World Building Part 2 - Putting Your Reader Into The World

PURCHASE FROM AMAZON

How do you start to build your dream world? If you’ve lucky and have chosen a world you know or one where you can find volumes of research. Then you rub those mental hands together and think this is a cinch. It ain’t necessarily so.

You’ve chosen today’s world in a town you can find your way around blindfolded. Your reader doesn’t know the world so you much provide them with information to draw them into the time and place you’ve chosen.

I often use a hospital setting in my contemporary stories. I’m a nurse so I’m familiar with the venue. Follow me back in time to the day I finished my first complete novel. The book was sent off. With the rejection letter came a helpful hint. “Your characters are existing in a vacuum/” I rewrote the book piling on the physical set up of the hospital, the unit and the patient rooms. Sent the book off again. Rejected again with this hint. "You definitely have shown me the hospital but your descriptions haven’t put me there. Try using the senses.”

I was fortunate. In those days editors wanted the full manuscript for fiction. Seldom happens today. So it’s up to you and me to create a setting the reader can step into.

One way to define a setting is to go from the large to the small.

Here’s an example from Wolfblade by Jennifer Fallon.

The hall was massive. Sixteen glorious cut crystal candelabras showed warm yellow light over the numerous arrivals. Musicians in a corner tuned their instruments. She caught a view of the handsome smartly dressed young men who had come to the ball.

As you’re establishing the setting, research is needed to help you focus on your world. Maps, descriptions and pictures of settings, houses, and furniture can be found in books or the internet. Since some of my stories are fantasies, I have copies of Archaeology and National Geographic to look for places and ruins I can use. Television programs can provide needed information.

I’ve published 2 books set in an alternate Egypt. They’re a cross between alternate world and pseudo-time travel. A documentary about camels taught me something I needed to know since I had first just wanted to use the ancient Egypt at the time of the Hyksos invaders. Wrong. Though there were horses present at this time there were no camels. I wanted camels so I created an alternate ancient Egypt.

When weaving word tapestries a light touch is good. Vivid words well chosen are a plus. Bogging the story down with volumes of data and description send a reader to find another adventure.

I judge a number of contests for unpublished and published writers. One was for the first chapter of a book. The first paragraph introduced me to a pair of intriguing characters. Then page after page the writer took me on a tour of a costal road detailing everything seen in glowing detail. Though the descriptions were vivid, nothing happened and earned the writer a low score.

A summer to remember

Helllooooooo all!
It's the 16th day of the 2016th year - is that supposed to mean something special? Personally, I think every day is special, each for its own reason, or, for no reason at all. Just being.

This summer has been one of the most memorable in all my 50+ years. Weather was hot and dry and for sailing, winds were strong enough to warrant plenty of 'wind warnings' in Georgian Bay. However, the fish were too shy for my liking. When I bought the Styrofoam container of worms at the Marina, the girl at the counter assured me they were well trained. She was wrong. But, fish or no fish, just being on the water was its own reward.

Promote promote promote!

Between sailing escapades, I've been promoting my book, The Twisted Climb. It's a book for young adults and, as I like to add, for adults who are young at heart. I have two events taking place next month: one is a signing event at a Chapters store near me, and the other is a 'Meet the Author' night, part of Ontario Public Library Week celebrating authors and books. I'm sooooo pumped! For the latter, I'm one of five invited authors who will read an excerpt from their book and then participate in a Question & Answer period.

Amazon

I took to heart Jude Pittman's advice about configuring Amazon / Author Central for countries around the world. It's exhilarating to know that your book is available in another continent. And at £2.10 there is no excuse for my Irish family not to buy. Right?

Ball hockey girls are the best!

More summer excitement came from my ball hockey team. They've been great supporters in my writing / publishing journey and proved it with a congratulatory cupcake-cake. So it is true. Ball hockey girls are the best!

Twitter

My son informed me that being an author means being a tweeter. Doesn't that sound ridiculous? But, apparently not. So, I've dipped my toe into the twitter-verse or whatever it's called, and I'm experimenting with this form of social media. I have a Facebook account (www.facebook.com/J.C.Kavanagh) which gives me free marketing exposure, so the next step, he tells me, is twitting. Or tweeting. Whatever.
Before I become a 'professional' with my twat or twit or tweet, I'm practicing under the following name: @JoanieJCK. Send me a tweet! I'll practice with my fellow BWL authors. Thanks for sharing my journey.

Joanie
J.C. Kavanagh
The Twisted Climb
A book for young adults and adults young at heart.

Email: author.j.c.kavanagh@gmail.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/J.C.Kavanagh
Twitter: @JoanieJCK

When did you last puddle jump? by Sheila Claydon

I've been time travelling again, back into my past.  My companion is my two year old granddaughter who is on a nine week visit from Australia.

When did you last puddle jump? Or balance across a log? Or count pine cones? Or draw pictures in the sand? And why does the wind blow the leaves on the trees and make some of them flutter down to the ground? And why do we walk on the wide paths when the hidden ones made by rabbits and foxes are so much better? And what about shadows, and crows, and the aeroplanes that leave a trail across the sky? And bubbles. There is nothing better than blowing bubbles and then chasing them until they pop.

All this and much, much more and we are only three and a half weeks into the visit.

We don't really forget you know, we just need an excuse to revisit our own childhood, an excuse to arrive home wet, or sandy, or both.  And discussing the magic of the wind, or blowing bubbles, are very satisfying occupations once we remember how to let go of our own reality and fly backwards in time to the days when we were two and a little bit.

I remember reading somewhere that we are our memories. Nothing that ever happens to us, no experience, good or bad, is ever lost. Some of our memories become less accessible over the years of course, but they are still there, just waiting for the trigger that will awaken them. And this month my trigger has been a two year old who has taken me back to a world I once inhabited.

I have two more books to write for my time travel trilogy Mapleby Memories. It's not going to be an easy process because juxtaposing different centuries in one story is difficult. What I've discovered this month, however, is that it will be easier than I anticipated. I just need to find the magic trigger that will transport me to an earlier memory. It might well be my little granddaughter because I already know there will be children in the next book so inhabiting their world as I write is important.

There are small children in the first book, Remembering Rose, as well. Children from three different centuries, and although it doesn't say so in the book, I guarantee they all loved to puddle jump.

Sheila Claydon's books can be found at Books We Love and Amazon

She also has a website and can be found on facebook  and twitter