Regarding World-Bulding

Creating a fictional world can be difficult in the best of cases. From the simple task of making sure you use the same character names throughout your story (especially if you decide to change one) to keeping stage directions consistent, careful proofreading is always required. It’s really helpful to have another person read your story to find the silly mistakes your gaze glossed over. It’s also a good idea to search for excessive repetition that might annoy the reader. If you think a turn of phrase is clever, please use it only once!

When I wrote my loosely connected romance novels and short stories, I created a fictional town in NorCal complete with street names, housing tract names, and a business plaza. I also created a nearby suburb with a mall. Part of the reason I did this is because I wanted to ensure that I didn’t inadvertently appear to be using any real people in my fiction. Also, it was fun! I love the naming process. I drew a map for myself so I wouldn’t mix things up, and I also wrote up a timeline to keep the dates straight. This all is a courtesy to the reader so they don’t break from the story to wonder why ages and/or events don’t make chronological sense. Not that I had readers, but whatever. (All those spicy books have since been unpublished from KDP, so don’t bother searching for them.)

I recently finished a series of nine horror novels plus a prequel novella ~ Haunted by Lee Mountford ~ and even though horror is not my preferred genre, I was intrigued enough with the first three books to continue. After Book 4 however, I began to get increasingly disappointed in the series, though I did slog through all nine books (and the novella). One of the biggest issues I had was the inconsistency in the rules for demons and ghosts. It felt like the author was playing “Calvinball” to get the plot where he wanted it to go. Sometimes ghosts were lost and clueless, drifting aimlessly, and barely scary except for their repulsive appearance; other times ghosts were purposeful and driven. Sometimes they would attach to a location, while other times they followed a particular person. One ghost turned into an angelic being and helped her loved ones, except when she ran low on energy, and then she’d be malicious. Who knew ghosts needed a charger?!

There was a simple, obvious solution to all the demonic machinations in this series, but almost every character refused to go that route, despite the fact that the world was ending. Speaking of that, in this creation, God as we normally view him had very little power, and an evil monstrosity was in charge of the universe, except that none of his minions could cross a circle of salt to finish up his end of days plan. This omnipotent devil could make his demons do all sorts of physically impossible stunts and reanimate the dead like zombies, but salt nope can’t go there. Wtf? Ridiculous! The last book was just a pointless gore-fest, and I got super sick of all the mangled eyeballs and gross death scenes. I ended up skimming to the end.

Now I need a break from all this ooshy gooshy horror and will try to find a sweet, fluffy romance involving a bakery and a golden retriever or something of that nature. It’ll be a palate cleanser for my brain so I can next tackle the holiday murder mysteries on my list.