I went to the local Renaissance Faire a week ago and amongst the other general accoutrements of a Ren Faire I also found someone offering free writing prompts. I grabbed a slip and received this prompt:
“When you picked up the magic wand, your perception changed. A dragon reading a newspaper approaches. What news does she share?”
So let’s work on this. This post is going to be world-building off of the prompt.
First, what does the wand do? Does it allow the wielder to see things that were previously hidden or does it allow them to see what is hidden underneath people? Basically, does it “move” the wielder to a magical plane overlaying the real world or expose the real world?
I’m liking the idea that when they pick up the wand, things in the real world alter to become more fantastic, so it’s not “uncovering a hidden world” but seeing the world differently. So who would the dragon be? Does she know that she is a dragon? I suppose there are two ways that seeing the world differently goes. It could be seeing the people who hide under a cover of reality but are actually magical, the classic veil hiding the mundanes idea, or exposing the core of people.
This is basically a re-statement of the first question and I feel like the magical veil idea has been explored a lot. That doesn’t mean it’s bad, it just means I want to go a different direction this time. So let’s say the magic wand uncovers what’s within people.
Does the wand then also expose what’s in the wielder or do they see themselves as before? Also this gives us a character pretty quickly for the dragon. What news do they share? Something that’s made them angry, snorting smoke. So let’s say the dragon is a very strongly opinionated, fiery friend of the main character.
Where is this character then? We want somewhere interesting. Let’s put them at a cafe meeting their friends for a brunch. That gives them the chance to see a lot of different people and what the wand exposes inside. We could have a troll in a corner and a harpy arguing about a trivial something and I’ll probably think of other things as I go along.
That’s usually how world building works for me; I’ll think of a lot of things as I’m starting out on the worldbuilding brainstorm, then as I go actually in to the writing, I find the places that I haven’t covered and what I need to know there. I’m at this stage in writing Astronautica; I did a lot of worldbuilding and character things at the beginning then hit a stage where I decided I needed to know more about the story before I could know what else I needed to worldbuild. I’m currently writing through and, taking a leaf from a writing group friend’s process, sticking an unusual word in ALL CAPS in places I need more info so I can see it easily when I’m revising. She uses ELEPHANT, I’m using PEGASUS. Since it’s Greek mythology. (but I’m pretty sure I’m going to name the initial place Pegasus Station because that sounds cool. Worldbuilding!)
This leaves one big hole to start the story. Where does the wand come from? Does someone give it or sell it to the main character? Do they find it? If someone gave it to them, why? If they find it, who lost it and will they want it back? I feel like it could go one of two ways. Someone left it for them to find- slipped in their cafe order or left at their table, or it got lost. Maybe it fell in their bag somehow, at a bus stop perhaps. Maybe it got kicked under the table.
Part of that feels like a question of who I make the main character. Why are they there? What’s their deal? What does finding this wand change about them? What do they need in life and how would it be affected/solved by finding this wand? Or just how would they interact interestingly with the wand?
I had that question earlier about whether the wand affects them. What if they feel very normal but they find they reflect the attitudes of their friends as they come? My instinct with that is they worry that they don’t have that definite personality that their friends have and feel undefined, then find their friends appreciate their ability to meet and reflect their energy.
Does this wand do anything else? Does it allow for spells? I feel like that’s too much for a short-style blog post so maybe if I took this further but not for the short story here. Similar feeling with the “has it been lost and is the person who lost it looking for it” idea. I’m just going to say it turns up and then they lose it themselves.
This feels like enough to get the story rolling with, so I’ll leave it here.
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