Workshop #2: World Building Journal

Morgan, here, with another workshop to get your creative juices flowing.  One of the things I love about writing, is world building.  Some authors use giant poster boards to collect images, scraps, and pictures for inspiration.  Since my day job requires tons of travel, I decided to combine my love of scrapbooking and collage to create a portable world building journal.

My latest WIP is a YA, Steampunk novel.  Here is a picture of the cover of "My Steampunk World" journal:

I found a plain journal at a local scrapbook supply store.  It is wire bound and included a mix of lined pages and pockets.  I took the binding apart and reordered the pages to disperse the pockets in sections for each character, then designed a cover representative of the world I'm building.  Sites like iStockphoto have pictures available that can be licensed (for a small or large fee) for both commercial and non-commercial use. 

After finding images to represent my characters, I created page spreads and sections to capture my thoughts, notes, and other research.  Here is an example of one of the character pages in my journal:

For one of the characters, I found a woman I liked, but she was wearing jeans and a t-shirt.  I used a bit of clothing from a paper doll book to put her in period appropriate clothing:

Other sections include sketches of my steam powered gadgets, maps, and notes from my historical research.

To help garner the look, feel, and textures of my world, I add scraps of ribbon, fabric, and craft paper. Tim Holtz has created a wonderful line of vintage and Steampunk themed papers and embellishments.  His products can be found at most major art, craft, and scrapbook supply stores.  (I also like 7 gypsies line of products.)

Questions:

• How do you do your world building?
• Can you think of ways to 'recycle' your world building work for use in your marketing and promotions?
• Wanna share your process? Send us a picture!

Note: This type of journal can be used for any genre.  Small business owners may use this project as a tool to gain a feel for their store image, products, website design, etc. 

In this week's Finer Points Friday post, I will discuss how I plan on using parts of this journal in my marketing plan for my WIP Steampunk series.

Feel free to be CREATIVE!

Any marketing questions can be posed in the comments on any post. If you have a question, others will too, so we can address our answers to all. Our posts are myths and tips we want to share but we love to target our answers to specific questions.