Friday, August 2, 2013

YA World Building Panel: Brodi Ashton

Brodi Ashton

Brodi Ashton is the author of the Everneath series.

Everneath, book one

Neverfall, the novella bridging book one and book two

Everbound, book two


The panel talks about the challenge of second books in triologies, shares how each of them came to build the worlds of their novels, jokes about story bibles (and how a number of them didn't finish theirs),  and agrees on how sometimes it's hard to remember what happened in book one...

Brodi tells us she even has a character in book three agonize that they can't remember something that happened in book one!

She explains the story of Everneath, her contemporary take on the Persephone myth, and tells us how she figured out the world of Everneath with a pen and a paper plate.  (And yes, her world is in the shape of a circle!)

The discussion yields lots of great insights, including Brodi's comment,

"You can build a world that specifically challenges your character's specific flaws."

And she discusses how you can use details to ground readers in reality so you can introduce them to new things in your world and they'll keep their disbelief suspended.

From starting out feeling she didn't have a world-building bone in her body, Brodi has clearly become an expert.  She'll be leading a workshop on Saturday afternoon, "World Building from the Ground Up: Ten Questions to Ask Yourself Before You Hammer The First Nail, and Ten Aspects That are Often Overlooked by Beginners."

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