Umm - things the are a changing. For those with a world bible?

AnyaKimlin

AnyaKimlin

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I've never needed to organise my world before but I'm in the process of putting together things that seem to require it. Like I'm doing a map for the front of Mayhem and my cover artist wants to know things etc At present almost everything is in my head.

How do you do yours? I'm thinking a physical folder maybe in order but as I'm not very good at these things I'm needing advice.
 
I suppose it really depends what you want this material to do. In that it can be a bit daunting to get it all down into some sort of encyclopaedic body that the artist might find useful if you've not done anything before. So in your case Anya, I'd be tempted to try and get a list of questions from the artist and just reply to what they want to know quite fully - and use that as your basis for your 'world bible'.

Anyway to answer your question, I have a sequence of word documents: Plot outline - scene by scene, Plot overview (that will morph one day into a synopsis hopefully!), a page on each character describing them and their struggles etc..., a 'Cultural' dictionary of lots of important terms and issues in the novel (doing it alphabetically is quite a good way to organise it - easy to find stuff) and a thirty-three thousand essay I wrote on the world about the society, history, technology etc...basically it was the culmination of all my research questions for the story.

I'm sure there are wonderful bits of software that can do all this (Scrivener?) But I'm happy just to knock out a few word documents and leave it at that.

However I did all this before I even started, as I was using it to organise my thoughts, and used it as a springboard. I further enriched the world by actually writing the story :) (so now it's all a bit out of date!)
 
If it was just the cover artist then I'd settle for questions but I'm finding I'm needing readily available information for a few things so think a day or two spent doing it might be worth it. Mine all fits with the story.
 
AnyaKimlin said:
How do you do yours?
Click to expand...
Separate text files for Events, Tech, People, Animals&Plant, Government, Food&Drink
Folders for saved websites, word doc and images that are research. Separate folder for images to use in the novel.
Paste and edit that into a private MediaWiki (same SW as Wikpedia), one copy on local computer and another is password protected website (no-one can even see the content, separate security to the MediaWiki users).
 
Separate files for people, customs, geographical locales, and historical background. But nothing is written in stone yet, and I intend to go back and revise and nail down the specifics once I've finished my first draft.
 
I use Scrivener and keep multiple sub-folders for things like Places, People (individuals), Cultures (+gov'ts), Technology, Ecology (+cuisine), Vehicles.

I try to tag most of my files with a "universe version number", because the universe changes I write more stories in it. Right now it's up to 6.0, so some "backstory files" written for a 3.0 short story may be completely wrong at this point.
 
For one persistent world I use I've got a few documents. Two are for all stories in that area (Lore/History and Demographics), two are story [well, trilogy] specific, and cover Characters and Plot.

I just use large(ish) documents, put a contents page at the top and slam in all the info. Helps keep things consistent.
 
Jo Zebedee said:
In my head. Occasionally, I have to refer back for something - and after Heir was published I did list a few things to keep spelling consistent - but it's pretty much all in my head. No hope of Brandon Sanderson completing it for me. :D
Click to expand...

Mine is all in my head too - and it's proving a nightmare getting it on paper. More than one beta reader has suggested a family tree but as Angus describes it "It's a thorny and very unkempt bush". When a family involves bird people and people who have lived for eight centuries, incest and twins with different families doing a family tree is a case of finding a new concept.
 
Ray McCarthy said:
Any software that does company organisation charts etc.
Libre Office Draw (free)
Inkscape (free)
MS Visio (not free)

It's also possible in a spreadsheet.
Click to expand...

I've tried that it's still very messy. The multiple messy partnerships are also an issue.

For example my first man (adam) produces children with six women which then go on to populate the planet.
 
Either this guy had ten wives or Freyja has 10 names.
I've found the Tuatha Dé (Tuatha De Danann) challenging with not only the multiple relationships but the different sources don't even agree. I'm running out of dotted lines and alternates.

Try a back of a some wallpaper and cut out cards with names, pins and thread, then when you happy, put it into the application.

No-one "needs" Scrivener. It's over priced and doesn't do anything that can't be done for free. It's a single source closed luxury solution.
 
It's the combination of things that's a struggle but i may try the cards.

My main character Angus is over twenty generations removed from the Litae whereas his wife Beatrice is only two. There's only two years between them.
 
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