We are continuing the build of our storyboard for NaNoWriMo2021. My planned NaNoWriMo project takes place in the world of Neveyah, a world where five other books have been set. Neveyah is an alien environment, yet it’s extremely familiar to me.
I know that world because I based the plants and topography on the Pacific Northwest, where I live. Other than the Escarpment, which is the visible scar left behind by the Sundering of the Worlds, the plants and geography are directly pulled from the forested hills and farmlands of Southern Puget Sound and Western Washington State.
In 2008, when I first began writing in this world, I went to science to see how long it takes for an environment to recover from cataclysmic events. I took my information from the Channeled Scablands of Washington State, a two-hour drive from my home. This vast desert area is comprised of the scars of a series of natural disasters that occurred around 13,000 years ago.
From Wikipedia: The Cordilleran Ice Sheet dammed up Glacial Lake Missoula at the Purcell Trench Lobe. A series of floods occurring over the period of 18,000 to 13,000 years ago swept over the landscape when the ice dam broke. The eroded channels also show an anastomosing, or braided, appearance.
The story I’m prepping for takes place only a century after a world-shattering disaster, so the way the world was before the Sundering is still fresh in their lore. The elders remember the culture and technology and know firsthand what was lost in the cataclysm. I am plotting book 2 of a duology, so I’ve already established that my protagonist is a shaman and devoted to caring for the fragile ecology.
But perhaps you are writing a historical novel. A certain amount of worldbuilding will be required, no matter when or where your book is set.
Let’s say you are writing an account of a soldier’s experiences in the Battle of the Bulge, also known as the Ardennes Counteroffensive. This battle was a pivotal point in World War II. American forces endured most of the attack, suffering their highest casualties of any operation during the war.
US Army Center for Military History, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Researching and building the world this novel takes place in will be time-consuming but easy because a great deal of information about this battle exists. You can access documents and accounts from both sides of the war. The Ardennes region covers the province of Wallonia in eastern Belgium, northeast France, and Luxembourg, and many maps showing the area as it was in 1945 are still available in libraries and on the internet.
In regard to the events and battles of World War II, generals of both sides left many documents detailing how the terrain they were forced to fight on affected their decisions.
But even though your book may explore a real soldier’s experiences through newsreels, the pages of his diary, and the interview you had with him just before his death at the age of 94, you are still writing a fantasy.
This is because, in reality, the world of this book exists only in three places:
- it flows from the author’s mind
- to the pages of the book
- into the reader’s mind through the written word
We can only view history through the stained-glass of time. History, even recent events, assumes a mythical quality when we attempt to record it. Even a documentary movie that shows events filmed by the news camera may not be portrayed exactly as it was truly experienced. The facts are filtered through the photographer’s eye and the historian’s pen.
Modern Romance, historical, and contemporary novels are genres set in real-world locations. Their authors are fortunate, as information is usually available for the researcher to dig up. For an author recounting any historical era, information will be accessible since archaeologists and historians are constantly expanding our knowledge of history.
Any story set in prehistorical times is a fantasy.
- Historical eras are those where we have written records.
- Any story taking place in a society that left no written records must be considered a fantasy as little scientific facts are available, although mythology, conjecture, and theorizing abound.
If you are setting your novel in a real-world city as it currently exists, make good use of Google Earth. Bookmark it now, even if you live in that town, as the maps you will generate will help you stay on track while you are winging it during NaNoWriMo.
If you are writing a tale set in a fantasy or sci-fi setting, you are creating that world.
Original Map of Neveyah from 2008 © Connie J. Jasperson
The first map of my world of Neveyah series was scribbled with a pencil on graph paper. Over time it evolved into a full-color relief map of the world as it exists in my mind.
I love maps. My own maps start out in a rudimentary form, just a way to keep my story straight. I use pencil and graph paper at this stage because:
- As the rough draft evolves, sometimes towns must be renamed.
- They may have to be moved to more logical places.
- Whole mountain ranges may have to be moved or reshaped so that forests and savannas will appear where they are supposed to be in the story.
Neveyah © 2015 – 2021 Connie J. Jasperson
What should go on a map? At this point, not a whole lot.
- The name of the town or area where the story begins.
Yep, that’s it, unless you are in the mood to draw maps. All you need for now is the jumping off point.
In November, you will add all the details as they occur to you, and believe me, they will come. In the meantime, your map page will be ready and waiting for you to note the particulars. When you are spewing words, the details will emerge, and you will have a place ready for them.
Why should you be worried about this now? It will be one thing you don’t have to worry about when you are pantsing it. The page will be there, and the map will be waiting for you to add to it.
When your characters are traveling great distances, they may pass through villages on their way. Perhaps the environment will impede your characters.
If environmental or geographical obstacles are pertinent to the story, it will be easy for you to take a moment to note their location on your map. This way, you won’t interrupt the momentum of your writing, and won’t contradict yourself if your party must return the way they came.
If your work is sci-fi, consider making a map of the place where the action happens. It could be a pencil-drawn floor-plan of a space station/ship or the line drawing of part of an alien world. I drew the floorplan of Billy’s Revenge for my reference, as most of the novel, Billy Ninefingers, takes place there.
Your storyboard is your lifeline in November, offering you dots to connect and help you stay organized when you are writing stream-of-consciousness. During the lead-up to November, make notes about your environment whenever you have an idea that you’d like to incorporate into your novel.
The #NaNoPrep series to date:
#NaNoPrep: part 1: What’s the Story?
#NaNoPrep, Setting: Creating the Big Picture
#NaNoPrep, Building Characters
#NaNoPrep, More Character Building
#NaNoPrep, Designing Science, Magic, and the Paranormal
Today’s post: #NaNoPrep, Terrain and Geography
Credits and Attributions:
Wikipedia contributors, “Channeled Scablands,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Channeled_Scablands&oldid=1031181669 (accessed September 21, 2021).
Wikimedia Commons contributors, “File:Western Front Ardennes 1944.jpg,” Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Western_Front_Ardennes_1944.jpg&oldid=470134455 (accessed September 21, 2021).
Open your 
Authors of sci-fi must research and understand the 
Satisfying these conditions sets the stage for you to create the Science of Magic. This is an underlying, invisible layer of the world. By creating and following the arbitrary rules of this “science,” your story won’t contradict itself.
Conflict forces the characters out of their comfortable environment. The roadblocks you put up force the protagonist to be creative. Through that creativity, your characters become stronger than they believe they are.
If you design this now, on November 1st, you will have the framework to showcase your characters ambitions, the drive to acquire more personal power, and the lengths characters will go to in their efforts to gain an edge over their opponents. Everything will be in place for a free-wheeling dive deep into the consequences of your protagonist’s struggle.
Cider Pressing by George Henry Durrie 1855
We humans are tribal and like having an overarching power structure because someone has to be the leader, which isn’t a job most people want once they see what is involved. Being the leader means bearing the responsibility when things go wrong, usually more often than basking in the glory when it’s all good.
Society is always composed of many layers and classes. Below is a list of questions for you to consider when building your fantasy or sci-fi civilization. I admit it’s long, but please bear with me.
Government: There will be a government somewhere, even if it is just the local warlord. Someone is always in charge because it’s easier for the rest of us that way:
Power in the hands of only a few people offers many opportunities for mayhem—followers may inadvertently create a situation where the leader believes they are anointed by the Supreme Deity. Even better, they may become the God-Emperor/Empress.
Every side character has hopes and wants something, so that will be noted.
My antagonist will have trusted captains, who will carry out his orders. I just haven’t met them yet, and probably won’t until I begin plotting the antagonist’s arc of the story.
Race: This is a post-apocalypse world. When the survivors were preparing to leave the catacombs, they divided into 50 tribes and blended the various races and ethnicities as evenly as possible to widen the gene pool. Everyone is of mixed-race heritage, regardless of outward coloring and appearance.
Next up, we will look closer at our characters and see who their companions are. Some of Ivan’s companions are already established as they were featured in last year’s NaNoWriMo novel. Others are new, and I need to understand who they are and how they fit into Ivan’s story.
Every series set in this world happens at a different point in their history. The current novel is set in the year 131 AS (After the Sundering). The Tower of Bones series begins in the year 3254 AS. In that era, the Sundering of the Worlds is almost a legend, yet the black wall of the Escarpment topped by the Mountains of the Moon still testifies to the reality of the event.
It’s a low-tech agrarian society. Tribal villages are communal, run by a council of elders. Everyone contributes to the community’s storehouses and benefits equally. While some earn more and others less, there is no class disparity. Ivan lives in Weiland, the main citadel of a western tribe, Weila.
If our work is set in an actual location, we should know where to find resources for appropriate slang, urban myths, and other local peculiarities. I suggest adding a list of where to easily access the resources about your chosen community to your storyboard. My co-Municipal Liaison, Lee French, reminds us that we don’t have to immerse ourselves immediately, just lay the groundwork for November.
I do this by having my daily prompts all set out in advance in the outline. Then I set myself in front of my computer and wing it for at least two hours.
Other things to consider are point of view and narrative tense. Who can tell the story most effectively, a protagonist, a sidekick, or an unseen witness? And will it be written in the 1st person, 2nd person, 3rd person limited, or 3rd person omniscient? What narrative time will the story be set in, the present or past tense?
I always give the proto novel a working title that becomes the storyboard’s label. The book I am writing is set in the world of Neveyah, and so it belongs with the rest of the books set in that world. The workbook is labeled Neveyah.xls, and the spreadsheet that I will be working on will be labeled “Ivan’s Story II,” as I currently don’t have a title.
Preplanning takes advantage of all the pertinent ideas I have at the outset and offers me a jumping-off point. Like a connect the dots game, I know how to write the story that happens between and because of each event. Having this knowledge helps me take the story to its conclusion, allowing me to have the full story arc written in thirty days.
If you haven’t heard of this before, it’s a worldwide event that happens in November. Each year thousands of people in all parts of the world dedicate themselves to writing a 50,000-word narrative in only thirty days.
But I got side-tracked. On day 5, I thought about an artifact’s origin that has a role in my still-unfinished novel. 80,000 words later, that bunny trail had become a novel, The Ruins of Abeyon.
Over the next few weeks, we will focus on laying the groundwork for our novels so that we will be ready and able to write when November comes. Much of what I will be discussing has emerged from our experience and comes from my co-ML Lee’s prep work as much as from mine.
My parents also had bought 
Then, in 1987, my father bought me a secondhand 
I’m proud to admit that my literary influences can be traced back to dragons, booze, elves, 
I shared what I wrote with other people and got feedback, some good, some bad. I learned from it all and kept trying. I bought books on the craft of writing.
Life in the Realm of Fantasy 
