Building worlds can be frustrating. In order to build mood and get people to care why the characters are doing what they’re doing, building a world is almost always necessary, but that doesn’t make it less frustrating.
Some of my author friends have tried telling me that I just
need to jump into the action, but why would I care about the action if I was
not invested in the characters and didn’t understand the world? And no, not all stories just jump right into the
main part of the plot. George RR Martin
spends oodles of time building the world within Game of Thrones in order to set
up the real action. JRR Tolkien spent
books building the world around the Shire and Mordor before giving people the
main thrust of the story.
No, I’m not Tolkien or Martin, but the world I’m creating
within my newest novel requires that kind of buildup. No one will care about the demons from Malum
or why the kingdoms of Progenitos put aside the differences they have on the
rest of their world to team up and keep those demons in check if the
world-building is shallow. It has to
build slowly until the reader suddenly finds himself or herself in the middle
of the boiling water.
All that said, it doesn’t make it less frustrating. It takes time, and, dammit, I just want to finish
the book. :-P
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