I forgot that today wasn’t Sunday, due to the long weekend. I had every intention of posting yesterday, but I honestly thought it was Saturday. So, I’ll start with an apology for posting a day late.

I’ve been working on the web site based on the idea that people would want to read about how I’m writing, what I’m working on, and the like. But, I got some pretty great feedback from my last post about achieving goals and how they help make your life better. Talking to my very good friend, I have decided to focus the web site more on how to go about building a world for either your writing or for role playing games. I did some research about this online, but really didn’t find anything as in depth as I was hoping. So, on the last Sunday of the month, I’ll talk about how I’m doing on the writing front. The rest of the time, I’ll be giving tips and tricks to generating a believable fictional world, either for your writing or gaming pleasure. My focus will be on fantasy, since that’s the genre I primarily write in, but I’ll also delve into some of the other genres as well.

With that, I’ll give a short overview on research. One of the best ways to get ideas when it comes to building a fictional world is to look at our own. You can take parts and pieces of cultures you find fascinating, mix them together with other unique ideas, then blend them into a cohesive whole. As an example, I’ll describe the ideas I used for Myos, the setting for the Blake Heira stories.

The first, and most obvious, influence is from Egypt. Myos is a desert country with a large river running through it, allowing farming and the like to happen. In addition, the pyramids, Great Sphinx, and other sites draw people from around the world to see them. There is a level of mysticism that draws me there.

I also drew from the idea of Mecca, a city where Muslim pilgrims travel for worship. It is a holy city, the seat of faith for 1.6 billion people. I wanted a great city like that for my world. I also wanted pilgrims to come there.

Finally, I wanted a city that was a crossroads to the world, so I chose Paris. There are many different styles of architecture, food, art and culture blended together. It is a dynamic city filled with history, an amalgam of the ancient and the modern.

For my own ideas, I need to draw more on the magical history of my world. I’ll get into that history later, but one thing I needed for my game was a reason magical items were so rare. Powerful wizards who despised the idea of commoners wielding magic was a thought, but then hoarding items wasn’t enough. I had them destroy them. This allows for all kinds of problems, conflicts, and interesting things to happen. The inherent conflict politically between the Hierarchy of Wizards and the Circle of Nine priesthoods made for many different plot lines as well.

When it comes to setting, think about areas or cultures you are interested in. Work to make them your own while keeping parts that keep your audience grounded. Remember to include things that keep the setting logical. How does a city of 500,000 survive in the desert? There’s a huge river that flows through it. Why is it there in the first place? It’s the end of a major road and has a good bay for shipping as well as being the holy city for the largest religion in the world. From this skeleton, you can work in more details, which we’ll get into next week.

Thanks for all your support!