#WIPJoy Day Twenty-One

Day 21: Do you have a history for your world?

OMG, yes. There is not a single town, statue, book, myth, Device, or person in the world that isn’t rooted in history. I take great care to find the stories behind each minute detail because it is critical for keeping the feeling of depth and realism that I want for the world.

Tracking all of that information is almost as time consuming as writing the novels, and several times I have destroyed whole subplots because they could not be reconciled with the world’s history.

Most of my world history is written in short stories, and whenever I need to write something beyond the novels I dive in to writing snippets of history, and those short stories frequently inspire scenes, locations, and dialog when I return to the novel.