Most worlds start with a single idea or a single flash of inspiration; perhaps it's some epiphany that sends you into a flurry of creativity. Sometimes it's just a simple thought like, "Wouldn't it be cool if...?"
I call this initial thought the seed of your world. If you've got a seed bouncing around in your head that you can't seem to shake, you probably need to find a place to plant it.
A seed can be absolutely anything. Your seed might seem dumb, or too small, or nothing special, but when you plant it and make it grow, you might find it blossoms into something you never dreamed it could be.
Here are a few of my seeds, some of which I've used to make worlds, some of which are on the backburner for another time. My seeds are sometimes questions, sometimes desires, sometimes strange keywords that came to mind.
- What if I told a story from the point of view of a sword?
- What if aliens met ghosts?
- What if people live handcuffed together? (I came up with two worlds with this one!)
- "Cheerleaders of the Aftermath."
- A dark, disturbing carnival. (The thought led to a 167 page videogame script.)
- I want to make a world based on coffee.
- The Abomination from Warcraft III, but miles tall.
- "Someone Else's Nightmare."
- War of genies.
Some of these seeds you may have thought sounded awesome, some of them you might have thought sounded dumb ("...coffee? Are you serious?"), but each of them could present (or has presented) me with unlimited possibilities. I'm writing an epic poem based on the life of a sword. I wrote half a novel just based on the image of the Abomination being bigger than Godzilla. I have yet to touch a war of genies (take it and run with it if you like!).
But each one of these struck me dumb when I thought of it, and I at least had to jot it down.
My biggest project, and the one I most often share, began with the seed: "I want to make a collectible card game with coded rules." This became FissureVerse, a card game, yes, but the rules are clearly written and the game is intended to be played without confusion. The seed was ultimately nonsense, and has nothing or little to do with the end result, but that doesn't matter; the seed I stuck in the dirt and watered and cared for blossomed into a completely different kind of flower than the packaging told me it would. But that's okay, of course, because Jack didn't know his beans would get him to a land of giants in the clouds when he first planted them, either.
Sometimes, you might have more than one seed. Stephen King, when writing his thousand-page doorstops, uses two seeds, two "What ifs" that he combines together to bounce off each other. After my initial seed for FissureVerse, I've added dozens more seeds to the mix, giving me location names, alien race names, and more.
What's your seed? Have you got one? Have you got more than one? Are you looking for one? Are you having trouble making it grow? Have you seen your seed grow and blossom, and have a story about how it evolved? Is your current world similar or utterly unlike your seed? Do you know where you got your seed, what the spark was that ignited your creativity? Can you help others find seeds for themselves, and show them where to look for seeds (if you even know where you found them yours)?
The seed for my sci-fi world came from Chris Hadfield explaining how feet in space become soft on the bottom and more calloused on the top as they are used to cling on to and push off from things in low gravity.
I'm probably wrong but I think in his book he presented this as ape-like hands-for-feet, and that idea just struck me and I instantly had this vision of a simian space-trader moving about his ship, with almost the exact style of Daft Punk's Interstellar 5555. From there I've played with the idea a lot and the world has grown around that seed though I definitely will have one story feature that character in that scene.
I've been working on a fantasy concept with some gender-neutral tones in parts, myself. I've got a race called tumans who are androgynous and don't have traditional binary sexes. But they are the most romantic and monogamous race, and might be considered the most western or most human-like in their traditions and culture, while the other two major races (bumans and lumans), have basic male/female sexes, but they're a lot more polyamorous.
But I've also just been thinking recently about how I'd tackle the tuman language, and of course all pronouns would have to be gender-neutral. But with the other two races, I've even been questioning the structure of their languages, as well. Would they have to have gendered pronouns? I'm not sure it's even necessary for them, so I might semi-enforce a gender-neutral language to all three races, and see if it works out.
:D I like that world, it's got a great capacity for both intra- and inter-race tension. One of the things I'm most interested in world-building is what the different cultures and customs that spring up because of (or in spite of) what makes them unique; the idea the tumans are the most romantic is nice and I would love to see what some of their art works and appreciations would be.
I think the other races would definitely have gendered pronouns, and that could be a point of conflict that travellers often stumble into. Should tumans have to have a big warning sign saying what pronouns to use? I imagine not, but the other races both being binary gendered would definitely demand that information to be displayed somewhere. Maybe you should check out Star Trek TNG 5x17: The Outcast where Riker falls in love with a member of a genderless alien species.
I've seen the whole TNG series, I know the episode very well :p
I'm not sure it's too necessary for genders to be verbally declared for bumans and lumans, or at least I hope it isn't, but that's something I think I'll discover when I construct their languages.
When I was creating the three major races for my world, I tried to make them each as unique as possible, so they were easily differentiated on sight and by culture, but they didn't fall into the cliche traps it's all too easy to land in.
The tumans are not just romantic, but introverted and solitary much of the time, so their list of friends is very small, but they hold a deep affection for them. Their art comes in the form of solitary activitives, where only the end result is shown, such as writing poetry, painting, or creating gifts (this is as opposed to performance art, for instance, which would be rather embarrassing to a tuman). Clay is a major commodity on their homeworld, so they learn pottery and ceramic skills, so a quality vase is considered a lovely gift. They have specific courtship rituals involving gift exchange. When two tumans decide to be wed, part of their engagement period involves building a house together.
(Actually, that last sentence I just made up now on the spot, but I really like it, so it's canon now!)
Lumans and bumans, however, are polyamorous, but in different ways.
Lumans live in households of about three to six adults, which can have any ratio of men to women. They can certainly be loving, but they are more extroverted than lumans and have many friends and acquaintances. Their art is typically performance driven, so dancing, storytelling, playing music, and even cooking are considered great social forms of art.
Bumans are on the far end of the spectrum from tumans. They are polyamorous to the point of having no single mate or mates, but rather they take the concept of "it takes a village to raise a child" rather literally. A tribe or village is the smallest familial unit bumans care about. They are extraordinarily extroverted, humorous, and have no concept whatsoever of privacy or private property. What is made by one buman is meant for the tribe, so the tuman concepts of monogamy, gift-giving, and the like are very foreign concepts.
The varying customs of the races does have the potential to create some conflict, whether serious or playful, but, being that this world is made for a tabletop RPG, it's up to the players to decide how they'd like to play their characters. They might ignore those differences to focus on the external quest, or they might make internal conflicts the central focus of their game.
Very nice, I was thinking about architecture then you mentioned it and it was exactly what I had hoped. I imagine that means the Tumans are less advanced technology wise as they'd have lower population density and people would probably be home schooled as a family. One way to combat that could be to have wandering teachers who integrate into a family unit and move on once they're not needed anymore? Books would be a huge factor, passed down through the generations, perhaps players should encounter more "Ancient Textbooks" when they're in Tuman territories?
This particular set of worlds (ScatterWorlds working title, very subject to change), is very primitive; I think of each race being slightly more advanced than hunter/gatherer societies, but are certainly not medieval.
Childhood schooling isn't something I've touched too much on yet, because I think with these races being so early in their development, they haven't got too much to teach, apart from social mores, labor skills, and art. I'm thinking that, while tumans were the first to create a written language, they specifically use it for poetical purposes, and less for conveying facts or historical accounts. The physical form of a book in particular is too advanced for them, but I'm sure they have created clay tablets for writing on.
I think none of the three races care too much about history and don't record much, which I think makes such concepts more curious and intriguing when they do find artifacts and markers of other civilizations. Seeing evidence of someone else's handiwork in a previously unexplored area sends them into new lines of questioning they'd never considered.
The way I imagine these three races is that each lives on a separate homeworld where they are limited by their resources and can only achieve some particular level of technology and sophistication, and it is only when they meet and find other worlds of abundance that they combine their skills and create cities and new technology. Once technical knowledge starts to take off and spread, it would then become necessary to have schooling, at least in the form of trades apprenticeships, but possibly more academic forms for those looking to improve life, acquire knowledge, and explore.
Since you mentioned architecture, I'll add as a little aside that the tumans of course make their huts out of clay bricks, while bumans, having abundant wood on their homeworld (something akin to redwood forests), make treehouse villages, and the lumans, having cotton-like plants on their world, are primarily clothiers, and live in tents. When the three races meet, their cities are a smorgasbord of architecture that combines those three main styles elaborately and elegantly. When I get to designing city layouts, I expect it to be a trip.
I'm picturing the Ba'ku people from Star Trek Insurrection, that about right in terms of technology and environment?
They might not record history directly, but I imagine being a high art output race, the tumans would have lots of instances of historical events being captured as part of something else: I'm thinking of The Scream being linked with Krakatoa's eruption. They would probably love allegories and fables too, adding a romantic twist on the stories.
It's interesting that they would mix and build cities together, it seems anathema to the tumans but I think there'd be some really fantastic blends of wood and canvas architecture possible with the bumans and lumans. Speaking of: If they live on separate homeworlds, how do they meet? Have you got something in mind for that? Manmade or natural? Don't feel the need to divulge, got to keep some secrets :)
- I'm picturing the Ba'ku people from Star Trek Insurrection,
More or less. A little less, perhaps. Perhaps more like Native Americans to some degree.
Perhaps in describing the tumans, I put too much emphasis on introversion. In terms of loving relationships, friendships, and so on, they keep very close-knit, but they do have larger societies, they just treat others with stoic reserve until they get to know them better.
As far as fables goes, I might consider something like that, though I think culture-wise, the bumans are more into that kind of thing, since they like to tell stories, and, I think, have a grander sense of hero-worship than the other races. Lumans are more prone to make up fictional stories, while I think tumans are more down-to-earth and present-oriented. But Of course I may change things up as the world evolves; I recently made a massive change to the physiology of bumans after I thought I had that locked down, so we'll see.
- If they live on separate homeworlds, how do they meet?
This one takes a bit of explaining, because the physics of these worlds is counter to our universe. I'm thinking of posting something like "Worldbuilding 101: What is the Gestalt of your world?" and give this as an example:
Worlds do not orbit stars, but rather float through a lilac-colored cosmic aether along hard-to-predict paths. Miniature suns orbit each world, though this number can be different per world. Bumans have no suns at all, and live in a dark, snowy world; tumans have three suns, and have a hot, humid environment of archipelagos and deltas; lumans have too many suns to count, baking their world into a desert.
So these worlds (and infinitely more) slide past each other, coming close and moving about the heavens in a grand cosmic dance.
Now that you know how the universe operates, you see that such worlds can come in fairly close when they pass.
But how does one hop from one world to the next? By waterrises. Like waterfalls, but they rise up into the sky, defying gravity. If you want to visit a world, you must track where the worlds will be passing, swim down a river, and dive up the waterrise, aiming for another world. But, of course, don't forget your parachute, or you're in for a lethal landing. (Parachutes, of course, invented by luman clothiers.)
This particular aether-and-waterrise system was developed for a number of reasons in regards to gameplay, but in terms of setting, not only does it look cool, but it allows for a lot of variety of biomes and worlds that can be reached quickly without too much grand traversing and long miles over similar terrain. But also, since the dance of the worlds is difficult to predict, only when worlds get close can people really figure out where worlds will be connecting. You might also be stuck on any given world for weeks or even years until the worlds align for you to move on. This can also create a disparity of technology, where one world might have so many resources available that they can create grand cities, while other worlds lacking in resources are capped out at some level of tech. Since traveling by waterrise is rather bumpy, it's hard to bring too many supplies to a resource-scarce world (and besides, you wouldn't want to be dependent on imports because you'd never know when the next time would be that someone could bring you some).
Possibly, but it all depends on how good their swimming skill is :p
Disclaimer, I started writing this when I got back from the bar last night and kinda lost the main thread of what I was doing after a bit. Posting it anyway.
I had a short flash of a story with a very intense level of detail. The setting is a medium-small college on the North Atlantic forest coast, a precise construction of dark granite buildings set less than a mile from the salt beach. It's an early October evening and low chill mists puddle just out out of the reach of the lanterns. The campus is mostly dark, except for a blaze of light coming from the student union. A banner across the front of the vaguely gothic building reads 'Homecoming Masquerade Ball!.' Pairs and trios, and the occasional single young man or woman in formal clothing and masks approached the building as the clock tower struck 10 o'clock. In a small, vacant top floor office a gaunt figure in a dark rumpled suit tugged his mask, an ornate golden affair with a pair of small curling horns at the temples, off of his face and massaged the spots where it had pinched his head. 'Damn thing is too heavy.' he muttered to himself as the sound of a sock-hop band replaced a that of an earnest young woman issuing from the main ballroom several floors below. The spidery youth reached into his misshapen sport coat and removed several objects. A doctors bag with several dark stains, a short knife in an ornate leather sheath with a dull red gem set in it's base, a cloth bag of various colors of chalk, a bundle of dull red candles and a dark leather bound notebook. With a sweep of this forearm he cleared a few feet of dusty stone of dust and detritus and set to work carefully drawing a circle a few feet wide in red chalk as thick as a mans thumb, and a perfect five pointed star within the circle. He stepped back to judge his creation after setting a candle at each point of the star. He stared for a few seconds and blinked, and when his eyes opened a dim crimson light danced in the depths of his pupils. The burning eyes swept the circle and abruptly closed, the pale young man gasping as if with pain and shaking his head. When he opened them again the light was gone but was replaced with an instant of fear then hard determination. He picked up the knife and reached into the doctors bag, withdrawing a thick rubber stoppered glass jar containing dark sloshing blood. He opened the stopper and the thick liquid began to slowly bubble, thick ribbons of steam beginning to slowly curl from it's surface, even as he stood, upending the container into the center of the pentagram. The candles burst into dramatic foot high flames, the blood rushed from the jar leaving no remnant and the few wisps of escaped vapor quickly were drawn into the circle, the column of gas roiling thickly against an invisible barrier around the perimeter of the circle. With a grimace he unwrapped some bandages that encircled his left hand, exposing a inch wide band of shredded skin on his palm glistening with scarlet. He dropped the sheath from the knife and coated it's blade with his blood, and faced the pillar of dark red smoke, now as high as his waist, indistinct shapes rippling the smoke. A stream of confident harsh syllables issued from dry lips and the young man extended his bloody hand towards the barrier, a hair fine stream of smoke emerging from his brutalized hand and pausing an inch from the cylinder. It inched closer and made contact, suddently blossoming into a torrent of smoke that rushed up to the offered hand and made contact, drawing suddently in and forming a perfect mirror arm in a handshake. The pale, stubbled face suddenly flushed and he gasped again, raising the bloodied knife high in his right hand, and brought it down on the copy arm with a jerk. The previously squat column shot abruptly up to match the young man's height and drew in to mirror his every feature, even the quickly darkening flush in his cheeks, forehead and throat. Another jerk removed the knife from the suddenly solid arm and a perfect copy of the gaunt youth in the dark rumpled suit stared out of the summoning circle, pinpricks of bitter fire burning in the pits of its inhuman eyes.
So do you think you'll be continuing with it, and fleshing it out into a complete world, story, novel, etc.? Changing things? Looking for advice on how to evolve it?
In addition to the word salad I wrote last night I have copious notes on the magic system, various supernatural realms and entities, a modest campus map and some character bios/stats/feats for important NPCs. I also have the beginnings of a player handbook. I have a friend who is good with illustrator and he made it look really amazing. If I can find them I'll post the character sheets and few other pages.
I guess I could use some advice as far as story development. My plan was to create a universe and sort of drop the players in with a little background and let them explore it and find the story, but when I tried to run a test session it didn't seem to work all that well.
- My plan was to create a universe and sort of drop the players in with a little background and let them explore it and find the story, but when I tried to run a test session it didn't seem to work all that well.
What went wrong? Did you give them too little background? Did they not know what to expect? Did they not know what they could and couldn't do? Often players become quite hesitant when the rules are too hazy.
I tried to direct them towards certain events, specifically the apparent suicide of a physics professor, but they felt I was just telling them what they couldn't do, rather than suggesting things that they could. And we ended up scaling up the power wayy to quickly too, I want magic to be something truly subtle right up until the very end unless things go very wrong.
Found the Player Handbook Sample
Right now I'm working a novel that started out as a short story. The idea is simple; it's told (in part) from the perspective of a thumping great deus-ex-machina who is ignorant of their origin or purpose.
I can see a lot of ways this can go. My first thought is something like a Lovecraftian tale as told through the eyes of a Great Old One. Or, by your use of the phrase deus ex machina, it might be something more of an ancient Greek tale, complete with titans and Olympian gods. What direction did you move in, and what motivated you to move in that direction?
Well, certain shamanic aspects forced their way in. Oddly enough. I'm trying to be more lighthearted than Lovecraft. But the primary character becomes fused with a synthetic symbiotic; an artificial organism with magical-seeming powers that even they don't understand. The ignorance seems to be part of the plan, whatever the hell the plan might be. Oh, and the organism essentially gives voice to the host's subconscious.
So, yeah. it's an excuse to talk to myself and hope some pay copy happens.
This was my second shot at an SF story. The first was set in a far far far distant future - and all my incredible futuristic tech kept showing up on TechDirt.
- So, yeah. it's an excuse to talk to myself
Hey, there's a reason the Lone Ranger has Tonto. Screenwriters learned early that having a solitary hero leads to a very silent movie, but giving the hero a sidekick allows them to basically talk to themselves and give voice to their internal struggles.
As for the other story, being in a "far far far distant future", you can always suggest that some apocalyptic event occurred that led to much tech being wiped out, and humanity had to restart and rebuild. I tend to think there are multiple ways tech could evolve, and it doesn't have to be the same path every time. Perhaps computers were invented before guns, so you might have muskets on a space station.
Also, there's certainly no need to be disappointed when your invented tech comes out in real life, it just means you're a prophet :p
|Also, there's certainly no need to be disappointed when your invented tech comes out in real life, it just means you're a prophet :p
Only if the prediction comes true after publication. During the first draft - it's kind of awkward. However, I do plan to revisit it, once I'm a better writer.
The other issues was managing scale and travel times. I had not one but three McGuffins going for FTL - and there's good reasons for that - but it made the plot extremely complex and it all came tumbling down around my ears.
My original seed wasn't much of anything I began with a character who had just killed a god. The surrounding story was peoples reaction to the event and the character. It has since then changed drastically, but the premise of power, strong motivations, and magic is still a big part of the process. For example there is a grand evil, but the lesser evil that is really centerstage in the stories fears it and hold very different motivations than it in terms of how it wants control.
The second one was a more generic seed. I looked at the world of magical creatures we had and saw all the variants in design for things like werewolves, vampires, the undead, etc. What if they were all real? If these magical creatures had different species like any other type of animal? What traits would be different? Would a trait be how human or wolf a werewolf actually looks? Or would it be how much control they were in when they changed. It started from that and has since morphed into something very early in development, but it's cool.
I can definitely see speciation in legendary creatures. Not only is there of course plenty of room to make up traits wholesale, but that's also a way to explain how multiple legends have different varieties of creatures. For instance, Nosferatu and Dracula are very different vampires. Of course there's the fast zombies and the slow zombies, as well as all manner of ghosts and apparitions with varying amounts of visibility and ability to touch and manipulate their environment.
I'd definitely like to see a world with a theme like that. Any ideas for a particular era? Modern? Medieval? Victorian?
I imagined modern era just because I wanted to include myths across the world. The main character is a species of werewolf from the northern Inuit mythos. To be more specific it was an Amarok, they are among the rarer forms of werewolf. They are called hunters of hunters so more often than not they are assassins or bounty hunters for the world of legendary creatures. It stuff like that I work on when I'm not working on my main piece.
Awesome concept. Sounds like it's worthy of at least one novel, though I can see it working in an interesting fashion if it were multiple novels where each had a different main character that it followed.
Since you mentioned werewolves and Inuits, I'm reminded of 30 Days of Night... about vampires, but I like the idea of werewolves in a similar environment better.
Though I'm guessing that by it's nature, the tone you're striving for is a more action than horror? If so, I can also really see it working as a comic book or graphic novel.
Well, like I said it is still pretty early in development, so I was really unsure of the direction. I really only have a few speciations of vampire, werewolves, and some ghosts. This seed came about maybe a few months ago. I actually imagined it a graphic novel too sometimes.
This took me a while to get to.
In one of my worlds, two things happened:
- the brain chip that connected a few billion people to the Internet got fried by what assumed to be either a computer worm (at least, that's what they call it after the fact) or a workframe mistake, frying most of the higher functions of the brain of the users,
- and someone launched several non-nuclear missiles onto the territory of the US, causing immense chaos, damage and, in case of Nevada and some of the eastern states, nuclear pollution (its nuclear plant was destroyed in a blast).
In short, the land is filled with pseudozombies who communicate through wireless Internet connection and are able to detect any Internet access in North America, pinpointing its location for the rest to hunt the fool. Pseudozombies - or, zeds - have some higher intelligence still (they're capable of cooperating in hunting the survivors, hiding and sneaking up, as well as still use firearms for those who have the trained reflexes), and therefore, extremely dangerous, even if one disregards their extensive aggression and tendency to group up. In addition, most sources of energy are down, water supplies are not to be trusted due to damage and, often, lack of support for the system, communication through Internet is impossible, and the technologies that might help people survive this - printing food and weapons, for example - are too expensive to use. What do people do?
I like it. It's a cool, unique spin on post-apocalyptic/zombie times. Do you have any plans for it? Make it a novel, etc.? Got any main characters or zoned-in setting, like a particular city or town?
Like most of my stories, I created the setting for a book. Many of the events are set all over the former United States, with particular yet-unselected cities serving as hubs (both in plot and socioeconomical sense) due to presense there of established communities with proper defenses and resource distribution.
While many of the characters are yet to be fleshed out, I can tell you about one who has a plotline of her own (the book is meant to consist of several intertwining plotlines).
Her name is Agatha Black Sun - at least, that's what she presents herself as to others. She's a white girl adopted into a fairly-rich (middle class) Native American family, before they finally happened to have a child born naturally. She's pale, has black hair and an aquilline nose. Trained by her father with many a method of survival, she's among rare few in the US capable of surviving and thriving (as much as one can) through the end of the world as we know it: endurant, strong, quick and dexterous, she was as if born for this.
Agatha had to leave her family - who can fend for themselves in their small town, mind you - in order to find her little brother who was swept up by the contamination forces before the bombs dropped, meaning that there's a chance of his survival somewhere in the US. She travels with her dog - a blackish German Shepard, a trained hunting dog as well with whom Agatha grew up - across many a military base and a military compound, with little success: her brother, among other survivors, is either haven't been there or have been transported to a safer location.
As such, with her vertical crossbow, she travels what now constitutes a barely-surviving country, scavenging for supplies as she does.
She's a lesbian, and, despite her stoic exterior (reminiscent of the Native American chiefs), she's a shy girl who has never been in a romantic relationship before. Due to her Asian heritage, she's incapable of processing alcohol efficiently, which leaves her unwilling to take part in drinking it. She's confident, but not talkative when on her way; if she has to, she'd say a few words, very succintly, while in a more relaxed atmosphere she might even open up to you and befriend you. She's not very clever in the academical sense but is certainly capable of surviving through her wits and cunning; she's also a capable, if unskilled, detective, able to piece together where her brother might be held despite lack of specific evidence.
In a wilderness, she's a perfect survivor - if somewhat dragged down by her pale skin - and with the Short War (the bombs falling), came the world she's most versed in. It's the buzzing society of the world we knew that had her stunned and incapable: she'd fail her job interviews miserably because she doesn't understand the code of the corporate, preferring to talk straightly and honestly; most of the girls she met were shallow and stupid, most often because of how they were raised rather than being incapable of becoming otherwise.
Have you come up with particular plot points that feature each of those attributes? I'm particularly thinking of instances where she'd be forced to drink alcohol, or fake it, perhaps; or develop a love interest (even if one that's half-hearted or full of mixed messages); or times when her crossbow comes in particularly handy (since you describe it as a vertical crossbow, I wonder if there's an instance where it might be necessary that it was such, rather than just being a cool visual).
AND THAT DOGGY BETTER LIVE!!!
Before I start answering, I must include the reason for such a name the character bears, which I unintentionally omitted from the original comment.
"Agatha" is her real name, with which she grew up at the orphanage, but the "Black Sun" part comes from the fact that she was born during an eclipse (doing calculations for it was fun). After learning that, her little brother, having fun with his own heritage (to which he wasn't entirely attuned), gave her an "Indian name". Agatha liked it and said that, if she's ever to lead a tribe, that's what her name would be.
- instances where she'd be forced to drink alcohol, or fake it, perhaps
One time, Agatha visits what its inhabitants call the Dome. The Dome is one of smaller hubs, with a couple of dozen survivors as a permanent staff and a few that are passing by and staying only for a while; used to be a typical five-storey house, until cluster rocket blew off its roof and highest floor as collateral damage, and it's also a set-out point for a major plotline.
Agatha manages to get in minutes before one of the hordes - very populous groups of zeds who, due to the way their system works, lost almost all of the sense-making that may have been left had they been alone - rush through the area. The Domers hope to wait it out, until someone makes a noise loud enough to get the horde's attention. Most zeds mindlessly rush forward to whatever destination they may have had, ignoring the Dome, but those closer to the noise got very aggressive, so the Domers had to fight back.
After this particularly terrifying and difficult battle, those Domers who had no responsibilities at the moment - which included the Dome's leader, Ellis Gatling, and her leuitenant and one of the best marksmen in the state, Chris King - decided to celebrate the victory and get some rest, which included drinking some stored alcohol. Agatha had to politely refuse, explaining the situation. Ellis doesn't believe it at first, but Chris tells her how he served in Turkey with an Asian guy who'd be a hell of a mess after what Chris himself could take in and have fun with. After that, the relationships between the leaders of the Dome and Agatha go much smoother, with her being able to open up to them.
- or develop a love interest
Indeed. I haven't fleshed that out yet, but there's certainly a plan to portray this part of Agatha's personality.
- or times when her crossbow comes in particularly handy (since you describe it as a vertical crossbow, I wonder if there's an instance where it might be necessary that it was such, rather than just being a cool visual)
Well, she is living in a world where any amount of shooting firearms will attract the whole gang of the local zeds (who, I will remind you, communicate through wireless connection and relay such information to those in the vicinity), so using an almost-silent crossbow is a very effective method of concealed killing.
Vertical crossbows are usually lighter than the classical wooden or solid-metal ones, because the vertical constuction is a modern invention to which the industry added a few of helpful sidefeatures. For example, one can disassemble such a crossbow if need be and reassemble it to the precise same use. The lightness translated to easier holding when aiming and, thus, higher accuracy, which is important when you're hunting either animals or living humans (zeds or otherwise).
- AND THAT DOGGY BETTER LIVE!!!
I love the doggy too, but given how the setting is Stephen King-inspired, I'd have to see about that.
Quickest way to make a villain is to have some human character kill the dog. Everyone will instantly want to see that guy dead. :p
Sounds like you've got at least a few key scenes happening. Have you been working on an outline or a way to tie the scenes together?
If you've got a stand-alone scene already written, or a test scene, don't be afraid to post to #worldbuilding and #shortstory and get feedback!
I'll keep that in mind.
I have a few strokes for the story: some scenes done better than others. It's a long way to go, still: I gotta finish #crystalclear first. (Which reminds me: I have to find a better host for those stories: Wattpad turned out to be incapable of serving unregistered readers.)
- I have to find a better host for those stories: Wattpad turned out to be incapable of serving unregistered readers.
Google Docs/Drive? You can set it to publicly read-only.
I've got a regular blog. I used to have another one specifically for fiction and poetry, so it's certainly doable to make a fiction blog.