2. Creating a background 1
In the beginning was nothingness, but what was before that? When a story begins, it's important to have something where it all started. It's like a timeline that doesn't just start when the first word of a story is written, but started long before the events that are part of the story. So you have to pick a point where you start to develop a bit of a "story". Why is the world in which the story is set the way it is today? Were there any reforms, religious entities that led to strange laws being in place today? Were there any catastrophes or human influences, perhaps from gods or a god, that led to the world being the way it is today?
There are some ways to fill in these gaps. Some are not necessary to build up an understanding of the plot, others answer some questions, especially in very intense stories that alternate between past and present. You can start to put windows in, in our WB house, that help the reader to have everything a bit more tangible. But be careful! Overloading this information can make it feel like a textbook. That's why it's important to stick with this window motif. We don't see everything inside the house, but only what the window gives us to see. This means, that some of this information isn´t necessary to be in the story, but rather envelop the story.
A background doesn't always have to be something that happened thousands of years before, but is just meant to answer some questions that may come to the reader's mind when they are reading. Why is it the way it is? Probably a rather childish question the "why" but in answering this question, one gets at the same time a new scope of ideas and information that are not given in the story but help to surround and stabilise the windows of the house with stones.
As a small task, it can help to enter a stage of " unawareness" here and think again about where there are small holes that might be left uncapped in the story. Are there perhaps some points that are still open? If you want you can share some of your missing stones.
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