Tag: eye of the storm

Dystopian World Building Worksheet – Part III

This is the third in a series of posts about the world-building process I’m revisiting as I work on edits for my 2012 dystopian novel EYE OF THE STORM. Part one of my dystopian world building worksheet– with an introduction to the concept of world building — is here.  Part two is here. And here’s part three…

What social ladders exist? Who has power and why? What are the tangible symbols of that power? Who is at the bottom of this society’s social ladder, and why?

What kind of ethnic diversity exists?

What role, if any, does religion play in this society? What are the dominant religions? What religions are marginalized?

What do international/inter-group relations look like? What wars are going on?  What countries or groups are fighting, and why? Which ones are allies? Which are enemies?

What climate and weather patterns are prevalent?

What does agriculture look like? Where do people get food?

What foods are considered standard fare? What foods are delicacies, and why?

In working on EOTS, a book with monster tornadoes, that weather question was obviously one that I spent a lot of time with before I ever started writing. But I’m going far beyond climate and weather in this new round of world-building (Can I still call it world building? I did that before I wrote…  Perhaps this is world-remodeling.)  And it’s interesting to me to explore how that climate & weather issue would shape the rest of this society’s world.

More world building questions soon.  Back to the colored markers & Post-It Notes now…

Dystopian World Building Worksheet: Part I

My revision letter and first line edits just arrived for EYE OF THE STORM, my upper-MG dystopian novel coming out with Walker/Bloomsbury in 2012.  I’ve been dying to get back to this book, but before I touch the manuscript to make a single change, I’m going to be writing many, many pages of world-building thoughts. While I did a lot of this during the planning process, I can already tell that this revision is going to be easier — and just plain better — if I take even more time to write explicitly about this world my character inhabits, its rules and challenges, and how it got to be the way it is.

For those who aren’t familiar with the term, world-building is the process of coming up with all that information — the history, rules, and everyday realities of the world in which a fantasy or science fiction novel is set.  In historical fiction, we simply call this research, because the world already existed in a past time, and the writer’s job is to ferret out all the details about what it was like.  But when a story is set in an imaginary world or in the future, there’s no real-life past to explore.  It all has to be made up, but made up in a way that makes sense, in a way that the circumstances of the world are believable, given the history that created it, and in a way that’s logical, given the rules you’ve established for the world.

Even imaginary worlds need rules.  Consider Hogwarts. The incantation "Expelliarmus!" always results in an opponent being disarmed, if it’s done right. As readers, we wouldn’t be on board if a character used "Expelliarmus!" to disarm an enemy in one scene and then cried "DroppusWandus!" five pages later. Things need to be consistent.

So what do writers need to consider when creating a world?  I actually spent some time looking around online this week, hoping to find a magical worksheet that would guide me through everything I’d want to consider.  I found some excellent resources at the League of Extraordinary Writers blog, written by a group of debut dystopian writers.  I also liked this post, called "The Importance of Worldbuilding."  But despite searching all over online and even asking for resources on my beloved Twitter, I couldn’t come up with a world-builiding worksheet that felt like it would work for me.

So I made one.  It’s six pages long, and it explores just about every aspect of my future society that I could come up with.  Here’s how it starts:


Geographic Location ___________________________________________________

In the year _______________

In this dystopian society… (Write one sentence that expresses the heart of the story, the conflict as it relates to the dystopia.)

What current issue/problem is at the heart of this dystopia?  From what spark of our modern reality was this world born?

How does the setting of this story impact the main character?

I’m going to get back to writing now, but I’ll share more of this worksheet in the revision-days ahead, in case it’s helpful. If you’re interested in this kind of thing, watch for Part II in a few days.

Friday Five: Things I cut out of my novel this week

I’ve spent my afternoons this week at a great little coffee shop in Boston, doing another revision pass on my upper-MG dystopian novel.  Early in the week, I made a plot map showing where things move along nicely and where they slow down, and I decided that cutting some fat would really help the book’s pacing.  Here’s what got the axe:

1. Dr. William Noyes.  He was a secondary character whose job was already being done by another, more interesting secondary character. Goodbye, Dr. Noyes.

2. A whole bunch of getting-from-one-place to another scenes. When I’m drafting, I often feel the need to take every step of a journey with my characters. If they’re having a picnic in the woods, for example, I need to step over every pine cone with them, hold back every branch, feel every squish of every sneaker. I think that helps me get mentally to the place where the action is going to happen, but my readers don’t need (or want) to take so long getting there, so many of these scenes are shortened a lot or deleted when I revise.

3. The word "actually" — about a thousand instances of overuse.

4. The phrase "what looked like" — ditto. While I’m a frequent abuser of "actually," this was a new one for me.  Reading through the manuscript, I’d find myself writing things like this:  She had what looked like jam all over her fingers.  Really?  If she’s sitting there with toast, can’t we just make the leap and call it jam?  Delete.

5. Most of Chapter 5 and half of Chapter 9. Don’t worry. You’ll never miss them.

I’d love to hear from some of my writer friends in the comments. What kinds of things do you find yourself cutting out of your works-in-progress during the revision stage?