World Building – Characters

Call into being things that were not

Consistent & charismatic worldbuilding through character development

“I have made thee a father of many nations”….Even god, who gives life to the dead and calls into being things that are not.

Romans 4:17

Worldbuilding is a huge endeavor.  I realized that I wrote my Blue Light series books two and three without any world building.  Writing the ending of Book Three, an epic battle between Po and Agrippa the Elder, a physical one-on-one of who will drown or shapeshift and reveal their true selves, was easier than sitting down and building the worlds of Axion, Grus and the Blue Cluster.  A punster by nature, I experienced writer’s block as I wrestled with questions of importance in bringing these worlds onto the page, birthing them and their peoples.

What was important?  To me, everything was and I bordered on drowning my beta readers in heavy exposition of tree leaves and songs and culture.  Hell, I even got down to the grains of sand along Lake Carlew and the molecules of water.    Several tools were extremely useful to me in this process of creation and editing.

Dungeon & Dragons Character Sheet:  I found several free character sheets online and modified them to work with my work in progress (WIP).  Flushing out each character was a process that evolved over time.  I would write a chapter outline first and then build out the chapter.  Then I would open the character sheet and fill in the details of the character themselves.  After this, I returned to the chapter to ask myself, “is there anything that is not consistent?”  and “is there any detail I missed.” 

For example, I returned repeatedly to Dr. Tan’s face.  What shape was his face?  How would I describe it.  I couldn’t quite picture him…. Yet

Illustrators:  On several social media feeds I follow there are ‘hungry artists’, artists who for a few bucks will shoot over a rendering based on a brief character description.  BOOM.  Suddenly I could see a Birney.  The poor artist though, I must have requested half a dozen changes and for the record, I absolutely paid the artist for their time.  But with the rendering I could go back to the Character Sheet and build out the Birney line of characters, now able to see them.  Some of my favorite feeds to find artists are r/HungryArtists in Reddit and ArtStation.

I found a sample Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) online and customized for my WIP.  I sent it to the artist, along with my questions on turn-around time, payment method and confidentiality.  Once executed, I send the Character Sheet and the character’s synopsis (more on this in a minute) so they could get an idea of the character.  I did at times send an image, of how I saw the character but I don’t recommend it.  I felt that one, the illustrator copied it and modified it only and I didn’t really get my monies worth.  Two, I missed the joyful surprise of seeing my character through someone else’s response to my writing.  As I work through each character, their attributes give me insight to the worlds they reside in.

Character Story Arc:  This is a separate useful tool that helped me better visualize my characters and then expand on them into their worlds.  The story of planet Birney and its peoples, moves through several generations of the McGregor family, from Seamish to Angus to Connor.  Events that shape Seamish’s life affect his grandson Connor and the story arc shows this, by using this tool I can expand on the character’s motives analytically, going back to the character sheet and the arc and the chapter asking myself, am I writing this clearly, am I getting this thought process down so that the reader understands?

The story arc includes the birth, childhood thru adulthood, and death of the character.  For characters like Maggus, his death is an important part of plot development.  His impact, over the course of his life supports the plot.  Once in place, I found I could visualize the worlds he moved through and bring them to life on page.

Chapter Summary:  A writer colleague mentioned she uses a chapter summary to track her plot through her novels.  I adapted and adopted this tool for my work in Blue Light and shorter stories for NaNoWriMo.  Its an easy tool to develop and update;  I dump in my character story arcs into each chapter heading and now I’ve got a tool that shows the major events of my character’s life that affect them throughout the story.

With these tools in place, I can turn my attention to world building; where do these characters live, where to they travel to?  How do they bring their culture and traditions with them?  Who is impacted by their culture?  What are the natural resources of the planets and systems they are from?  With these questions answered, I can fill in the deets of each world, brining the Axion Outpost and the River Clyde in Birney alive in my novel.

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