Wednesday World-building Workshop Part 1

An Introduction

From the moment that I entered the Steemit community I declared myself proudly as a Worldbuilder… or as “the” Worldbuilder. I didn’t mean of course that I was the best at it, but it was a nice title spinoff from “Enter the Dragon”.

Over the years there have been many great worldbuilders that have all contributed to my inspiration to do the same. Names like Tolkien, Martin, Feist, Clarke, Eddings, Wiess & Hickman, Knaak, Jordan, McCaffrey, Erikson all played parts in my development. From when I was a young reader up till today, these authors have been what I aspire to be.

Of course I did not start out thinking I will do some world building. I wanted to write a book. I liked series. I wanted to write series. So at the age of 14 I wrote and I wrote about 23 Chapters, 300 pages of A4 exercise book covered in my hideous handwriting. It was around then that the plot had fallen apart.

I stopped writing for a while, thought about it and began writing again. It was not long after that I failed a second time and I took months to recover from there. When I did recover I saw that I had indeed changed, I had improved. I had some friends who would read my stuff as I wrote them and it would be remarked that I had indeed improved.

There was still a planning component missing.

I wanted to create Epic Fantasy. Something to rival my better’s, inspired by them. For me to get to that level I needed to create something that happened on the back of the scene. Supporting information of facts of things that were happening behind scenes.

World of Kedra was born

It was only in 2014 that I really became extremely busy with World-building. This began with World of Kedra. An outdated count was 141,000 words of non-publishable deign documents, though this is likely incorrect.

By have created an extensive world with plenty background, history and definitions for World of Kedra. It contains all the information that I need to build my content in an accurate, planned way. World of Kedra is ultimately an Epic Fantasy world.

The Wednesday World-builder Workshop publishing format

What I hope to achieve with these regular publications is the following:

World Building components - A section that explains a components of World-building.

Extract Example - A section that uses a piece of my work as an example.

World Information - A section that takes a look at a short piece of background.

Definitions

Bashnote - When I am speaking of a Bashnote I am talking about a Document where I explain something about my world. Sometime I voice it as though to a reader or to myself. It is the overall of a concept

Character Profile - An in-depth character profile is created for important characters, not just the protagonist and antagonist, but for others that need to interact a lot in the fiction.

Publishable non-fiction - The first example I ever saw of this was David Eddings that published the Rivan Codex. It was written on the pretext that the King of Cherek writing about what can be found in other kingdoms and bits of history about them. This is turning all the bashnotes into presentable publishable content. Sometimes I begin writing my bashnote like this instead because I want to write what a Scholar of the time would say about whatever.

A small example of the above sections:

World Building component

Define your nations. Usually your fiction takes you to walking the streets of towns and roadways and villages in a country. Most of the World of Kedra deals with the Kingdom of Railor and though it is a massive faction compared to its neighbours, it is the neighbours that define a nation.

Everything starts somewhere and our example today explains a nation bordering Railor to the north: Ungaraia.

Explaining their demeanour, economy, brief history and military strength will tell me, the writer a lot about the little nation. It can serve as a reminder to me as to what people and conditions will be there when I have a character goes there. The character on its own also has traits and a personality, knowing the two will result in a characterful display of how your character will interact with their surroundings and the people.

Are they similar or dissimilar to the people in this nation? Do they fell that they are superior or inferior to the others? Do they tolerate or hate people from that nation? Know your character and you know his actions. Know his surroundings and you know the scene and the character as part of that scene.

Extract Example

Let us imagine ourselves visiting the following:

The Kingdom of Ungaria

Lead by the Ungarian King, this is a dour and warlike nation. Because of their various wars against other nations such as Arrzan, Bokorva and Cromana they constantly take in bands of mercenaries from all over the known world.

Their country produces some grain and barely and they have cattle and sheep livestock. Poultry used to be a big produce but they have had trouble managing them in the winter years during wartimes and foxes and deserters have destroyed their stocks.

Most importantly however is the country’s gold mines. This is the main reason for their neighbouring Kingdoms constantly eyeing their lands and why Ungaria greedily guards its own borders. Using this coin to trade for metals to equip the army and hire mercenaries has become standard practice for decades.

So here we can see that this nation does not have much in the way of natural resources. They have gold however and seems to be the only thing that keeps people in that place at all. When food gets scarce, even gold is not enough to keep men in this place and there is where the deserters come from.

If it was me, I would not like the attitude of the people of Ungaria. Though it would be a fantastic place to go to do trading. They also have need for mercenaries so if this was something that I was good at, there would be good enough pay to be had for rendering these services.

Characters who have strong morals and spiritual concepts will not enjoy this nation or their manners.

World Information

The Ungarian Military goes as follows:

King’s Guard: A small army that protects the King and his household. 30 Horsemen armed with lance and sword, armoured well. 70 Men on foot, of which 40 are archers and 30 are pikemen.

Ungarian 1st Army: Led by a General, this army consists of 6 squads of ten Horsemen (60), 300 Pikemen and 250 Bowmen. These are stationed on the border facing the Arrzan Kingdom.

Ungarian 2nd Army: Led by a General, this army is mounted on walls facing Bokorva, they have no cavalry but have 400 archers and 200 pikemen.

Ungarian 3rd Army: This force defends Ungaria’s northern border. Because of the rough terrain and constant warfare no solid wall border has been made. The area is covered by a number of castles or forts that house various military groups. Each fortification is led by a Commander or Captain and has archers and pikemen manning the walls. Within, units of horsemen are made ready to go out and hit any intruders hard and then retreat to within the walls.

Recent History

Ungaria is an ally of the Kingdom of Railor, they make a tribute in gold to the Kingdom’s coffers to make sure that their southern border remains shut to their enemies. The King and his father has made offers before of joining houses with the Ungarian King so that it become part of the Kingdom and thus remain safe from attack but always there has been complications to doing this. When the Ungarian King had a daughter, she had died of a wasting disease in the King’s father’s time. Now that the King is looking to marrying a child to the Ungarian line he has only boys and so does the Ungarian family.

Next time on Wednesday Worldbuilding Workshop

The famous and intricate construction of the Towers of Magic - This region is technically the Western Duchy of Railor. It is a large island with a massive structure built in the centre. A collection of Towers that has grown fused together for over a millennium’s construction and growth.