An introduction to world building
A huge attraction for the want-to-be sci-fi writer is world building. It’s addictive — like drinking liquid imagination.
World building is the process of working out the setting of your story. Over the next few installments I’ll talk about elements of world building that I incorporated into Melody Harper’s Moon.
It all starts with an idea. But remember your “idea” is your stage, your setting — it will influence your story, but it won’t be your story. This is a mistake I made as a teen in my early writing — having a really cool premise is a great start, but although we’ll buy a book based on a cool premise, we won’t stay with it until the end unless there’s a great tale that grips us.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
The premise for Melody Harper’s Moon is really simple, “girl moves to a colony on the Moon”. What came next was research — reading, reading, reading.
I’m an astronomy major, so I had good ideas of where to look. Whilst I’m doing this I like to build up a “bible” for the Universe. It’s a folder or perhaps a Word document (my notes are so old, some are in Lotus Notes) — some extracts, some links.
Generally it helped to what I call “ferment” ideas. This means to read a lot, and go “okay so what if …”.
An important early character for my story, more ironically than my main character, was the colony on the Moon. Would it be far in the future so all problems are solved? I thought there’s a lot of such far-future stories.
But I also really didn’t want it to be too early in the life of the colony on the Moon. It didn’t seem a good place to send a teenager to. I also wanted the colony to be established enough that it would have it’s own culture, which would form a culture clash, which I could use for dramatic purposes.
Although it was science fiction, I decided I didn’t want aliens in it. However I did want the people who lived on the Moon to feel different to my main character.
Finally, I had to watch myself. I’m a scientist and engineer, so I can put too much detail into things. I wanted to tell a story, not create a manual for life on the Moon. It was important in all these design decisions to think of how they impacted people, and how they could be exploited for dramatic purposes when needed.
You can buy Melody Harper’s Moon through Amazon,
In the UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Melody-Harpers-Moon-Meike-Torkelson-ebook/dp/B07GTYY3NL
In the US: https://www.amazon.com/Melody-Harpers-Moon-Meike-Torkelson-ebook/dp/B07GTYY3NL
In Australia: https://www.amazon.com.au/Melody-Harpers-Moon-Meike-Torkelson-ebook/dp/B07GTYY3NL
