Today we started Creative Writing World Building Camp! After a what-if creative writing technology, where we imagined the ripple effects from a physical change, social change, magical change, and technology change (pulled from current events) and how they’ll impact the future 50, 100, 500 years from now, we went over some basic terms of Speculative Fiction. Then we discussed the continuum of hard systems to soft systems. Mostly, you’ll hear about this in terms of hard magic and soft magic, but the same rules apply to technology and real world skills. Think medical dramas. The real life hard rules of medicine matter a lot in some fiction and in others, there’s a softer system of medicine in play where really, the hospital is more of a setting that contributes to the atmosphere of the show rather than a medical mystery to be solved.

After lunch, we broke talked about how climate and weather can be used to intentionally set the mood and tone of a story, so the campers started creating the climate of their worlds (or realistic settings) and what weather may be occurring during key scenes.

Check in tomorrow to see what learn on day two of world building!