Young Writers Society

Alright, where are my speculative fiction writers? Hiding in the woodwork, I see, afraid to come out and talk about their own projects! Well, here we go, let's have a fun discussion here.

Out of the projects you've written, what is your favorite setting to play around with? What setting have you put the most work and research into? What kind of research do you do when figuring out the time and place for your idea?

Do you solely pull information from real life sources, or do you go the opposite route and make up your setting completely? Do you mix and match the two? Which cultures and languages do you feel like you overuse, and which do you want to incorporate but you've never gotten around to it?

Do your settings rely on magic? Advanced technology? Immense dragons made of black matter consisting of the entirety of the universe? Nuclear winter, or greenhouse gas summer?

Come out and play!

I don't write as many stories as frequently as I used to, but I love the more dark settings when it comes to writing it. I've always been one to love pulling things from real life to write fantasy and things all of that sort. It's more the lore and the history of things that I like to look into rather than just a single setting, such as battle formations or how people fight in certain styles because those are things that interest me when it comes to writing stories.

I've always pulled in a contemporary feel into my stories, or at least have tried to because I feel it adds to characters. Often when I'm writing things that take place in a fantasy or science fiction based world, I feel the disconnection from the characters, which is probably my least favorite thing about writing it.

People and the psychology of them is another thing that I like to research because I feel that fantasy characters often lack emotion or that they don't feel like real people a lot of times. I'm not saying they completely should and the advance of history and society goes into that because most likely a person in a fantasy world would not be the same as someone in the real world.

As for settings when it comes to fantasy, I've never been a big fan of high fantasy with knights and dragons, rather an either calmer setting or a setting that's more dark and maybe even gritty. "Maybe even" because I wouldn't really describe what I write gritty but more-so having a melancholic tone. I love studying culture and history because it helps give ideas of what to write in those types of stories and it gives more of a base than working from scratch does.

>:3


I'm not sure where to start.

Because I tend to lose interest in my stories fairly early on, my worlds don't often go beyond "oh what a lovely picture." BUT there are some settings that, even though aren't fully developed, do make me feel giddy and excited about writing and talking about them!

My worlds tend to be just whatever comes to mind that I like- meh you'll see.

1. Black Scale

This story's setting is an underground kinda tunnel system but also kinda like a shack. The colour is rusty, and sandy, and I love that part about it. The society in the story move underground because their sun is too close to the the world and so it's too hot to live above ground during the day (but they DO do some things up there at night). One of the things I love about this society is they're all bald ('cause a certain root they have to eat, also no lice) and instead of names they basically have numbers. Often people will inherit numbers. Names are awarded to heroes, awesome people, etc. There was also supposed to be a war going on but I think I ditched that. There are dragons, because the story needed dragons and because dragons are rad.

2. Mischief Moon

This story's setting is on the moon! It's an idea I've written since I was... fourteen, and I've never been able to write it how it is in my mind. The society on the moon run a lot on imagination ( 8D ) andddd the characters learn how to make their own imaginary friends (imagine having a DRAGON as an imaginary friend O>O like, this story I just want it to come out the way I see it 'cause I love it- even though it's mega goofy. I might opt for writing it in children's-book-form and illustrate it). I always see my ideas in a certain colour and this one is purple, silver, and dark blue. Not exactly surprising. There's some really fun character's in this one, and one of my favourite characters has an imaginary friend that's a winged jersey cow named Gizzum.


3. This story doesn't have a title, bwahahaha

I'm CURRENTLY writing this story on my mobile. I've discovered that I can get a lot done if I write on my mobile because it's harder to switch tabs. So I've been writing instead of reading before bed! XP

Anyway, the story I'm writing is set in a community that's kinda like a community prison... there's giants and I'm pretty sure that the giants are the prison guards but I'm not sure yet- because they live in the community too. It's kinda... urban fantasy I think it's called...? AKA they have moterbikes and stuff like that. It's really fun. It was supposed to be a short story but it keeps growing. So I've made a pact with myself to just finish the story, however long it is. Not going to give it any labels like "short story" or "novel" because that sets unfair expectations on a story sometimes. It's really fun right now though, so I hope it continues to be that way.

Well, so far I have written 2 fantasy novels and my favourite scene has to be in Knowing gods where I describe the Nevoo. It's a massive tree in a world I created called Alara. It's all about nature there and I was able to go wild with my love of description. I have spent a lot of time perfecting the scene to make it as good as it could be.

Something I had to research a lot about was angelology, which was so much fun because I love the concept of angels. I did research mainly on archangels as they are talked about more in my book. I have ones like the archangel of healing, Raphael, among others.

However, I also like to create entirely new things like with my other work Journey of Acceptance which is set in another world. I loved having to create the countries, cultures, religions and histories as it allows me to get creative. The continent is called Malarean and consist of the winter country of Sonare (where the main characters are from), where warriors are made. The Capital with its advanced technology, it is a country driven by war. The land of rivers, a country cursed with eternal rain and under the Capital thumb. The Hun Islands, the only country that can still use magic, they fight against the Capital for their crimes against the country of Caparea. Caparea, a country who was ravaged by slavery because of the people's skin colour being black.

I loved writing fantasy as I find it allows my mind to flow in whatever direction it sees fit as it isn't bound by the Earth's laws.

Oh God, where to start?

My first fantasy story that involves fighting is set on France, and the battlefield is an abandoned cathedral. The building just sounds so romantic and perfect. Schools teacj magic, main protagonist learns magic of water while his rogue, in-need-of-saving friend learns magic of darkness. While the setting is fantastical, the theme is my favorite since it is about relationship between father and son as well as between friends.

The very first fantasy story that I wrote is actually darker. There is no use of magical term, however, the plot is fantastical in the sense that there is this scary clown that shows you events of the future in which you commit something awful. I'm proud of it because it's really psychological and relatable, and the concept of magic involved is up to readers to determine and elaborate.

There is more to come, I'll post later. <3

Well, I've been encouraged, so I'm going to post in my own thread and attempt to not be a horrible person by talking for fifty million hours.

Let's start with in general. In general, I don't make up a lot of my fantasy worlds -- and yeah, I primarily write fantasy. I'll take inspiration from a few societies or languages that were nearby each other or had significant mixing in our actual history, use those as a basis, and build my fantasy worlds (architecture, clothes, cultures, etc.) based on "but what if?"

Almost 100% of the things I incorporate in my stories have historical basis somewhere, and if there's no historical basis then I do my best to extrapolate what would have happened in these circumstances.

While a lot of my worlds come down to "fantasy Portugal" (or Greece, or China), there are a few that are more complex (and I'd love to talk more about, haha).

- My current project! The Cobra's Eye (working title in progress help titles hurt)


- Beneath the Shallow Water


- In the Absence of Stars (yes, that one)


I have ten million more, but these are the one I'm working on now and the two that have stuck with me through multiple incarnations.

I'm a sucker for self-sustained cities. Other planets, wastelands, space ships, I don't really mind. It's the complexity of how daily life would work and how fragile it would be. I love digging into the science and technicalities of it.

Emergency services are probably my favourites. Like, if a fire breaks out in a dense city you'd have to have strict and orderly evacuation procedures, but if the city had become sparse for some reason then you'd need a way of locating a fire even if no-one is around, before it gets out of control. Then there's access; whether a fire-fighting vehicle goes underground on tram lines because it's the most direct route, or overhead in air crafts- both would be really fun to design.

Waste management is also fun; that endless debate of to recycle, or not to recycle. Birds, rodents and other pests, and whether someone would be hungry enough to eat one.

It only takes a slight push in any direction and the whole system has to bend and adapt or collapse inside itself. It's that teetering moment, like watching someone pull the bottom brick out of a Jenga tower, that I love.