When I’m writing a larger story, the idea will generally start with some clear image or phrase. The rest of my world-building is devoted to creating something in which that image could exist. Build up logically.
In the case of the one I’m writing now, it was an old woman, on a horse, who carried away people about to die. I don’t know where that came from, but one day it was there.
That leaves a few questions to be answered:
- Who is she?
- Where is taking them?
- What is she doing with them?
- Why is she taking them?
The last question is the most important, because that underpins everything else. You need a reason for your world to work the way it does.
And I find the best way to get a good answer is to ask more questions. What would they do with the dead if she didn’t take them away? Probably bury them, so why don’t they do that? There’s lots of possible answers here, but i’ve decided that it’s because they don’t like putting their dead in the ground. They think death taints the earth.
Now we’re moving on to culture. You could, and should, ask why they think that, but you should also start thinking about whether this belief affects anything else. If people think this, how else do they think? What do they think about dead animals – do they bury them? How does this belief affect how they act around dying people, how does it affect their conception of an afterlife, how does it filter in to their language and art?
The answers to these questions might never make it in to the finished story, but knowing them means you can add in the details that make the world real and your characters believable – and more than that, it grows story. It’s the stuff that gets whole new plot strands developing.
In this story, I’ve already built up quite a lot of world. I know that the woman is a Rider, one of many who collect the dead. This started me thinking about how people become Riders, and that’s how I found my narrator.
It’s been a while since I’ve written anything in a longer form, and while the 100-worders are great practice, I need to get back into bigger stuff. I’m going to try and get this one done by the end of January. At my usual writing speed, that’s a big ask.
So let’s go.
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