Why Talk about Building a World?

First I'll start by apologizing for taking so long to post again.  I should have kept up better with this.  From here on out I will try to post every other week starting today, Wednesday Oct. 12, 2011.  (Yes that's there for my reference XD)

Before I start posting the main meat of this blog I'd like to take a few moments to explain why I chose this particular topic to blog about.

First off some of the greatest stories take place in worlds other than our own.  The Lord of the Rings and Dragon Riders of Pern series are the first two that come to mind, and are probably the best known.  Mercedes Lackey, Tanith Lee, Kate Elliot, Terry Brooks, Lynn Abbey and Kristen Britain are a few of my favorite authors with stories that occur in worlds other than Earth, or even our present time.

Now some writers sit and plan out their worlds before they start writing.  Others build the world around the story and the characters.  The world is created as the story unfolds.  When I write a story, I write the story first and build the world later.  Now, how does that work?  Well it's not easy, and requires rewriting later to make sure things make sense, but rewrites are a part of writer's life.  You will always have to do rewrites.

During the rewrites of the world the story is set in I use a standard set of questions, the same set of questions that I will share with you here.  They are simple, and easy to remember, and they are the basics for world building.  They can be used before, during or after the story is written.  They are that versatile.

Well, that's it for now, watch for my next post on Oct. 26 2011.