WORLD BUILDING THE SHAI WAY
Ten weeks of world building with Shai August to make your story the best it can be…
World Building The Shai Way?
How is a world building class going to help me?
Authors often fall on either one end of the world building spectrum; they don’t build enough of a world or they overbuild their world.
The first leaves readers picking over a corpse of a book like a vulture for bits of flesh to feed their imagination.
The latter is a gluttonous buffet that overstimulates the reader’s mind.
What is world building the Shai Way?
Slow. Gentle. Creative. Comprehensive.
I want you to achieve the right balance in your world that leaves the reader wanting more in your next b
Why does my fantasy world feels flat?
So, you’re writing an epic fantasy, or a paranormal romance, a time traveling speculative genre bending novella, or the next science fiction thriller.
Great!
I know you want to create a rich world like those inhabited by one of the Harrys – Potter, Dresden, Morgan, or one of the Stark children or Honor Harrington, you’re very own Safehold or Pern, but everything seems forced.
Forced not just to you but to those you’ve trusted to read your work, your alpha and beta readers or editors.
I’ll let you know what they will say, “Great dialogue.” “Love the characters.” “I like what you’re doing, are you going to add more?” “Is this all of it?”
Do you have page after page of information dumps that kick your readers right out of the story and possibly right out of your book, never to return again?
Let me help you pump some life into your world, but first tell me about the world you’ve created? Can you do it in twenty-five words? How about fifty? One hundred?
If you can’t write a one-hundred-word description of your world, how is it supposed to sustain you and the readers and most importantly your characters over three books or five or fifty?
Your world is your biggest non-speaking character in your novel; the eight-hundred-pound gorilla perched in the corner watching every move everyone makes. And if you’ve built the world correctly, trying to thwart the moves everyone is making.
Just like your characters need to be fleshed out, your world needs flesh, muscle, and bone too. That flesh is in the places and spaces. The muscles are the traditions and religions and cultures. The bones are from the history – the wars, the movement and evolution of the people and different species.
Tell me about the main hero and their posse of friends. Not just who are the good guys, but what makes them the good guys? Who are your bad guys? Why are they bad?
If you babbled on for twenty minutes and you’re just returning, do you see the difference between how you described your world and how you described your character?
What is Bloated World Building?
I once read a manuscript by an author (and I hope they don’t see this) but the main character was:
half angel
half demon
half vampire
half shifter
If you’re like me, that math just doesn’t math.
While many readers are just looking for a literary escape from the real world things like the above composition of the main character can make the story impausible leading to a quick DNF.