Writing Corner: World Building Wows and Woes

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I enjoy world building the most of any part of the writing process. Coming up with geography, maps, borders, history, characters, etc. is very invigorating. However, my technical skills are not up to my imagination.

You should see my poor attempts at drafting the new borders of the US, Canada, Mexico, and new country of the GT (Greater Tribal Council of the Americas) I created for the world of Touch of Gray. Paint, Photoshop, and the like are not my specialty, so I finally just printed off a blank outline of the North American continent and drew the countries by hand and filled them in with colored pencils. Low tech it is.

For the 13-month calendar the GT uses, it was super easy to create. Each month has 28 days (except the last month of 29 days) and is named after a different animal. The days of the week are the same as ours though. As Gray ruminates in Out of Touch,


the 13-month calendar makes more sense, honestly, being based on a lunar month cycle. I wonder how the computer-less settlers who stayed on the Tribal Collaboration lands handled changing to a 13-month calendar. The US cannot even change to the metric system, so I do not imagine that it was easy...As for me, I am just glad that there is software that converts the 13-month calendar to the 12-month calendar used by most of the world as it makes my job much easier



The problem is that as the genius that came up with the calendar, I also had to come up with the way to convert the months and dates back and forth. I tried a widget and a formula and finally just settled on a low tech option as well. All of this energy, and I am still pretty vague on dates, preferring to use seasons instead. This isn't because I don't know, but rather I am saving the audience from having to figure this out (and me explaining it). But just know that I know and be impressed.

What are some of your more elaborate practices when building worlds?  Feel free to leave a comment or contact me on Twitter ( @AuthorLeia ). 

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