Tip Series 1: Your First Story---World Building

Hello, adventurers one-and-all!

These next several articles will be in no particular order, and you as a creative mind may start with whichever area works for you and the story you want to tell.

Now, on to world building!

The worlds our characters inhabit form a kind of story on their own, and can become as believable as the real world with the right applications. Look to Middle Earth, or the galaxy in Star Wars; these are places that imaginative people thrive in because of their complexity but also because of their attention to detail. The stories placed in these universes allow for the worlds to be fully immersive without feeling like a huge information dump labeled, “WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE WORLD BEFORE YOU START!” It all comes back to the basic principle of “show, don’t tell,” that lends the worlds we create to be alive and real. So let’s get started!

Moon Dream - Original Poem

Moon Dream

By Tom Laspisa

A small boat illuminated and veiled in dripping moonlight,

Rocking in crystalline, glimmering wakes of the wind,

On a pond in a small wood clearing along the dirt forest trail to the right,

And the moon was enormous,

Hovering slight behind mountainous clouds of post-dusk dusty yellows,

Deep creams,

Grays,

And blacks,

The sky twinkling beyond under a blanket of stars,

Catching the shadowed sky with patches of midnight blues,

The lunar body hung as a plate of whites and gleaming navy-gray plains along its surface,

And the boat, with naught but a single mast and folded sail,

Sat in that watered clearing,

Lulling still in that glassy pond...