The Vanished Knight, #IWSG & Indie Life

There’s a lot going on over here today, I’m Misha Gericke, who’s talking about world building. It’s also IWSG post day and this will also do double duty as my Indie Life post. Without further nattering from me, please welcome Misha…

Since I’m traveling around the blogosphere, marketing my YA Epic Fantasy book The Vanished Knight, Joy asked me to write about world building.

I approach my world building the same way as my characterization. In my mind, the world exists the moment I think of it, already formed with its cities, monuments, histories, cultures and norms. My job as a writer is to find out what they are and share the relevant details with my readers.

That’s pretty much the basis of it. But of course, there is one complication to world building. Characters can act out of character. Worlds… not so much. Unless a story is about the world suddenly acting strange, like… say with a super volcano suddenly erupting, the world is completely subject to its own rules and its history.

If the world suddenly went off its access for no reason, or people just suddenly went to war without a reason why, the story’s believability would be undermined. And strange as it might sound, believability is the foundation of the fantasy reader’s relationship with the story.

Fantasy requires the reader to suspend disbelief, but there’s only so much you as a writer can get away with. Anything beyond that point will have the reader sneering at your fake-looking attempt and closing the book. Which naturally, no writer wants.

So if you’re building your world, make sure you know the world’s fundamental rules. And never break them unless you have a very specific and excellent reason to do so.

Also, never forget to take into account the effect of culture on your characters and what they’d do. It might sound silly, but something as silly as saying “OMG” will jar if you’re in a culture that either has no gods or a pantheon of them. Even if your character acts out against his or her culture, it still has an effect. You don’t rebel against your culture for no reason, and you don’t do it by acting as if the culture doesn’t exist. You rail against it, beat your head against it, you scream against it. But above all, you’re always acknowledging its effect on you and those around you.

Above all, world building is about being authentic. So once you know your world, make sure there’s internal logic and consistency within your book that blends with the world and culture you developed. If you can do that, you’re well on your way to becoming a master world builder.

How do you approach world building?

Blurb

Since the death of her parents, Callan Blair has been shunted from one foster family to another, her dangerous secret forcing the move each time. Her latest foster family quickly ships her off to an exclusive boarding school in the Cumbrian countryside. While her foster-brother James makes it his mission to get Callan expelled, a nearby ancient castle holds the secret doorway to another land...

When Callan is forced through the doorway, she finds herself in the magical continent of Tardith, where she’s shocked to learn her schoolmates Gawain and Darrion are respected soldiers in service to the king of Nordaine, one of Tardith's realms. More than that, the two are potential heirs to the Black Knight—Nordaine's crown prince.

But when the Black Knight fails to return from a mysterious trip, the realm teeters on the brink of war. Darrion and Gawain set out to find him, while Callan discovers there is more to her family history than she thought. The elves are claiming she is their princess.

Now with Darrion growing ever more antagonistic and her friendship with Gawain blossoming, Callan must decide whether to stay in Nordaine—where her secret grows ever more threatening—or go to the elves and uncover the truth about her family before war sets the realms afire.

Bio

M. Gerrick (AKA Misha Gericke) has basically created stories since before she could write. Many of those stories grew up with her and can be seen in her current projects.

She lives close to Cape Town, with a view over False Bay and Table Mountain.

If you’d like to contact her, feel free to mail her at warofsixcrowns(AT)gmail(DOT)com, Circle her on Google Plus or follow her on Twitter. If you'd like to see her writer-side (beware, it's pretty insane), please feel free to check out her blog. You can also add The Vanished Knight on Goodreads.

Links: 

Amazon

Amazon UK

Barnes & Noble

Kobo

All Romance Reads

Amazon France

Amazon Germany

On the IWSG & Indie Life front...

In view of Amazon’s policy of removing reviews of books that haven’t been bought on Amazon and those felt to have been written by friends and relatives, I decided to do things a little differently for my next release. 

I’m doing a review tour with Wendy Ewurum at the end of January and so I uploaded the book and made it free for a day in order to give the reviewers a chance to download. I got more than I bargained for because 300 people downloaded the book. Don’t ask me how they found it.

Since then, it’s been at 0.99, until I moved the price yesterday. Where does the insecurity part come in? At a 0.99 price, I had a few returns. Naturally, that didn’t sit well with me because I wonder if people don’t take samples before they buy books, and who the heck returns something that was 0.99 anyway? It’s not even worth my time to do that, nor do I know how to do it anyway.

But like my husband tells me, I sometimes make the mistake of thinking that other people think the way I do, and we all know that no two people think alike. In my heart, I know I still haven’t found my niche market, but each day is a new opportunity to explore the book publishing world and move in the direction I think best for me.

I also know that not everybody will get my stories. I don’t think anybody can call any of my novels a light read. Plot lines that take interesting turns and multi-layered characters are my forte. Nor do I write 100 page books—which is something I’ve come to like in romance, by the way. You know a quick read that you don’t invest a lot of time to finish? Yes, I’ve read some of those recently and like them.

Susan Kaye Quinn wrote Burn Bright and Be Patient, an interesting article that many of us should take to heart. We often forget that writing, publishing and finding our niche takes time and fortitude. It’s hard to keep our eyes on the goal post, easy to forget the readers who clamour for our next book and even easier to get sidelined into thinking our career is on a path to Nowheresville.

 

As I like to say, unswerving perseverance is the key to success. That’s how I kept myself focused when I didn’t see a book contract in my future. That’s what I said when I didn’t think I’d sell much in the indie market and that’s what I’ll tell myself until I break into my targeted readership in a big way.

I hope what I’ve shared has encouraged you in some way. What are your insecurities today? 

Don't forget to share the love today. Visit the IWSG site and as many bloggers as you can. The Indie Life list is here.

Also, do check out the Facebook IWSG. We are beginning a new feature this Saturday, titled "News & Promo Saturday". Members will have the opportunity to post one promotional piece and share some "writerly news" with the group.