Plot Creation(World Creation-planet)
So this is a series that I'm continuing from my main blog, lossiwriting.tumblr.com. This is just some general things you can use to make your writing better, or more organized. Note, I'm telling this as simplistic as possible so that someone who's just starting their journey into writing will have the chance to use these things accurately in their stories as well as my main goal is to inspire new writers and show them ways to put their determination to use efficiently so they don't feel overwhelmed.
I've always felt that the most efficient way to create things for a story is to store them all on multiple cards, but it's slightly more complicated when you're making a world, the information isn't always straight-forward, and can often be complicated. I use a pretty generic world, so it's been a while since I've created a new world, but lets play together and I'll make a world right now for one of my upcoming stories on lossiwriting.
I'm going to create a new universe for this story because I don't want to deal with existing politics, so that's going to involve several cards but the first and most important one is the planet our characters will live on, and the others will fall subordinate to that.
I'll be posting my information and explaining other options (Which I may go more in-depth later);
Timezone(Prehistoric, Ancient, Fantasy, Medieval, Renaissance, Steam age, pre-modern, modern, post-modern, apocalyptic, futuristic, and Undefined): For me, I'm going to use apocalyptic. Let me go briefly in depth with a few of these.
Prehistoric - Stone age essentially, possibility of dinosaurs, and generally humanity grouped together in caves.
Ancient - Ancient is the first marks of civilizations, by this point humanity has developed enough to have huts, and some civilizations have formed formidable defenses, the ever glorious ones being Egypt until the Holy Roman Empire.
Fantasy - I put this one here because I wanted to explain that there's a difference between Medieval and Fantasy, although people mistakenly think all fantasy includes a medieval timeline. A good example of otherwise is 'The girl with the Dragon tattoo', which is a post-modern, apocalyptic, fantasy. Fantasy is more of a type, then a timezone. Generally if your story involves things that given currently knowledge could never happen, it's considered fantasy.
Medieval - This is your standard castle and knights timeframe (although they technically do not match timezones exactly, feudal Japan is included in this frame)
Renaissance - This is the time period that began introducing rifles and general firearms(yes they existed briefly in feudal and medieval times, but they didn't become status quo until the renaissance). In addition the world underwent a dramatic change in culture, art, music, and many other things.
Steam Age - So for American's, you can all reference roughly to revolution times, steam powered things gained practicality briefly before we rebelled. For the rest of the world, think late 18th century, as the world entered industrial revolutions.
Pre-modern - I personally am not a fan of this time age, this is about 1895-1980, covers the time period that propeller planes were the quo.
Modern - Today, is actually not modern. Modern runs from about 1980 to 2005, I'll explain why in post modern.
Post-modern - My personal favorite age. The difference in modern and post modern is that computers became highly available, and the world began to enter what is also referred to as 'the information age' where almost any information is available from anywhere in the world at a quick search.
Futuristic/Apocalyptic - These are honestly the same thing, they both take place in the in the near or distant future, the only difference is one is pro-tech, one is anti-tech.
Undefined - I don't really recommend these often, but you can formulate your own technology basis. One good example I've seen of this is Full Metal Alchemist, where there's some pre-modern aspects mixed with post-modern, occasionally apocalyptic, and other frames, and it's honestly just a blunder-bust timezone.
Features(This one will get sub-categorized)(p.s. I'll make one for sci-fi based stories where you need multiple planets in a different post):
Size(Small, medium, large, huge) - For me I'm going to do a small world (Roughly just larger then the planet Pluto) you should note that this does have affect on day length, the smaller your planet the shorter days will be because it rotates faster.
Moons - I'm going to do two moons, they travel within a short distance of eachother. One of them is blue, and the other is violet, one of them has a very large impact in it from a meteorite it intercepted before it hit the planet.
Continents - 3 small continents, and an island strip.
That's all we'll need for this one. I'm going to go much more in-depth with the planet creation next. But this is the planet out-view. Remember that everything has an effect on other things, the larger % your water is, the smaller your continents will be, but inversely, the less you have, will make it harder to supply water to your population. If you have many moons, your planet may need to create walls to prevent the water from destroying cities during high-tide, or maybe they circle on opposite sides of the planet and balance the tide out. But don't worry about that, I'll try to summarize it all when we're finished creating the world.
As always, Critique is always welcome, and I hope this helps someone reading over it.
(P.S. I'm intending to start making resources for plot creation, stay tuned and I'll have more information about that :) )
