The first city I designed for my fantasy world was Venn, a city that in my mind’s eye was about the size of Medieval York – a rough circle of about 1km diameter.
For the Great City of Azinor though, the greatest city in my world, seat of the Ministerial Synod… I want to convey a city of great power, and I imagined it being bigger, much bigger.
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So, over the past several months I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what I want to do with my life.. about what I can do with my life. To be honest, part of me would love to be able to go and get a job and just work like a normal person. But I’m not a normal person.
My depression has worsened over recent weeks, leading to me feeling like I’m at a bit of an impasse. I know I want to write. To be a writer. That is at least a start.
Book I of my ‘fantasy epic’ is at draft stages, and I’m working through it to try and get it publishable.. I’m just a little unsure what to do then. I am strongly considering the idea of self-publishing, possibly by using a Kickstarter to raise funds for promotion and for people to do general pre-ordering type stuff. My thoughts here are still in their early stages
The Harbinger Rises, Book I of the Red Bargain
Heh, it almost looks attainable when I make a picture like that.
So, as you may know, I’m doing my best to write a fantasy epic that I hope to get published properly and be like a real author or something.
All fantasy epics need a map, and that’s what I’ve been working on today.. It’s slow going because I’m effectively making it poster sized (much larger than the cropped extract on the right) and am doing my best to make the quality as good as possible. Basically I’m a perfectionist..
It got me wondering what other (real) authors do to get their maps worked out.. do they do them themselves? I’m curious.
Here’s the beginning of the prologue of my in-progress novel:
The place where the thirteen High Judges met was not a place at all, in the strictest sense. That the table seemed to be circular and wooden, and that the floor appeared as though ancient dark slate tiles had been laid there centuries before was mere illusion.
Sometimes writing is difficult, and coaxing the words is a challenge that would try the most creative among us, and yet other times the words appear to come almost unbidden. These times are special; stories can grow almost by themselves, like watching a skeleton grow flesh and come to life.
I frequently find it interesting to look at the mood of different parts of my work and I cannot help but see a certain similarity between my own thoughts and feelings and those parts of the book that seem to write themselves. I think this is somewhat natural – possibly so much so that saying so is a little redundant, because it is so obvious.
Planning ahead is something some authors find hinders them, and restricts their characters, and prefer to just write from the beginning through to the end with only a light hand on the tiller.
Myself, I am not one of those authors; I prefer to make sure I have a plan as well-defined as I can have from the start, and I would be surprised if most authors did not have at least some kind of pre-defined plan, even a loose one. I find it hard to imagine how anyone could produce anything coherent without one.
Chapter thirteen is the part of my book that has been most heavily based on an afternoon of gaming so far, and consequently it has been one of the most challenging to write. That seems paradoxical, however when you consider the difference between four friends having a laugh and attempting to create a serious high-fantasy world with a cast of three-dimensional coherent characters, then the reasons become clearer.
Now I’m past the 65,000 word point, I cannot help but start thinking about the future, about whether doing this professionally is something that is even remotely feasible.
I mentioned in one of my earlier posts how a series of table-top roleplaying game sessions developed into the design of the world and principles that is in process of becoming the novel (or series of novels) that will become what I’m tentatively naming The Ministratum Cycle, pending a better name than that.
Today the word count of my embryonic novel has passed the 62 thousand word point, which I’m told is meant to mean that it gets easier because I’m meant to be well past the difficult ‘getting started’ point. I don’t really feel that way though right now.