Monday, September 5, 2016

And Then I Fell Down a Research Rabbit Hole

So remember last week when I was all like "hey I'm going to write a fantasy novel in 30 days and use this master outline as a template as an insane cool, fun experiment"?

Yeah. About that. As I've mentioned before, I've never written fantasy or sci-fi that wasn't a fan fic of some kind. I love reading the stuff, but I don't have much confidence in my world-building skills. Or my ability to weave an amazing plot. I am hopeful that using the master outline will help somewhat.

When I'm anxious about something or I want and need to build confidence, I research. I probably over-research in some cases. So I took to the interwebs. Pinterest came first. I pinned images that reminded me of my dragon-owning princess warrior. There were also resources on there about writing fantasy, dialogue prompts and how to make your magic realistic. Then I found the fantasy name generator.

Guys.

I loved my name generator I listed one as part of my writing and story resources top 10 list. That one is pretty basic. It gives you real, normal-sounding, non-generic names. This one has that too, if you want or need it. But it also has a data base to give you randomized names that 100 percent sound like they come out of a fantasy world. You can use it to generate dragon names, warrior names, names for your knight or royalty names. Have a cave you need named? Got it. Want a great sounding name for your kingdom or country? Yep that too.

I started generating lists of names. And then I could not stop. For three hours. Three. And then again for four more.

So now I have between three and seven names in about a dozen different categories. I have my kingdom and related countries. Neighboring kingdoms. My king. My princess. My dragon. A few yet-unamed creatures. A few castles and a forest or six.

It's gotten a tad out of hand. That's what happens when you fall down a research rabbit hole. Or into research worm hole? Whatever you call them...you find yourself on the other side of them tired, yet excited. I myself looked at the clock, saw it was 3 a.m., realized I never ate dinner. Oops.

All in the name of art, I guess!

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