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RE: Dream City Builder Contest (2SBD prize)
Okay - just did a nice big post for you - including some of the intricacies of my huge city-state, Irola. Please consider this my entry.
https://steemit.com/amarabooks/@viking-ventures/citybuilding-for-terrenden-874bea8faf73eest
Thanks for an awesome entry, you are so creative. If you think about universe buildings with quantum rules, you really don’t need to flesh out parts of cities your characters never interacted with. Say an ancient race built a room. It’s state of existence before and after it was discovered by humans is completely different. The people pioneering this discovery will establish parameters with their sense of touch, sight and smell. Before this, it was pure potential undetermined by our limited understanding.
Yes! Even with our own creations, it is quite okay to say "I don't know - yet."
The legend I ended up writing this week... I'd realized that I was eventually going to have to start writing legends, but this one was suddenly foisted upon me when another story had characters which started talking about this legend...
(I don't know if you've had the experience where the characters just sort of take over and tell you what they're up to - it's kind of a weird experience, but so important!)
So, suddenly, I had to go back, and finish up this stagnant story that takes place 2000 years before the current set and tell the legend that takes place about 2000 years before that!
(I really need to take a few days and catch up on my encyclopedia as this week has seen a lot of new things happen that needs to be better documented!)
I admire your ability to hold an encyclopedia, it must be quite a challenge to keep it all organize and to make sure to consult the relevant bits before writing. It could be worse, I can’t imagine working for Marvel comics having to refer to character history written by so many people working with their own lore. At least you’re one person.
Thankfully, since it is only me, I can remember an awful lot of what has gone before. But it is also absolutely essential - especially when keeping track of characters.
The books I'm currently serializing take place in 850 Terrenden Common Era, but there are frequent mentions of something that happened to Saraca in her past - something that causes her to be very conservative in advising A'mara about relationships.
Then, I came into a time when I could not work on a computer, but still wanted to write - so, I started writing what would be Saraca's Tragedy (now called the Birth of the Neví and scheduled to be serialized and epublished in August.) I had to remember how old characters were to make it work - and even once I had my older works with me, I had to do some adjusting to make things mesh. (Some of that material is going into the sequel - Rise of the Neví.)
More recently, as I've been working on my 851 T.C.E. set, I need characters, but it's better if I can re-use existing characters rather than create new ones, so I look to my character encyclopedia and ask myself, who is in Towani City (for example) in 851? Who is available to transfer? Who needs to be married off? (Since they are romances as well.) Who has been born? And which new characters are really required?
I guess, my real point is that an encyclopedia saves me a lot of time and headache later on! Especially when I'm writing (so far) on three separate points on the time line - one of which will soon run into the other, so we have age issues. I have existing stories from three other very separate points on the timeline as well, which will need to be tied in at some point.