World Building
As an author, we have to go through a little something called 'World Building' even when we don't realize it. Now authors who write in the here and now don't have to adhere to this technique as much as authors who write in the future or in the past. Even if you write in recent past, such as those who write 30's and 40's pulp. They have a basis to start with at least, but they still have crate a viable world around those characters. If you write in the dim, unknown past you have your work cut out for you. Never mind on another world or the far flung future.
Case in point, my just released 'Torahg the Warrior: Sword of Vengeance' on Pro Se Publications label. It takes place in a dim past that is pre-historic. That does not mean there are dinosaurs running around, though there very well could be. What it means is that it is pre- history. It takes place in a somewhat civilized era that there is no longer any remnant of. It is pre-historic. Basically it's a fresh new world.
But the way I worked it, the mapping is the same. In other words 'the black sea' became 'the sea of darkness' in Torahg. you can figure out the rest from there.
Now on to Crystalon's world, things got completely different as it's a parallel earth that he's from. So while he may have recognized different landmasses when he came to our world there were no individual nations. It had been all under his control, as had many other worlds in his home dimension. IN the upcoming Crystalon novel, "My Enemy, Myself' it's revealed that on Crystalon's home world, New York City is known as the 'Sorcerer's City'
Going even further, my forthcoming sci-fi novel, 'The Cagliostro Chronicles' a good chunk of the story takes place on an alien world, so that's a perfect example of world building, as well as the universe surrounding them all that they live and breathe in.
See, the 'world' in that case at least is not just the planet they walk upon, but everything that encompasses them as well. It's their environment. That could be ten galaxies and the design of the space craft they fly in as well as what the earth looks like ninety years from now.
All of that has to be conveyed in a way to not take away from the story as well as to help build upon it. You don't want to bore your reader with details, but you do want to give them just enough to know the character they are reading about do not exist within four blank walls.
That's world Building
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