Typically in fantasy there is no distinction between the idea of a villain and that of the antagonist. There are the good guys and the bad guys. All too often, they each embody either the principle of light or dark, order or chaos. Many of these stories are classic and I’m sure we all have fond memories of them. But is the fantasy genre strictly limited to these moral themes and this (frankly fundamentalist) world view?
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as Jaime Lannister in Game Of Thrones Season 3
If you have read Part One, hopefully you now appreciate the importance of good book keeping for any world builder. Now I am going to go into more detail about how you might want to go about it yourself, exploring some of the vast array of options available to you.
There are a lot of options available. They all have their strengths and weaknesses. Not all will suit your purposes. Simply settling for a filing system is probably not advisable, given that the system itself may influence what you choose work on. For example, a system that focuses heavily on filing information about home life may not be particularly relevant if you are writing high fantasy, but likewise a system that focuses heavily on categorising information about military organisation, probably won’t be relevant if there are no battles in your story.
I don’t know about other world builders, but for me book keeping has been a major challenge. I guess generally that I am not a particularly organised person. I began work on my world years ago without any filing system in place. I was working with a wiki for a while, which was perfect, but the website’s terms were changed and I could no longer use it. Over time my notes have built up and are so scattered that it’s sometimes difficult to remember where I noted something down (or if I ever noted down in the first place). It can also lead to working on the same thing twice, which wastes valuable time that could have been better spent on new material, and could even lead to confusion on which version should be considered cannon (not really an issue I’ve encountered so far but certainly one that I can foresee happening as the project gets bigger).
As such, I have finally decided to put all other projects aside (including writing) until I have a functioning filling system that contains the vast majority of the notes I have to date. It’s a rather daunting task. My world is huge: covering two continents, many cultures and sentient species, languages, maps, stories, etc etc. All contained in a variety of mediums from refill paper and google drive documents to Pages documents and even a pdf file. Not to mention all the notes still contained in my mind. This blog also probably contains some material not noted elsewhere. My stories also contain a lot important information that should be filed with the rest of my world building notes before any inconsistencies arise in my writing.
Writers are often stereotyped as exceptionally productive, organised and diligent. Certainly I am sure that these are skills necessary for most professional writers, but I wonder how true the stereotype is for aspiring writers. I don’t just mean amateur writers that have no intention of ever making a career out of their work, but more the writers that are new to the field that are still learning the ropes and developing good work habits. It’s certainly a challenge for me, and while I’m certain it affects my output as a writer, I wonder if it actually adversely affects my creativity and the maturation of my ideas. Perhaps what others might call procrastination, is in fact valuable time to process ideas within one’s subconscious (which is infinitely more powerful than the conscious mind). I’m sure all writers (and creative people in general) have the experience of coming up against a creative block or struggling through a problem, only to find that after a break one not only sees with new eyes but brings new ideas and energy to their project.
The following video isn’t about writers specifically, but I think that Adam Grant’s observations about innovators and entrepreneurs applies equally to creative people in general.
Of course it is also possible that I am just trying to justify my bad habits to myself. What are your thoughts and experience on the matter?
Fantasy World Forge 