Barbara V Evers

World building. Some people hear the term, world building, and shrink away, their eyes averted. Other people race toward the idea, excitement and ideas brimming over in their minds. Whether you're writing scifi, fantasy, or another genre, to some degree you must create a world. Outside of the speculative fiction genres, your world will follow a lot of the norms of your story's time period, but world building still applies on a smaller scale. It's constrained by what we know about that time. With speculative fiction, writers get to create everything . Yes, everything:  religion, countries, clothing, manners of speech, government, etc. This can be challenging, even for the writer who embraces world building. Luckily, you don't have to look far to locate advice on how to create your own world. Just this week, the Writers Digest website ran the following post:  20 Things to Consider When Building Fantasy Worlds If you've ever considered creating a world,

Image courtesy of Pixabay.com My daughter came to me on the night of September 10, 2001 around 11:30.  She trembled with fear and crying.  I struggled up from slumber that fought back in blissful ignorance, but a mother can't ignore her child, even if she is twenty-two years old. I turned on the light.  "What's wrong?" Her unlikely reply made me sigh.  "I'm afraid of terrorists." "Whatever for?" I fell back against my pillow.  "The odds of you coming in contact with one is so little." "But I might," she said, her voice on the edge of hysteria. "What if they ask me if I'm a Christian? If I say yes, they might kill me. I've heard that some kill you even if you say no." I fought exasperation that night.  Every evening, I struggled to get a good night's sleep. Once I'd reached the point where my body finally succumbed to sleep, I needed to be left alone in order to get anything clo

Most writers dream of capturing the imagination of their readers. We write our stories, the characters as real to us as the people we see each day, and hope others will welcome those characters into their hearts and minds. When J K Rowling wrote the first of the Harry Potter books, did she dream of the overwhelming success and fascination people, young and old, would have with this story? Probably some, but I bet not at the level of popularity it's achieved. Yet, twenty years later, the story of "the boy who lived" continues to resonate with people worldwide. When you wake up someone's imagination, it can lead to anything. For example, the Harry Potter Science day camp my granddaughter attended this summer. When I signed Victoria up, I wished I could attend. Instead, I did what most adults do when their children get to experience something they never did--I lived vicariously through her. She bubbled over with excitement and news each day, so it wasn't hard