History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

Fun for Friday: Seasons as Characters

| September 22, 2023

In connection with Monday’s post about seasons in worldbuilding, I’m thinking about seasons as characters. How would you write a character based on spring? Which elements of that season would you emphasize? You could write a character who’s all joy and rebirth and growing things, or you could write a character who’s like torrential downpours […]

WriteHive Panel: Seasons in Worldbuilding

| September 18, 2023

One of the WriteHive online conference panels I watched was Seasons in Worldbuilding, which was an interesting look at how you can use seasons as part of your writing. Even outside of the part they play in worldbuilding, seasons can be used evoke emotions related to that season. In some writing, the season and/or the […]

Interview with CD Covington

| August 14, 2023

Today, I’m talking with CD Covington, who is just about to launch her Kickstarter for A Writer’s Guide to Linguistic Worldbuilding! Keep reading for more on the Kickstarter, CD’s work, and linguistic nerdery! DV: Tell me a little about yourself and your linguistics background. CD: My name is CD Covington, and I’ve been writing as long […]

Writing Tools: Reckless Deck Worlds

| August 16, 2021

I’ve accumulated a large collection of card-based writing tools, each of which is useful to different parts of my writing process. So I’ve decided to do a series of posts about the various decks I own and how I use them in my writing. I’ve talked previously about the core Reckless Deck, but today, I’m […]

Writing Tools: World Roulette

| July 19, 2021

I’ve accumulated a large collection of card-based writing tools, each of which is useful to different parts of my writing process. So I’ve decided to do a series of posts about the various decks I own and how I use them in my writing. I’ve talked previously about World Roulette as a worldbuilding tool, which is […]

World-Building Recommendation: World Roulette

| February 24, 2021

One of my recent Kickstarter rewards was the World Roulette Deck from Light Grey Art Lab. It’s a deck meant to assist in world building for creative projects, with a really interesting setup on the individual cards, which are meant to be stacked and layered in interesting combinations as you’re creating a world. As the […]

Awesome Find: World Roulette

| September 9, 2020

I LOVE things that allow for random idea generation, so I’m super excited about World Roulette. It’s part art book and part advice on world building. But there’s also a deck of world building cards with instructions on how to make infinite combinations with those cards. And one can never have too many sets of […]

Borrowing from Yourself

| July 20, 2020

If you’re inspired to write a short story that isn’t slated for anything in particular, are you tempted to build a new world, or set your story in a world you’ve already created? If you’ve already got a world that you’ve created, it’s entirely likely that there are potential stories that you haven’t gotten to […]

When the Clothes Make the Story

| January 27, 2020

In one of the games I play, which is a sci-fi heist game, we’ve got a couple of characters who fancy themselves as fashion designers. I threw out the challenge that my character wanted a dress that mashes up Sarah’s dress from Labyrinth with rutilated quartz (as pictured here). I could envision exactly what I […]

Anthropology and World Building

| July 22, 2019

There are many ways in which anthropological studies can help authors with their world-building. This lengthy and detailed review of a book about anthropology includes many bits of information that an author could use when they’re considering questions of worldbuilding, including cultures, learning, and more!