The Bewildering Pine - The Needle in the Haystack - 4th Friday Post - May 25th

When I began working on "The Ledgerkeepers" novel, I knew that I would want to fair spend bit of time with the world building. There was so much to figure out and create before I got the actual writing of the novel going.

Geography, flora and fauna, language(s) transportation, quality of life, currency/trade, clothing, economy, death, myths and legends, climate, superstitions, history, education and on and on.

I spent quite a bit of time working through and fleshing out all of this even though less than 5% of it will end up in the world as actual written detail, I DO think it's important to have the fantasy world built out in your head before you dive in and start writing in it. While characters, plot and action will be the core of the writing,  it helps to know what the world around them is all about so you can experience it as the characters would.

In recent months, when I went ahead and began the actual storylines for the characters, I found myself swimming in that sea of details because I am an admittedly terrible organizer. Time and again  I found myself spending far too long looking for those things I had already worked out months before. It was often like looking for a needle in a haystack. Many times I had a good idea where the right section of notes was. Others, it was a shot in the dark.

Very frustrating.

The writing program I use, Scrivener, has several wonderful ways to organize notes and details just like these. My problem was that I had written most of the pages of world building notes before I started working with Scrivener, so I needed to go ahead and transfer them all over from Mac Notes.

Well, I recently got all of those notes printed AND transferred and, out of curiosity, I decided to put all of the notes in one project folder so I could check the word count on all of that world building.

It crossed over400,000 words. Given that a novel will be in the 100,000 word range, that floored me.

I've basically written FOUR books worth of NOTES about the Bewildering Pine world in the last 18 months!  It now occurs to me that the world is the haystack and the book that I am trying to pull from it, is the needle.

But I am SO glad I did all of the world building. When I am writing a scene and I know the style of clothing a Lutin elf wears or the type of hat a Hob sports, if I want to write about the types of street food or the fillings for a tart or drop the names of  a few of the wagering games played in the secret basements of pubs, I smile.

 Those are the details that I can just write without having to create them in the moment.

Next month we will begin the dive into the world itself. I hope to focus on the map for the next few fourth Fridays.  I love maps and I think I could sit and create them all day long. . .  I've spent hours on the one for the Bewildering Pine and it is nowhere near complete.

So come back then for the next installment!

Hoping YOUR world magical and bright! Thank you for dropping by. . .

Nicolas XO