I don’t mean in your writing, but in your head, when you’re developing the story. How much do you grind down your thoughts into fine bits of sand so you can understand the minutest aspect of the plot or character you’re working on? Or do you start out a story with broad sweeps of thought and image, letting the details emerge as you go?
For me, I tend to spend a good bit of time building the world, its environment and even its mythology. It is much easier for me if I do this at the beginning then to make it up as I go through the writing process. Otherwise I keep hitting spots where I think, “I need something culturally or magically significant to happen here, but I have no idea what their culture involves.” Then I have to pull away from the story and think through it, losing the momentum of the prose in the process. I’d rather have the setting at hand when I begin, and then if I need to dicker around with it, shift a few timelines or language
There is a point where things gel. Where I can step back and say, okay, I could keep going, but this is all I really need to know for now. If I were to compare it to drawing a portrait of someone, I’d say I need the outline of their face, the arranged features (though subject to rearranging if necessary), some hair and eye color, and brushstrokes of their clothes. I don’t need all the shades and wrinkles and freckles dotted in. I don’t need everything…just enough so when I put this character into a scene, I see them right away.
Where do you begin? Do you get down into the grammar structure of your fantasy kingdom? Do you know their monetary conversion rates between neighboring lands and mapped out merchant trade routes? Draw maps? (I do)
I see that smile.
In my last novel, I made up the cultures as I went along. I also never mapped the countryside beyond figuring out where the mountains and the ocean lay relative to the principle cities. It was all seat-of-my-pants, otherwise.
What I did put a lot of effort into was sorting out goals and conflicts for the characters in each individual scene. Most of my preliminary notes consist of outlining the arguments people were going to have with each other.
That’s a great focus to have, one I think you can be in danger of overlooking if you do focus too much on worldbuilding. The characters suffer because you get sidetracked by this nifty environment you’re creating. I love that you outline all the arguments. That’s a great practice.