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CraigEllsworth  ·  3154 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Untitled Novel Series - Exposition

My first points are not on the exposition itself, but to encourage you to continue worldbuilding and assure you that you are doing everything right:

    I've been working on this project since I started college (On/off so it isn't like I have two-three years of work to show for it)

Hobbies like this are always on/off; I'm working on a text adventure game, and after a year, I think I had less than 200 lines of code, which is practically nothing. Stuff like this always takes time, and everyone goes at their own pace depending on how busy they are with the rest of their life, and what other projects they're working on.

    I'm not even sure where to begin because things rarely settle long enough to share.

Oh, I've shared parts of my worlds online that are now out of date. In one of my worlds, a race called bumans were kind of like a Hagrid/Klingon hybrid, and a warrior tribe with coming-of-age hunting ceremonies. But all that's been wiped out and now bumans are more like rhinocerous/armadillo humanoids with fungi as their primary food (not meat), which eliminates their hunting rites.

I hope the purpose of this #worldbuilding tag (and getting a worldbuilding community started on Hubski) is to share not just the final result, but many steps along the way. Nothing is ever written in stone, not even when it's written in bits on the Internet. Heck, I'd be interested to see what stuff you'd made that got cut!

    it all seems overwhelming how much useless information I have on the entire world. I mean most of it is just for me, and won't make it into the main novel series. I guess I find it cool to have all that rich detail even if it is just for me, you know?

That's part of what worldbuilding is about: you're not just writing a novel or novel series, that's just the product you have to show a wider audience. But the world you're making will always go beyond the pages. In fact, it's really how many writers write their novels: they've got to create the cohesive world first, then write the outline, then write the novel, then edit the novel and cut stuff out. I've read that anywhere between 10 to 50% (FIFTY!) of a novel gets cut between first draft and published work. That's a lot that never sees the light of day! And that was stuff that was intended to be shown. I bet much more of the world of the writer was created, that never even got into the first outline.

Creating the fuller world is how writers make the world of the novel feel bigger than just what's happening on the page. The events of a novel aren't happening within a bubble by themselves. Heck, take Lord of the Rings: you know a lot more went into the world than just the four books (Hobbit + LotR), since there's not only appendices, but also the Simarillion.

(Ugh, every time I write a comment like this, I realize it should be a complete post on its own!)

But let's get to your stuff:

You said the stuff about the gods' war and giving humanity the knowledge to defeat the followers of the void is the "basic premise of the novel". Do you mean it's the backstory, and the novel focuses on later events? Or do you mean the gods' war etc. is the meat of the novel?

If the gods' war is the meat of the novel, I'd definitely like to see the gods described in greater detail. Are they humanoid like the Greek pantheon, anthropomorphized hybrids like the Egyptian pantheon, or strange superbeings like Lovecraft's mythos? The closer to humanity you make them, the more relatable they become. Perhaps they could even act more like the Christian god in Milton's Paradise Lost, who used his angelic army to defeat Satan's army, rather than getting into the fray Himself. Do the gods have their own lives, squabbles, backstories, creation stories?

You begin the paragraph detailing the gods' war with "Before humanity was born...", then in the middle you say "...destroying all humanity...". At what point does humanity get created and why? Did humanity evolve, did they come about through cosmic accident, or if I compare this to Milton again: were they the angelic force to used to defeat Satan's (the Void's) army? Perhaps the Goddess of the Stars created most of humanity in response to the God of the Void creating the Shadai (or the precursor to the Shadai)? Looking back up, I see you said the Aetirn were created for defense, so they might be the angelic army comparison. In that case, I'd have to ask again why the human races were created. I would find it a bit interesting if the human races evolved naturally out of control of the gods, and the gods were surprised to discover new intelligent races appearing on the world. You've mentioned that the God of the Moon had limited power, so perhaps all the gods do, as well.

If your focus is not on the gods' war, but rather on the human element, I wonder if you could give more detail on the races you've created. What separates them beyond their home climate? What happens when these races interact? As far as novels go, I've always wanted to read a novel series that switches focus per novel, so, for instance, you might spend a novel focusing on the O'kani, then the next would focus on the Hasreni, and so on. (In the same vein, I'm disappointed the Harry Potter series is mostly over, and we never really got to see much about Ravenclaw, my favorite house.)

Working on any human characters?

Do you know what the overall technological setting is for the humans? (Greek, medieval, steampunk, modern, cyberpunk, etc.) Or, if the races are separated geographically, you could even separate the tech levels (like how the Europeans were far more advanced than the Native Americans when they met). Perhaps a unique level of tech we have not categorization for, or anachronistic tech (like they have computers, but never invented guns)? I see you mentioned in your initial short story it was medieval, but has that changed over the evolution of your world?

How do the gods interact with humans? Do they have an intimate role, coming down from on high often to talk and lead? Do they have a hands-off approach, where once things are set in motion, they back off? Do they see humans as purely pawns in a larger game?

You said at the beginning that you don't "have two-three years of work to show for it", but you've actually got quite a lot going on, and I'm interested to see how all of these different aspects interact. I haven't even touched upon how the magic system works! I wonder how thoroughly the gods matter in regards to the national structures (were you referring to governments?) and the religious orders. Do some religious orders believe in different religions and gods that don't exist? It'd be pretty interesting if all the religious orders were wrong, and none of them believed in the gods that do exist!

Welp, I've written enough for now. I hope I've given you enough questions to make your head spin, and encouragement to continue, and continue to share!