Want to write novels that feel real enough to the reader to have been ripped from the headlines, whatever your genre? Think like a journalist. You want to evoke a feeling of WHEN and WHERE that will make readers feel like they have just taken a walk through your story world. Take a few cues from how journalists do this. For novelists WHEN and WHERE relate to setting.
Get ready to dig into the concept of setting. WHEN and WHERE the heck are your characters? They have to be somewhere, waiting for the story to start. And that place shouldn't feel random.
In this textbook/workbook you will look at the nuts and bolts of worldbuilding, whether you are writing contemporary fiction, or something set across the galaxy. The worksheets will assist you in everything from deciding what era to set your story in to creating a workable fictional society. There are additional worksheets for worldbuilding speculative fiction.
This workbook serves as a full self-paced writing course, presenting theory on writing vivid, consistent worldbuilding - and then offering step-by-step worksheets that allow you to apply what you just learned to your own story. The instructional material is designed to give you a basic foundation in creative writing theory regarding setting, culture and history to create fiction with meaning using the information you add into the worksheets.
Working through the entire WHEN and WHERE Relate to Settingb workbook will give you a an extensive worldbuilding document, including maps, historical overviews, societal structure, and a plan for incorporating these element into the story that you can pull from while writing. In short, you get a reference source for your world - and the expertise on how to use it.
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Approach worldbuilding the same way a journalist approaches making a documentary.
Delve into understanding how to balance your use of worldbuilding and setting details to avoid either confusing or overwhelming the reader. Instructional material focuses on incorporating your setting into the story, how to use setting to create a mood or as an addition character on creating and using maps and lists of details to keep everything consistent. All of this works in tandem with the worksheets.
- Determine the basic when and where your story takes place. Then fill in the details using an extensive worldbuilding worksheet that includes maps, history, economy, and culture. There are also resources for working with real-world contemporary and historical settings.
NOTE: The e-book version of this workbook links to printable versions of the worksheets. The page count is therefore different than the print book.
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Hemmingway worked as a newspaper journalist before he became a fiction writer. E.B. White did a stint at the New Yorker. L.M. Montgomery was a reporter in Halifax before tackling Anne of Green Gables. Margaret Mitchell got her start as a reporter for the Atlanta Journal Sunday Magazine. What these writers have in common: an excellent sense of character, and the ability to write clean prose that clearly puts forwards the characters' goals and motivations. This ability may well come from having mastered the journalistic art, which emphasizes creating a sound story that balances logic, research and emotional authenticity.
Even if you're working in a purely creative world, you can still use those principles, and learn to organize and research like a journalist, and to ask the questions a journalist asks either before or after you write your story.