I've been developing this world for over a decade now, I really hope I don't make any more changes to it.
I think a lot of the world will still change while you write the novel proper
That's kind of where I'm finding myself at with this work. Though I'm going to focus on the main story for the moment and not dwell on an extended universe.
Well, that sounds interesting! It would be cool to have this rich universe where you can set more stories! And the Global War idea also sounds really good.
I should write some of the side story elements but lately I just work on the Bible because it also helps inspire me to work on said novel. I have a few ideas for side stories that would deal with new characters detailing events from the Global War or some political issue but I'm not sure how much I want to do with actual characters in the novel itself. I'm really liking the idea of developing a world with enough rich story elements that I can expand it into a larger universe if I needed to.
That's exactly what I was thinking. I have stories like that in mind for both Fool's Journey and Crosswords. The first one would follow the older Thaumaturges years before the events of the story took place, as I think that would be interesting to explore, while for the latter I had an idea for a story starring Ian and Freddie and their quest to adopt a baby after the whole disc nonsense. Hey, you can always write those in-between chapters if you want writing practice or just can't force yourself to write anything of your novel. A change of pace can really help get inspired!
Well my last names tend to either be grounded in reality (I hate making up names) or I tend to make them into shout-outs to other series I love. One character shares her last name with a character from Evangelion for instance and I have a city named after the mistranslated name of a character from FFIV. I didn't really intend to do side stories but if the novel ever gets published, and somehow was popular, I may do that. Especially since the actual "sequel" story I have in mind follows FF rules of sharing thematic elements but largely being set in a different universe with a whole new cast and setting.
Well, with your story it's easier with the names,. because it's pretty divorced from the real world, while mine is kinda 20 minutes into the future, kinda not? It's vague. For now. Still, I kinda need the names to make it feel natural, I think. We'll see how it goes. And I've also been thinking of sidestories! Those can be pretty cool ideas for shorts later
I never sweat too much on last names since they rarely mean much in my stories outseid of ones where a family name is important. I'm dealing with world history in my story, explaining where certain countries came from and internal political bickering that led to the world's current state. What kind of bugs me is that I'm probably not going to address too much of this in the actual story but I need to write it down to maintain a consistent narrative. One issue I kept running into the story in the past was accidentally retconning events because I never had a firm grasp of the past events and it started making plot holes I needed to iron out. It was little stuff like accidentally changing dates which kept shifting character ages or changing when historical events took place. Hell four characters actually have a pretty detailed backstory in my head but because it's such a major shift from the story proper, I'll probably never go into it in great detail for the story proper but may leave it for a side-story to write later.
Yeah, that is a good idea. I now find myself struggling making sense of the ages of my characters. And I still don't have any damn last names.
