WORLD-BUILDING

One of my least favorite things about writing has always been the world-building aspect. I like to dive in and just start writing. Unfortunately, this usually means that along the way I get hung up on things like, "What sort of currency does this culture use?" or "Hmm, is there a creation myth in this world?" These sorts of questions can bring the creative process to a screeching halt, and cause the most interminable writer's block.Thankfully, I married a man who is the math and science to my literature. When we were just married, he started creating this world: Aelon Ere. He came up with a creation myth, which races lived in the world, drew a map, and began writing a history. Throughout the process, we would have conversations about what sorts of things made sense, and what kind of story this might become. At the time, I was still writing the Minstrel's Song series. As he created the world, I made it clear that I did not want to "take" Aelon Ere from him. I did not have any desire to write a story in this world because I was worried that if the story was somehow "wrong" it would hurt his feelings or that he wouldn't be able to enjoy the book. Besides, I had plenty of other things to write, and had no need to step on his creative toes.However, he eventually explained that he had no desire to write a book. He enjoyed the world-building aspects, but was perfectly content to leave the plot, characters, and story up to me. Which is why I am currently working on writing the first novel in the Aelon Ere series.Here is the rough draft of the map he created eight or nine years ago.

As I've written the story, I've added details like lakes, rivers, plains, forests, towns, and capital cities.This whole arrangement has worked out rather brilliantly, leading me to be able to say that world-building is now one of my favorite aspects of the writing process. Why? Because the way that we build fictional worlds is now far less tedious. It's much more fun getting to talk it out and chart out the mundane details with someone else. I love having these conversations in which questions are asked and answered and stories are born. Also, we have discovered that a great time to have these conversations is while road tripping across the country. Our trip to Nashville and back (all 16 hours round trip) was pretty much spent hashing out the final details of world 1 (Aelon Ere), discussing some of the holes in world 2 (the sci-fi world that I am really excited to begin writing soon), and beginning the work on 2 new worlds to write in after that. My husband's goal? That I would never be at a loss for a world to write about. And that is fine with me!