I’m not going to lie: today was a bit of a struggle in terms of writing. I’m not really sure why that was, but i had a hard time concentrating for any length on my StoryNexus project. Or at least at first I did. I think this was because I sort of felt like I was beating a dead horse, regoing over character backgrounds a bit to make sure things were working. As I’ve mentioned before, I have three factions and three characters that are basically personifying those factions for me at the moment. Two of them I have a pretty good handle on (the siblings). But the third one I just haven’t really developed. So I was sitting here on my couch, trying to figure that last character out and nothing was really coming.
I shifted gears a bit and started working a bit more on the world. What size should this island be? In the process of deciding that, I came up with some great setting-specific ideas (which will have an impact on the larger City of the Dead), so that was pretty neat. Those setting-specific things also ended up helping me with some of the character things I was struggling with a bit, so that was great. I ended up writing (and sketching a bit on) 9 pages in my notebook tonight, so that’s not too shabby.
Oh, and I also decided to load up AutoRealm so I could draw the map I came up with last week. Here it is:
As of right now, most of the island is made up of farmland (hence all the grass). The idea is that in the center is the tower where the ruling family lived; it’s surrounded by mostly dead trees, hence the weird lump of browns and blacks. On the east is the dock area, which is also where most of the citizens of the island live. The population of the island has been exploding in recent times, so the inhabited area is actually spilling out of the dock area a bit along the northeast and southeast coasts (this isn’t pictured though). Lady Dael, the ruler of the island, is keeping the settlements along the coast so the farmland isn’t disturbed too much; despite whatever else is going on on the island, their primary job is to produce food for the mainland (the Megacity that is the City of the Dead).
Once it was drawn, I really had to name it. I did a bit of research (basically trying words out with Google Translate) and ended up deciding to call it “Korm.” I almost went with “Korma,” being an amalgamation of the Yiddish word for feed and the Napali word for “treat,” but then I remembered that “Korma” is an actual dish. So I shortened it down to Korm. I was specifically looking at Yiddish words because two of the characters have Yiddish names, plus I wanted to go with something different than my go-to Scandinavian. But I was also trying to avoid using an actual word to give the name a bit of a different feel. I don’t know how well I succeeded, but then again this is the first piece of land that I’ve named in the City of the Dead world.
So there we go, the first visual for this project: the island of Korm! All in all, a rather productive #WriteFriday, even if I was struggling a bit to stay focussed! 🙂
An Acquaintance with Letters 