Creating a Map

Looking at the maps of other writers' created worlds is one of my favorite parts of digging into a new fantasy series. Lately, that has been Osten Ard (Williams) and the Realm of the Elderlings (Hobb).
I imagine having my own beautifully drawn map someday, inserted in my books and framed up and proudly displayed in my house.

Tolkien's, Flanagan's, and Martin's worlds are recognizably European, with pseudo-British Isle home bases. I love these fictional realms, but I wanted to do my own thing. I wanted the land to feel more like the land I know and love.

I was inspired by the cleft of the Mississippi River valley, especially on trips to Winona to see Shakespeare at the GRSF. I was inspired by all the windbreaks on homesteads and farms across the sweep of the Great Plains. I was inspired by the badlands and the North Shore and the deep forests up north. My land is this land...

http://www.airum.org/

So, the upper Midwest. But medieval.

When I started writing, I had very little of the created world in my mind. I knew there was a castle, and I knew that castle was built against a cliff at the convergence of two rivers. I imagined the river continuing southward to an eventual sea. I imagined a trio of mountain countries to the north of the castle. And I knew Lio and Lamb were not originally from this castle or its town.

Over the past two years, but especially this summer, the Realm of Aelland has slowly evolved into this:

Look closely and you can see the following features:

* The land is split by the massive Aco River, Mississippi-like in its flow.
* To the west of the river, "Round Villages" of the broad Aco Plains spread out to the coast.
* The northwest is my Badlands, and the northeast is my Northwoods.
* I've included mountains in the north as a sort of boundary and along the east side of the Aco River as a break before the desert. I have no plot in mind for the desert, but I didn't want the plains to continue eastward, and the mountains would affect climate. A desert seemed proper, in any case.
* There is an enormous lake-like bay on the southwest coast.
* A massive curved, paved road crosses the realm from coast to coast, touching nearly all climates and landscapes.

I am happy with most of it, though it seems a little too lumpish.

One of my favorite places is the sacred Isles of Mourning on the southwest tip. I'm not even planning to go there. It's just a part of the country that presented itself to me, the same way characters sometimes present their quirks and personalities to me as I write. I didn't so much invent the place as discover it.

It turns out that there are plenty of artists who specialize in map-making, and for a fair fee they would turn my rough sketch into a lovely map. But I'm not ready yet. As my characters travel, more place names are added. And I have no idea how the world will evolve in the third, entirely unimagined book in the series. I'm pretty sure the characters travel north, into the mountainous Bardlands. But I won't know what they will find there until they hit the road.

Why I Want to Go to Comic-Con (Someday)

Unfortunately for the progress of my novel, much of August was filled with more creative procrastination. Many of the author panels from Comicon San Diego 2017 have been uploaded to YouTube, and I spent some -- cough, too much, cough -- time enjoying them.

Of course I enjoyed seeing some of my favorite authors speak about their craft and process and upcoming work, but I also "met" some fabulous new authors. For example...

The Martian author Andy Weir (I recommended that book to so many people long before the movie came out)
and my new favorite author person Claudia Gray. 

It's not so much that I'm fangirling, although there is some of that. It's more that I want to be them, published by a major imprint and sitting on a panel next to Andy and Claudia and everyone else in San Diego answering questions with funny anecdotes that make the audience laugh.

This is not a new fantasy...

Before my first book was even published, I was invited to speak at the North Dakota Reading Association Convention in Fargo. My talk was more about self-publishing than SPOTD, but the experience hooked me. At each main session (when they were feeding us), I was seated at the authors' table next to serious, published authors. I felt special. And my fellow authors were wonderful. I wanted more.

That summer my book actually came out, and I immediately tracked down the rules for getting a table in the convention hall at San Diego Comicon. It turns out they have a small section reserved for Comicon newbies, and I thought I fit the bill. So I sent in my registration/application along with the requisite copies of my book. While I waited for my eventual rejection letter, I dreamed about sitting on a folding chair at a wobbly little table in a corner at the very back of the hall and seeing Steven Spielberg or Nathan Fillion or Neil Gaiman walk past. It was probably more about having a backdoor pass to the show than being a part of the show at that point.

Although I wasn't selected for a table, I am glad I tried. In retrospect, I would have been so far out of my depth there back in 2011. But you can't get what you don't ask for, and I'm glad I asked.

While I listened to the 2017 panels, I opened a second window, read about the featured authors' books online, and then (when my resistance was low) ordered them or (when a calmer head prevailed) requested them from my local library.

A few favorites:

Space... The Final Escape Panel
     A fascinating look into the minds that create hard sci-fi. I learned that I will probably never attempt the genre, as the technical expertise needed is daunting. So much respect for those who can and do. These are the kind of nerds I love: passionate about the getting the details right.

Lucasfilm Publishing: New Star Wars Panel
     Although I love Star Wars, I almost skipped this video. I always assumed that novelizations of movies were hack jobs. I'm glad I watched this and learned that I was wrong. Lucasfilm Pub has hired serious talent to expand the Star Wars universe.

Genre-Blending: How and Why?
    I only made it halfway through Red Rising, but my sister loves the series. Could this be part of the reason?

Pierce Brown. 

As nice as it is to watch the uploaded videos, I am aware that not all panels were taped. Panels like this one:

What's Hot in Young Adult Fiction

• The seventh edition of this panel is one of the best ever! It features Jennifer Armentrout (The Problem with Forever), S. Jae-Jones (Wintersong), Lish McBride (Pyromantic), Brendan Reichs (Nemesis), Beth Revis (Star Wars: Rebel Rising), Megan Whalen Turner (Thick as Thieves), Kiersten White (And I Darken), and Nicola Yoon (Everything, Everything). That's Sunday at 1:00pm in 29AB. Hosted by Nathan Bransford.

So despite lovely Youtube access to many of the author panels, going to San Diego is definitely still on my bucket list, whether as an artist or attendee. Even though you hear stories about lines that stretch around the block to get into certain panels, I don't think that would be an issue. Most of the wide panning shots at these author panel venues revealed half-empty rooms. How ironic. The backbone of the con is actual comics + sci-fi/fantasy books. But film/television and celebrities seem to be the bigger draw.

Another irony: At our humble Nerdcon: Stories in Minneapolis, those rooms would have been overstuffed. Lines around the block. These are the story-loving nerds' biggest celebrities.

An Inspiration

Inspired by Wales' Bodnant Gardens, one of my favorite new ideas is for a particular "garden" landscape.

Imagine a tended garden as large as a state park, with perfectly manicured flower beds, paths that wander through curated forest, benches for resting and viewing picturesque scenes, lovely brick houses where you can break your travels, and helpful rock steps over each rivulet.

The Queen's Park.

Now imagine what the same garden looks like a generation or two after the monarchy has fallen. Wild, unfettered... Still astonishing in natural beauty, but dangerous as well.

Castle Research, 2017

Summer!
Travel!
Edward I's campaign to subjugate the Welsh with an Iron Ring of mighty castles (sarcastic exclamation point)!

Conwy Castle, Wales

Which really boils down to lots of awkward selfies and pictures of indistinguishable rock walls.

I learned a lesson from my 2015 trip to castles in the south of England: I need to take more immediate notes while traveling. And so, at each Welsh site I allowed myself to look ridiculous, stopping often to type up notes (or dictate them to Dragon Dictation if no one was near me) and thus enduring the unwarranted scorn of fellow castle visitors whose looks as they passed me shouted, "You are in a historical site! Enjoy the moment! Turn off your phone and stop texting!"

Those uncomfortable moments were worth it. I returned with 12+ single-space pages of notes -- descriptions of what I was seeing and ideas for the new series I am writing.

When Ideas Overlap

This winter I watched a video of Terry Brooks, Todd Lockwood, Django Wexler, Robin Hobb, and Kevin Hearne discuss modern fantasy at the 2017 Emerald City Comicon. It was fascinating, and it inspired me to read Hobb's Farseer Trilogy.

Those covers are gorgeous.

And what a revelation.

I enjoy reading series like this one* because being immersed in romantic epic fantasy is just a good time. The world building is inspiring. The archetypal plots are reassuring. The characters become friends. But I also want to make sure that as I write my own series I don't inadvertently create a world that is too similar to another, craft a plot that is derivative, or invent a character who already exists.

So far, Lio and Lamb seem to be living in their own world and doing their own things. But every so often, I discover a name or moment somewhere else that overlaps with one I have written. I am okay with that, as long as I wrote my idea before reading the other one.

For example, I have a character whose name is one letter different from an important character in the Hobb series and another character whose name is pronounced the same as one of hers, although the two names are spelled differently. Such is life.

Interestingly, one name that is common to several series is "Will." It's a name I haven't used, but I think I would like to. It would be a tribute to William Shakespeare, without whose work I would not still be teaching. Now I just have to find out where this Will lives in my world, and how his life matters to Lio and Lamb.




*Other favorites include The Ranger's Apprentice series (Flanagan), The Kingkiller Chronicle series (Rothfuss), The Queen's Thief series (Turner),  A Song of Ice and Fire (Martin), and of course The Lord of the Rings series (Tolkein).

The Rabbit Hole of Creative Procrastination

The last time I drafted a blog entry, I titled it "New Year's Wish." I never finished the draft nor posted it.

It's now the end of May.

What happened? 

I started the year with wonderful goals, and I wrote daily for almost a month and a half. The prequel* continued to take shape, and I pushed past the childbirth scene that had stalled my progress. A few new characters walked themselves into the narrative, a delightful rogue and addlepated fool among them. A character for whom I had envisioned an entire life's backstory ended up elsewhere. It was fascinating, satisfying work. 

Then I moved the location of the calendar on which I was keeping track of my progress. Writing stopped. Funny how a physical act can have such considerable consequence. "April," I thought. "I'll jump back in during Camp Nanowrimo."

Camp started well. I nearly reached my 10,000 word goal. But then the end of the school year interrupted my daily writing practice, and the story was once again set aside. "Summer," I thought. "I'll jump back in when summer starts."

Meanwhile, I've been mentally plotting away. As a result, the prequel is getting bloated with characters that ultimately don't matter and plot that spins off sideways. I've given considerable thought to my fictional world's "religion" -- its beliefs and practices. 

I should know better. 

I started reading Matt Bird's The Secrets of Story during spring break.

Among other timely lessons, this excellent guide reminded me that I need to be lean. 

And then today I read this in an article by David Peterson about creating fantasy languages:

"A common bit of advice given to writers is that story comes first; everything else comes second. With respect to fantasy, this advice is often employed to warn against the dangers of falling down the rabbit hole of world building. World building is great only insofar as it serves the story; anything else is a creative form of procrastination."

I have been creatively procrastinating. 

It's now the end of May. 

Summer. 

Time to jump back in. 



* I did, indeed, temporarily abandon the original book in order to start writing the prequel. In November, I participated in Nanowrimo and wrote a solid start to the newer novel. All it took was finding a "moment" to get me going. That moment involved a foot stepping onto a gangplank, the beginning of a journey.