I’m thrilled that my dear fellow bloggers A. Catherine Noon and Rachel Wilder have gifted us with Emerald Fire.  As you can read in the previous post, a big part of the story involved creating a new plane of existence.  They really did a wonderful job, inspiring me to comment further on the concept of world building.

In my humble opinion, names and terminology are fun and relatively easy ways to help develop the tone of a location.  Weather and climate hold great sway over how a society functions, so that’s another good place to start.  From there, clothing and architecture and food add depth.

Other routes can entail religion and politics.  These systems most often play a key role from what comes to mind – Frank Herbert’s Dune series is a fine example – but that doesn’t mean a writer can’t imagine aspects that don’t make their way into the tale.  Such details can drive a character’s actions as well as build substance without necessarily needing detailed inclusion in the final text.

There are many ways author’s draw the reader into a story, and shaping a believable culture within which the characters interact is one of my favorites, as both a writer and reader.  A. Catherine Noon explains beautifully the resources she and Rachel Wilder tapped from the real world.  I highly suggest you scroll down and enjoy learning much more about this process.

If you haven’t already, please go out and purchase Emerald Fire.  Happy reading!