New Worlds, Year One: A Writer's Guide to the Art of Worldbuilding

by Marie Brennan

Overview

Step into a world of your own making . . .

Worldbuilding is one of the great pleasures of writing science fiction and fantasy -- and also one of its greatest challenges. Award-winning fantasy author Marie Brennan draws on her academic training in anthropology to peel back the layers of a setting, going past the surface details to explore questions many authors never think to answer. She invites you to consider the endless variety of real-world cultures -- from climate to counterfeiting, from sumptuary laws to slang -- and the equally endless possibilities speculative fiction has to offer.

This volume collects essays from the first year of the New Worlds Patreon.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781611387476
Publisher:	Book View Cafe
Publication date:	11/20/2018
Series:	New Worlds , #1
Pages:	220
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.46(d)

About the Author

Marie Brennan is a former anthropologist and folklorist who shamelessly pillages her academic fields for inspiration. She recently misapplied her professors' hard work to the short novel Driftwood and Turning Darkness Into Light, a sequel to the Hugo Award-nominated Victorian adventure series The Memoirs of Lady Trent. She is the author of several other series, over sixty short stories, and the New Worlds series of worldbuilding guides; as half of M.A. Carrick, she has written The Mask of Mirrors, first in the Rook and Rose trilogy. For more information, visit swantower.com, Twitter @swan_tower, or her Patreon at www.patreon.com/swan_tower.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. The Shape of the World

3. Plate Tectonics

4. Rivers

5. Mountains

6. Deserts

7. Natural Disasters

8. How Many Seasons?

9. Measuring Time

10. Where Does the Food Come From?

11. Local and Imported Food

12. Kitchens

13. Dining Customs

14. Phonology the Easy Way

15. What's in a Name?

16. Names and Their Meaning

17. The Etiquette of Names

18. Greetings and Respect

19. Gestures of Contempt

20. Insults

21. Profanity

22. Idioms and Slang

23. Folk Magic

24. Lucky Charms

25. Curse You!

26. Divination

27. Birthdays

28. Childhood

29. Respect Your Elders

30. Rites of Passage

31. Lineage

32. Third Cousin Twice Removed

33. Fictive Kinship

34. Residence Patterns

35. Marriage

36. Structures of Marriage

37. Buying and Selling Spouses

38. Divorce

39. Funerary Customs

40. Cannibalism

41. Mourning

42. The Afterlife

43. Your Money's Worth

44. Follow the Money

45. All that Glitters Is Not Gold

46. Signs of Power

47. Sumptuary Laws

48. Status Without Wealth

49. The History We Live In

50. Worldbuilding as a Habit of Thought

51. Bricolage

52. Liminality

53. Afterword