Working on the “Wrong Thing.”

Writing Journal #91 15-21 May 2023

There is a saying; “There is no such thing as bad writing.”

To clarify… there is awful prose, bad grammar, etc. But the act of writing itself is always good, always furthers your skills. Gets the mind engaged. How many of us find that we have more ideas when we work on more projects? The sheer number of writers who talk about how they have all these ideas but they’re in the middle of working on something else, is legendary.

There is an alternative to the phrase above:

“The only bad writing is the writing you don’t do.”

Of course, I have spent two months moaning the fact that I have not been working on the novel. Last week, I said that I was going to work on notes and world building for the next novel. That work would exonerate me for another week.

Which brings us around to the title of this journal, “Working on the ‘Wrong Thing.’”

Wrong Thing

I’m still dealing with my back being out again. It is very slow to heal this time, and I’ve noticed side issues. Muscle cramps trying to compensate for the back issues, nerve impingement down my right side, etc. etc. Excuses done.

I promised to work on notes and world building… and I did. Just not for the next novel nor for D&D.

But, “No writing is bad writing.” (Just realized the double meaning of that statement and that both are true).

I bought a new pad for mapping, I have several fresh notebooks (about 87 at last count, not joking… though half of them are the garbage ‘wide-ruled.’) and I have a project I LOVE. So why aren’t I working on it?

I sat down to outline a simple adventure and jot a few notes, and a whole day was lost.

Call of Cthulhu

Working on some Cthulhu material I printed out a map of Kingsport (my copy of the book is at a friend’s house) and I decided to just flash it forward to the 40s and create all of my own material for it.

Rival newspapers, a fishing company, local colorful characters, the coast guard base staff, the islands outside the bay.

Before I knew it, I had a notebook with about 78 characters mapped out in it. And an entire day spent working on it.

At first, I was a little mad at myself for having the whole day going by… and for realizing I could have worked on the novel. “I should have sat down and done all this work on the city of Dusk!”

But here’s the thing… if I hadn’t worked on “Kingsport” I wouldn’t have thought of doing the same thing for “Dusk.” And this brings me around to a topic I have talked about in the past and which I will always take the time to talk about again.

Character and World-Building are linked. One and the other go hand in hand. They are the same thing. I’ve come across people who think they are separate. Even used one of these journals to complain about a guy online who said his players should sit at his table and just “worship his world building” and that their “character builds (feats, levels, and backstories)” should be minimal or unobtrusive.

World Building/ Character are ONE.

This seems so obvious to me but character is built on world.

Those backgrounds that shitty DM derided, should have been a part of his world. In D&D (and other games) background is part of how your character grew up, or an organization the belong to.

Was your character a soldier? Sailor? Tailor? All of those things would be part of their background. The education, geography, family, culture that raised them will affect how they act, talk, and even look. A fisherman has different swears than a farmer. Someone raised in a desert dresses different from someone raised in swamp.

Geography has physiological changes in a character as well, besides skin tone, body hair, styles etc. It also changes their values. That character in the desert values water more than the guy who lives on a lake.

I’m beginning to wander off my main topic and back to my favorite world building tenets. Let’s get back to Kingsport and how that character notebook has invigorated me to work on other things again.

Kingsport Character Notebook

When I set out to fill this notebook, I was just going to make a list of names with a bunch of traits.

It was going to be: Name, hair, eye, height, weight, age, profession, a couple character traits and maybe a voice idea. Done.

I was going to write fifty names down and walk away.

But as I mentioned, character and world building go hand in hand. So, as I wrote each character into the notebook, I couldn’t help but start to think about what they were up to at the moment. I started filling in their pasts a little. Even going so far as to create timelines to determine who was a WW2 and WW1 vet and who was born between the wars and didn’t contribute to either.

I started working in events they witnessed and why the PCs might want to talk to this person. What would they do to help or hinder the party. Who were their families? What is their story. And before I knew it, I had half a notebook full of characters. I had three newspapers fighting for the town. I had characters who traced their families back to the founding of the city.

I had characters who had survived the mythos. I had a character who was a hero in his own right back during the 20’s and another who was a hero during gaslight. I had hooks to other stories. I had ideas for a short story or two, some Lovecraftian material I haven’t written in decades popping back into my mind.

But even better, I had a need to find a new notebook and label it Dusk Characters. I wanted to pull out the maps of the city and start placing characters, families, shops, etc throughout it. But instead, I’m writing this journal and trying to plan the rest of this day….

DUSK

I will probably get the notebook and maps together after I finish writing this. I have a few hours of free time this morning to get things done before I get into scheduled things. Though 2 of those hours have been spent on this journal and laundry.

Even if the players never encounter any of these characters, or bypass who plot hooks, the fact that I worked on them just gets the creative juices flowing. More and more ideas pop up as I go. It helps with creating more stories, finding more threads, and even contributing back to the world building.

While mapping the city I determined that there was a “schola system.” Basically, a bunch of schools that are rivals. But also focused on different types of education. Various “sword schools”, magic academies, general education centers, etc.

I haven’t named them yet, but once I start, I will have rivals, histories, and members of the school. It just builds on top of each character, each fact, each idea. They all compound. And then I’ll get ideas for further characters, and then backgrounds and mechanical rules for the players to create characters from these scholas. OR whatever else I worked on. Guilds? The military (that one I already have a bunch of history and notes on).

In all cases, it has rekindled my creative spark.

And now 3 hours have gone by and I need to wrap this up and spend some time creating characters (world) and having fun.

Outro

Thanks for putting up with my huge lapse this year. I have to get back at the keys on the regular. And I need to stop skipping weeks on this journal. Be well, and I’ll come back next week with more notes and world information.