The Trouble I'm Having With Mattie's Story

If you’ve been following along here or on Twitter, you know I’ve been trying to start a new project, a departure from Young Adult. But I’ve been having trouble.

I tried to outline the story, and that was good, I had a roadmap of where this first story was going to go, but I’ve been having a hard time getting into the telling of it.

Then I went to a book signing this past week and the author talked about creating a very detailed “world bible” for her new series. A light bulb went off in my head.

In this new story I’m trying to write, it’s entirely different than my Elemental Series. In this project I’m creating a whole new world, not just plunking paranormal characters in our world. These characters have a different reality than we do, they have different slang to go along with this world, and their everyday lives have supernatural elements that we don’t have to deal with.
Maybe I need a world bible. I find while I’m writing this new story I keep stopping to think of the perfect thing for a character to say, rather than them just telling me what they would say. When my character is walking down the street I’m having to think of what the block looks like and what types of storefronts are on that street. I should know these things before I start writing.

So, while I should be much farther with this book than I am, I think I need to stop for a bit and create a world bible. Figure out what types of creatures live in this world and what their roles are, how they speak, what food they eat, who they hate and who the love.

I’ve never done a world bible before and to be honest, I’m not even sure where to start, but it rang a bell in my mind when I heard about it and I think that will be the ticket to finishing this… no, starting this book.