Thursday, August 11, 2011

History

Hi all! As you might notice, I've changed my comment form recently after it was suggested that the embedded form was the reason why some of my readers couldn't comment.

But now it seems that the new form isn't helping, because I'm just getting new people who are saying that they have a problem. So if you have a problem with the new form but not the old form, would you please let me know? And if you had a problem with the old form and not the new form, please let me know too. I'm trying to figure out the lesser of two evils. I'll love you forever if you mail me. mishagericke(AT)gmail(DOT)com.



OK... now admin is done and I get to the real meat of today's post.

Today as I was preparing to drive around with my family (today is my day off), my muse dangled this little string in front of me. Curious being that I am, I took it and decided to see where it went. And... now I sort of have another major Doorways related project on the to-do list.

Projects, you might ask. Well, I still have to draw more detailed maps of my countries. I still want to draw the important places in my book. I especially still want to write out a significant portion of  two languages.

And now... I have to get the history down. Before book two. Doorways is mainly about events being triggered, but for that to be the case, something must have happened before.

I thought that the current situation was started in the previous generation, but now I'm starting to see that it wasn't.

Except for that, there are some aspects of the culture that could really do with me knowing exactly what caused them.

Fun, but I can see how that will be time consuming.

But fun. I'm actually thinking about starting either in the current situation and working my way back. On the other hand, it might be a lot more natural to just start at a point in the past and working my way to the present.

Of course, the latter method can be a study on its own...

Anyone else discover the need to write out the history of the places and cultures in your books? How did you go about it?

13 comments:

  1. Yes, I feel that strong pull to write history of places before the direct people sources are gone. It saddens me to realize that the number of WW2 veterans is dwindling, and soon almost all will be gone.
    I need to interview more of these wonderful people.

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  2. Oh yes, that's often the most fun part!

    As for comments, I don't really care how you do it as long as there's no stupid word verification. ;)

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  3. I wanna see your maps. And I think that when your muse acts up, you should remind her that you cannot listen because you are #editing.

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  4. Some of the feedback I've gotten on my current novel suggests my worldbuilding needs to be beefed up. My solution was to write a prequel, and now I'm delving into the history of the society even deeper and coming up with all sorts of great stuff. Fun.

    Never had any trouble with posting comments before. Sometimes I'll get a message that I'm not signed into Blogger, but I just hit "post comment" again and it lets me in. Sometimes you just have to give it a good kick.

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  5. Embedded or pop-up comments is fine with me; my browser doesn't have trouble with either.

    Yes! I've actually thought about writing a book set in a historical (relative to the first book I wrote in the same world) time period, just to bring out more details and history.

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  6. Either comment form is fine with me.

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  7. Pop-ups are great and without the word verification? so much the better!

    I am getting ready to write a piece with archaeology and cultural references in it. In the book I am working on now, I did my research but didn't write a lot down because I could but don't think that will work with this piece so I think I will be taking notes as I go on the next one... I think. We'll see.

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  8. No problem commenting here...!

    As for writing out history/culture, yeah, definitely for my fantasy novel. Not so much for other novels with fictional places. But I should probably work on that, definitely for my SQUEAKY stories. hehe

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  9. History is important to me, I often intruduce the history of whatever I'm writing about into it.

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  10. I'm having to do personal histories right now and I'm finding character journals helpful. Sounds like you have lot of work ahead of you. Good luck and I hope it's fun.

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  11. Either comment form is okay with me.

    I am currently working on the personal history aspect of an ancient civilization. God knows how I will go about it.

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  12. I have the advantage of using real historical settings. However, I do have to think about how characters and their families fit into that history.

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  13. NO problem commenting either way.

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Thanks for commenting! I love to read what you think.

Feel free to ignore the check-box saying "Prove you're not a robot." My word verification is off, but I moderate comments to posts older than two weeks.