When it comes to writing styles there are two basic camps that most authors can be separated into, panster or plotter. Sure there are points of intersection between both, and sometimes a singular author likes to waffle between both basic camps. Yet either way you look at it, both sides of the aisle will eventually have to step into some form of research and skill sharpening. Side note, for those unaware of the terminology “panster” means to “write by the seat of your pants,” aka no outline, “plotters” tend to plot the entire story structure out before they sit down to write.
Pantsers and plotters alike will eventually have to come face to face with how the world in their novel runs. If you write more of a historical fiction approach then you face a good amount of research in order to keep your setting true to said particular era. When you are writing fantasy or science fiction you have a bit more leniency on your world structure, but surprisingly enough you two will being doing just as much (if not more) research. The types of researching can vary though. While often you’ll face logistical research as to draw parallels in real world time periods, basic ecological systems, physics, and more; there are also points in which you decide where to diverge from the natural and just how far “off book” you want to go.
For these steps of world building I would strongly suggest getting yourself some writing prompt books like the one I’m discussing today: Writing Sci-Fi & Fantasy: the San Fransicso Writer’s Grotto. While this is more specifically a “book of writing prompts” as labeled on the cover, I found this little guy (only 95 pages) as a fantastic mental exercise to help me better understand how each nation within Sacred Tears functioned, where their “beginning of the universe” stories came from.
Inside the book they break down some concepts on what it means to write in the Science Fiction and Fantasy genres: “[it] is about striking a balance between freeing yourself from the boundaries of reality and usi8ng the discipline of technique to tell a good story.” They encourage you to take into consideration the physical, cultural, and sociological details of the world you’re creating. Why do you need to know all of these things about your story? Can you not just focus on your character and be done with it all?
Well, you can, but it will make things more difficult and can easily throw you into the trap of either lack of motivation for your characters or where all your characters just become carbon copies of each other. Knowing these greater details of your world will help form your characters, giving you a quicker understanding of how they will respond to the different trials sent their way. Is your character from a low income (or impoverished) family? When hardships hit this may have made them less likely to panic because starving is just their normal Tuesday. Conversely is their society one in which the poor are that way due to ostracization? Then maybe they have a very hard time asking for help or feeling like they are worth being helped because they are used to being hated.
The writing prompts and notations in this book become great exercises to get you thinking about different things such as the history of your world’s timeline, or possible modes of transportation, and some great out of the box fill in the blank story starters. Not everything you work through in this book, which honestly is more of a workbook than a straight prompt writing book, will be used in your world structuring. But each exercise offered will help you break away from things we take for granted as assumed knowledge for societal structuring and make you sit and think what do you actually want in your stories?
Personally, I was thrilled with this little book because not only did it help spawn a whole series of new story ideas, but it helped me dig so much deeper into the lore of Sacred Tears than I had initially gone. Will everything I’ve discovered be put in the books? No, probably not. But the more I understand Iris’s world the better I can represent her and how those around her will engage in it and with each other.