Welcome to our Monday Coffee. Every Monday is set aside for musings and considerations around the Twinverse, the Tales, and the writing craft as a whole. We will occasionally discuss sources of inspiration for the Twinverse, share some text from existing or upcoming books, discuss the history of the Twinverse's development, and how roleplaying games have contributed to fleshing out the world. We may even look at some of the original documentation on the Twinverse, at its very beginning. Happy Monday!
Different authors have different tools for collecting and categorizing their research when writing a novel. From old-fashioned newspaper clippings kept in physical folders, to PDFs, screenshots and links saved in different digital folders, everyone's creative process is different.
However, a speculative fiction writer - such as a fantasy novel writer - is in a slightly different position, as their "research" often involves constructing elements of an entirely fictional world. Such elements may be very far removed from the real world's equivalents, but still need to be internally consistent to prevent plot holes or confusion on the part of the reader. This is especially true if the material is dense or if the author's goal is to start the book in media res, throwing the reader directly into the action with little or no preparation or exposition.
Of course, one could use notebooks, Word files, or other similar tools to categorize this material. And this would work well, but only up to a certain point. This typically can become a major challenge if the author is not planning just a single novel set in their fantasy world, but a whole series, or at least several unconnected novels set in the same world. As more and more material is needed, and the author needs to track a growing number of items, even these tools become less helpful and potentially, even harmful. What good is information if you cannot easily find it, or connect it with other elements?
Enter one of the greatest categorization tools - especially for constructed worlds and universes - I have encountered: the wiki. Almost everyone is familiar with the concept, courtesy of Wikipedia: pages of content that are interlinked, so that it's easy to connect one concept to another, and categorized so that it's possible to pull information based on a specific category (e.g. "locations in Ailund"). What many people do not know is that there are self-contained wiki tools that don't require high technical proficiency to deploy and utilize (e.g. self-contained wikis such as TiddlyWiki). There are also tooks that, with some practice, can be used to set up virtual servers to run more complete wiki software, which provide better functionality. The latter are typically more important if the amoutn of information on the fictional world has grown significantly, as self-contained wikis typically begin to struggle if they become too big.
Some of these tools can even be installed on a thumb drive, making it easy for the owner to plug them into any computer and continue working seamlessly, even on the go.
Personally, I have built a wiki for the Twinverse that has migrated at least two times. I initially started using TiddlyWiki, which is fairly user friendly, but when the amount of material I had became unwieldy, I transitioned to Screwturn Wiki. The latter was closer to a full wiki setup, but support for it eventually dried up, and for the last migration, I decided to turn to MediaWiki (the software which runs Wikipedia) installing XAMPP, a virtual server software, in order to run it.
The benefits of this setup are countless, in my opinion. Creating connections between different pages enables me to ensure that information is consistent. I can tighten the screws on concepts that are becoming too diluted or too confused to be usable. By creating nested categories, I can become extremely specific in defining areas of interest, which makes it easier to retrieve information when needed. I can add images I found as inspiration, making sure I don't lose them. The result, I feel, is tighter worldbuilding, and easier access to reference material whenever I am writing and I need something on the fly.
A word to the wise: wikis can be hard to set up (it took me the better part of a day to set up the XAMPP-MediaWiki combo). But the benefits in the long term far surpass any short-term challenges. Of course, not all fantasy authors use this tool, and others do quite well with more traditional categorizing tools. It all depends on the tool with which you feel most comfortable. But if you are working on your own novels and building your setting, consider experimenting with a wiki. You may find you don't want to go back, once you try it.
Well, this is all the time we had for today. Thank you for joining me in another Monday Coffee, and I look forward to seeing you again next week!
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