How the World of Dream Sparks was Created

World building is one of my favorite things, because it is as limitless (or as limited) as you want it to be. It’s all up to you on what comes to life in your story. From what I’ve seen there are different styles of world building. Some authors like J.R.R. Tolkien like to set the stage completely before any of writing of the story takes place. Others like to do it minimally, or as they go. For Dream Sparks I went with an approach that did some of both, depending on which part of the book I was at.

The Early Stages

I have wanted to be a writer for a long time, but didn’t seriously pursue it until later in life. When I was younger I liked to write poetry and short stories, along with making characters that had no story yet. Franca was one of these characters, and was actually written back in around 2016-2017! Some of the characters from the crew (like Alex) came about not long after Franca when I started experimenting with putting the characters into a shorter story. Even though I had a passion for writing stories then, I didn’t prioritize it in my life, and the story eventually went to the back burner.

Years later, on a college break I was discouraged and not feeling very motivated to do my homework on a break between classes. I thought I would mess around a little by doing some world building just for fun. I made a few planets, (Hayventh and Pike III were part of this) and started adding settlements to them. As time went on I found myself writing more and more on breaks, and I eventually decided that this was a good setting to add some of my old characters to. Dream Sparks originally had around 3-4 characters with 5 planets! Everything else has come about at different times.

The Stage Where Things Got More Serious

Once I had the initial characters (everyone in the crew) and planets for my story I began writing the first few chapters. As I kept writing, I came to realize that this is what I love doing, and I officially made the decision that I wanted to become an author! At this point I stopped world building until I got to chapter six, where I needed to create another location on a certain planet (not wanting to spoil anything for anyone who hasn’t read Dream Sparks yet.) From that point on I did world building whenever it seemed like the story needed it, or when I got stuck, (though I had to be careful to continue writing and not get stuck creating the environment for the story!)

Some Interesting Things I Learned Along the Way

When I started writing, my experience was mainly in writing academic papers. Early on some of my chapters actually read more like articles! It took time for my writing style to have a more set foundation, and for things to read more like how a novel should. At the time I didn’t know any other authors, so I found myself learning things from articles online or YouTube. This is how I learned about showing vs. telling, and other things that have really helped me write a solid story. Dream Sparks has been a learning experience from every stage, including this one!

One of the bigger things that I learned about world building is that things can be added to previous chapters as you go. The dreams that Franca has were actually not a part of the novel for a long time. I wrote those while I was writing chapter twenty eight! I stuck them in where she naturally fell asleep in the story, and then blended things in. I’ve also had times where I cut something out, and then put it back in later. One planet that’s mentioned in Dream Sparks was cut out initially because it had no purpose to the story. Later on I needed another planet for something, so it was put back in! I’ve also made characters that didn’t seem to fit with the story, or that I was thinking would be saved for something else I write. Often times those characters have been added to the story as it goes! The world grew a lot as I wrote, and by the end of Dream Sparks you have way more than just 3-4 characters and 5 planets.

Where My World Building is at Today

I use Scrivener for writing my novels, and keep a database of my world building there. When I started the second novel I copy and pasted the database part of it over to the new book! That took longer than I thought it would, but it really has made a big difference in the quality of this series as I can look up anything I need to remember about the story. It keeps growing, and there are already new characters and places in the next book, with just as much action as before! I want to thank all of you for your love and support as I go on this journey, and hope to have the next novel released soon.