Wednesday Creativity
Welcome to the third instalment of Creativity Wednesday, the weekly segment covering creative writing, fictional characters, writing styles, tips for creativity, etc. There’s much to cover in this topic, and not much time for it, as they say.
Last week’s blog was a tribute to my three villains, two of which were from Just One, and one was a Star Wars roleplay character. What did you think of them? Personally, Veronica Harlington still fascinates me even after all this time. She started off as this typical FBI agent hunting aliens (as they all do in an alien storyline), but then, writing her through Just One and Just One: Edge of Never (the second book), I realised things about her that made me want to delve deeper into just who Veronica was. There’ll be even more about the Division Head in Just One: Weight of the World (third book).
Roswell fans will recognise who Corran was made after. Frankly, as a villain, the original guy hardly got any time and was shown as both the hero to one and the bad guy to the others; there just seemed a lot more that could have been said about him.
Onward to today’s topic before this becomes part 2…
Love and Hate World Building
An explanation here – the term Universe in the title represents the world, as in all the locations relevant to a storyline, not a galaxy. It’s the planets with the constellation, the small town of Colletown and the locations throughout the cities mentioned in the first book. It’s building details around the characters…
I have mixed feelings towards building worlds. On one hand, I love creating from scratch, having grown up watching Star Wars and Star Trek to guide me. On the other, there are a lot of details involved, and I often feel like I’m never finished… This can especially be said about this universe, as it feels like it’s forever growing.
Start off with all the Details or Add Later?
Hadin and Ryctor
Starting with the name of a place to get you typing is okay. The muse may not always work in our favour. My problem is that I am genuinely never done, and I have had to go back to my text to add details later worked out because they fit at that moment.
When I first created Hadin, the planet, there were no descriptions. The only thing I knew about is that it was referred to as the blue planet, which had initially referred to the alien eyes. It turned out to be a lot deeper than that, as the world has most structures built in tinted glass. As the two suns reflect against the surfaces, the place looks very blue from a spaceship.
I loved coming up with that, but it meant going back to both Just One and Just One: Edge of the World and finding references to put that in. Especially in the second book, where there is a whole scene outside, it was essential to get the descriptions right.
As far as I’ve worked out, Hadin is the only planet like that in the alien constellation.
Ryctor, on the other hand, is my red planet. The surface is read, and thunder and lightning are a regular occurrence; no rain exists. It’s also much warmer than Hadin and is closest to the two suns, which may explain why it is so. Temperatures of both planets have been touched a few times during Just One, so it was essential to distinguish between them.
Another thing about the red planet was the palace, which had hidden accesses, and only select individuals could get into it. It’s under the surface in many parts of it.
Why may this be important? Why… it’s a significant part of the storyline.
I won’t tell you how today.
How to Name Your World?
This is a tough one. Researching baby names has been a big help for anything I have ever created. It gets a little bit trickier when it’s not a character, though naming a town or planet “Joe” would be wrong. Or maybe not? In calling my aliens, I picked a name and then changed letters around to create their alien’s name.
Hadin pops up as a first and last name, coffee shop name, and many others. Still, I have taken time to play with possibilities like Hydan or Hadyn before deciding to keep it as it is. In theory, there could be an ancient name of the world before any of the joined histories occurred, but that’s not something I’ve thought about. There will come a time when I’ll explore the origins of Kivana Eli’s family and go back into the beginnings (which are touched upon in all stories, as the existence of the first King and Queen of the system play a significant role in today’s events). Still, I’ll leave that research for then.
Now, Ryctor was a bit more fun. You could google a few options nowadays for the name, but going back, let’s change the y back into I, and we get Rictor. Then, moving forward, shift the r into a v. Victor. Sometimes, it’s a simple switch of a few words to get something I like.
After having worked out the y in the name, I had resolved that it would be necessary for other alien names, same as K having more of a presence than C: Uncle Connor used to be Kon, Corran had originally been K and realistically, is most likely still written with a K in alien texts, but it was a little tribute to my name here in Ireland where there is a neighbourhood called so.
About Colletown
Finally, Colletown. Took me a few tries before I got this right. The town is named after its founding family, Collins, and it was another play with letters and combinations before finding something that looked good. Besides, the sound of the name reminds me of coal, the family’s original main export.
Bonus. Colletown has a word map done up on one of my notepads. I’ve never made a complete town map, but I have a list of which roads, avenues, and streets lead to what. And I’ll be honest, I would rather play with names and write out whole histories of worlds than spend too much time creating maps of anywhere. It’s not something I do, yet it was essential to the story to have street names and be accurate between different scenes, as it wouldn’t look good constantly changing it up.
End Details
As usual, I would love you to like, share & subscribe.
Leave comments below or on social media as to what you thought about this piece.
- Please share your thoughts on parts of it about Ryctor, Hadin and Colletown.
- Please tell me what you think about the Hadin and Ryctor descriptions.
- Do you build worlds?
- What’s your pet peeve in building worlds?
- What’s your favourite part?
- How do you name your characters?
- Have you ever made a map of your location?
There are a lot of questions today, but I would love to hear your thoughts and answers to these questions so we can get a dialogue going.
This was blog three of the new segment, Wednesday Creativity, brought to you by this writer’s passion for writing. There are no sponsors for this post.
Until the next time…
~ Love, L.V.
L.V. Luca 