What's the Name of Your World?

World building is one of the funner things a fantasy or science fiction writer (to a lesser degree) gets to do. At least from my perspective, it offers me the freedom to design the very laws of nature to create a unique experience. So I thought I would let you in on how I developed the world of The Reality Chronicles.

There are two basic types of world builders. There are those who plan out the whole world, how it operates, functions, land masses, seas, forest, mountain ranges, language of people, etc., before they ever lay a word to page. Then there are others who start out with a very minimal idea of the world, and it grows and develops as they write. In truth, very few writers are totally one way or the other. Most of us will find ourselves somewhere between those two poles. But most writers will lean to one side of the fence. Even that can change from one novel to another, depending on how dependent the plot is on how the world is designed. I would designate the two types as pre-planners and organic-planners.

I fall more into the organic world builder. I find out more about the world as the story progresses. That is true of novels like Mind Game, which is more a traditional novel plot, but even more true of the Reality Chronicles, which started out as a short story, three more short stories, another short story added to it. Then a novel sequel to those. Then a third novel. Then went back to the first book and added ten more short stories. Because of the way it grew from that one short story, the world naturally grew with it as I added more and more.

The task in doing it this way, is to keep it consistent. Adding onto it as you go, it is easy to forget some detail that what you are adding that would contradict what you've done before. That requires keeping a good database of what you've added or defined, so any proposed additions or changes can be checked against what's gone before. But even someone who plans it all out before hand will find themselves making mid-story adjustments as characters and plots develop.

But when it comes to the Reality Chronicles series, two of the common questions I get is first, does the world have a name? And two, is it modern or medieval?

To the first question, that is no, the world as a whole doesn't have a name. This is counter to a lot of fantasy where the whole area or world will usually be called something. For sure, people like to have names for things. But when I wrote the first short story for this world, I didn't bother deciding whether it was in our world's history or an alternate world. I didn't name the town it was in. It was just about the story of a kid in a small, primitive town with a strange steam house. The story was meant to be an allegory of the Last Judgment. Figuring out the name of the town or where it was or the world it was in beyond the little bit you get in the first story wasn't critical to the story.

But then I added on four more short stories to that one. Sisko traveled to new places and towns, which I did give names to. Those first five stories gave a bare sketch of the world and how it operated. But by the time I had finished those, I had a good idea of how magic worked in that world, that it was an alternate reality from our own Earth, and the rules of how the ring worked, mostly, and what it even represented. But there was still a lot left undefined as those five stories become my first published novella, Infinite Realities.

Including I never gave Sisko's home town a name. That didn't come until I wrote the full novel sequel, Transforming Realities, currently listed as Reality's Ascent. When Sisko decides they should return to his hometown, I figured it was time to give the place a name. That's when I gave it the name Reol. When I added the other ten short stories to Infinite Realities and Splashdown Books published it as Reality's Dawn, I went back and added mentions of the hometown into the previous stories I'd written where appropriate, as well as using it in the newer stories. But if you read the original novella, you'll never see the name of Sisko's hometown.

The development of the political aspects of the world resulted in a city-state type governments. So a king in the Reality's world is king over a city and its surrounding territory. There is no king over all the land. And whether a city had a king or not depended upon the city, and how they set up their governments. You'll find some very much like a traditional kingship, and others more “democratically” organized. Sometimes this is mentioned, other times just assumed if it doesn't play into the story.

Because of that, the people tend to focus upon their own world, their own towns, and don't think in “big picture” ways. Because there is no overarching governmental structure, or developed sense of geography, no one saw a reason to give their whole world a name. At least, not one that was commonly used by most everyone. Theoretically, individual places might have a name for the whole world.

In the third book, Reality's Fire, the world grew again. Our characters headed west, across the forest, into a less “Christian” section of the world. New cities and mountain ranges and deserts are added, and a sea, an island called Pluto, and new races including a group who live in the caves of the north called Burrowers. When Transforming Realities was first published, I came out with my first map that I had visualized as I wrote the stories of the adventures. The third book added to it.

By the time I added the extra ten stories to Infinite Realities to create what had eventually became Reality's Dawn, I had already written two rough drafts of a new series in that world, which I've tentatively called, “The Dragons' Dying Fields.” These stories have greatly expanded not only the geography of the world, but its history and even how that world is connected with our own, as well as other alternate realities. Knowing that as I wrote the ten new stories gave me the ability to not only help introduce characters that appeared later on, like Joel, and fill out the stories of the characters better that were only alluded to before, but I was able to foreshadow what was to come in the next two books and the future new series.

One thing that never changed, however, is the world as a whole never received a name. In the first book of the new series, I play on that as well a bit, because the characters have no concept of a country or names of anything beyond a forest or mountain range.

When it comes to the feel of the world alluded to in the second asked question, I wanted to give it enough of a historical basis that it was grounded in some type of familiar reality, but change things up a bit. Being an alternate world gave me the freedom to do that. I focused on it having a medieval feel to the world, but there are more modern things about it. Primarily, I used common English we are used to hearing, without worrying about whether it sounded too modern or not. I did limit it some in that regard, but I wanted the language to connect with the readers instead of attempting to stick to an Earth-like language during the medieval times. Being an alternate world gave me the freedom to do this, though I know some will balk at it.

However, that doesn't mean I didn't do any research to keep it “real” in other respects. When I had a reference to toilets, I asked, “Did they have toilets back then, and if so, how did they operate?” So I researched it, and discovered yes they did, but usually only the rich had them. Common folk had a “spot” in a secluded area and used leaves for wiping. But often toilets were nothing more than a bench with a hole cut in it, and flies buzzing all around as you did your business. Not very sanitary. Castles were often better off, where toilets were on upper floors, and the disposed of mess dropped all the way to the ground so it stayed as far away from the seat as possible.

In another story, I wanted to use a dentist. Did they have dentist back then? Yes, though they were mostly crude and involved pulling teeth out more than anything. I took some liberties that in this world in that they'd developed the ability to use tools to “tap” the cavity corruption out of the tooth (to Sisko, it felt like pounding), and packed it with a substance that would keep it from getting worse, a primitive filling material. So you see a more modern type of dentistry than what actually existed in our medieval history, though Sisko no doubt would label it as torture, not healing.

Though I hadn't decided in the first story whether it was an alternate world or not, early on I decided it wasn't our Earth, and even though it had a parallel history, there would be some significant divergences in progress and abilities and historical facts. Enough real history to keep the reader grounded in a world, but enough differences to say, “We're not on Earth anymore, Todo.”

What I liked about that approach is the ability to just focus on the story, without worrying about getting a bunch of historical facts “just right.” Yet enough I could make some allusions and analogies to our world.

So that tells a lot of the story how the Reality Chronicles world developed and grew. You'll be reading more and getting into a lot more history and worlds within Sisko's world in the near future, when the first book of the new series comes out.

How did your world(s) develop?

Interview with Gabrielle from Reality's Fire

Welcome to another edition of Author Interviews. Not interviews of authors, but an author interviewing their characters. Today, author R. L. Copple interviews his character, Gabrielle, who plays a starring role in the newly released novel, Reality's Fire from Splashdown Books.

RLC: Hello, readers. My name is Rick Lee Copple, thus the author by-line: R. L. Copple. I write fantasy and space opera stories. As stated in the opening, the third and final novel in "The Reality Chronicles" has just been released. One character that has appeared in all three novels, but hasn't played as large a role in the story until this book, is Gabrielle. Why don't you start by introducing yourself.

Gabi: Hi Rick. Funny talking to you. It's almost like talking to myself.

RLC: It does help an author to have split personalities. Maybe to start, tell us a bit about your family life.

Gabi: My parents lived on a mountain just outside Jerole, in the northwest edge of the Cluster Range. My mother died early in my life, leaving myself, my father, and older brother, Seth, to fend for ourselves. My dad did his best, but a wizard of sorts put a curse on him and my brother so that the littlest provocation sent them into an uncontrollable rage. I spent several years keeping them from killing one another. So while life started out pretty normal enough, it went from crazy to crazier after that.

RLC: But Sisko came along and saved them from that curse. Yes?

Gabi: Oh yes, he healed them from their hate, after almost killing us all. But if you think dealing with a miracle man is not crazy, not to mention his children, I have some lake-front property on Dark Lake to sell you.

RLC: You did have a significant part in the first novel, Reality's Dawn, even if it wasn't extensive.

Gabi: Yes, even though I was only in two of the stories, I did play a part in the last story that was key. If not for me, that would have been the end of the series right there. And what was my thanks? The next book, Reality's Ascent, you lock me up in a crystal prison for practically the whole book!

RLC: Yes, I did feel guilty about that. But look at it this way, the readers felt really sorry for you for the whole book too. And you had a couple of good scenes, opening and closing the book. But, that was part of the reason I wanted to give you a starring role in the final book of the trilogy.

Gabi: Indeed, it was quite the part. I had my own point of view for nearly half the book. And not only a big part, but I got to play a part of "eternal significance" to many people, as Father Jonah put it. And it was nice sharing the stage with my daughter, Kaylee. I think we made a good team.

RLC: Naturally, I would agree. But let's talk a bit about your co-star, Josh. Like you, this was his biggest role. He played a part in the first stories of Reality's Dawn as the fledgling wizard. But by the end the second book, we discover that he has become a very powerful wizard. What was it like sharing the limelight with him in Reality's Fire?

Gabi: Yes, he did become a very powerful wizard. He explains that in more detail in this book. However, that turns out not to be as big a help as you'd think in attempting to fulfill my task of finding Kaylee and Nathan, and change the course of events. Naturally, you'll have to read to discover if I succeeded despite that or not.

RLC: How did he make it harder, without giving away any surprises?

Gabi: Let's just say, he doesn't have full control of himself for most of the story. Making him on the unpredictable side. When you have the most powerful wizard in the world not able to control his power, we'll just say, setbacks happen.

RLC: What is your favorite part of the story for you?

Gabi: Despite the frustration of the moment, it was probably turning Josh into a dog.

RLC: We forgot to mention that you end up with a power yourself.

Gabi: Yeah, that steam house. You never know what it is going to do.

RLC: If you had to sum up what this story is about, how would you put it?

Gabi: There's lots of things I could say, but if I were to boil it down, I'd say that the fear of God will either redeem you or defeat you, depending on how you approach Him. Each character experiences that in one way or another.

RLC: I couldn't have said it better myself. Now, let's shift gears a little to some topics the books don't usually touch on. The world you are in, does it have a name?

Gabi: Huh, just the world.

RLC: It doesn't have a name?

Gabi: You call your planet, dirt. Earth.

RLC: Hum, you have a point. But here we have nations like the United States, England, Germany, Australia, and a lot more. Is there anything similar there and why not?

Gabi: Not being from your world, I couldn't say for sure. But our world has a series of city-states. Mostly they get along though there are fights from time to time. A small handful of cities might govern an area, but most have their own king, ruler, or whatever, and they trade and work with neighboring villages and towns in an organic way. So there's not a bigger political entity beyond that.

RLC: And therefore, no need to name a bigger area.

Gabi: There are forest, deserts, and mountain ranges that have names. Like the city I'm in when this book starts out, Reol, is in the Durge Forest.

RLC: So your lands have never experienced wars much?

Gabi: If you believe the myths, thousands of years ago there was a big war between humans and dragons. Some say our peaceful living is in part due to our bonding together back then to fight a common enemy. Most people believe they are scary stories told to frighten kids around camp fires and that dragons don't exist. I used to think as much too, but Sisko's encounter with an invisible dragon gave me pause to wonder about that.

RLC: Interesting. Thank you so much, Gabrielle, for being with us today. Any last words to leave with our readers?

Gabi: Sure. God's reality is the reality. Don't hide from it, embrace it.

RLC: Your on a roll today. Until next time, faithful readers. Be sure to read the series if you haven't and if possible, leave honest reviews on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and anywhere else you please. You can find the book list at my website along with the other books I've written. Thanks for reading.

Reality's Fire is Here!

The Reality Chronicles trilogy comes to a close with the advent of the final book, Reality's Fire.

As of today, the paperback has made its appearance on Amazon, though it is still in process as the cover image isn't up as of this writing. And there are no copies yet to sell, however, you can pre-order and Amazon will ship them when they come in. Additionally, there is the Kindle version for the ebook lovers. In the next few days, expect to see the book appear at B&N both paperback and for Nook, as well as it is currently available at Smashwords in formats that can be read by most any ereader out there.

For more information on the book, you can visit my page which gives you the book's blurb, a sample chapter, and links to where you can buy it.

I thought this would be a good time to give some behind the scenes look at this series. I've told some of this on other sites, in interviews, but I'll go a little deeper here.

The Reality Chronicles series isn't an allegory proper, but does have some allegorical elements to it. Unlike some stories, God is simply God, not some strange name in this alternate world. But certain things do represent other things in an allegorical manner. For instance, as I've written on this blog before, the steam house is an eight-sided building. For history buffs, this represents the baptismal font, which in the early church, was eight-sided representing the eighth day of creation brought on by Jesus Christ's death and resurrection.

And some might complain that Jesus is never mentioned in the books. And that would be true, and yet He is on nearly every page and story. He forms the backdrop for all that takes place, and is present in the climax of Reality's Fire. And that is the beauty of allegory. It not only indicates that something stands for something else (Jesus is the vine, we are the branches), but what the relationship between the two are based on the relationship of the known. (All branches are one in the vine, and so we are one in Christ.) So the allegorical elements in this story, some obvious, some not so obvious, show a relational revealing more than they show a ontological revealing.

But even every relationship in an allegory doesn't translate. Saying Jesus is the vine and we are the branches doesn't mean if the locus come along and eat at us, that Jesus is powerless to stop them, just as a vine would be powerless to stop an insect from eating at its leaves. But where it is an intended relationship, sometimes such things can make us see areas of our lives in relation to each other and God in a new light. Those without ears to hear, will just hear a good story. Which is fine too. Even those can show some good things to us.

So it is in that vein that I started out writing a little short story in the summer of 2006 which I called "Steamy Realities," and is the current first chapter in Reality's Dawn called, "Reality's Advent." In the critique group I was a part of, we did a group challenge, where all of us wrote a short story to submit to a magazine's contest that had the theme of "hot." Thus the idea for using a steam house. And my initial idea is it reflected a precursor to what God's presence would reveal in people on Judgement Day, where every man's work is revealed by fire. And that fire is God's presence itself, as Scripture states multiple times. Not fire as we know it, no doubt, but similar. Except those in Christ experience Him as light and love, while those who don't experience Him as the fires of Hell.

So you see that theme presented in multiple ways through these stories and is the "reality" that is being referenced: God's reality. And so these three books represent a miniature retelling of the Gospel narrative itself in concepts as we all go through it. Reality's Dawn, a person's birth and growth in Christ. Reality's Ascent, the continued growth and revealing that we fight not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, powers, and darkness. And Reality's Fire, the culmination of what Christ accomplished in His battle with Satan, and how He overcame Him.

That first short story was picked up by "The Sword Review" online magazine, which eventually merged with "Dragons, Knights, and Angels" magazine to form what is now "Mindflights." The same magazine decided to run a contest with the theme of "hope." And in deciding what to do for it, I decided to create a sequel short story, currently titled "Anger's Spell" in Reality's Dawn. I entered it into the contest. It didn't win, and they didn't want it for publication, but the owner of the magazine, Bill Snodgrass, took a liking to what I was doing and wanted to encourage me. So he went to the trouble to do a detailed critique of that story in the hopes I would rewrite it and give it another go.

I decided to do more than that. I not only rewrote that story, but I wrote two more stories so that I would have stories based on the themes of faith, hope, and love. The faith story is "Faith's Fire" and the love story is "Love's Sacrifice." With each story I created, the world grew. And when I submitted all of them to the magazine, they accepted the faith and love stories right away, but wanted a rewrite on the hope story. In going through that story, yet again, it dawned on me why it wasn't working. I had my protagonist too passive through the whole thing. Everything was happening to him, but he did little to make things happen. So, I rewrote that chapter to make Sisko do something to affect the outcome, and it was immediately accepted. They accepted those in January of 2007 to run all four stories as a series in the last months of 2007, right before it merged with "Dragons, Knights, and Angels" to become "Mindflights."

But that was not all. Bill Snodgrass liked the stories enough, he wanted to put them into a book to sell through his company. I wrote an additional story to add to it as a "bonus" story not shown online, called "Desire's Trap" in Reality's Dawn, as well as an article on why I write fiction as a Christian, and by November of 2007 he published my first book. The novella we titled Infinite Realities hit the virtual selves of Amazon and other online retail outlets.

As the novella was coming out that November, I did my second National Novel Writing Month, where people from all over the world get together and encourage each other to write a minimum of 50K words of a novel. I started doing that in 2006, and did them every year except for last year, 2011, I ended up doing something different after a week into it. But in 2007, I had outlined a novel I wanted to write in November, but Bill put a bug in my ear about doing a sequel to Infinite Realities instead. At first I didn't think I would do it, as I had what I wanted to do planned out. But then on the first day of November, I made a quick decision to write that sequel, and spent the first hours of the month doing a quick outline of main plot points for the novel, and then jumped in to write it. I spent all of 2008 editing that book, and it ended up getting published as Transforming Realities in March of 2009.

Well, I was on a roll, and so when November arrived in 2008, I wrote the third novel in the series, which after many edits and look overs by various people and going through several names, is now the story being published this month through Splashdown Books as Reality's Fire.

What happened to Bill? Well, by the time I got Transforming Realities published, and went through edits of the third novel in hopes it could come out in 2010, Bill's life took a different turn, and it ended up that his company shut down. So I ended up with a two-book series, and a third book without a publisher. As 2010 headed toward November, I thought I had a publisher, signed a contract, but he backed out at the last minute for personal reasons. So I was back to square one.

But one of the things I had decided to do in September of 2010, was to write more stories to fill in the holes in Infinite Realities. The only big criticism I got was the book was too short. Everyone wanted more. Bill had even prodded me to do that at one point. In September of 2010, I got the itch to do just that. I planned out how many more stories I would need to make a full novel, snagged me a critique partner with the time, and started working on writing those stories at the pace of one a week. I planned to expand the original five stories to a total of fifteen. I had already written one story as a Christmas story the previous Christmas, so I only needed nine more stories. I was in the writing groove, and cranked out one good story after another. I kept thinking at any point, I'll run out of ideas of what to do next that is decently original and interesting, and builds on the character and plot arcs I had in mind. But no sooner would I finish one story, and start thinking about what to do for the next one, than an idea would pop into my head and I'd be off writing the next one. I was even able to fill in some back story for characters and events that appeared in the second book, Transforming Realities, and the third book, which I'd already written at the time, but not yet published.

It was shortly after November's National Novel Writing Month of 2010 that I barely made it to 50K because I was already worn out doing the equivalent of a NaNo with the new stories for Infinite Realities during October, that Grace Bridges with Splashdown Books, after some discussion, agreed not only to take on publishing my third novel, but to republish my first two books, and the first with the added stories. She moved fast on the first two. She published the new and improved Infinite Realities as Reality's Dawn, and republished Transforming Realities as Reality's Ascent in March 2011 and May 2011 respectively. And now the third book is finally coming out in June of 2012: Reality's Fire. Now for the first time, readers who've enjoyed the first two books, can discover how the series ends.

Some interesting notes on this novel. It is unique in several ways. In most of my novels, my outlines are rough major plot point outlines. And what has happened in most of my novels, is by the time I get to the "end" I had planned, I've only written half a novel. For instance, in Reality's Ascent, my original outline had the wedding of Nathan to Crystal being the big block-buster ending. But by the time I reached that spot, not feeling I could extend it any longer without it looking like that's what I was doing, I had only written around 25K words. Far from a full novel. So I made plan B and winged it. And as it turns out, the actual ending I wrote was far better than what I had originally planned. Most of my novels have been like this. The outline gets greatly modified by the time I finish writing the book.

Reality's Fire went nearly exactly as planned. As a matter of fact, unlike my other books where I had a vague idea what the ending would be, and by the time I got there it looked nothing like it, my first realization of what this book would be was the ending. In a hotel room at FenCon in 2008, with Bill sleeping away, I saw in my mind the perfect ending to the series. It fit the theological and series arc, and was exactly what needed to happen. And better yet, few would see it coming, even though it would be logical once they saw what happened, with everything else that had happened to that point through the whole series, even beginning with that first short story I wrote in the summer of 2006. It was like this story simply could not end any other way.

As I wrote this book in November of 2008, it went exactly as planned. Didn't missed a beat, nothing unexpected. Well. Almost. There was one crazy wrench Gabrielle threw into the story. Without giving anything away, at one point, based on what she could do, and Josh's condition, as I was writing what I figured she'd naturally be thinking, it suddenly occurred to her she could do something unusual. And as a writer, I couldn't deny her doing that because it wouldn't be natural for her to do anything else but what she did. And boy did she make a major change to the story. I did not see that one coming. But I worked it into the story as best I could. Not perfect, but it did provide some good story moments, nonetheless. Both drama and humor. It will be obvious when you read it.

But all the while I was writing the story, my mind kept running over and over how the end would go. I was glad when I finally got to write it, because then I could get the visions out of my head and on paper, and they wouldn't keep me up at night. As a matter of fact, by the time I started writing the ending, I didn't have to think about how any of it would go, what they would say. I'd been over it so many times in my head, all I was really doing was writing it all down. I've never had a book go almost exactly as planned, and an ending happen just as I envisioned it before I'd decided anything else the book would be about.

Also, this book was a departure in other ways. On one hand, I'd addressed some issues that my YA audience not only face everyday, but often get swallowed up by in many cases. I felt they were important issues, and because of what needed to happen to get to the ending, a big sin needed to happen. So this story has ended up focusing on more mature material. I've kept it PG-13, but it does mean some of the younger readers that enjoyed my first two books, would probably not be allowed to read this one, at least until they'd grown up some. My only regret is that it will potentially exclude younger children from getting to read this anytime soon.

Readers will also notice more romance and character interaction and not as much "action" scenes. They do happen. There is sword fighting. But it isn't as intense as it was in Reality's Ascent, or even Reality's Dawn. But some really cool stuff happens, even if it isn't high action fighting.

And yes, Joel does make some appearances in this book. Not as many as I know his fans would like, but he plays his parts which are critical. As a matter of fact, Joel is the one character that has so far appeared in every book I've written in this world.

So, that's the story behind this book and the whole trilogy. It is something that started out as one short story, and grew from there into a full world. But the stories don't stop with this book. I'm writing a spin-off series in the same world, that not only expands that world, but reveals how it relates to our own world. This series builds upon the dragon in "Faith's Fire" in Reality's Dawn to reveal a whole dragon culture in that world. So much more to come. Stay tuned!

Series Title Contest

I'm giving my readers a chance to win a copy of my book, Reality's Dawn. How, you ask, do you accomplish that?

I'm in need of a series title for a new book I'm currently editing. Here are the details on what it needs:

1. It is a series centered around dragons in the Reality World. It is a spin-off from the first series, from the book Reality's Fire that is about to come out.


2. It will be at least five books long.


3. The title needs to have "dragon" in some form or fashion in it.


4. It needs to avoid being trite.


5. The atmosphere of the series will be similar to the Reality Chronicles series.


6. It should avoid using the word "Chronicles" in it, since I have two series with that already used.

Sound easy? Well, if you have a good one, post it in the comments here. If I find one I like and want to use, you'll win a free copy of Reality's Dawn, ebook or paperback if within the continental United States. Contest ends midnight on June 3rd. If I don't like any of the choices, no one wins.

So with that information...GO!