Thursday, June 23, 2016
Sunday, June 12, 2016
World Building
I am always on the look for a new hobby. I have adopted many hobbies and revisit them often, both to keep from being bored and to provide some sort of work-life balance. Though my job brings plenty of excitement, living more/less as an introverted hermit right next door to work presents its own challenges, requiring a little bit of creativity.
Over the years my hobbies, some more serious than others, have included:
Hiking, Camping, Archery, Slingshotting, Reading, Drawing, Painting, Writing, Sculpting, Paper/Cloth Mache, Wood Whittling/Carving, Rock Collecting/Polishing, Video/Board Gaming, Lucid Dreaming.
But one thing I have also done consistently is daydream. When I lived in the forest, for hours while searching for wild orangutans to follow, I would daydream--specifically daydream the plot for a book that I want to write. Although people keep telling me that I should one day write a book about my field adventures, focusing on writing a book about the field now would make me miss the forest too much and live too much in the past. Also, I would hate to have to change the names of people as not to unintentionally offend, so I figure that I can revisit and hopefully publish my non-fictional book someday in the distant future. I do in fact have a name for this book and have started it, but that is a topic for another time...
Back to the daydreaming. I remember being very picky about the books I enjoyed reading when a child and until I discovered Science Fiction & Fantasy books I didn't truly appreciate how exciting reading can be. I now read exclusively in these related genres and while in the forest doing my post-doc I decided to write a book. The idea for this book evolved over the course of my 2 year post-doc and I took extensive notes, both in my head as well as on paper and on the computer. But recently I discovered that I could apply the parts of what draws me to role-playing games. The tedious parts of games such as Dungeons & Dragons has prevented me from ever playing the original game with others, except the Online version and a spin-off board game that I have and made my mother play with me once--I find that I just can't bring myself to keep track of or really care how many points of a particular ability a certain character has.
Though I once bought all of the books about how to build a D&D campaign, I ended up giving many of them away to a friend with a kid who I anticipate will get into this type of gaming one day but finding that the D&D world was just a little too regimented for me. But there is something about the idea of being a Dungeon Master in D&D that I has always intrigued me. I realized that I needed to find some way of exploring the creativity of creating a world, rules for the world, and characters to interact with one another in the world without having to find a group of people to actually make my world come to life. I got to do something like this once when I made a board game by scratch - following rules I found Online for a game created based on a book by the same name that I read for a book report in Middle School - "Interstellar Pig" by William Sleator. Although I did convince both my mother and a geeky friend to play the game with me (yes it works and is fun!) on two occasions, it was the creation of the game that was most exciting.
I recently dusted off some notes I had compiled for the loose plot of a book I daydreamed about while in the forest doing my post-doc. It took me a while to revisit them mostly because one of the principle characters had been given a name I had always liked, but after having met a person with a different spelling of the same name who became very close to me, only to abruptly exit my life 2 years later, I realized I would have to find a new name for this character, who I had grown so attached to in the ever-evolving plot in my head. To make matters worse, certain aspects of this character had been based on another person who I had re-connected with years after we first met who also chose to exit my life about 2 years after re-entering it. Both are now very painful memories that I have tried to put behind me, so since returning to DC I have slowly started to think of other ways that this character could evolve, most importantly with another name. But the additional hang-up I realized I still had was that although I could clearly see some of the characters coming to life in my imagination, the broader plot still alluded me. And then I realized this was because I had been going about the whole creative writing process all wrong!
I am not sure how it happened exactly, but I will credit the great Sci-Fi writer Orson Scott Card (author of the Ender series) with my epiphany. A while back I bought two books about writing written by Card, since I figured if I ever wanted to write a book I would enjoy writing, it should be based on writing tips given by an author whose books I thoroughly enjoyed reading. From time to time I read parts of these books, though like so many hard copy books that I own, I rarely find that I devote enough time to sitting down and really absorbing them in the way that I have e-books on my Kindle. I recently stumbled upon another book by Card and another by a different author, both about how to write Sci-Fi and Fantasy. I bought them both in hard copy from Amazon and am so glad that I did, mostly because one of the books, "Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction" by Jeff Vandermeer, has absolutely amazing illustrations and simply must be a coffee table book that I actually keep in view on the coffee table!
What I realized after starting to explore this book, as well as read more of the books written by Orson Scott Card and watch several YouTube videos by Hannah L. Clark, author of a book called Cobbogoth, is that what I really enjoy doing is World Building. It turns out that in order to successfully write fiction, especially Fantasy, it is highly recommended to thoroughly invest time, often years, in world building before dropping characters into the world and developing a plot. So this is the journey that I have decided to embark on in my very few spare moments of free time. Perhaps as I read more and get further into the creation of my fantasy world that will become the backdrop for I suspect multiple future adventures, I will find a way to carve out more time for myself to write not only the scientific manuscripts I know I should write for work based on the research I conduct and oversee, but also the novels that I yearn to create and eventually publish.
Over the years my hobbies, some more serious than others, have included:
Hiking, Camping, Archery, Slingshotting, Reading, Drawing, Painting, Writing, Sculpting, Paper/Cloth Mache, Wood Whittling/Carving, Rock Collecting/Polishing, Video/Board Gaming, Lucid Dreaming.
But one thing I have also done consistently is daydream. When I lived in the forest, for hours while searching for wild orangutans to follow, I would daydream--specifically daydream the plot for a book that I want to write. Although people keep telling me that I should one day write a book about my field adventures, focusing on writing a book about the field now would make me miss the forest too much and live too much in the past. Also, I would hate to have to change the names of people as not to unintentionally offend, so I figure that I can revisit and hopefully publish my non-fictional book someday in the distant future. I do in fact have a name for this book and have started it, but that is a topic for another time...
Back to the daydreaming. I remember being very picky about the books I enjoyed reading when a child and until I discovered Science Fiction & Fantasy books I didn't truly appreciate how exciting reading can be. I now read exclusively in these related genres and while in the forest doing my post-doc I decided to write a book. The idea for this book evolved over the course of my 2 year post-doc and I took extensive notes, both in my head as well as on paper and on the computer. But recently I discovered that I could apply the parts of what draws me to role-playing games. The tedious parts of games such as Dungeons & Dragons has prevented me from ever playing the original game with others, except the Online version and a spin-off board game that I have and made my mother play with me once--I find that I just can't bring myself to keep track of or really care how many points of a particular ability a certain character has.
Though I once bought all of the books about how to build a D&D campaign, I ended up giving many of them away to a friend with a kid who I anticipate will get into this type of gaming one day but finding that the D&D world was just a little too regimented for me. But there is something about the idea of being a Dungeon Master in D&D that I has always intrigued me. I realized that I needed to find some way of exploring the creativity of creating a world, rules for the world, and characters to interact with one another in the world without having to find a group of people to actually make my world come to life. I got to do something like this once when I made a board game by scratch - following rules I found Online for a game created based on a book by the same name that I read for a book report in Middle School - "Interstellar Pig" by William Sleator. Although I did convince both my mother and a geeky friend to play the game with me (yes it works and is fun!) on two occasions, it was the creation of the game that was most exciting.
I recently dusted off some notes I had compiled for the loose plot of a book I daydreamed about while in the forest doing my post-doc. It took me a while to revisit them mostly because one of the principle characters had been given a name I had always liked, but after having met a person with a different spelling of the same name who became very close to me, only to abruptly exit my life 2 years later, I realized I would have to find a new name for this character, who I had grown so attached to in the ever-evolving plot in my head. To make matters worse, certain aspects of this character had been based on another person who I had re-connected with years after we first met who also chose to exit my life about 2 years after re-entering it. Both are now very painful memories that I have tried to put behind me, so since returning to DC I have slowly started to think of other ways that this character could evolve, most importantly with another name. But the additional hang-up I realized I still had was that although I could clearly see some of the characters coming to life in my imagination, the broader plot still alluded me. And then I realized this was because I had been going about the whole creative writing process all wrong!
I am not sure how it happened exactly, but I will credit the great Sci-Fi writer Orson Scott Card (author of the Ender series) with my epiphany. A while back I bought two books about writing written by Card, since I figured if I ever wanted to write a book I would enjoy writing, it should be based on writing tips given by an author whose books I thoroughly enjoyed reading. From time to time I read parts of these books, though like so many hard copy books that I own, I rarely find that I devote enough time to sitting down and really absorbing them in the way that I have e-books on my Kindle. I recently stumbled upon another book by Card and another by a different author, both about how to write Sci-Fi and Fantasy. I bought them both in hard copy from Amazon and am so glad that I did, mostly because one of the books, "Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction" by Jeff Vandermeer, has absolutely amazing illustrations and simply must be a coffee table book that I actually keep in view on the coffee table!
What I realized after starting to explore this book, as well as read more of the books written by Orson Scott Card and watch several YouTube videos by Hannah L. Clark, author of a book called Cobbogoth, is that what I really enjoy doing is World Building. It turns out that in order to successfully write fiction, especially Fantasy, it is highly recommended to thoroughly invest time, often years, in world building before dropping characters into the world and developing a plot. So this is the journey that I have decided to embark on in my very few spare moments of free time. Perhaps as I read more and get further into the creation of my fantasy world that will become the backdrop for I suspect multiple future adventures, I will find a way to carve out more time for myself to write not only the scientific manuscripts I know I should write for work based on the research I conduct and oversee, but also the novels that I yearn to create and eventually publish.
Awesome Con!
My first Awesome Con, a 3-day conference devoted to all things nerdy! I went to an interesting Q&A session with Karl Urban (Kiwi actor from Xena, Lord of the Rings, and the new Star Trek movies), ran into Jeremy London, and thoroughly enjoyed hours of exploring a packed Exhibit Hall.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
