Blog Chain - Where Do You Go?

Okay, so it's my turn to chose the topic for this round and I toooootally spaced (I was supposed to post yesterday).

So! Without further ado, here is my question:


There are so many things we have to include in our storyworlds...characters, world details, settings, etc. No matter what genre you write, your stories are full of tiny details that help create your storyworld. I know that for me, at least, finding or creating all these details can sometimes be a bit tough. 


Where do you go for help? And what types of things are you more likely to research/search for as opposed to making up on your own? Do you have any favorite resource sites? Share links if you have them!!

For instance, I had a rather lame name for my girls' boarding school in my book. I was using it as a filler and sort of never got around to giving it a more unique name. I wanted to remedy that but after a million edits (and as it was nearing midnight and I was a little fried) I just couldn't think of anything.

I started googling and found this site, Serendipity, which has several random name generators. I took a couple of the names it came up with, combined them, and now have a school name I absolutely love.

This article on K.M. Weiland's Author Culture blog has several good links for historical writers.

This site has a lot of great Old West info (I've spent a lot of time in their Western Slang section) :D

I've emailed horticultural societies for info on what types of flowers bloom in England in the winter, doctors to find out if 100 year old skeletons would still have hair, checked out a pirate lover site to find info on pistols, and googled the history of toilets :D

What sorts of things have you looked up? Do you have any great resource links?

Head over to Margie's to see what sorts of things she might be googling :)

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Blog Chain - Where Do You Go?

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A Lot of Words Thursday :D

Crowding is what Keats meant when he told poets to "load every rift with ore." It's what we mean when we exhort ourselves to avoid flabby language and clichés, never to use ten vague words where two will do, always to seek the vivid phrase, the exact word. By crowding I mean also keeping the story full, always full of what's happening in it; keeping it moving, not slacking and wandering into irrelevancies; keeping it interconnected with itself, rich with echoes forward and backward. Vivid, exact, concrete, accurate, dense, rich: these adjectives describe a prose that is crowded with sensations, meanings, and implications. 


But leaping is just as important. What you leap over is what you leave out. And what you leave out is infinitely more than what you leave in. There's got to be white space around the word, silence around the voice. Listng is not describing. Only the relevant belongs. Some say God is in the details; some say the Devil is in the details. Both are correct. ... Tactically speaking, I'd say go ahead and crowd in the first draft — put everything in. Then in revising decide what counts, what tells; and cut and recombine till what's left is what counts. Leap boldly. 


— Ursula LeGuin

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A Lot of Words Thursday :D

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Blog Chain: Creating New Worlds

Blog Chain time again! This round's topic was chosen by the ever awesome Cole, who wanted to know:



How do you get inside your character's world?

You know, to be honest, I read this question and my first thought was "I don't know! I just do!"

So I had to take a second and think about what I do when I start writing and building that world. I think at first, I just sort of have an idea of how things are. A character, a storyline pop into my head and they are a part of a world. I explore that world as I write. With each scene, the world gets a little more detailed as my character's go different places and experience different things.

I'll get to spots where I need to research something, details about what could or would be in the world in which my character lives (were there toilets in 1855? Does it snow in Nevada? What would a 200 year old tombstone look like?)

I love researching the details. It makes my worlds come alive and helps me create something real and fantastic.

I do find pictures that are similar to my character's world. I'll often use these as my desktop picture, just to keep me in the right mood. For example, my latest book has a pyramid of rocks as one of the key locations - there is an actual Pyramid Rock in Nevada that I use in my book. I did change things about it...exactly where it is set, etc. But my storyline revolves more around things Egyptian. So I have a picture of the Giza Pyramids as my desktop background....because they get me in the right mind frame.

I will often see locations and think "ooooo that would make such a cool location for a story!" Like the Pyramid Rock. Or the cemetery next door to my house. When I find locations like that, I do try to take or find pictures of them because they often will trigger storylines and scenes. I don't describe them exactly as they are in real life. They are more like the starting point for my storyworld. So it's never exact.

And I never do this for my actual characters. I might see someone in real life that has the same features as one of my characters. And I might see someone that I think might be a cool character in a book. But I don't think I've ever seen someone and thought "Ooo, that is my character!" It's more often going to be something like "Ooo, that guy has the same hair and eyes as Bryant" or something along those lines. I'm not sure why, but I think trying to describe something I'm looking at is harder for me than describing something I'm seeing in my own mind.

As I do revisions and rewrites, my characters and their world become more detailed, more vivid, more real to me. I learn more about them and their surroundings. It's sort of like in the first draft is our first meeting. I had a vague idea of who and where they were, but the more we meet, the more I get to know them and their world. And that helps to make revisions a little more fun and exciting...knowing that I'm going to come across something new and interesting about my storyworld. :)

How about you? How do you get into your characters' worlds? Do you find pictures of people and places or go by that fun movie playing in your head?

If you haven't read it yet, head over to Sandra's blog for her take on the subject and be sure to visit Kat tomorrow to see how she gets inside her characters' worlds :)

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