Katherine Frances's Blog, page 33
July 29, 2018
wivibook:
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Quick reminder to support authors.
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Think you’ll like a book? Buy it if you can.
Finish a piece you liked? Review it.
Support authors. Just don’t feed them after midnight.
20 Questions to Ask Yourself When Worldbuilding
One of the most important parts of writing is grounding your story in a believable setting––not just for fantasy, but any genre. Worldbuilding can help you figure out how your characters fit into the bigger picture, or learn what their motivations are.
Sometimes, it can seem frustrating to spend a lot of time on building an elaborate world for your novel, only to have to cut most of that fascinating history and background in the final draft. But having that knowledge is important to create fully rounded out characters and plot. In fact, the iceberg theory of writing imagines that 80-90% of a story occurs below the surface!
How much do you know about the world of your novel? We’ve come up with 20 important questions to ask yourself when creating the background for your story:
July 28, 2018
Today I edited 7,880 words of my WIP found under the tag #TIGER
“She’d never smoked...
Today I edited 7,880 words of my WIP found under the tag #TIGER
“She’d never smoked before, but the taste was familiar, a lite flavor
compared to that of burning ash. She let it fill her lungs. She let it fill her
brain. She let it be the only thing she was.”
Convo Question for my followers:
What is your favorite character vice to write?
Guide: Naming a Town or City
There are many things to keep in mind when naming the town or city in your novel:
1) Genre/Theme/Tone
It’s very important to consider the genre and theme of your story when choosing a town name. Take these names for example, each of which indicates the genre or theme of the story:
King’s Landing (sounds fantastical)
Cloud City (sounds futuristic)
Silent Hill (sounds scary)
Sweet Valley (sounds happy and upbeat)
Bikini Bottom (sounds funny)
Radiator Springs (sounds car-related)
Halloween Town (sounds Halloween-related)
Storybrooke (sounds fairytale-related)
2) Time/Place
It’s also important to consider the time and place where your story takes place. For example, you wouldn’t use “Vista Gulch” as a name for a town in Victorian England. You probably wouldn’t use it for a town in modern day North Carolina, either. Vista is a Spanish word and would normally be found in places where Spanish names are common, like Spain, Central and South America, the southwest United States (including southern California), Cuba, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, and Florida.
3) Size/Settlement Type
An isolated town of 300 people probably won’t be Valley City, but a sprawling metropolis of 30 million could be called Windyville, because it could have started out as a small town and grew into a large city.
4) Geography
Words like gulch, butte,and bayou tend to be regional terms. You probably wouldn’t find Berle’s Bayou in Idaho, or Windy Butte in Rhode Island.
Words like mount, cape, and valley are dependent upon terrain. Most of the time, you won’t have a town named “mount” something unless there are hills or mountains nearby. You wouldn’t use “cape” unless the town was on a cape, which requires a large body of water.
5) History
Is there a historical person or event that your town might be named after? The Simpsons’ hometown of Springfield is ironically named after its founder, Jebediah Springfield. Chattanooga, Tennessee is named after the Cherokee town that was there first. Nargothrond, in The Lord of the Rings, is an Elvish town with an Elvish name.
6) Combination of Words
person name + geographical term = Smithfield, Smith Creek
group name + geographical term = Pioneer Valley, Settlers’ Ridge
descriptive word + geographical term = Mystic Falls, Smoky Hill
person name + settlement type = Smithton, Claraville
landmark + settlement type = Bridgton, Beaconville
Word Lists:
Types of SettlementsGeographical Features
Place Words
Common Suffixes
Other Descriptors
Try a combination of two words from any of these lists. :)
Yaaay! I was looking for this one forever! No need to update this one. :)
Kim Shimmers and the Veil of Death
A Harry Potter fanfic by me (and the 4th instalment in the Kim Shimmers series)
How could we ever hope to flicker on against a
darkness so complete, against an evil so prevailing?
This Harry Potter fan fiction (as long as all goes according to plan) will be posted at the beginning of every week. The pictures above are not mine, though I edited some.
This is the last chapter of book 4, Kim Shimmers and the Veil of Death. Book 5 (the last of the Kim Shimmers fanfic series) will pick up next week.
Chapter 14
The Grand Escape
The next morning Kim forced herself to go down to breakfast. She’d had a lousy night’s sleep, freckled with dreams of funerals and everyone she cared about slowly being picked off. She was feeling slightly better about her perpetual lie to Harry only because she was so distracted by her fear for what would happen do Dumbledore.
Strix was joining her for breakfast that morning by her own demands. Kim had tried to leave her behind but for some reason she had been extra insistent that morning that Kim allow her purchase on her shoulder.
“Hey guys,” Kim said without life as she sat down beside Hermione. Ron was on her other side and Harry across from them. No Ginny this time.
“Where were you last night? I thought you had homework,” Hermione said. Kim usually did her homework in the library, which was no doubt where Hermione had been the night before and hadn’t found her.
“Oh, I did it in the common room,” she said, trying to make it sound like it was an insignificant change in her behavior. Kim reached for a plate and looked over the options for breakfast. As she did so an odd hush passed over the Great Hall in a wave, starting with those closest to the entrance. Kim looked up to detect the cause of the disturbance as almost complete silence fell over the usually din filled hall.
Clacking down along the path beside the Gryffindor table were two men that Kim didn’t recognize in purple robes. She realized they were Department of Mysteries uniforms.
“Kim Shimmers?” said a tall man with a thick brown beard. “We need you to come with us.”
Kim frowned at them as she felt all the eyes of the Great Hall fall onto her.
“What’s going on?” Harry hissed at her from across the table, but she couldn’t answer. This had happened once before already, but that time she had expected it. This time… she had no idea what was going on.
“Now, please, Ms. Shimmers,” said the other man with dark skin and cropped, tightly curled hair.
“What is it? What’s going on?” she asked, turning toward them but not standing.
“All will be explained,” said the bearded one.
“But I have class, I can’t—”
“You need to come with us.”
“What if I don’t want to!” she retorted indignantly.
“I’m afraid you don’t have a choice,” said the black man, whose voice was ominously baritone.
“Don’t have…” Kim breathed looking at her friends in fear. “No, this can’t be right, talk to Dumbledore—”
“He has no jurisdiction in this matter. He’ll be informed. Now come with us,” the bearded man said with more edge. He placed his hand on Kim’s shoulder, making her recoil. He took this to mean she wasn’t going to come easily so he grabbed her under her armpit, the black man doing the same on her other side.
“Get off me!” she cried as Strix flapped off Kim’s shoulders and circled angrily overhead, crying agitatedly.
Together the men hoisted Kim up from the table and to her feet.
“Kim, what’s going on?” Harry bellowed, standing with his hands splayed on the table, Hermione shrieking words of concern and surprise over top of him. The Great Hall was starting to be noisy again, but not full of casual conversation, rather hushed voices and gasps of surprise.
“I don’t know. Let go of me! You can’t just take me wherever you like and not tell me why!”
“We’re taking you to the Department of Mysteries for questioning.”
“Questioning?”
“Kim!” Harry was still yelling from behind her.
“Questioning about what?” she demanded as they pushed her along down the aisle, still clutching her arms on either side. Neither of them answered her demands and all she could hear as she was carried from the Great Hall was Harry.
“Don’t worry! I’m going straight to Dumbledore, he’ll fix it!”
But Kim wasn’t so sure. It was starting to sink in what was happening. She was being taken for questioning, and not in an optional way. She was in some kind of trouble with the Department of Mysteries, which could only mean one thing. They knew she’d lied, kept things purposefully from them… Her heart thundered painfully in her chest as they stood her before a fireplace in an adjacent classroom.
A Fortnight of Questions. #9
Rules: Answer this question (and any previous questions you wish), and then tag as many or as few people are you feel like, between zero and infinity.
Previous questions: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8
Does your world have any original or mythical creatures? Do your characters have pets? (If not, what’s their opinion on pets and what pet might they want?)
No mythical creatures, in my WIP (#TIGER) unfortunately, because it is a scifi super hero story set in a mostly real-world setting. I do have many original monsters… but they’re all people.
Tagging: anyone reading this.
