After a failure at writing fantasy when I first started writing, I began writing quasi-historical fiction. I had a story that was just begging to be written. But now that I'm writing the second draft, I feel like I need something new to write. I have a Word document full of story ideas, from high fantasy to a Ruritanian quatrogy to a speculative fiction short, but the one my mind keeps going back to is the high fantasy. The problem is that my world isn't very developed beyond races, some creatures, and some vague maps.

How developed did you make your world before you started writing? Did you develop most of it first? Did you develop a little and then continue developing as you wrote? Or did you just jump in and let the developing try to keep up as best as it could? Did the way you started work for you, or would you do it differently if you did it again? What would you say is the minimum amount of development that should be complete before one starts to write?

The book I am developing now...
I am developing as much as I can. Everything. And then after that I am going to start writing, I have the first chapter or so done just because I wanted to but not really anything.

Occasionally I will only develop a tiny bit. In camp nano this year I couldn't develop anything at all! I was late to start as it was, so I just had to jump in and hope for the best! I am going to have to edit it a lot though...

It really depends on the way you write, and the way your character/personality tends as to how much you develop and when. However, this is what I do.

For my last novel, (which was actually historical fiction, but the same basic principles apply) I started out with a vivid ramble on each of the characters from the MC's pov. After looking up the basics of a desert nomad's lifestyle, I wrote a brief plot, and began writing. This worked for me, because although I had a definite direction in which to head off, none of it was concrete. As the drafts multiplied, the story and the characters actually developed into fully fleshed circumstances and people 'of themselves'... and as I found out more about the world they lived in, I enriched that, too.

From what I know of fantasy (and I have written some) I can tend to get really caught up in determining every which what and where. But for me, to do that would be disastrous... the story, characters and world would have no way to grow under my fingertips. By refraining creating involved maps and race profiles (and even involved character profiles) I leave myself margin to change and twist and develop things.

Hope that helps.

I agree with Cassandra: It largely depends on you as a writer

Tolkien, for example, spent a few decades only writing a few small legends and gradually compiling everything from languages to ocean depths. Then, when he got the idea to write the Hobbit, it was logical to just pull together everything he'd been working on and to call it Middle Earth. *is reading a bio on Tolkien*

Me, personally, I sort of do what Tolkien did. My world is developed far beyond the scale of just one novel I already had most, at least a lot, of it developed before I began writing the novel

eru

I don't know if this will help but here's what a writing book I've got says under the heading 'When will I know I'm ready to write?'



The only thing I have against this book ('Someday You'll Write' by Elizabeth Yates) is her generalizations... her use of 'always' and 'you will' and 'is', for frankly I have never 'known' when it was time to start writing. It would make it a lot easier if I did. My way happens to be the 'breathe-in-deeply, glue-self-to-chair, glue-pen-to-hand, start' way. For though I love writing, opening up Chapter One is... difficult. (Apart from that the book is truly inspiring--and not the average writing book you come across).

My approach has always been "You don't have to know everything before you start. But you do have to know the basics, and know where you are going, otherwise you will never get there."

So far it has worked.

Anytime a bit of prose---or poetry---comes to you and wants to be written down is The Right Time To Write that bit of prose. Because, in my experience, if I don't write down something that comes to me as it comes to me (or at least repeat it to myself until I get to where I can write it down) it vanishes from my mind by the time I get around to setting it down.

But in my own work, beyond that, and beyond "writing what I feel like writing", the story-in-my-head-that-wants-to-get-out is so vast in its scope that I'm putting off most of the down-to-brass-tacks writing until I've gotten a lot more of the background work (outlining, creating character histories and profiles, mapping, etc.) done because I don't want to end up contradicting myself on something big (like having a character in two places at once).

On the other hand, as I say in my signature below, I fear I've developed the worst qualities of both Tolkien and Charles Williams: Tolkien's insistence on getting it right and tendency to fiddle with background details, and Williams' difficult prose and obscure allusions. So "Your Mileage May Vary."