Getting started — What if
What if is my current working title for my novel.
Tessa had a point about introductions. The idea is good and I will use it to get started contributing to OtherWorld.
I am 41 years old married with 2 kids 12 and 8 at the moment. I work with ERP and BI at a furniture company. Denmark is my birthplace and the only country I have lived in. I am kind of a nerd.
I have no formal education but I love to read and have read books in English since I was in the eighth grade, where I read Dune. As a fantasy and science fiction fan in the late 80s you had to read books in English, because most books weren’t translated. I have written on Medium for about two years.
My take on writing a book is based on my experience with role playing games through the last 25 years. There are many premade settings each different game usually comes with one. But making your own setting is fun and a great way to start a story. The strength of the setting concept is that it helps structure the whole process and gets around many different things.
Another lesson from role playing games is the creation of NPC (Non player characters), these can be very shallow to start with but can develop if the get involved in the story. So just a few lines about a secondary character can be helpful later on. The same holds true for places and other things regarding the setting.
Doing setting stuff can also help you get started. You can write short stories in the universe and maybe the will end up as part of the product.
Many years ago I read The Middle Kingdom by David Wingrove, and he got me interested in the what if idea. His isn’t a what-if story, but the rulers of the twenty second century rewrote history to more firmly claiming the future. That got me started on my what-if story.
My setting is our world with the exception that Martin Luther never nailed his thesis’ to the door. Instead the Roman Catholic Church made a great reform.
The year is 2016 and there is a fragile truce between the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) and Islam. Because in the 80’ the parts of the world that was Buddhist collapsed and the spoils was picked up by the other world religions. The have since used many resources on integrating their new belongings.
By the treaty of 1801 Australia is neutral and that makes it a heaven for all kinds of people. Israel has been the battleground for a long time and the border has moved back and forth.
Due to the constant fighting the focus on developing weapons has seen many more advances than our world.
That is the introduction to my story and me. I will write short stories set in my setting and hopefully I can turn them into a novel.
