The Mundane Made Fun

 Hope everyone had a wonderful Spring Break, if they are around that age or have kiddos that age!

So how do you make the mundane of your world, important to how your world works, interesting to your readers?

I have a chapter, soon to be written, on the bits and pieces of the world, the glue you don't see, but many people who like your stories want to know!  As a roleplayer, I like to know these things, and I think this is where you will have your most interest.  Not only them, but the deep dive people who really get into your stories.  I read everything on the Dragonriders of Pern by Anne McCaffery, to the point I at one point knew all the wyers and major houses by heart!  In a chapter like this you want to bring in that sort of information you think is just a side description but is very important to your story world.

Here are a few things I thought of putting in:

1) Holidays.  I'm going to stick to the major ones, but it makes your people of your world seem more real.  Just think of how important holidays are to our world.  To know what your characters find important in holidays can be interesting.

2) Languages.  Some of this will probably be covered in regions or race areas, but to talk about the languages all in one spot is also a good idea.  If you are Lord of the Rings fan you know how much time Tolkien put into his language stuff.  I'm not going into that much depth, but I like to talk about the languages.

3)Money types.  Just like our world, my world has different coinage.  This is a small interest to most readers, but for roleplayers this is pretty vital.  I have this in pretty good detail because we did use my world for roleplaying.

4) Trade routes.  This is for the detailed orientated people, and roleplayers.  If roleplayers use the world for being trade merchants/mercenaries knowing what they are hauling would be a great idea. 

To make it interesting and not dry I plan on using quips from my bard narrator or even little stories to get the information out.  And I also plan on relating it to some of the issues my characters have in the books, such as language issues.

Happy Writing!

How to Make History Interesting

 With many fantasy books and sourcebooks, there is some sort of timeline in the front of the book.  Generally, it's there to give the reader an idea of where the story is taking place in the "world's" timeline.  For me, a timeline was important so I knew I was getting everyone to the right place at the right time, plus I could talk about distant events and make sure I was consistently keeping the times the same.

When writing a sourcebook you can expand on this short, (or not so short), timeline and maybe give a little life to the dates in the book.  In roleplaying books they sometimes give a short timeline, then pick out some important dates that shape the world you are roleplaying in.  For roleplayers, this important so they can feel as if their character truly lives in this world they are in.  For readers, this allows them to see some more depth to the world they have come to enjoy.

For me, I am going to have a chapter on history, but not make it dry.  That is a tall task, I'm sure.  So I'm breaking down my chapter as follows:

1) A short timeline.  Here I will hit all the major points in history in a bullet point list.  I will start with the creation of Martapa and finish up with the current date of the High King's Sword.

2) I will take each bullet point and explain them a bit.  At one point there is the comment that the dragons disappear from the world.  Here I would explain the reasons and speculations by historians.  The speculations is what will make it not just dry  history.  It's fun to see ideas of why they think the dragons disappear instead of a "just the facts, ma'am" kinda of article.

This doesn't seem like a lot, but once you get going this could be reams of paper.  Make sure to hit the most important points in history and if these things didn't come up in the book or you plan on filling them out more in a later book, be vague, it's okay.  If done properly, it will bring your readers back for more!

Happy writing!

Oh The Places I'll Go...

Though not as apparent to the importance of a story, places and locations are a vital cog to your story.  And, thus, they should be a very important part of your sourcebook!

You can make this section as detailed or not detailed as you feel necessary or want to work on.  For me, I like to give lots of details, so I will have to hold myself back if I don't want to have 300 pages of area descriptions!  For some people, it may be a little more difficult.  Here are some ideas of what might work for your sourcebook to get your creative juices flowing!

1) Name your area.  Are you going to do a small section of the world, a continent, or just the whole world and pick a few choice places to describe?  Myself, I'm going to break my areas up by ruling areas.  So, in my case, I have Western Taina, Eastern Taina, the Tsalagi Mountains, The Dwarven Islands, the Ariellen Empire, and the Southern Reaches.

2) What is the important features of this area?  I would describe the major terrain and weather patterns for your area you are working on.  For the Tsalagi Mountains I would say they are a mountain range from the north part of Taina to the southern part, effectively cutting Taina in half.  I might mention there is a lot of snow in the winter, lots of rain the rest of year, and not fun to cross in the few passes that exist.

3)What are some important places in this area?  For my mountains, the passes would be the big features.  So I would mention how they are protected, any cities there, any problems for that area.  The biggest pass is Devonshire and I would mention this is also the site of one of the biggest battle in the War of the Chosen.

4)How in depth do you ant to describe the places?  For Devonshire, I would mention the High King's troops manning the walls, maybe some local business, like taverns, inns, and shops a person in the world would see or frequent, and maybe some major NPC's, (Non Player Characters for you non-roleplaying people). I would put any characters from here in your character section, but don't go into depth about them in this section.

5) How is this area important to the story?  You don't have to make it tie in directly, but readers like to see the tie and maybe a little more in-depth description about the areas the characters of your story have gone.  But feel free to flesh out areas just mentioned or not mentioned as all, but make sure there is a good balance!

Hoping this helps kick in your creative juices.  Keep on writing!