Creating Life The Art of World Building Book 1 edition by Randy Ellefson Reference eBooks
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Creating Life The Art of World Building Book 1 edition by Randy Ellefson Reference eBooks
Great books--I got both this one and Creating Places. I simply stumbled upon both books online when looking for something about plotting, and I bought them both, and am glad I did. I'm a fairly experienced writer in literary genres, but fantasy/sci-fi are different. The first book I got, Creating Places, was immediately useful as I was creating a land ringed with tall mountains, and I wondered about rainfall--this book answered my question about how mountains effect rainfall! It's not like you couldn't look some of this stuff up in other ways, but having it all in one place was very useful to me.This one still had tips I was interested in, but I agree with the reviewer who noted it did feel like it was more about world building for world building's sake (at least in this book). Plenty of things didn't apply to what I'm writing, but if you use these as a handy reference--rather than a "how to" book, I still think there is a lot of use here. (Plus, when I bought it, the book was under $3, so I figured why not?)
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Creating Life The Art of World Building Book 1 edition by Randy Ellefson Reference eBooks Reviews
I've been listening to Mr. Ellefson's podcasts and decided to buy this book in paperback. As he states himself, a lot is duplicated in the podcast from the book, but I definitely felt the book was worth buying when I started going through it. I appreciate that he has tips to help you create the illusion of depth in your fantasy world, and while I was at first put off by the many rhetorical questions he asks or specific hypothetical scenarios he brings up, the farther into the book I get, the more these set off bells in my head on how to solve problems I've been having in my novel. At first they seemed more like story prompts, as in having the world drive the story rather than creating a world for a story to live in, but I've gotten used to the style, and they're helping me now. Here's a specific example of how this book has helped me so far I needed to create a pantheon for my novel, and his mythology section helped me organize a lot of my thinking and create something definitive I could use. I like his discussions on using analogs from real life, and I plan to layer that into my next revision. This book also gives me lots of ideas for other stories, but I try not to get distracted. ;) All in all, I'm glad I bought this, and I plan to buy the others in the series, too. The podcasts on building places have helped me visualize the world I'm building better, and I've even learned some cool random facts too, which I love. I'm hoping cultures comes out soon.
Really? Author spends a lot of time patting himself on the back.
Page after page of front matter just to make the page count larger.
Too many links to authors websites. Yes, plural, and not all have anything to do with writing.
Grammar and usage are on a sixth grade level. Not a good sign for a writer who claims to be a college graduate.
There are two partially useful parts in the book. In the front matter is a section titled "Paragraphs" which gives a a synopsis of the numbered paragraphs. This section is all one really needs to read to discover what the author has to say about "creating places". The rest is fluff for word count and not helpful.
The second partially helpful section is the templates. Writer says they are free to use and that a reader can save typing time by downloading them from his website, but you have to sign up for his newsletter!!
Advertising surrounded by fluff.
Loved it. Amazing resource on world building.
A fantastic resource for building your world. This book focuses specifically on the life in your created world, with lots of useful advice on fleshing out the deities, different humanoid species, animals, monsters, and undead. I'm very much looking forward to the release of the other two books that will follow on from this one.
Let me open with a caveat at the time of writing this, I have only read up through the chapter on creating species.
In terms of content alone, I would give this four stars. The author goes step by step through the different major questions of populating a world, and while I personally would quibble with the order (starting with gods seems very counter-intuitive to me), each section takes a detailed review of the questions that a worldbuilder might want to ask when creating a fictional setting. The species (races in fantasy genres) section was particularly interesting. I especially enjoyed the discussion of "species vs race", and the observation about how access to public domain fictional peoples in fantasy creates expectations to be negotiated, while the lack thereof in science fiction requires greater effort to not inadvertently violate copyright.
That said, as a resource I found the content a little underwhelming. The approach presented in the content presumes a very top-down approach, in terms of assuming that the reader is creating a setting for the sake of creating a setting. In addition, much of the advice on races/species in particular runs the risk that many science fiction and fantasy sources fall prey to, of creating fictional peoples who are one-dimensional compared to humans, because they are built in comparison to humans. Also, while the author openly acknowledges that world creation is not one-dimensional and that the different categories feed back into each other in the opening chapter, discussion of how to negotiate this feedback is somewhat limited.
The aspects that brought this down to three stars, to me, stem from two problems. First of all, I purchased this based on the comment in the summary that "the series discusses how to use your inventions in stories while balancing narrative flow with the need for explaining your world." However, within the book itself the author explicitly states that he is NOT offering a writing guide, and the examples that I have seen so far are minimal and not particularly oriented towards fitting into a narrative.
Secondly, I quickly grew very tired of the constant references to either visiting the author's website, or variations on the theme of "this topic is important and I will discuss it in The Art of World Building Book Two/Three." This both left important questions of worldbuilding hanging - extremely frustrating! - and was off-putting in and of itself.
Ultimately This is a useful book if you're interested in a top-down approach of creating a world entirely from scratch, if you don't mind having important aspects (environment and culture) put off for later books (and the constant reminder that they're being put off). If your interest is aimed more towards organically developing a world around a particular story hook, or if you're interested in building up your setting with a smooth feedback between the different aspects (living things populating a world, their environment, and their culture), this may not suit you.
Great books--I got both this one and Creating Places. I simply stumbled upon both books online when looking for something about plotting, and I bought them both, and am glad I did. I'm a fairly experienced writer in literary genres, but fantasy/sci-fi are different. The first book I got, Creating Places, was immediately useful as I was creating a land ringed with tall mountains, and I wondered about rainfall--this book answered my question about how mountains effect rainfall! It's not like you couldn't look some of this stuff up in other ways, but having it all in one place was very useful to me.
This one still had tips I was interested in, but I agree with the reviewer who noted it did feel like it was more about world building for world building's sake (at least in this book). Plenty of things didn't apply to what I'm writing, but if you use these as a handy reference--rather than a "how to" book, I still think there is a lot of use here. (Plus, when I bought it, the book was under $3, so I figured why not?)
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