 What's shaking? My name's Cam. Welcome back to another video. So fun fact, I've never actually written a fantasy book based in an entirely fictional world before. I mean aside from when I was a literal child and I was ripping off every popular movie I saw. More recently to my adult life I did write a few urban fantasy books but they were set in our world. I'll be it with some secret more magical locations. I've read a lot of fantasy over my life and written a fair bit of it as well. So I was actually pretty surprised when I realized how long it's been since I actually created a world. It's exciting though, it's something new for me to try and that's awesome. You know I've spent the last like two years or so writing pretty much nothing but horror which was great. It was fun but I am really looking forward to going back to my roots. So that's my plans for Nanorimo this year. I'll be working on the first book in a new fantasy series based in an entirely fictional world. My plan right now is for it to be a bit more of a western industrial world still with a lot of classic medieval elements. Kind of like The Witcher meets Red Dead Redemption for lack of a better example. Multiple continents with lots of different landscapes and climates. This video is to talk about how I'll be doing the outlining and the world building including a really awesome tool that I've been playing around a lot with recently. It feels almost more like a video game than an actual writing tool. I've been using it a fair bit to make a map and it's been a lot of fun. Video is not sponsored or anything. I just want to show you. Really quickly though I will just explain the general plot and series structure that I have planned so far as it stands. I plan on actually writing the first three books before I publish any of them. That way I can keep writing and publishing them on a more consistent basis. I want to basically give myself a head start by the time the first book comes out. That might sound a bit odd and might sound like something I'm not going to get done for years but at the moment I'm actually planning to have these start coming out pretty early next year. The thing is the books are going to be pretty short about 50,000 words and they'll also be quite episodic. What I mean by episodic is that there will be a major high stakes plot that connects all of the books and the series will build up and build up towards that major plot but for the most part each book will actually have its own little story with a setup, climax and resolution. I've been reading quite a lot of episodic types of story not just fantasy but others as well adventure, quest type stuff and I was really inspired so my plan is to uh I want to write books that almost feel like you're tuning in for an epic fantasy TV show with lots of little adventures within an epic story. The stories themselves will follow two cell swords or mercenaries that are on the run after escaping from the empire's most dangerous prison. They'll be hunting monsters solving mysteries doing heists. I basically want them to be the salmon dean of the fantasy crime world and the major plot that they'll find themselves involved in eventually will tie into their escape in book one. It'll tie that escape from the prison into a huge conflict that threatens the state of the world. Again that's a really really foundation uh ground floor rough plan for the series so far. It could very well change uh but for now that's what I'm gonna be working towards. So uh outlining a fantasy world where do you even start? When I was trying to plan how I would be planning how I would be outlining I knew I needed to decide a few things very early so that everything else works. One is their magic and if so how does it work? Two how do people talk uh like do they sound modern do they talk like me and you or do they talk a bit more traditional fantasy style or is it a mix of both? Three how does the money and the economy work and four what is the power structure of this world like the empire or the authority are they multiple kingdoms are they at war do they live in peace what is the power structure now I won't tell you exactly what my answers were to those questions that way the stories have at least a bit of mystery to them but even before I started thinking about the characters those were the questions I answered. What I will say though is that I decided not to go with a soft magic system meaning uh you know just casting spells or wizards with staffs as much as I love that stuff and as fun as it is I don't think magic always needs to have like a scientific explanation behind it but I do want to kind of try that I didn't want anything to be needlessly complex so the magic system isn't going to be as extravagant as maybe a brand and sanderson novel but I do want to try more on focusing on characters kind of mixing herbs and chemicals to create magic. The sell swords in this world uh that the two major characters are a part of are actually a bit of a faction they used to be really a respected organization that functioned almost entirely to help people and maintain peace they weren't soldiers they weren't police they weren't governed by the emperor or the king but they were generally doing things for a good cause but as time has gone on that faction has kind of split all of the sell swords have become a lot more independent some of them have gotten a bit greedy a bit morally questionable and now they are basically seen as outlaws people that can get something done for you for a price sometimes outside of the law the characters are going to be interacting with a lot of creatures and inhuman people or races so to help my outlining I've actually been creating a bit of a separate bestiary a document where I just list different fantasy creatures that I'm trying to come up with and that's been really fun I completely forgot how fun outlining fantasy actually is it is a whole different world to planning out a horror or a mystery now my strategy so far with creating monsters and creatures etc has been to come up with the abilities and the weaknesses before I decide what they look like because I think that those abilities and those weaknesses can dictate how they look for example the story starts in a desert so I wanted something dangerous to live in that desert some kind of monster worms have been done obviously so I wanted to go on a different a completely different direction I decided on a creature that is able to camouflage themselves in the mirage the fun of like deserts or people wandering through a desert in stories and movies etc is them kind of hallucinating things in the mirage so I wanted a creature that could kind of play with their mind and in this barren desert the creature would probably be pretty rabid pretty starved which means that would be really aggressive and very likely carnivorous so once I have these pieces I was able to create a creature that I think was pretty unique that's how I've been creating a lot of the creatures I plan on working on this beastiary quite a bit and creating a lot of creatures much more creatures than I'm actually planning to use at the moment that way when I'm actually writing the stories I can refer to the beastiary and that will help me decide where the story can go maps fantasy maps one of the best things about fantasy full stop I love them you probably love them but did you know that you can create your own really really easily as well like surprisingly easily again this video is not sponsored in any way but I do want to show you two programs that I played around with when I was creating a rough draft of my fantasy world I wanted a map for my outlining so that I can visually see the path that the characters will be taking and what things they will come across on that path I find it really really helps with coming up with ideas for the story especially with an episodic story like this where something is going to happen in each book that is somewhat self-contained I can plan a route for the characters maybe through a forest or a swamp or a cave system I can see where those things are with a map and it makes sense anyway first up I'll quickly show you the free program it's called incarnate you can do quite a bit with this one and they have a free version for you to use this will be great for the people that just want to create a really really simple minimalistic map which tons of authors do it's actually a problem that a lot of authors run into when they're creating a fantasy map is that they just make it too hectic too busy if you do want something a bit more intricate or colorful though I would recommend wonder draft the links for these programs will be in the description below but this one it's not too expensive it's 30 us dollars for a full license meaning you pay that once and you get a ton of stuff that you can use to create your map I will say a final time this video is not sponsored but this program was so easy to use dude I made this map on my very first try basically not even knowing what I was doing you pretty much just drag and drop everything I am going to redo my map of course make it look at least a bit more realistic I just feel like this one looks a bit too cartoony looks like it's from a straight up children's fantasy it also it also kind of looks like a uterus so so that's something I want to steer away from creating maps is pretty fun even if you're not writing a story some people use these programs for dnd planning because you can create a city map or a dungeon map and I'm not too worried about making a world that is 100% geographically accurate I know there are people that nitpick at stuff like that like how's that mountain range exist where it is that kind of thing I'm not too worried about that to a certain extent obviously I'm not going to have like a snow biome next to a volcanic desert biome but I do want to have fun with this world and I want to create a fantasy world and sometimes that's going to have some slightly unrealistic biomes and mountain ranges who cares its fantasy I am doing lots of outlining at the moment but once nano rimo starts I will be officially writing this series and I could not be more excited like I said it feels like I'm going back to my roots fantasy was pretty much all I wrote before a couple of years ago but for the time being let me know how your writing is going how is your outlining are you doing nano rimo do you have like a checklist when you're outlining fantasy let me know but for the time being thank you so much for watching especially for watching through the whole video I appreciate you and hopefully I'll see you in the next one catch it