Tonight’s posts all have a being practical theme to them.
FAIRYTALES WITH BITE
I look at Transport in the current post having visited a railway museum today. Magic would be an obvious form of (a) fuelling transport systems and (b) actually being the transport system. But there is a downside to most things in life, including transport, so where would that be in your fictional creation? How much magic does it take to enable someone to fly? Can everyone in your world manage it? Just a few thoughts to consider…
THIS WORLD AND OTHERS
I look at Practical World Building and set a few questions that I hope may help anyone who is starting off on the process of creating their own world but may not be too sure of where to start. It is a big undertaking when you think of it – a whole world out of nothing except what your fertile imagination can invent. But this is where looking around at the world we live in can be such a good place to start. What is your world’s equivalent of the trains for example? And Terry Pratchett famously started by working out what the plumbing would be for Ankh-Morpork (the waste has to go somewhere and fresh water, or as fresh as possible, is crucial of course).
FACEBOOK PAGE
I talk more about my railway museum visit and speculate what it is about history (including things like the history of transport) that I love. It is all about stories. The story of this, the story of that, when all is said and done but there are fascinating tales in our past, any one of which can be used as inspiration for kickstarting our own ideas into play.
At the Steam Museum, Swindon. Women at work during WW2. Image taken by me.
Allison Symes: Collected Works 