Torn World: The Lichenwold Crossing
This week kicks off my latest (and most ambitious to date) contribution to ellenmillion's Torn World project: The Lichenwold Crossing - Part 1. For the next seven weeks there will be a new installment every Monday. It's about 14,000 words long, in total.
Torn World is a shared world project -- anyone can get involved -- and I have to say that "adopting" a character (actually two of them) changed my perspective on the whole thing in really interesting ways. I'd been contributing in small ways for awhile, because Ellen is a friend; I've been copy-editing stuff and doing little bits of art here and there. Last winter Ellen talked me into adopting Tiren and Anler, who are major players in the "Lichenwold Crossing" story and other parts of the storyline surrounding it. Somehow this eventually snowballed into me actually writing this part of the story arc, since 2/3 of the characters involved are now "mine".
And it was fascinating for me to notice how my perspective on the whole project changed once I had made Tiren and Anler "mine". I got to write Anler's detailed character description (Tiren already had one) and, while some decisions were already made because they were established characters, I got to make decisions about smaller aspects of their appearance and personality and who in the various Torn World villages they were related to.
But it also made me care in a way I hadn't before. I found myself going back and reading all the stories in which Tiren and Anler appear, trying to get a feeling for who they are as people, especially once I started writing the Crossing Lichenwold story. Torn World has two major settings, the North where Tiren & Anler live (an Alaska-like place with small villages who herd snow unicorns), and the South, where there is a major empire and a rather steampunkish vibe. I'd been sort of vaguely, broadly interested in both regions, but picking Tiren & Anler as "my" characters made me suddenly switch my allegiance to the North -- er, not that it's a sporting event or anything*, but I had never really cared that much before, and now suddenly I'm all invested in the North and what happens to it. It's interesting!
*Although it could be. Now I'm amusing myself with the idea that a century or two from now they might have South vs. North sporting events, kind of like the Olympics.
Anyway, I'm glad "The Lichenwold Crossing" is finally going live on the website so that I can share it with people. It's part of a story arc, South Meets North, which like most of the Torn World arcs consists of a number of (more or less) self-contained stories; the rest of the arc can be found at the Empire Explores the North story collection on the Torn World website. And here's the Torn World intro page.
This entry is also posted at http://layla.dreamwidth.org/227761.html with
comments.
Torn World is a shared world project -- anyone can get involved -- and I have to say that "adopting" a character (actually two of them) changed my perspective on the whole thing in really interesting ways. I'd been contributing in small ways for awhile, because Ellen is a friend; I've been copy-editing stuff and doing little bits of art here and there. Last winter Ellen talked me into adopting Tiren and Anler, who are major players in the "Lichenwold Crossing" story and other parts of the storyline surrounding it. Somehow this eventually snowballed into me actually writing this part of the story arc, since 2/3 of the characters involved are now "mine".
And it was fascinating for me to notice how my perspective on the whole project changed once I had made Tiren and Anler "mine". I got to write Anler's detailed character description (Tiren already had one) and, while some decisions were already made because they were established characters, I got to make decisions about smaller aspects of their appearance and personality and who in the various Torn World villages they were related to.
But it also made me care in a way I hadn't before. I found myself going back and reading all the stories in which Tiren and Anler appear, trying to get a feeling for who they are as people, especially once I started writing the Crossing Lichenwold story. Torn World has two major settings, the North where Tiren & Anler live (an Alaska-like place with small villages who herd snow unicorns), and the South, where there is a major empire and a rather steampunkish vibe. I'd been sort of vaguely, broadly interested in both regions, but picking Tiren & Anler as "my" characters made me suddenly switch my allegiance to the North -- er, not that it's a sporting event or anything*, but I had never really cared that much before, and now suddenly I'm all invested in the North and what happens to it. It's interesting!
*Although it could be. Now I'm amusing myself with the idea that a century or two from now they might have South vs. North sporting events, kind of like the Olympics.
Anyway, I'm glad "The Lichenwold Crossing" is finally going live on the website so that I can share it with people. It's part of a story arc, South Meets North, which like most of the Torn World arcs consists of a number of (more or less) self-contained stories; the rest of the arc can be found at the Empire Explores the North story collection on the Torn World website. And here's the Torn World intro page.
This entry is also posted at http://layla.dreamwidth.org/227761.html with
comments.