Expanding the World

Expanding the World

In the coming Chapter Twelve, Dice's Troupe leaves the river and heads eastward toward their next objective, the port of Ocean's Embrace. While the character Jaundice has her route laid out, my author's map of the area Dice's Troupe will be traveling through is a blank slate. Much of the northern half of the Glades is rolling hills, forest, and tamed land. The lands further south along the western boundary are also diagramed and named as well. It's the eastern portion of the Glades north of Ocean's Reach and extending south to The Drain that I had not yet spent any time describing.

I won't reveal any details of the new terrain here. You'll just have to follow along with the troupe and explore along with them. I do wonder how other authors build their worlds, though. I have an overall mental map of the world I'm building, but I generally leave the details out until I need them. Where do I get such details? Partly from taking bits and pieces from our own world, and partly right out of my imagination.

For example, the shape of Glades, if you looked at it closely, is patterned from the state of California. The terrain of the Glades is much different, but that is where the shape comes from. I had originally envisioned keeping the terrain features as well, but frankly, it was easier for me to develop my own terrain map than try to mimic California's. There is even an early map I made up of pasted together chunks of terrain that had features that I was interested in. I don't use that map directly, but it has influenced some of my decisions.

In my last post I talked about writer's groups. Since that post of 24 March I have been waiting to hear back from one group that I was interested in joining. It took 18 days and two queries, but on 11 April I was accepted into the writer's group called "Go, Be, Write!" The reason for the time it took to receive a reply and acceptance was quickly obvious. More than a dozen applicants were approved all at once, some of which had been waiting longer than I. I'm looking forward to getting to know the group members and taking part in the meetings. Right now there are no meetings scheduled, but I hope we get word of that soon.

In the meantime, Spark grows richer as I fill in more and more of the details. I made a broad estimate that I would need twenty chapters to finish the first book, which was a reduction from the original thirty chapters I had envisioned. I now have a framework laid out for each of the remaining chapters, so I can estimate a little more tightly just how far I have to go. As things stand now, the book will have 18 chapters. At the pace I'm on, I'm still two to three months from the finish line.