Quote Originally Posted by Karro View Post
But I keep thinking "how can I show the true depth of my characters if I don't fully understand the world in which they interact?" Chicken or egg, I guess...
I'm pretty much the same. I've written about 45k words so far in my most recent endeavour and it was becoming harder and harder to wrench the story out. I realised that much of my problem was due to me not knowing enough about the world they were playing in. I had a character turn to the south at one point and he was supposed to be internally visualising what lay in that direction between him and a certain town. But it occurred to me I knew absolutely nothing of the land around there, or even about the town other than its name. I attempted to just fudge over it but it became apparent that I was doing it more and more and I was getting less happy about it.
Just working on my map is already suggesting certain plot points to me, which is pretty cool. I equate it to knowing your characters (which is basically what the land is, another character) - if all you know about your character is a name, height and hair colour then you are going to struggle to give them a personality and they won't be able to help shape your story based on what you know about how they would react to a given situation.
I've already spent far longer away from the writing than I wished to (I expected a map would take me a few days to a week ) but I am confident that in the long run I will be thankful for the time spent.