How do you world build?

I’m sure there are any number of techniques for world building out there and if anyone’s reading this I’d be happy to know how you build the world in your books. But the method I’m using probably isn’t one many use. While in law school, I discovered that my key to writing was to pose a bunch of questions to myself and then figure out the answers. So far the same tactic seems to be working well for building the world my novel will exist in. I’ve posed a lot of questions for the world itself and the magic that will inhabit it. I don’t have a lot of answers to the questions yet, but the questions make me think before I put answers to paper. Now as I think about it, this is probably a result of the Socratic method used in law school, but I’ll use whatever works!  So now I’ll pose a question to you my reader. How do you world build?

Real Life and the craft of writing

It’s funny sometimes how real life gets in the way of writing. And in my case it’s not anything major. I’m simply job hunting, reading up on other job possibilities (I’ve realized I’m not terribly interested in the practicalities of the legal profession), and reading up on the craft of writing.

I’ve been doing a fair bit of reading on the craft of writing recently. I’ve also been reading some advice given by various authors. When it comes to both categories, I’m all for reading as much as you can. However, I tend to follow more of the former as opposed to the latter. I think advice from other authors is good to think about, but not necessarily take as gospel. As for writing itself, I’ve been doing a lot of reading and internalizing about 75% of it. The remaining 25% I’m still sifting through and figuring out what will work for me and the book in my head. Not every “rule” of writing a book will fit every book you write. I think part of the fun of writing the book is figuring out which 10-15% of the rules you’re going to break.

Writing & Inspiration

Until recently, I didn’t know how to turn on inspiration. But then I started reading The Story Within: New Insights and Inspiration for Writers by Laura Oliver and that all changed. If you’re looking for ways to get inspiration jump started, it’s a good read. The suggestion she gave that has worked wonders for me is to do something you’d consider mind numbing or repetitive. That keeps the non-creative side of your brain busy but lets the creative side wander and make connections. So far I’ve discovered that driving works best for me.

What do you use to keep your writing organized? Once upon a tried using a program called yWriter, but it was too much for me. During law school I learned to use OneNote to great success, so for the moment I’m using that. If you’ve never used OneNote, I highly recommend checking it out. It’s a Microsoft Office product that is meant for taking notes and keeping things organized. I used it in law school to take notes. I have one notebook just for writing projects, then within that notebook I have sections for various writing projects, including my writing exercises. Within each of those sections I have different pages. In the writing exercises section, each exercise gets its own page. One really nice feature is that I can make a to-do list and transfer those reminders easily into Outlook.  One other terrific feature of OneNote as opposed to Word for example is that OneNote automatically saves all the time. In fact, there is no regular save button in OneNote. It simply saves everything.  There is a save as option if you need to save a project as something else however. Hopefully OneNote can help me keep my novel ideas straight and organized.