As an author of science fiction, can I call myself that before my novel is published?  I digress, as authors of science fiction and fantasy, we often have to shoulder the burdens of creating a world from scratch.  If we didn’t do it, it generally means we are writing   In the lingo of us super cool author types, it is called WORLD BUILDING, but basically it means that we have to create a world from scratch.  In other types of fiction, be it modern or historical, the reader already knows the nuances of life.  You say he wore a Hawaiian shirt, BAM, we can picture a Hawaiian shirt.  Tell me he drove a Porsche, I can picture a real life droll worthy dream car.  Say the knight wore armor, I can picture it in all it’s shining glory.  BUT, you try telling me he rode into town on a wee beastie [insert your super cool name here], then brother/sister you better commence to describing that thing in detail.

 

Now that we’ve established the basic concept of world building, lets get into one way it affects writers with armies in their worlds.  I recently read a great blog post by author Joe Zieja about creating the rank and culture of your army.  Things like the various ranks and how the forces are organized.  He titled his post Military in Fiction #6 – Rank and Organization, and I highly recommend you check it out!  I hope you find the piece as illuminating as I did, but either way let’s talk about it!

 

–> Note to Readers:  This post replaces an earlier reblog that might have inadvertently violated copyrights.

–> This image is under available under the free Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unreported license and originally shared through a Wikipedia posting. It was taken by photographer Murray Kerr and uploaded on 13 November 2008 at 13:17 hours.