Interesting Links

As is common for many people these days, I have a short list of blogs which I regularly read. One of the bloggers that I casually follow, who has a tendency toward polarizing opinions, recently posted a couple of interesting items that I thought were worth sharing.

This is the first in a series of as-yet undetermined length: http://voxday.blogspot.com/2013/07/rules-of-writing-i.html

• In this post, the author talks about the importance (for fantasy/sci-fi stories) of having a world that is fully fleshed out, with its own cultures, history and back-story, and reasons for it being the way it is. In other words, why is my fantasy world that isn't actually western Europe in the Middle Ages, so much like Western Europe in the Middle Ages?
• I have already written on the same topic, and have provided the answer to the question as well, in the following links:
• http://www.chroniclesofaerde.com/2012/01/created-world-alternate-earth-far.html
• http://www.chroniclesofaerde.com/2012/01/why-ancient-earth.html
• http://www.chroniclesofaerde.com/2012/01/world-background-nations.html

Here is the second post in the series: http://voxday.blogspot.com/2013/08/rules-of-writing-ii.html

• In this post, the author discusses the importance of knowing how your story is going to end, before you even start writing the actual story. He covers the two commonly-accepted styles of writing (outlining vs. discovery/exploration), then adds a third style, autobiographical, which I would argue is not really in the same class as the other two. It may be a valid method of storytelling (basing your stories upon your personal experience rather than extrapolation or simple creation), but it has nothing to do with whether the story's plot is planned out versus "discovered".
• In addition to the above posts from my own blog, I would add the following which contribute to the discussion linked above, and go to show that I am most definitely an outliner rather than a discovery writer:
• http://www.chroniclesofaerde.com/2012/01/current-project-balfrith.html
• http://www.chroniclesofaerde.com/2012/01/character-arcs.html