C17: April (Days 90-120) – World-building and novel planning

by Suw on April 2, 2017

Yesterday, I decided that this month’s creative act would be to learn napkin folding. Unfortunately for me, all of our napkins are rectangular and thus unsuitable for folding techniques that rely on a square napkin.

I have taken this as a sign that this month I ought to do something else, and that other thing is to work on my novel. I’m still at the planning stage, which means building the world I’ll be writing about: deciding what technology exists and how widespread it is, where the novel is set, what society is like, who is in the community and what their relationships are. This novel is not one where I can just start at the beginning and see what happens. Everything needs to fit together in a sensible way, so I need to be clear about the science and everything else.

I don’t do well with “let’s just see where it goes” writing anyway. I need a scaffolding upon which to sculpt, which means working out the details before I get going. I need to know where the thing ends before I can work out where and how it starts.

I don’t know that there’ll be much to relate on a day to day basis. But I did some good work both yesterday and today, so have done my Days 91 and 92. I may or may not blog updates, so if the blog goes a bit quiet, that’s not a sign that I’ve given up, it’s a sign I’m hard at work.

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