Worldbuilding in progress

While I'm letting my muse mutter in the background on how to fill a short gap in my current WIP (after finishing a rather intense pair of scenes for my two MCs, particularly for the mage), I decided to ponder on some of the worldbuilding for their story.

I don't sit down and create a world, then find a story. Characters and situations comes first, sometimes when I'm not ready for them. Sort of like this story. Rather out of the blue, I imagined the meeting between this cursed young woman and an aging mage. It was going to be more of a semi-comedic fantasy love story, but it's become more of a epic fantasy adventure with kingdom politics and love to provide complications.

The comedy angle would have been lots of fun. You know, a light-weight fluff fantasy novel with only a brush against the idea that looks don't have to be important, good for mental dessert. I'd have loved reading it. But I haven't the foggiest idea how to write that way. I don't read much fluff, only when I'm in the mood for something breezy. So when I started trying to implement the idea and the world started filling in around them, their personal histories became much more important, giving the tone a serious angle. But then that's what I read most.

Some of the setting history has shaped up just from writing stuff that the characters are thinking and talking about, but this past week I hit upon the need for having a solid way for how characters in the setting would talk about magic. Though it will be teaching my readers "how things work," the upcoming conversations themselves will reveal the differences in what each knows about the topic.

After all, I know some basics in fine art, but I don't know much about advanced technique or the best supplies to use for each style. Some of my customers at work know even less, so the conversations are interesting sometimes. ;) Plus some areas I'm rather good at, like sewing, or getting better at, like beading, so when people have questions, I can provide greater assistance. I'm trying to keep that manner in mind when one character teaches another about something. It's all filtered through what they know or don't know on the topic as well as their opinion and experience with it.

So I think I've nearly got the basics for how magic works figured out including terminology. Now I've got more of the world trying to form up in my head, like what technological developments are available in order to make the world less of a stock fantasy world. One rather neat site I found this morning while looking up Renaissance technology is a gamer's history notes from creating the world used for a homebrew game. It's specifically stated that the notes are not strictly historically accurate due to the slant towards a fantasy game, but it makes a great overview.

After following one of the links at the bottom to its new addy, I also found The Medieval Technology Pages, which is supposed to be more accurate. I haven't finished looking through it, but there are pages on a variety of daily life items like artesian wells, hops, soap, and windmills.

Ideas are marching in my head for upping the basic tech level in my world while still keeping guns and gunpowder out of it. Time to go think on how to integrate some of these ideas.

Hope the rest of you are having a productive Monday, too.