Guess Who's Back!

Long time, no speak!

I'm finally back to this! Only 8 months after I last posted...

Anyway, I've had a recent burst of inspiration after buying Wonderbook. It's a book designed to help authors write 'imaginative fiction', which largely means fantasy or science fiction, so it's perfect for what I'm after. It's got some really cool authors as contributors as well, like Mr. Game of Thrones, George R. R. Martin. It seems to have been just the kick up the backside that I needed!

I've decided to start working on this on my breaks at work, and I think that'll be when I get the most done, so hopefully that can carry on! Over the past couple of days I've been looking at religion and the political organisation of the world I'm creating. It's something that could actually work out quite integral to the story, and if not will be important to make the world feel realistic and actually inhabited, so hopefully I've been able to come up with something decent!

For the Mage, I had something vaguely
like this in mind, but a bit older and more modestly dressed

I've gone with something vaguely similar in style to Game of Thrones and other similar religions, but I've varied it a bit, most notably by changing around the typical organisation of religion a little bit. I've gone with ten Gods, associated with particularly characters or roles, such as Warrior, Trader, Scholar and Child, each with their own particular qualities and particularly areas. For example, a pregnant woman would pray to the Mother, or someone on their death bed would pray to the Aged. Obviously, more complicated issues or problems will need overlap in the Gods who are prayed for, but the same general gist will apply.

In terms of organisation, it's different in that there will be none. There's not going to be priests, or a pope or any kind of similar figure. The plan is for worship and prayer to be entirely personal. There will be temples (name could change, I need to think about this) with 'stations' for each of the ten Gods, and citizens can go and pray as little or as often as they'd like, in a complete personal, non-organised way. There will be 'caretakers' (again, name likely to change), who look after the temples and maintain them, but they'll have no religious role or significance at all.

The upkeep and maintenance of the places of worship will be paid for by the government, but these won't this will be the only link.

There'll also be home-stations, where families can purchase 'stations' for worship in their own homes. They can purchase just the entire 10 stations, or just one. For example, a blacksmith could just purchase a station to the Warrior (weaponry) or the Mason (construction, crafting).

That's about all I've got so far. It's a pretty hollow shell of a construct, but it's a start.

I'm intrigued to hear what anyone has to say about it, whether it's good or bad. Any additions or comments are completely welcome (and would be greatly appreciated - I can repay you in positive thoughts!)

I'll hopefully be back in a few days with a post about my plans for the political system!

First Word, First Line, First Draft

It's definitely about time for another one of these I think!

Even though I've not blogged for a while, I've actually being doing a lot of work on this, and I'm feeling much more optimistic than I have in a long time. Re-reading my prologue made me feel a bit disheartened - I could see that it wasn't great. But I know that it was never going to be perfect on the first try, and I think that realising that it was a bit terrible has been an important step.

I've been able to approach it from a completely clean slate, and I think I've identified some of the things that I needed to change, and, most importantly, ways to improve it.

The start was a bit dull. I started with trying to fill in the background, and provide context, but looking back over some of my favourite books, they all start with the story. The background and context you can fill in later, but if you haven't got the reader interested in the first few sentences, then they're not going to be bothered enough to read on, and the context is going to go to waste anyway.

So, I've identified the key point of interest in my prologue, and that's the new start to it. It opens with this big point of conflict, change and shock, and then the background gets filled in afterwards. This is potentially the biggest change I've made, and (hopefully) should have a massive impact.

I've also realised that in my prologue I'm a bit pompous. I spend a bit too much time on the description, and I've realised that I'm trying to show off what I can do, rather than worrying about the reader, and whether its going to appeal. Having spoken to a few people, I've realised that I'm far from the only would-be-writer whose made this mistake, and I think I'm lucky that I've caught it quite early on.

So my plan is to make my new prologue half the length of my first attempt, which should mean I'll cut out the needless, self-indulgent description, and just be left with a quick, driving prologue that doesn't waste any of the reader's attention.

So, the exciting news (well... I think it's exciting, and a few of the people I've mentioned this too have agreed - though how much of it was sarcasm I don't know...) is that I'm hoping, with my next blog post, around the end of my Easter Break, I'm going to upload my entire prologue (when I say entire, it's only probably going to be 7/8 A5 pages haha). It won't be the finished draft (that'll be years away yet) but it should be something similar to how it'll end up. So, look forward to that guys!

For now, I thought I'd let everyone know what I think the first line of my book will be. This'll change a few times I'm sure, but for now, I feel like this is a good start. The first line of my book will be... (drum roll please!)...

"Veyrun had no idea where the flames had come from." 

I know. Exciting isn't it.