably, a rather poor rip off of Tolkien's Silmarillion (Which has always been my fave Tolkien book) However as I worked at it, it became rather less 'fantastical' and has ended up much more of an 'alternative world' fantasy, with a very long history and though the 'magical' stuff was still there, it became much more grounded.
In truth each revision I have done of the world has reduced the fantasy angle more and more. At present then I am fighting a bit of a battle with myself over the magical/fantastical elements and the more grounded ones. The old story, as I left it, was that a war from another dimension spilled into Bair, bringing the peoples of both sides of the war into the world, which then became the battleground. That is alright, I like these people, (I won't burden the blog with names yet) However when one side (the baddies) nearly win, I pulled a minor Deus Ex Machina to stop them, which basically 'removed' the most powerful. That I've been having issues with and it is made worse by the old concept that those 'most powerful' beings come back right at the end.
I'm still not decided on this, and it is something which I need to think about some more. It is perhaps different to me than most. For me, I've always been someone who has made a world for enjoyments sake, which I can then write stories in, and not someone who writes stories and just needs a world for background. Hence any change here is quite important.
True, one idea I had way back is to play the background of this way down. The entire lives of these beings are shadowy to the peoples who live in this world, so it can be semi secret.
*ponders*
Saturday, 13 November 2010
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