The other night Phephe - the 4-yr-old kidlet - and I were watching The Neverending Story 2 and it got me thinking. While the movie is old and the special effects dated, there is a tremendous amount of world building in there. It was amazing how basic the plot of the entire movie was, but the world building involved was what got us sucked in.
My current wip is a paranormal YA - a first for me. And I've been fortunate enough to work with some great crit buddies who've asked me those questions about my fictional world. As this is my first foray into this genre, I never realized what was involved in making this story work. But when my buddies began to ask me the hows, whys and whats, it got me thinking about how much I needed to put in to make this new world of mine, make sense.
There's a lot of crazy things out there in the world, happening each and everyday, and sometimes we think to ourselves, "Man, that totally doesn't even make any sense!" But guess what? It doesn't have to. It's real life and it will work itself out. But whe you're writing fiction, you can't just let it fix itself. Because sometimes it won't. You need to know how to fix them.
A lot of you out there write paranormal and fantasy, I know. So have you made sure to ask yourselves the whos, whats, whys and hows as you've been going? Have you hit any weird hiccups along the way that maybe changed your perspective on how things work?
3 comments:
My husband is a stickler for making things make sense. He's read more fantasy than I could in a lifetime and I'm so lucky to have him pointing out the flaws in my world. It will be so much better because of him! It really is important and it takes work, but it's so worth it!
I hate it when real life doesn't make sense, lol.
Maybe that's one of the reasons why worlds in our books HAVE TO.
I always answer those questions--maybe not at first, but certainly by the time I'd doing a second run-through, I NEED the answers to those questions.
One of my WiPs is a sci fi and I had to spend HOURS trying to wrap my head around the science of their world. It hurt! My brain had to work harder than it did in college, I think, lol!
Still, it felt really good when I finally figured it all out. And even if only glimpses of all that work actually show up in my MS, it makes the whole thing stronger because I KNOW it's there.
Good luck with your story Windy!
Since I just sit down and write, I always have to go back and make sure that the society and the world are well-established. It's hard. Good crit buddies help.
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