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Post by Stacy on Sept 26, 2009 3:16:08 GMT -5
My story is set in the Sims game, but I know that some of you have built your own little universes where your story takes place.
I'm going to need to build my own little world for the non-Sims Valley. Like I don't even know what to do with Seth - so much about him is totally tied into the game. And I don't want him to be a vampire. So I'm going to have to come up with some new and exciting way for people to live longer and stay young by killing other people.
I'm going to have to look into alchemy, I think.
Anyway - this will be the first time I've embarked on such an adventure. So I thought I'd ask how you guys who've done it for your stories went about it.
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Post by girlyesterday on Sept 26, 2009 4:34:21 GMT -5
Research. I would suggest reading up on Elizabeth Bathory. She was rumoured to be a 'vampire' but she wasn't. Reading some accounts of the things she did could help you in developing Seth's background as far as the immortality thing is concerned. Alchemy is a good idea too. Blood is the essence of life so immortality would certainly deal with blood. I love world building. Next to research, it is the next best thing about writing. I love creating my own world. It's why I will rarely write about stuff in the real world, there are too many things I'd have to be accurate about whereas with my own world, I can go wild. It depends on the story I am writing. For a fantasy based story with a heavy focus on political machinations between the great powers of two nations, I would start with a map. It helps me to define the borders of my world, the city states, the political climate, the religious climate, the cultures, the dress, the key figures, and the central conflict. Then I would decide whether the terrain is much like earth or are there small changes (ie. the use of magic - how is it used, what price has to be paid to use it and who can use it?). I then create my characters. I have a fairly lengthy bio for most of my characters chronicling their history, their flaws, their strengths, their fears, their education, medical history, skills and parentage. I also decide their role. Who are they? The boy king who was stolen from a kingdom as a baby? A mage of great power born into poverty? A god banished to mortality as punishment for some sort of wrong? I usually set aside a binder folder where I add bits and pieces as I craft them. I admit, creating fantasy worlds is so much more rewarding for me. But then I am biased because fantasy is a genre that will always remain my favourite. It does usually end up exhausting work for me because I invest so much time into my worlds. Of course, if you set it in the real world, your job is a lot easier and particularly if you set it in a town you're very familiar with. The thing I've found with world building is that you craft all these things and the reader will barely see even 10% of it in the finished product. It's crazy. EDITED: After I posted this, I went and hunted down some articles which might be of use. Fiction Factor - World Building
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Post by thelunarfox on Sept 26, 2009 11:56:37 GMT -5
Thank you, Carnaxa, for the link and the tips. You are so thorough it puts my little world to shame. I can tell you seriously do enjoy making a world, which is wonderful because that means your worlds must be fun to delve into.
Hmm. Well my only tip is to just try writing it. My most thorough world is the one in Ruin, and even that's not very thorough I think. I built it by just writing about it. A lot of the characters were created as I free wrote.
The ideas came to me from things I read including the local newspapers. In the Wildlands section of my world, I talk about different "tribes," but the idea actually came from our local gang problem. I figured that if there wasn't much left and the world was in chaos, people would probably band together to take what they needed. Then I just took it to an extreme.
The original concept wasn't really well thought out, and as I wrote I sort of found out things along the way-- like there were other areas one which was worse and one which is supposedly better.
Now I'm actually in the phase where I have to think about it and build it. My first plan is to do some research on feudal systems and wars, then see where that leads to.
Each time I change an element, I set a character in the new addition and run through it, writing to see if it works and makes sense-- uh if that makes sense.
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Post by mdpthatsme on Nov 14, 2009 0:29:45 GMT -5
My Universe was built from scratch...I never really thought anything through except that it was in the future and not on Earth so I didn't have to deal with correct historical figures. I could make my own. However, I made Earth the Example of the Universe that way I can still play off of some events that underwent on this planet. There are eight solar systems/galaxies to this Universe. My Sim stories are set on Madrins, the second planet of the second galaxy. It's an itty bitty planet, not even big enough to be our moon; yet, it happens to be the most popular and important planet of the Universe.
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moondaisy
Full Member
locked in a moonbeam
Posts: 254
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Post by moondaisy on Nov 23, 2009 19:14:35 GMT -5
I am not sure my reply to this thread is helpful, or even a good one.
Whatever world our Sims live in, it will need a social structure and rules. Just as in real life, Sims will strife for agency - the right/ability to decide what they do in this world (however constricting its set-up).
I've read many Sim stories by now and come to the conclusion that 'new worlds' are fascinating... but not half as much as the characters that actually populate these worlds.
Utopia would be boring... a world without conflict would not illuminate characters in such way.
Therefore, building a special world is not that different from creating a normal one where rules, roles, settings, situations already favour conflicts as we know them. BUT, conflict is the key word... what's the interest of a story without it?
The advantage of a new world setting is that it allows the reader to truly escape in a dream-world, a non-existant world, away from what's really happening in his or her life. This has been shown brilliantly by all of you... yet the conflicts that your characters have/face/deal with are by nature similar to those the reader deals with/ or can envisage dealing with in his normal world - how else, could he/she identify with the psychological processes and remain interested?
So, the question remains... does a story need a designer-world to achieve this? Probably not. But that's exacly where a writer's creativity comes into play more than ever...
My verdict? It's writer's - read a creator's choice - entirely!
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