Itâs important to know your strengths as a writer. Mine has always been worldbuilding, probably because thatâs the part of fantasy that draws me in: the magic, the epic settings, the sense of wonder. Itâs also probably what drove me out of the small towns I grew up in, once I had the choice, living in places like Japan and Ugandaâthat love of the new and strange and wonderful. I know itâs what pushed me into grad school for anthropology, after Iâd become a weathered expat: the desire to professionalize my love of the unknown.
Turns out writing fantasy does that even better. But I have a secret: the worlds are a mystery to me, too.
Or to put it a different way, Iâm not one of those authors who gets a debilitating case of Worldbuilderâs Disease and spends twenty years designing the landscapes and languages and mythologies of their worlds[1]. I always start out that way, and love imagining how a different kind of magic and landscape would shape a culture and its peoples, but at some point a story starts to press on me, and I have to let go of filling in every detail so I can write the dang thing.
Thatâs what happened with the Tidecaller Chronicles. You may notice that book one only happens in one city, and though we get a sense of the wider world, all the main characters are from that city. Thatâs not because I was trying to make it easy on you, as I introduced all this strange culture magic and had my character running for her life trying to solve a mystery. Itâs because I didnât know either.
And thatâs been one of the joys of writing the later books in the series: there are still unexplored parts of the world for me to imagine. Book two had me do a deep dive into the merchant city of Dahran and their wealth-based magic, and in book three, well, thatâd be spoilers, but letâs just say as the cast gets more international, we keep diving deeper.
So like Iâm discovering my characters turn out better if I donât plan them so well, Iâm finding my worlds are richer if I leave some of them unexplored until Iâve really gotten to know one part of the place. In writing we say the trick is to carefully describe the tip of the iceberg, hoping the reader will assume the rest of it is underneath, when actually we have no idea whatâs down there. For me, I guess I like diving deeper and deeper down and fleshing out that berg more with each book, even if a lot of the things I know never make it on the page.
And therein lies the problem: with each new culture I develop, and magic system I work into the existing ones, new story ideas pop up. Epic characters and cool side quests and spoilery things that are happening behind the scenes of the books I am writing. I want to write all of them, and know that if I did, the main story would never get done. Call it Plotterâs Disease, a new variant of the Worldbuilderâs Disease thatâs been plaguing authors for centuries (a metaphor that feels especially timely, given the state of my family).
Still, I occasionally indulge myself in these sidequests, mostly because I want to explore those places the main books will never go. One of these is Witch and Wealth and Ruin
Chapter 22.5, which Iâm not sure I ever mailed about, but is a fun little side quest if youâve read the book. Click here and Iâll send you a copy.
And as I close in on the end of Rebel of Riddle and Woe (more on that below!), I thought it might be fun to throw some of these wandering Tidecaller ideas at you, and see if any of them catch your
eye. I know Iâm writing one for sureâa novella told from Gaxnaâs perspective, in the months before Daughter of Flood and Fury startsâbut there will likely be room for a few more in the 2022 schedule.
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