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    World Building from the Inside Out: World Building Made Easy, #1
    World Building from the Inside Out: World Building Made Easy, #1
    World Building from the Inside Out: World Building Made Easy, #1
    Ebook91 pages59 minutes

    World Building from the Inside Out: World Building Made Easy, #1

    By Janeen Ippolito

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Go to the heart of your world and build it well!

     

    Memorable world-building enhances story, attracts readers and listeners, and sells books and audiobooks! Find the core of your science fiction or fantasy people and instill your narrative with universal themes and concepts derived from real-world cultures.

     

    -Explore different religions and governments with concise entries that include ideas for plot and character development

    -Develop key aspects of your society without getting caught up in unnecessary details

    -Learn how the deeper effects of appearance and location can enhance your narrative

     

    World-Building from the Inside Out challenges you to go deep and build fantastical worlds that truly bring your story to life!

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJaneen Ippolito
    Release dateJan 11, 2018
    ISBN9781386517740
    World Building from the Inside Out: World Building Made Easy, #1

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      Book preview

      World Building from the Inside Out - Janeen Ippolito

      World Building

      From the Inside Out

      By Janeen Ippolito

      ––––––––

      Copyright © 2015 by Janeen Ippolito

      All rights reserved.

      Cover design and illustrations by Julia Busko

      Editing by Sarah McConahy

      No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

      Click here to get the free World Building Check-Up Miniguide

      First Published: June 2015

      Second Edition: December 2015

      Third Edition: April 2016

      Fourth Edition: January 2018

      Table of Contents

      Introduction

      Chapter 1 – Religion

      Chapter 2 – Government

      Chapter 3 – Societal Structure

      Chapter 4 – Art/Media

      Chapter 5 – Technology

      Chapter 6 – Naming

      Chapter 7 – Food

      Chapter 8 – Appearance

      Chapter 9 – Location

      Appendices

      Appendix 1 – Health and Medicine

      Appendix 2 – Military

      Appendix 3 – Education

      Dedication

      To Marilyn Montlick

      the best HobbitMom a girl could have.

      You taught me to take speculative fiction seriously

      but not too seriously.

      Introduction

      World Building From the Inside Out began because of a mistake.

      My mistake.

      I’d been world building for over ten years. I’d studied cultures and anthropology at a college known (and infamous) for its thorough humanities program. I’d taught classes on world building and coached people through the process individually.

      And yet, when it came to incorporating world building into my own speculative novels, I failed.

      Over and over again.

      My worlds were well designed. My races looked cool and had neat clothing and weaponry. And the names! Oh yes, I loved making up all those crazy names.

      But I had missed one key factor that I should have remembered from my very first literature class: a story is about plot and characters, working towards a goal, and having disasters thrown at them. It’s about excitement. Adventure. Emotional depth. Pacing.

      I had beautifully-formed races with no heart. No soul. No motivation.

      No reason to go along with my plot other than because I said so.

      For some reason, that made for some pretty shallow cultures!

      To use a favorite expression from my college days, I was missing the cultural worldview.

      Worldview, the essential collection of beliefs that frame how an individual and a society perceives, interacts with, and makes decisions about the world.

      Once I stopped banging my head on my desk, I did what any self-respecting, hyper-planning teacher would do: I began writing a curriculum for myself. I researched all sorts of different ideas on world building and tried out character builder profiles with pages and pages of questions.

      I sifted my way through cultures and societies and compiled a set of tools to build a story culture from the worldview, instead building the geography, races, and other physical aspects and then throwing in the philosophy and beliefs as an after-thought.

      The result is World Building From the Inside Out, a quick primer to get you to the core of your story world’s cultures.

      We start off with religion/philosophy. What are the essential moral and philosophical beliefs of your culture? By deciding what motivates them on a basic level, you can then figure out how your main character interacts with them, and how they in turn are products of that culture. Furthermore, it will be easier to create and manipulate conflicts between different races because you will understand their core needs and desires.

      From there, we move on to government. Government is often closely entwined with religion/philosophy, and sometimes it even acts as a replacement for a religious system. After government comes society, including family structure, marital traditions, and gender roles.

      For the fun of it, we touch on art, technology, naming, and food. These are often the places where you can have the most creativity.

      Next come appearance and location. These categories are often the easiest to change according to what the plot requires. They are also the easiest areas to get lost in minutiae that will do nothing to further your actual plot and get that story on paper.

      We end with appendices on health and medicine, military, and education. While these areas aren’t strictly necessary, they can have great relevance to your personal story.

      So if you’re the kind of person who wants to go deep and world build fantastic story cultures, then this is the book for you.

      Please join me on an exciting journey into the heart of man.

      Or elf.

      Or half-unicorn.

      Or whatever else your brain can come up with!

      Chapter 1 – Religion

      The dreaded R word.

      This can be a tough area to tackle for any

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