Worldbuilding Book Update.

To my dearest friends and followers,

This week has been pretty exciting for a multitude of reasons, one of those being that I started working through The Essential Worldbuilding Blueprint and Workbook by Scribe Forge and am building the best world I can for my second novel, The Death of Jack.

My sister and I have been working on it together a few times a week (the Worldbuilding book that is) and we are three chapters in so far.

Since the Worldbuilding book assumes I am beginning a new project, I decided to write down everything I know and understand about my world in The Death of Jack thus far (or at least everything I could think of at the time), down to the mundane. Here are some of the details I wrote, so you, my dear reader, might understand better what my book will contain:

• The Death of Jack is the sequel to The Story of Hollyhocks and takes place in a time Hollyhocks's world refers to as the "Ancient World". Possibly 100 years (or more) before Hollyhocks is born.
• The separation between the fairy world and the human world has not happened yet.
• The setting is primarily in the forest (lower case "f" intentional here, as the forest is not yet named). The forest is primarily flat land. The mountain range is to the north and the human village is to the east.
• The Earth Mother (Rhea) is the supreme being, the creator of the world and the earth itself. The god, Cernunnos, is the nature god who is the father to the dryads, though all of the fairies (sprites, pixies, pillywiggins, hobgoblins, dryads, etc.) are considered Goddess Children and are referred to as her children and she their mother. The Great White Stag was the Earth's protector before the god, Hypnosis, put the other gods to sleep.
• A prophecy says that with the falling of the stars, a new protector/champion would emerge.
• The forest only experiences spring and autumn (the dryads and the sprites keep the colder elements from entering into their home).
• Each of the fairies has magic (sun magic, moon magic, and star magic).
• The grove is not connected to the forest.

I feel like there's a lot more mythology and magic in this book than there was in Hollyhocks's story. I think that's because Hollyhocks went into the human world and experienced what that was like, whereas in the Jack's story, we (the readers) are going to experience what his world is like.

In the Worldbuilding book, the first chapter covers the stars and planets your world takes place in. It was a pretty easy section for me to get through, since my world does take place on Earth, in the known galaxy, and the same stars we know of. The second chapter covers the location aspect, including geography, climate, and ecology.

A few things I learned about my world (in addition to some things I already knew, but forgot to write in my list) from this chapter are:

• Geographically, the story takes place in mythological Wales.
• The beings who live in the location are the various kinds of fairies and animals, and humans, though the humans are not native to the land.
• They don't have electricity yet, but rely on fire (for candles or cooking), moonlight and fireflies.
• Food is foraged in the forest and surrounding land (meat is not eaten by anyone, as that would be disrespectful to the Earth Mother and her creations).
• Water is found in the river for drinking and irrigating crops (only the humans have crops).
• There are little "natural resources" in the land, though the humans and fairies do trade in herbs, food, and the like.

The third chapter covers fictional beings created by the author (me in this case) and what they're like. Here are some things I've written about them in my notebook (for the sake of length, the types of creatures I'll be covering in this blog post will be the sprites, pixies, and pillywiggins):

• The environment the fairies have evolved in is the forest, as they have been there for a very long time and were created by the Earth Mother. They have great respect for nature and all living things and for one another.
• The type of shelter they live in varies between the different fairy species. The sprites live in trees - quite literally in trees, such as preexisting hollowed out trees or holes in trees. They are also not confined to living near each other, but are spread out throughout the forest (the central areas of the forest). The pixies live on the ground, in their own little community, with houses made out of mud or clay, dried grass and sticks, and small rocks. The pillywiggins don't live in the forest, but just outside it, in a single massive willow tree. They don't really have individual houses, but treat the willow tree as one big house and each fairy sleeps on a branch or twig with a bed made of dried flowers, herbs, and other plants, such as heather.
• The fairies eat wild berries (dried or fresh), tiny mushrooms, and honey. They drink nectar for a similar effect to that of wine, and drink dew drops for water. They also like sweet treats provided by humans, such as bread, lemon treats, and cream.
• The fairies are very small, ranging from 3-4 inches at full height. 4 inches is the maximum height and any fairy over 4 inches would be quite tall.

I haven't finished going through the questions for my fictional beings I created, but I'm really excited to finish and learn more about my characters.

I love Scribe Forge's Worldbuilding book so far, as it has provided me with not only a reason for my sister and I to work together, but its also asked some very interesting questions about my world that are really making me think. One thing I will say is that it asks a lot of questions that might not seem relevant to my current WIP (work in progress), but that's ok because those questions might prompt aspects of my world that I hadn't previously thought about and then I'll go ahead and answer those questions and maybe, just maybe, I'll end up using this new element in my story. At the very least, I won't use it on my story at all, but I'll still gain something by better understanding the world I am building.

If you are a creator of any kind, I highly suggest checking out a copy from Scribe Forge for yourself, so you can better understand the story you want to tell and the world it takes place in.

Thank you so much for reading!!

Yours truly,

Me

**Disclaimer: this is not a sponsorship

Additional:

Check out my shop on Ko-Fi to get a copy of my novel, The Story of Hollyhocks.