While each genre comes with its own set of requirements and expectations in regard to the amount of worldbuilding and the level of detail, one thing that seems to be certain is that every fictional world needs a strong foundation.

Alas, the truth of life rears its ugly head and I try each week anew to strike a balance that leaves me feeling both productive and satisfied.

Welcome back to the Craft of Fiction Series. Today’s the start of our new section on worldbuilding, called The Architect, and through each post we’ll be talking about the different components that can be a part of every fictional world. I stress that word “can” because every story, every writer, is different. (Before we continue, if you missed last week’s post introducing The Architect section, you can find it, like always, …

The dirt, the mud, the water. Barbed wire, tin sheets, and canteens. Walls, walls, walls. For forever there stretched walls of earth, propped up by timber and metal, driven deep into the ground. Along the sides of these canals in the mud and beneath the sharp wire were dugouts, barely more than small holes for a man to huddle in and protect himself from the rain.

With that, I'm finished. For anyone who's thought, "Who the hell does this guy think he is?" I hope this was a sufficient answer.

Hey everyone! This week, I'll be taking a break from posting, as I just started a new job! It's been a very exciting, but very busy time, and as I still attempt to find some rhythm and balance to my life, the writing has taken a little bit of a hit. Such is life. But more importantly, it caused me to fall a bit behind when it came to writing, particularly the posts for the website.

The authenticity of a character doesn't just come from within, but from the world they have around them, especially when it comes to other characters. How characters connect to one another and how they exist in their world in relation to each other are important components to character-making as well as worldbuilding.

Original photo of book cover. There is one thing that all artists, regardless of medium or philosophy, have in common: they're hard workers. They have to be. The hard work of creation, the hard work of critique, and the hard work of craft are the unavoidable requirements demanded of the creative who truly wishes to make something, and those requirements never lessen with each new undertaking.

Asking questions is not as common as you might think, particularly between friends and family. Perhaps it's a sense of complacency or comfort. I'm talking about honest-to-god, wanting-to-know questions...