Ed – when you build a world – do you do random thoughts and pen one down and keep with a theme or do you do a bunch of random thought then think how to tie together?It depends on the project. If building for a particular purpose, or someone else, there are usually given "starter points"/concepts/ideas that I build on. Sometimes, when worldbuilding "clean slate" for myself, it begins with a lone idea or image or imagined scene. I grow from…
— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) February 28, 2019
2)…there. Any thinking about how to tie things together comes much later, when filling in the last few gaps in things, when there're already a lot of "well, if this and this, and that must come from somewhere, so we need a source of" threads to be tied down into the tapestry.
— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) February 28, 2019
Thank you. I find myself wanting to tie things together (connectedness) the whole time I am building and can struggle or it feels too pushed at times. Again – I appreciate you, sir. Thank you for being a wonderful gift to us all. Worldbuilding works differently for us all, so take this advice with a palmful of salt: when creating, instead of making the ties (pushing them), write them as questions: e.g. "Is the same as..?" "Part of?" "Connected to?" …preserving the idea/notion for later contemplation.
— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) February 28, 2019