09.17.2007
I've decided to significantly expand the history of my little sci-fi world. It's not that I've run out of stories to tell in what I'd already developed but more like I have other stories that I want to tell but haven't yet flushed out the back story for.
So what does it all mean?
Well... for organizational purposes, I've begun dividing my world up into "ages". For now, I have three.
- The Age of Colonization - This is the age that I've basically been working within so far. It's everything from colonization to revolution.
- The Age of War - This is the second age and the age of strife, internal and external.
- The Age of Betrayal - I'm trying to decide what this age means. I mean, not what happens but what it means to the world overall. I only have half of it timelined out. The other half will be determined by what's supposed to mean. I was tempted to call it the Age of Superpower but that just sounded lame.
Each has an arc within that tells a period of the world. Each moves the world into a new place. In some ways, the world grows darker with each one.
So what does creating the ages accomplish?
Thanks for asking.
It allows me to subdivide the history work. You know, one book for each that serves as the "bible" of that time period. As of right now, I've got 2 1/2 of the ages timelined out and I've started to work on my second history book.
Maybe it's just me but this project feels like it keeps growing on scope not wrapping itself up. It's kind of nice and kind of frustrating. And here's why.
- Nice - It's nice to have a project that I feel like I can continually add something to. There's always a detail that can be added or something flushed out. And each thing that I work on the detail for can be spun into several stories. I could work on this shit for fucking ever, baby!
- Frustrating - When will it fucking end?! Will I ever reach a goddamn point where I will say, "You know what? That does that. I'm done. Maybe I should work on something that might actually be read by more than a teeny-tiny and ever shrinking audience." No. Not fucking likely, it would seem. Becuase every detail that I flush out shows that I've got a dozen more to work on to make it feel complete. You do the math on that.
So yeah. That's where I'm at. I may not do any short stories for a while. Partly because I've got a book that I've begun working out and also because of my new ages. So no short stories mean no rejections, which will be nice, but I'll continue keeping my four readers updated.
Why? Because you're badass, people. Bad. Ass.