Thoughts So Far On Writing The Tree of Vines

As far as recorded dates go back to, I've been writing this version of The Tree of Vines since at least September 24, 2019, and I started the original version on November 20, 2017, so it's been a non-insignificant amount of time since I started to write the world of The Tree of Vines, and I thought at the end of 2020 (especially as the nearly catastrophic year it has been for the majority of the world) would be an appropriate time to at least give some of my genuine thoughts on ToV.

To be honest, I'm not absolutely certain where to start. My natural habit / instinct is to simply start scatterbrained, and just follow the trail of my mind, but in all honesty, I want this to be readable. I can't help but imagine it might come out as a bit cringe-inducing, like I'm trying too hard to sound fanciable... and you wouldn't be wrong! haha!

Eh, I think it's time I stop procrastinating on this and just get started. Scatterbrain is for the initial draft, and well sorted thoughts are for the finished, published version.

A Writer's Attitude

As of writing this, I've handwritten a total of 145 finished pages for the first draft of The Tree of Vines, and I've had numerous thoughts just in the last few months since I've started and finished Chapter Fifteen. I've felt this way long before one hundredth page, but I do feel a little "guilty" that I'm only at page 146, but at chapter sixteen. Something about apparently having that many "short" chapters is sort of irksome to me. Now, granted, I'm somewhat exaggerating, making it sound like I've actually lost sleep over it, but it's not that bad yet. Common sense and basically every piece of writing advice says to not worry about these small things, especially not as early as the first draft, and jokes aside, I do concur. There is absolutely no way I'd have written as far as I have without having to at least partially wield the ability to just not overthink literally every single detail every single moment. It's a common trap that many writers get into: What if my writing sucks? What if nobody likes it? What if I can't come up with any good plot lines? Characters? Locations? Jokes? and these thoughts are almost always exclusively in the very first draft of your very first book.

Of course, as of writing this I'm not obviously close to publishing one myself, but once you've written so many pages, there's no turning back. If you tell yourself otherwise, your mind will abuse that "knowledge" and will find an escape route as soon as possible. Maybe the person reading this is also a writer and knows what I'm talking about when I say I've written so "few" pages in such a "long" amount of time, and then going on to explain that it really doesn't matter so long as you're not on your deathbed. Every adult knows that your life can be taken away at any moment, but that's not something you can necessarily help. I'd rather die suddenly knowing that I was destined to not finish a book, then to have an idea rot away as I lay six feet under. You need that type of mentality when it comes to writing.

What is in the Making of a World?

Part 1 - Introduction

I really want to create a believable world more than almost literally anything else. My basic desires as a human are the only things it doesn't really ever overcome, thankfully. I like writing, and there's a part of me that wishes I could say I like it enough that I lose sleep and skip meals because of it, but to be quite honest writing is a dream more than it is a life-stealing hobby for me. That would be gaming, if I were quite honest. Now, granted, I don't usually skip meals because I'm in the middle of a game, but I will confess I lose sleep over it on a semi-regular basis. If I want to go to bed at "reasonable" time, I basically can't be gaming in a yet undiscovered amount of time. I'm still young, so I have time to figure out what that timeframe is, but something about it instinctively tells me that I shouldn't be gaming from around a hour before me bedtime. Well, I would be oversimplifying it if i kept it at "'cause instincts", as I feel it implies absolute ignorance, but I do have some reason to believe it. Call it a "slightly educated guess" and you'd probably be closer to being spot on with what I mean.

Part 2 - Mystery

But back to the topic at hand; I want Sekros to be believable, and that's really hard to do, especially when you have giants and people with superpowers. What does a world like that look like? To be honest, I still don't really know. The best I got is a religious world steeped in mysticism, mystery and history and other words with y in it, probably. I need to stop, but this is only a slightly filtered version of what my thought process is normally. However, I think it's kind of funny. Jokes aside (for now), a lot of this is really hard to depict. All of the big fantasy writers have heaps of all of these things, plus more, but what I find the hardest part is figuring out how to make these implicitly implied, as opposed to turning to the audience and exclamation of mystery! Intrigue! ???! And how do you this without saying it's a mystery?  I know there is a way, but I'm not completely sure of it. Speaking of mystery, I remember I once met someone online that said they rather disliked unexplained mysteries. I can't quite remember their logic, but I guess they were the type where these things would really nag at a book's enjoyability. I can sort of understand, but I'm probably not the last person who will stand by mystery being extremely vital to the intrigue of a plot or world.

Sometimes I feel like people carry this connotation that mystery is only murder or horror - these distant things that creative people make up with an indeterminate amount of time on their hands. Of course, I believe most people know that there are similar cases in real life - like why do people disappear? Is there a serial killer in your area, and do you know them? Etc. Etc. and while this is a legitimate point, people tend to neglect another side of mystery. As someone who thinks about it on a semi-regular basis, I cannot overemphasize this; there is mystery in the mundane. Now, there are probably people who would laugh out loud at that. "Mystery is all interesting! Mystery is exciting! Enthralling!" but no. That's purely subjective. Art is in literally everything you see and touch and interact with. Someone made that coffee mug and put some thought into it. Maybe it wasn't much thought, that's possible, but this also neglects another thing about the mundane; the coffee cup did not always exist. There was a person who designed it. It's possible there were multiple people throughout the world, granted, as it serves a practical function, but someone actually created it. Someone had to have had a problem, and they had to find a way to sort it out. Even the table you're sitting at had included this. Yeah, tables are perhaps one of the most mundane things to an average person (especially if you have access to the internet), but it's not like all tables are just elevated floor to put things on. Some are art pieces, some are elaborately and intensely designed to work and look that way. If anyone reading this is an engineer, they'd know what I'm talking about.

It's this part that is very difficult to create, too. I am not an engineer or really a professional in anything other than making things up. There are some things that are just common sense to me and probably the majority of people, but I'm the seemingly rare type who can question so-called "common sense". Something that seems like it could be sensible in a Hollywood movie could just be completely nonsensical dribble of someone who is only common, and lacking in sense. I like to believe I avoid and am not included in this, but I don't know that. You, the reader, don't either.  Besides that, with a fantastical world, some sort of "sense" might be different because of their world's circumstance. In order to create a believable world, you have to look into every single minuet detail, or at least consider it to some extent. I mean, granted, you don't need to describe the fauna of every single region, but you still want to describe it enough to create an atmosphere and image if you have a specific scene in mind. Some people will rightfully look into these things, and even though you don't have to cater to them, I am one of those nerds who likes a world where you can do this. Granted, I wouldn't do it myself, but at least I like knowing that other people do.

I'm probably overthinking it. I'm definitely overthinking it, but this is my time to speak and do it. I guess, apparently, my favorite part of worldbuilding is the mysteries. The things you don't know, but want to know. I like it when they have an answer, but I always wonder if they should have one. That's not really anything that I or you can tell anyone. Hopefully you can trust your instincts, and don't end up over explaining everything.

Part 3 - Language

Oh god. Don't get me started. Yet another thing I adore, but wouldn't otherwise look deeply in to. I want to create a language... or two or three. I know it's one of the things writers mess up the most, and I constantly wonder if I am. I suppose that's something that will simply happen no matter what. English is the only language I fluently speak, and while I'd say I'm good at pronouncing the nuances of other languages, I don't usually know the context or meaning of the words or sounds. The only languages I have any understanding of are Latin and Japanese, and even then, only very vaguely, but there is one advantage to this; I am at least not excluded to the grammar of English. I don't know how well known this is to any polyglots / bilingual or monolinguals, but grammatically English is relatively unique. I can't break it down right here and right now, but essentially the subject comes first in most languages, but English is more like.. adjectives connective word and then subject - more or less - as opposed to subject adjective adverb connective word, or something.

Obviously I'm not a linguistic specialist, so I can't accurately break it down to the simple terms, but it's really hard to make a language when you only speak one, and it's even harder to make those languages based on a grammatical structure you aren't used to. Tolkien himself based his languages on pre-existing languages, which is very smart and pretty much the only practical way to go about it, but he still created his own alphabet and vocabulary, even if Elvish was based on butchered Finnish. Tolkien natively spoke German, Afrikaans and English, but he deeply loved languages. I don't know how many languages he spoke fluently (other than the ones he invented), but he understood them and the logic of their structure.

On the other hand, I am glad I know how to make sounds. At the end of the day, languages are just sounds uttered through our mouth, nose or a combination of both. Figuring out how to make a language that doesn't sound like yours, but still sounds like a language (as opposed to slightly over glorified baby speak) isn't something everyone can do, and my  you basically just need to imitate what different languages sound like to you. Spelling it out is somewhat difficult unless you happen to know the phonetic alphabet, which is also an immense amount of help for writers and readers alike. And with that said... I do not follow that advice, to be quite honest. Thankfully, I have made it easy for me, though. If it wasn't obvious, I am working on at least a basic implementation of languages for The Tree of Vines, but I'm doing something a little different from all of that.

I am, as someone who isn't completely insane (can't and won't promise I'm not partially), the languages in Sekros do have a base line, in real life and their own. Essentially, any new language is loosely based on interpretations of an older language which is still partially spoken by the ancestors of humans (read the "Elusive Prologue" for the context), on top of being based around the sounds of a handful of ancient languages, such as Hebrew and Latin, with a small mix of modern Japanese. Now, here's where I need to come clean: this base language was not solely created for The Tree of Vines. In actuality, I had written the sounds, alphabet and some of the vocabulary a long time ago for another scrapped story, and in fact, there's a handful of names and concepts that I created as far back as middle school, or even when I was very little. The language itself was started in late middle school / early high school, and I managed to remember and keep the notes for what I had created. I altered them because I felt like I understood languages, their sounds and structure a bit better, but the core of it is still something I've been working on long before The Tree of Vines. But anyway, what is completely new is the languages intentionally built off it. 

I had a basic idea for the language being grammatically different from English, but having it as the language the others are based off of is an advantage. I don't know if Tolkien did as much within his own universe, or if other writers have too. I'd be surprised if there wasn't at least one popular writer who didn't do the same thing as I have, but it's an idea I genuinely adore. Because of this, I can use pretty much all of these techniques at once. Here's how I've basically been doing it; What is the word for it in the original Cloud-Language? What area do I want this place based on, and what does their real life language sound like? How can I change the base language to better resemble the real life counterpart? and I guess that's it. To be honest, I feel like I went into this with an immense amount of excitement, but burned out half way, but I am genuinely excited that I figured out a working formula for Sekros. Speaking of which, Sekros is also a "base" word. I've yet to do much with it, for various reasons, but there is a degree of excitement to making different takes on the name of their world. Speaking of which...

Part 4 - Beliefs

Now this is where I had the most fun! If you can believe it, everything was neat and of course necessary to the current take of the Sekros, but I loved creating the religion(s) of The Tree of Vines. Of course, being the first draft, there is still much to do in all likelihood, but I do have a few important details; the common religion, and the truth of it. I grew up in a Christian household surrounded by people who liked nerdy things, including science and history. A large part of real world history is, of course, religion. To some extent you can argue it still is, as the western part of our world wouldn't be so angry at Christianity if it wasn't for what happened in the past. I'm not going to state my exact opinions on different religions, because this isn't the place for that, plus I find it extremely disrespectful. Because this topic in the real world is still widely tied to politics all around the world, I will say what matters the most to me is respecting each other. If we all simply listened to each other, things would be a lot better than they are now, and my belief in this is a large part of The Tree of Vines. In fact, the name eludes loosely to this, however, when I wrote "beliefs" in the subheader of this segment, I was referring to religious beliefs. While I do believe the majority of religions overlap with this fundamental lesson (or at least are supposed to), that is far beside the point.

Unlike the real world, people generally believe the same thing. Now, I understand how this can immediately turn people off to it being immersive, and if I were quite honest, on a face value it does to me too, however there is tons of context leading up to this. It is covered in the "Elusive Prologue" (which is the previous post on this blog), but to summarize; all humans are descended from these larger and more powerful beings called "Cloud People". Everyone knows this, and everyone has different views on this. While I say "believe the same thing" what I meant was that everyone "knows their origins", or at least part of it. I do actually have the exact and truthful origins thought up, but I really do not want to spoil it. It will eventually be something important to the world of The Tree of Vines, so it would be vital I stop at saying I know the truth of their existence. 

Anyway, on top of knowing that they had descended from the "Cloud People", who aren't extinct, many people worship them as Lords, because, a long time ago, people had called them gods, but such a strong word had brought up war upon war. Humans had discovered they should separate and leave each other alone, leaving their ancestors to do whatever they wanted. Being Humans, they didn't entirely follow this edict, and because the Cloud People aren't really any different from Humans (aside from their height and strength), they too had not really listened to this rule. People still fight, some people having forgotten the promise for peace, and some people having never heard it in the first place. In the long run though, the common religion is that of peace and worshiping their ancestors as Lords, which to them is similar to the word "Guardians".

Some of the Cloud People had really leaned into their new role, and have gotten egotistical about their identity. The Cloud People all live long, develop eccentric personalities and have the tendency to fall into the same traps as Humans. Their only saving grace is that they widely love Humans. They would not fight Humans as a single group of Cloud People, as to them, they are like their sweet and innocent children. They're not stupid, and they know Humans are no less perfect than they are, for they've seen and lived the same mistakes. 

So now you know the Cloud People are more or less the same as Humans, but they're worshiped as Lords. Are there more to the beliefs of Sekros? Glad you asked, because this is my favorite part. Better yet, it's a part of the story that I can say! Beyond the belief that the Cloud People are the powerful ancestors to Humans, there is only one ultimate being over them all, over all life and existence; Fate. Well, calling Fate a being is sort of misleading. Fate is still very much a concept mirroring our own, but in the world of Sekros, Fate can manifest itself into a living, touchable form. It's rare, but it's not impossible. It's not known, perhaps even unlikely, that everyone calling themselves Fate manifested were honest people, but it is known Fate has manifested itself. When, or why? That is a mystery to be discovered in The Tree of Vines.

Part 5 - History & Culture

Everything culminates here. You cannot have history without mystery, beliefs and language. I already covered a chunk of history, some of it more implied than others. And with history, comes culture and its context. To be honest, I wrote the majority of everything that would go here, as to me everything before was more or less synonymous with cultures and their history. Strangely enough, history is probably the section where I unintentionally look the least at actual events. Now, granted, what I said implied that I did look at events for everything else, and history being all of these in a nutshell means that some of it is, but as far as the actual going ons, I used the largest part of my imagination. 

If there's anything I'd love to sit down and binge, it's history. In fact, I do it on a regular basis. Then you add that I read other books (less than I'd care to admit) which themselves take from real history, you can get a rough idea of how I got my ideas. I wish I could at least say I targeted a certain era of history. I mean, it will be a fantasy series, so of course I took a lot from medieval history, but also from the Renaissance period. I don't know how many people know that, but fantasy post-Lord of the Rings has always had a close mix of Medieval and Renaissance, granted the Medieval "period" was far longer and more complex than just the Renaissance, but in summarized history, they're considered two separate periods. Renaissance was, of course, the earliest start to the modern period, and obviously every period was a result of the period before, but I mean if there's an earliest point I understand as being called "modern", Renaissance is it.

Anyway, being an entire world, you cannot and should not just say "the world's culture" and assume that makes any sense. There's multiple cultures, but if I were to tell the truth, it's either obvious or undeveloped. It, up until this point, takes place in western-inspired culture, having hints of African-inspired and Middle-Eastern-inspired history. There's not much to explain on a surface level, as, again, it's not developed enough, but as I'm being very thorough with this first blog post, I thought I'd just get that out of the way.

To summarize, if you were writing a book, and you got as far as religion and language, your history is already made. To add more, you'd want to look at what would make sense in that context, and that's more or less what I've been doing.

Conclusion

There is an immense amount of what I still have to write - including but not limited to the actual book. I'm only 146 pages into what I plan to be an initial two books totally at around 1,400 pages. I want to write more past that, but again that's far, far into the future. Anyway, if you read this far, I hope you can stick around to see the conclusion of this initial story.

Thank you so much for your support,

J. P. Tainter