More World Building

Well, I have made some excellent headway on my world. The map is labelled--albeit with blank labels--and I have the races and recent history as fleshed out as I would like for this stage in the writing process. I don't want to outline myself into a corner; I want the world to reveal itself to me, but it needed a little backbone. I feel pretty good about it so far. I even had an idea today for a future novel in the world while I was creating the history for one of my races.

I like to think of my world as a cross between Victorian era western Europe, Far Far Away from the Shrek series, and Middle-Earth. I mean, it is all of those and none of them at the same time. Your run of the mill fantasy races thrive in archetypal form, but they also harbor all of these fairy tales. On top of all of that they have a very realistic and gritty underbelly that controls the mood of the stories. I am hoping the world itself feels more like Waterdeep from the D&D Forgotten Realms, or like Sherlock Holmes' version of London; where everything is seedy and dark with a nice coat of varnish.

I don't want these stories to feel like silly fairy tale interpretations, but their own living breathing stories that somewhere down the line may have resembled something more traditional. So far I am liking what I have. I don't want to say too much because this thing may turn into something I can sell. I will say though, that this is the first time I have sat down to something and truly felt the world. I smell the oil that lubricates the cogs, I here the wail of steam trumpets on the locomotives, I taste the sickly sweet mead of the north. It's a full sensory experience and that is how I know that this is something different than the other stories that sit idle in my brain or on my hard drive.