Alright, I’ve got a guest post for you today as part of the Coming Darkness blog tour. It’s about world building, which is always an awesome topic. Again, this is one of the early posts in a blog tour, check out the other stops on the tour. And, as always, enjoy!
I think world building is the best part of writing. Molding a world to fit a story is both creative, and challenging. The best way I know to talk about world building is to give you a little insight as to how I went about building the world in Coming Darkness.
When I started writing Coming Darkness, I was new to writing and still feeling my way around. I gave zero thought to world building, didn’t even know it existed! I was busy thinking about the characters and what they were doing and how they were feeling. I had plans to include supernatural beings, like vampires and angels, but I didn’t plan beyond that.
It wasn’t until I began to get deeper into the story that I started questioning the nature of those beings. I was unaware that those questions were my first steps into world building. Before then, I had been following pretty standard rules of paranormal fantasy. Vampires are undead. Werewolves are ruled by a male alpha. And so on. But I was finding that I wasn’t satisfied.
For instance, I wanted my vampires to have their own characteristics. I loved what Anne Rice created with The Vampire Chronicles. I also loved what White Wolf created with The Masquerade and what J. R. Ward created with The Black Dagger Brotherhood. So along those lines, I started thinking about specific characteristics and abilities my vampires could have. I wanted them to be an old, primal species—pre-human civilization. And that lead me to the idea of the elements fire, earth, air, and water. I separated my vampires into clans and the abilities of each clan fell into symbolic sync with the elemental name. Clan Earth can fast travel through earth. They have mastery over the body, and the ability to shape shift. Clan Air can fast travel through shadows. They have mastery over what senses perceive, and the ability to produce powerful pheromones that can beguile and seduce. Clan Water can fast travel through water. They have mastery over the mind, and the ability to charm. All the clans are descended from the first vampire clan: Clan Fire. They had red skin, all of the abilities of the other three clans, and the ability to walk in the sun.
The werewolves were re-imagined next. I was going to include them in the story for balance, but I was doing it reluctantly. I’ve never liked werewolves because of the hyper-masculine alpha pack leaders. So you can imagine how delighted I was when my werewolves presented themselves with a matriarchal social structure! Wonderful! They have alphas, but the matriarchs are stronger and could defeat one easily. I think I can thank hyenas for giving me the subliminal inspiration for that.
In all, I was happy with the beings I adapted, but I needed to tie them together. To be specific, I needed to tie their existence together because of the angels. What I was chafing at was a world where gods, angels, vampires, werewolves, etc. existed without a reason for them all to exist together. I needed to be able to explain not only how they came to be, but also how they shared existence on the planet.
Enter The Purge: The angels were sent to earth to clear it of Darkness and pave the way for humans. Creatures that posed the most threat to human life were killed off. Others, knowing they would soon succumb to forced extinction, used all of their magical and biological skill to live on in the form of hybrids. So all vampires, werewolves, etc. are human-other hybrids. Humans became the dominant life forms and the angels allowed the hybrids to live (for reasons) only if they kept their populations low and did not interfere with human development.
Probably the last big thing I did was change standard vampiric nature. I could see no way that angels would allow anything “undead” to exist. If I created a world in which the angels cleared the earth of serious and unnatural dangers to humans, undead would have been wiped out as soon as they appeared. That goes for zombies, and ghouls as well. In my universe, there are no dead men walkin’!
I did other things as my world took shape, and I will say I found that world building was as integral to the story as the motivations and actions of the characters. As both framework and universe, it supports the characters as they sort out their challenges, as well as providing challenges themselves. I love stories with rich worlds supporting them, and I’m tickled beyond belief that I created a world that is already planting seeds of different stories within it. I can’t wait to explore and see what comes next!
Happy Reading!
Coming Darkness
Archangel Lucifer lives a comfortable life of self-imposed exile with his vampire lover, Kai. When the other Archangels come to him with a problem — Heaven is gone and their Father is missing — he refuses to get involved because not only is it not his problem, but it’s probably some elaborate ruse they’ve cooked up to lure him back into the fold. When he’s personally attacked, he finds that he’s wrong on both counts. There are other powerful gods at work, gods who believe the current creation is flawed and must be destroyed.
Kai is thrown off balance when Lucifer disappears, and his life begins to spiral out of control. In the past, he never cared that he was looked down upon and called Lucifer’s pet. But with Lucifer absent, he’s left to navigate a world that doesn’t respect him. Since the only true currency is respect, he must gain it the only way his enemies will understand, through blood.
Purchase from Amazon – http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01D7MM5IM/
Author Bio –
They say it’s never too late to find and pursue your passion. Turns out they’re right. Although Susan loved to read, she didn’t start writing until she was in her late 40’s. A stint in grad school helped her hone her craft, and now she happily spends her days making up stories and figuring out how best to emotionally (and sometimes physically) torture her characters.
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