When I was in Primary School, we used to sing a hymn that began: "I'm going to paint a perfect picture, a world of make believe..." Creating a fictional fantasy world is something that many authors who write in the fantasy vein have to do and it was also something that I had to do today to prepare to write my novel.
I have to admit it wasn't as easy as I thought it would be, afterall how do you create a world from scratch. My earliest design started as a large diamond shape made up of 4 diamond shapes (the 4 kingdoms making up my world) but I quickly realised that this wasn't suitable fof my needs. Being a bit stuck I decided to seek help a la google, so I typed in 'how to create a fantasy world' by which I found a link to Holly Lisle's website http://hollylisle.com/. Holly is a published fantasy author with some great tips to wannabe writers and using her help and that of my artistic house mate I was able to create my world.
Creating the world and the objects in it was the easy part, naming all of the villages, towns, rivers, forests, deserts, mountain ranges, oceans and lakes was the difficult part. That's the part which has taken me hours, through dozens of internet searches from river names locally to latin translation websites I looked everywhere trying to name everything. It's not happened, my main mountain range which all my characters will have at some point have to cross still hasn't be named but I will cross that bridge (or should I say mountain) when I get to it. :-)
The next stage for me was to download pictures of the various places that I have imagined for my book. I am no great artist and can barely draw to save my life, so I have been googling for images and have also been using Deviant Art which is where my background image of my fairytale castle comes from.
I thought researching my previous novel which was set in the 18th Century was hard as i was trying to be as realistic as possible in terms of architecture,fashion, history and customs; but this fantasy novel which I have free rein on is so much more difficult to write as I am having to literally make things up as I go. At least I can use the internet to help me, I don't know how writers such as Tolkien and C S Lewis coped with out it when creating Middle Earth and Narnia. I don't even know where they came up with some of the names from. All I can say is that they must have had amazingly overactive imaginations.
Showing posts with label Research. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Research. Show all posts
Saturday, 18 December 2010
Friday, 8 October 2010
Spotlight on... Research
Researching my novel has been one of the most challenging things i have had to do in order to prepare my novel. I thought i had done quite a bit of research before i started anyway but i also borrowed a few books from the library and have also bought some books most notably 2 books of Amanda Vickerys which look at women in Georgian England.
I keep finding that as i make progress on my novel i am having to do more and more research. I intend to write a love letter in one of my up and coming chapters and in order to do so i wanted to look at some existing love letters from the period. Some of the most notable letters were those of Napoleon Bonaparte. His letters were written approximately 60 years after the period in which my novel is set but he was quite a prolific writer and his letters tell a lot about his relationships with all of his lovers. Some of the letters i found the most relevant to what i intend to write are the letters he wrote to Marie Walewska. His language is so passionate one of my favourite lines is:
"I saw no one but you, I admired no one but you, I want no one but you.
Answer me at once, and assuage the impatient passion of N"
From this and others that i have read i am really looking forward to having a go at writing one myself.
On another note i have just heard some great news. i live in Cheltenham in England and the Cheltenham Literature Festival started today, I had a look at the programme over the next few weeks and you won't believe this but Amanda Vickery is doing a Seminar based on her two books behind closed doors and the gentlemans daughter! I am so pleased and am definitely gonna book myself in to see her and perhaps even get both books signed!!! Even better it's taking place on Monday so only a few days to go.
I keep finding that as i make progress on my novel i am having to do more and more research. I intend to write a love letter in one of my up and coming chapters and in order to do so i wanted to look at some existing love letters from the period. Some of the most notable letters were those of Napoleon Bonaparte. His letters were written approximately 60 years after the period in which my novel is set but he was quite a prolific writer and his letters tell a lot about his relationships with all of his lovers. Some of the letters i found the most relevant to what i intend to write are the letters he wrote to Marie Walewska. His language is so passionate one of my favourite lines is:
"I saw no one but you, I admired no one but you, I want no one but you.
Answer me at once, and assuage the impatient passion of N"
From this and others that i have read i am really looking forward to having a go at writing one myself.
On another note i have just heard some great news. i live in Cheltenham in England and the Cheltenham Literature Festival started today, I had a look at the programme over the next few weeks and you won't believe this but Amanda Vickery is doing a Seminar based on her two books behind closed doors and the gentlemans daughter! I am so pleased and am definitely gonna book myself in to see her and perhaps even get both books signed!!! Even better it's taking place on Monday so only a few days to go.
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