Worldbuilding 101- Let’s Build a World Together

One of the best parts about living in a city with several bookstores and publishers is that there are a lot of readers and writers. I was connected with a group that loved to write and from our writers group the Wealkings Jot – the free one night writer’s conference, complete with presenters and workshops – was born.

Jot 5 is Friday, March 13^th from 7-11pm follow this link for details.

Every time this event comes around I am equally thankful and thrilled that we have such a vibrant community of writers in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I get incredibly charged up (nearly bursting with energy, literally) and my well of creativity is filled to the brim and over.

This Jot I will be leading a workshop on Worldbuilding.

For those of you unfamiliar with the term worldbuilding, it’s exactly like it sounds – laying a foundation for a story.

Worldbuilding is about the climate not the weather. It’s about your character’s clothes and why they dress a certain way. It’s the reason your character has his or her job, or why they don’t have one. It’s the history, the accents, and how their community came to be. It is different from a setting as it is constantly interacting with the characters that are traversing your pages.

For some, this might sound like a horrible nerdy topic but it’s essential to any work of fiction. If you do not know about the age, values, and traditions which reach deeply into the people we are creating, we lose the richness. It’s about depth and this vastness is essential to writing believable stories.

I plan on a micro introduction to worldbuilding and then working together with those who attend my workshop to build a world from the bottom up. I’m sure I’ll write more about this as Jot 5 gets closer but until then please save the date.

Cheers,

Bob