As I juggle ideas for the final product (the book), I have considered several questions. At the moment, I am trying to simply write down all of the creatures I will need to design and getting some of the designs out of the way. Already a few important questions have arisen.
How many creatures will be featured?
I have already thought of a vast number of creatures to fit in this universe, what their powers are and how they will look. However, I don't want to put in too many creatures as it means more work and I will constantly be creating new creatures throughout the book series. This current book is merely promotional material for the main book. Preferably I would like to include all the creatures I have invented, but this is a fairly tall order and I would rather pick somewhere between 30-50. I could always go into greater detail with some than others.
How does magic work in the Gretchen Goosander universe?
Something that I have been mulling over for about three years now is how magic works in the Gretchen Goosander universe. It is essential to get the basic rules of a world's magic understood as it is another part of its logic and physics. Google describes magic as the following; "The power of apparently influencing events by using mysterious or supernatural forces." Depending on what kind of fantasy universe one wants to create, magic can be an element used to do anything. Some books may, however, make magic its own physics with its own rules to use or activate while others treat magic as a method of breaking logic. The problem with magic is that it can take away any stakes in a story or get characters out of a situation as a sort-of Deus-Ex-Machina, which is a pitfall I want to avoid. Likewise I don't want to invent a magic that takes ten pages of a book to explain and becomes difficult to follow consistently throughout the book.
I want to be fairly sparing with magic in the Gretchen Goosander universe. I want it to be a universe that is fairly grounded in reality, though not so much that there isn't room for fantasy elements. The best way to describe the GG universe is a majorly caricatured version of our world with a lot of fantasy and science-fiction elements. There is a lot of "steampunk" machinery which looks nice but has no practical use in our world. Humans in this world can have IQs well into their hundreds (seeing as though there is a 9-year-old mad scientist). The books also have nonsense as somewhat of a theme both in the wacky fantasy elements and in the mundane. GG is set in an alternate version of earth taking place somewhere around the 70's-80's.
At the moment, the only "magics" that really exist are "forest magic" "mechanical magic" and possibly "cosmic magic". Forest magic is supposed to be powers relating to life and the natural world that occurs naturally but can only be used and produced by living beings. Objects cannot be magical (so no wands or magic stones). Forest magic is intended to be constructive and used for metamorphosis, growth and healing. What separates "normal" creatures from "fantasy" creatures in the GG universe is that normal creatures have not been evolved by magic, but can sustain themselves without it. Fantasy creatures are evolved by the magic, but would die out if the magic was to vanish. All creatures can use forest magic, but then depend on it to live the more they use it.
Mechanical magic isn't really a magic at all, but rather machinery in general (but dumb forest creatures think this is some kind of sorcery). Cosmic magic is intended to be unconscious, simple and destructive. This is the magic I am thinking of omitting from the final book. There is also a world of spirituality in the GG universe, though this still needs some figuring out.
This is probably how I will keep things until I have thought further into the story and its elements. This is an aspect I will be doing more research into before I finish the creature concept book.
How in-depth do I want to go?
The universe that Gretchen Goosander inhabits is full of depth and a myriad of its own wildlife. With this book, I wanted to write it from the perspective of either Gretchen's mad grandfather or from Gretchen's own perspective. Therefore, the book only contains as much as they know. They won't know everything since they are not a part of the hidden world, but this could make the creature book much easier to write. The more in-depth I go, the more research I will have to do. I was even considering creating an evolutionary tree for the Phraxai (mammalian) dragons.
What material can I study?
For the first three learning outcomes it is fairly simple what I need to study and what books I need to use for my research. For the last one, I'm not entirely sure what research I should do just yet. I will probably be investing in books similar to the one I would like to produce and other animal encyclopaedias.
No comments:
Post a Comment