Yesterday I had a snow day. While I could have gone skiing, instead I tackled a major marathon of worldbuilding for the Netwalk Sequence. My editor had pointed out some issues and I realized that I really, really needed to coordinate and plan things out, starting with a coherent timeline and then some filling in of backstory, not just character but historical and outlining what research I needed to do. After all, the last time I did this sort of planning for Netwalk? It was still being called Netspider (which changed to Netwalk a couple of years later) and it was 1995.
Not good for a world built around concepts that postulate major political and environmental upheaval as precursors to the recovery I’m writing about.
Well, I have the bare bones outline. But the process looks something like this. Above was the preparation layout, with binder and papers from pieces I’d put together both in hard copy and in Evernote editing clips.
Then I went to the easel. Early takes:
At this point, I’d already created the broad outline sheet (pinned to the bookcase) of Things I Need To Build. I kept on adding stuff. The sheet on the easel was the dateline posted here on the website (which will need to be updated seriously).
A later iteration of this same sheet:
Already you can see the scratch outs.
But wait! There’s more!
And while that’s the last picture version, there were further additions and corrections.
There’s also the third sheet.
Like I said, a six hour straight through marathon of worldbuilding work. I still have a lot more to do, but the bare bones have been laid. A productive day, IOW.
