In my post about taking a break, I mentioned creating a character for Dungeons & Dragons and the project that became. Well, I'm still working on him and his story. He grew from a simple character to a fleshed-out character and his history has continued to grow. The world he lives in is being created around him as more of the history gets written and what was supposed to be a simple history involving his family has expanded to encompass the lore of the world.
The project has grown.
This all started as just something for me to do to take a break from other projects, but has developed into it's own project. It isn't yet clear what I'm doing with this, but it is certainly fun and a welcome change of pace from working on The Agency and building an entire science fiction world. At any rate, I'm still working on writing out the histories of the character, his zombie, and the tyrant that opposes them as well as the lore surrounding certain magical items.
This is what happens when different facets of the writing process intersect.
When taking a break and letting your mind wander to other things or focus on a hobby rather than something you're working on, your creativity gets refreshed which allows you to find inspiration, even if you're not looking for it, and sometimes that inspiration leads you asking questions and daydreaming 'what if's which is how world-building at it's very core begins.
World-building is a bit like a seed, a tiny 'what if' seed that grows when questions are asked and answered about the potential world. Inspiration is like water. Too little and the almost-world dries up and stagnates. Too much and the world-plant drowns. That is why taking a break is important. Taking a break allows the world to develop a little on its own without constant attention while you recharge. Then, when you come back to it, you can approach it with more inspiration and maybe a few new questions. Sometimes, you'll find that a bit that you planned for your world no longer fits with the story you want to tell, in which case it's perfectly fine to break out the pruning shears.
With the character I've been creating, I didn't have a story in mind for him. He was intended to just be a character I could drop in, an NPC in a Dungeons & Dragons campaign. As I began creating him, however, I began asking questions--Does he know his parents? Are they in his life? If not, why? What about siblings? How many and how do they get along? What's his place in the family? How about friends?--on and on with the questions until I realized that I needed more than just a Notepad file for him. With questions in mind and ideas blooming for answers to these questions, I opened a Word file and got to work.
Soon enough, I had the story of how his parents met and their occupations at the time figured out as well as how they came to live in his hometown and relevant people in their histories that are unlikely to be relevant to his specific story. From there, I soon had information about his older siblings and their different interests and personalities. Threaded throughout all of this were plot hooks, elements of foreshadowing, and references to a deeper story that was beginning to develop. For example, his mother--a researcher apprenticing to a necromancy wizard--discovered a journal from a lost civilization that, much like the legendary city of Atlantis, vanished in one day due to some type of cataclysm. This civilization is known and, if people are willing to brave the treacherous area the civilization was found, ruins are present, but for the most part, the average person views this lost civilization as nothing more than a work of fiction. Her goal was to go down in history as the person who discovered the truth of what happened to this civilization while her mentor--remember that wizard?--had some idea about what happened, being a life-long academic dedicated to the pursuit of immortality, and wanted to use her research to find the artifact that led to the destruction of the civilization. Where does his father come in? Well, that journal his mother found was bound in leather and she needed it examined by a professional leather-worker to determine the age, quality, and type of leather--after all, it needed to be authentic. His father was a leather-worker of some fame at the time so she went to his shop and the rest is history.
That was a very brief and vague summary of his parents' meeting and doesn't even touch on his father's connection to the rebellion or what causes the two of them to leave their city and move to a small town at the very edges of an entirely different country. That is also covered and involves the tyrant I've mentioned as well as another member of the rebels opposing him.
Now, I've mentioned the tyrant a fair bit, which makes sense as he's the primary antagonist. But, just having him be a tyrant wanting to conquer the world doesn't make for a very interesting plot or an interesting character. So, I started asking questions: Why does he want to conquer the world? What is his ultimate goal? How far had he come in pursuit of that goal? What is he prepared to do to achieve it? How did he get started on this path? This is how what I'm calling the "prologue" section of the history got started. The prologue section covers not just the tyrant's origins, but also the lost civilization and how it became lost as well as the artifacts involved.
So far, there was a lot written down about the history before the character I'd initially started with was even born, but that's okay. That's how history is. Every book that has ever been written (with very few exceptions) has a long history before the main character ever draws breath. Life works the same way and, much like in life where knowing history can help you see patterns and avoid repeating history's mistakes (hopefully), knowing the history of the world your character resides in is important. It helps when figuring out some of the whys of the world and is useful in figuring out what your character knows versus what is actually true. Now, the character I'd set out to create is the son of a researcher so he grew up around books about a wide array of topics, including history, but also spent time with his father who kept up the trade of leather-work and he took an interest in that due to how versatile leather could be. Of course, he's not in a vacuum. He has siblings and friends, all of whom have their own lives that don't revolve around him. One of these friends is an elf and becomes relevant to the story later on to the point where he gets his own section, which I've taken to calling the "interlude" section.
This is a lot of detail and information regarding one character.
Yes, all of this is what sprung up and evolved from the creation of one single character who was supposed to be an NPC.
This isn't even all of it, to be honest. This is just a glimpse at part of what's been created so far.
Yes, so far. I'm still adding to it.
This is an example of inspiration and world-building intersecting as well as why it is important to keep the world in mind when creating a character. Every character that is created has their own family and their own history, and all of this is affected by and can affect the world they're in.
This probably won't be the last time I share bits of this particular side project. As I said, I'm still adding to it and it's a fun project, not to mention a good example of how inspiration, world-building, and character creating intersect and allow for ideas to grow organically. For now, though, that's all the information I'm willing to share so until next time, keep reading, keep writing, and remember to take breaks.
