Research and more research, hints, tips and tricks.

[KATS]

I write mostly fantasy stories and they are based in a fantasy world. Sounds simple enough but if you’ve ever created one of these fantasy worlds you know the work that can go into creating such a world, especially for book length stories. It seems every time I thought of something that needed to be in my world five other things would pop into my mind. And using reality as the background for the story isn’t easier. You have to know about history then.

So, I thought it might be helpful to share our hints tips and/or tricks for the mountain of research that is involved with creating a story.

One of the many time consuming problems I came across was names for characters, then there was names for secondary characters, then names for inn keepers and such. I saw a baby name book one day and it clicked for me. It really has helped me a lot to pick that perfect name. Of course the check out lady looked at me funny when I was a teenager buying a baby name book, but oh well.

[wynnyelle]

My names sometimes just popped into my head, but most of the time they needed to be coaxed! I sometimes use this program called Wordgen for windows, that I got on some RPG language-creation site. It lets you create words of a made-up language, but you don't have to actually make up a language, you just input the letters you want to use. A good springboard for names.

I prefer to make stuff up than use reality, so fantasy suits me well. With historical fiction there are too many ways to mess up and write something inaccurate, but with fantasy you make up your own details and as long as they all make sense, you can't be "wrong."

I like to use fantasy creatures. The creatures can help create a plot. For instance, my story has giant dragons who prey viciously on people. So it affects how the people must live, and creates a problem for them to try to solve through the course of the story.

[Ragnarok Knight]

Hi WC!
Anyway, i try to use more description so that the reader can see the world as you can see it.
I also try to make the fantasy world more realistic, while trying not to make it into a duplicate of the realworld.

[Hans]

I've just started to plan for a fantasy book I want to write. I gotta agree with KATS, I seemed to been spending alot of time with coming up with character names, and I was searching amazon.co.uk website for books which could help me with research, and came across a Baby book name, which I've ordered and awaiting arrival. I want to keep the name simple so they can stick in the readers mind.

I've also ordered 'Marshalls plan for Noval writing', to help me organize myself and plan my noval.

Also I keep coming up with great ideas to put in the books, that I want to happen to a character, but I have no clue where I can fit it in the timeline.