Method of my Madness Part One

Method of my Madness Part One

• Monday, September 6, 2021

Method of My Madness Part One: 

This post is reserved for an in-depth (hopefully) description of my worldbuilding efforts, and the method behind my madness. -Malachi- 

In the beginning of the Book of Legends, I have the genealogies. Now, this was not necessary as most of my worldbuilding is done without a ton of history. I always have a bit of history. In the Gauntlet (possibly I'll add a link someday), I had to have a bit of history to explain the three main parts of the world -- the university, the gauntlet, and the maze (it was totally not cliche). A large part of the reason I wrote the Book of Legends was so that I 1: had a better idea of the history, and why the things are the way they are, and 2: so I could have a foundation off of which I could grow branches off of my series. 

The first thing I think when I see stuff like this is, "This person is putting their story in a box, making it so that they don't have any more space to explore." I don't think I'm putting my story in a box. Think about it this way. In the second section of the Book of Legends, I have something like 500,000 people to choose from as a character in any story I wish to write. In the first section I have about 40 generations, and maybe 3 people per generation, so 120 in the royal line. Is that not plenty to work with?

Now, as for the names, most I got from my head, the Bible, or my favorite name generator. A few key players like Alistair, Bennet (oops, you haven't met him yet 😉) and Gawain were hand-picked for their meaning (most of my main characters are picked based on what their name means). Ghoti is a name I got from Aperture's video "The English Language is a Giant Meme."

In my second part of the Book of Legends, I said that I used a growth calculator for developing population growth. These are helpful in developing histories. Hard times often result in a lower life expectancy, and a lower birth rate (with some exceptions). Good times often will spike the birth rate and life expectancy and depending on the culture will go to a low climb (The US is at a growth rate of .7% which is very low compared to some countries). It also helps to get a rough idea of what your character is going into (it is a very different thing if they are going into Boston rather than Unalaska or if you are going to Wyoming rather than Kentucky).

Try to dodge these bullets:

• You always have to have some history in order to have a rich world.
• Historical 'texts' can be very helpful in developing your world, even if they take a ton of time.
• Historical texts can help you rabbit hole... if you like that kind of thing.
• The Bible is a great place to get names for a fantasy world.
• If you can't think of names, name generators always help.
• If you still can't think of a name, search 'baby name meanings' or something like that and start searching the attributes for your characters.
• If you are developing a history, try plugging your population into a growth generator. Otherwise, it might not be very realistic as your reader is wondering where these 50,000 people came from in the past ten years of the story.
• Model the growth of your world's population with real countries or kingdoms that are similar to yours.

I'll probably stop for now... Next time I'll try to explain the method of my madness for the third part plus some.

-Malachi (again)-