Reworking a Section

I'm currently at a crossroads.

I got roughly 3400 words into a scene and realized it just doesn't work at all. It's not believable for the characters I've created, and it doesn't even hold up to outside scrutiny - when I read back over, it felt rushed, completely out of character, and like I was just trying to cram through a section of the book (I'm REALLY excited for the next part, because it's the climax of the book and I've been playing that fight scene over in my head for nearly a year).

But I can't just gloss over it so I can get to the next section. This section is critical for setting up the political environment and action going into the next book. It is crucial I get it right and give it the right amount of space to flesh itself out and pull the audience in. The whole piece probably needs to be two or three times bigger than it is, with more believable dialogue and decision making by my main character who has proven herself to be logical and to think things through completely.

So I read the whole section again. I realized the section wasn't going to work when I was having the main character inform the group of her plan based on just the tiny bit of evidence she had been able to gather, and I realized if I was in the story and part of her group, I would have laughed in her face and walked away. I thought I could just add more detail here and there, flesh things out, and make it work. But now I realize, I need to step back to the first interaction between the main character and this new group, and start the whole thing over.

So I'm mulling things over in my head, trying to rework the scene, get the dialogue right, and have a solid plan before I jump back into it. A couple of weeks back, I created a one-page outline for the rest of this book. This section, which is so critical, was only two lines in that outline. I think that's where the problem started for me. As a reference, the next fight was nearly 20 lines in the outline because I have all the major parts so well through out. So it's back to the drawing board for this entire section.

The crossroads I'm at is that I've now spent two days working the scene over in my head, and I'm no closer to having it workable. A part of me wants me to just leave it and come back to it so I can get to the next section. The other part wants me to wait until I get this all worked out so I know exactly how it's going to feed into the next scene. I'm pretty sure I've figured that part out at least, but it may need to change, and then I'd have to rework that part as well. And if there's one thing I hate it's having to redo things that I should have just done correctly the first time.

How do you personally handle this?

Would you power through and just come back to it at some point later? Do you worry about not having things tie together nicely if you do that? Do you worry about the next scene writing yourself into a corner with the section that's weak and needs rewritten?

Or do you halt your progress until you get it where it needs to be in your head before you continue on?

A Programmer's View on Worldbuilding

I come from a very technical background - my brain is wired for math and logic. I've been programming for nearly twenty years now, and I tend to approach most problems in the same way I would when trying to design a system to solve a business need.

• What are the major actors/things?
• How do the actors/things need to interact to solve the problem?
• What traits do the actors/things need to be able to perform their specific tasks?
• Are there any special requirements for specific actors/things to consider?

Obviously, that's a simplified list, but when you're looking at Object Oriented Programming, that's a good initial list to start getting down high level details. I use the same approach when I'm worldbuilding, though the questions look a little different depending on exactly what I'm working on at the time.

• What are the major geographic regions?
• What sets this geographic region apart? How/why do people travel here?
• Are there cities here? What industry supports them?
• Anything special about this region? Strange celestial occurences? Weird minerals? Strange wildlife outside of the norm?

These questions start leading to the data members of the larger object. Maybe you have a region near the coastline dominated by rivers that feed into a large delta. There's a few bridges spanning a few of the rivers, but most travel would be via boat or ferry. Cities would probably spring up along major river forks or near the delta as stops along trade routes, but you'd probably have a few small places dotted along the river where small bits of trade might happen because fishing in the river could easily support people. The rivers could lead to far reaching lands where important ore or minerals are mined, or to farmlands where crops are harvested. Maybe a major power controls the delta and acts as a trade liaison between the inland cities and a faraway country.

But just like here in the real world, most places have something special about them. You may have to look harder to find the special thing, but it's there. Maybe the beaches have bioluminescent plankton that glows when you walk on the beach at night. Maybe there's a special kind of fish that draws people into the area to try to catch it. Maybe the cedar trees that grow in the marshes around the delta are the best wood in the world for building ships. There are a lot of little details you can add that grab people and pull them in, and make that part of the world more immersive and not just another place that your characters are travelling through.

It's also important to engage all of a person's senses. Whenever I read a story and it describes how a place looks, the sounds you can hear, the smells that reach the character's nose, how the wind feels against their skin, it pulls me in and makes me feel like I'm there. Sticking with the Object Oriented Programming example, every thing/place/person would have a certain set of characteristics:

• What does it look it? This could be macro or micro scale. Maybe you're describing the city as a whole, or maybe you're just describing the inn the characters are at. Perhaps you're describing what the people of a region look like, or detailing the gruff, burly bartender with the sense of humor of a piece of sandpaper.
• Does it have a noticeable smell? If it's a fishing village, does it smell like seafood? If there's industry, does the smell of smoke hang in the air? What are they cooking in the inn? Has the person your character is interacting with had a shower in a week (or month or year)?
• What sounds does it make? Are their gulls flying overheard? Waves crashing on a beach? People milling about?
• What does it feel like? Does the cool sea breeze make your character's skin prickle? Is there an enormous amount of heat radiating from a furnace? Is the cold blistering?
• What does it taste like? Please don't lick the floor of the inn...you don't want to know what's been down there. But obviously things like food or drinks could have a distinctive taste, or maybe a smell is hanging so thick in the air your character can almost taste it.

I typically find it easier to start at the high level objects and work down to the smaller, individual objects. But maybe you have a specific character in mind so you start with them, and then start building the world around them. Either way, all the details you're adding become data members that help your object (character/place/thing/etc.) perform its task in your story.

How do you approach worldbuilding? 

Introductions Are in Order

Welcome!

Thanks for visiting my new (and very first) blog. I'm going to use this as a working space to discuss my writing progress, character concepts and designs, and how I tackle worldbuilding. But before we get too much into all of that, I'd like to take a few paragraphs to introduce myself so you at least have an idea where I am coming from.

My dayjob is as an IT Director at a regional transportation and logistics company, supporting over 40 locations spreadout over the southeast United States. I've also worked as a Senior Software Consultant in a disparate set of industries and a software developer writing programs for a Department of Defense contractor. Programming languages are my jam - being able to come up with unique solutions to complex business problems using a language with a well defined grammar is its own little artform. I am married to a beautiful, talented woman, and we have two awesome children I affectionately refer to as tazmanian devils.

I've always been drawn to science fiction and fantasy. My love for fantasy started early, when my grandmother got a NES and I spent hours romping around in Final Fantasy and The Legend of Zelda. During middle and high school, I was a voracious reader of science fiction, specifically the Star Wars Expanded Universe (I may still be bitter that it's no longer cannon). College didn't give me a ton of time for extracurricular reading, but when the Lord of the Rings movies came out, I tore through Tolkien's works in just a couple of weeks. Some work travel allowed me to consume quite a few more series, there's still a couple I need to make time to actually go back and finish the last book or two (looking at you, Wheel of Time).

In the midst of college and all this fantasy reading, I also discovered a love for tabletop RPGs. The group I play with started with Dungeons and Dragons, but we've moved between several different systems and even now we're playtesting an entirely new game using dice and cards - I'm not going to plug it too hard here right now, but I'll write more about it later as we've spent the better part of the last few years playing it. Tabletop RPGs really got me into creating characters and worlds - I've actually only played maybe 7 or 8 actual Dungeons and Dragons characters, but I've created dozens more with intricate backstories and ambitions. And while our group typically starts with a standard module for whatever system we're playing, our games always evolve into some sort of homebrew campaign in a unique world, or at least a unique area of an existing world, where we have all the creative license. As much as I love playing characters, leading the games lets me flex more of my creative muscles.

Over the past few years, I've started and stopped several stories with various characters. Most of the time, I realize I'm just retelling a story, albeit with some differences, that's already been told before. The current story I'm working on started coming to me over three years ago. It actually started as an idea for a video game system - an intricate magic system using runes and magic circles where you would create your own magic spells by researching runes and incorporating them into magic circles. The more I thought about it, the more I started to think of the characters that would be in the game, and that slowly began to materialize into a story. I still haven't completely abandoned the game idea, but the characters, stories, and world that started floating around in my mind demanded to be put down on paper rather than just living in my imagination.

The first few chapters of the book came together about three years ago. That same year, my mom was diagnosed with cancer, and my family's life and time went to making sure she got the care and attention she needed to overcome the diagnosis. The book obviously went on hold, but the stories and characters never left my head. When the Covid-19 lockdowns started and I was spending more time at home, I decided to dust off the story and finish getting it down into words so it would be out of my head and so that I could share the story and hopefully let others get some enjoyment out of these characters that had become so much a part of my life. I've lost count of the number of times I've worked and reworked certain scenes over in my head as I'm nodding off to sleep, trying to get them just right so everything feels natural and in character.

In future blog posts, I'll examine how I go about the character creation process, the wacky way I tackle worldbuilding, and why I think certain scenes just won't get out of my head. I hope you enjoy the ride as much as I do.