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Why I Wrote It: Magic, Technology, and Worldbuilding

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

This was the second book in my “Way WIth Worlds” Minibooks. Why I wrote it is twofold.

On the larger level, this was me wanting to try out writing a series of focused worldbuilding books. I’d decided to work on six at first to try it out, originally as tie-ins to my Way With Worlds books. Later, as I’ve noted before, I found these were valid on their own and began writing them regularly.

But that’s the general thing. Let’s talk why I focused on Magic and Technology – together.

Because for your worldbuilding magic and technology are the same thing. I’ve said it many times, and I gave myself an entire book to talk about it. So it was kind of cathartic.

See, Magic and Technology are how characters work with and change the world. Rituals and coding, spell gestures and wiring, are all just “I want to do X so Y happens.” For the sake of worldbuilding, they’re almost always the same.

This is important because we so often focus on the differences between magic and technology. This leads us down the path of focusing on the differences between them. We ask what the magic system is like. We ask how probable the technology is in our world.

But these differences are only a small percentage of all the questions we should ask bout a world.

How does this work? What is the impact? Who teaches it? What is the effect? Once we decide on a magic or technology, the major worldbuilding questions dwarf the questions of “how many necromancers can dance on the head of a hard drive.”

Putting this in book form felt great. Here’s the hard questions to ask about magic or technology. Here’s the social impacts to think about. Here’s all these questions without getting lost in differences.

If I hadn’t done the Way With Worlds series, this probably would have come back as another work, perhaps a larger book. Instead it got to be part of the larger picture.

This will always have a special place for me, because of this.

And that’s why I wrote it.

Steven Savage

Steve’s Book Roundup For February!

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I write a lot and have quite a few books.  So now and then I’m going to post a roundup of them for interested parties!

My sites

Fiction

I’ve been returning to fiction with a techno-fantasy setting of several planets orbiting a star called Avenoth.  Take a typical fantasy world of magic and gods, and let it evolve into the space age and internet age . . .

  • A Bridge To The Quiet Planet – Two future teachers of Techno-Magical safety find trying to earn their credentials hunting odd artifacts backfires when you’re hired to put some back . . . on a planet where gods go to die!

The Way With Worlds Series

This is what I do a lot of – writing on worldbuilding!.  You can find all of my books at www.WayWithWorlds.com! 

The core books of the series will help you get going:

  • Way With Worlds Book 1 – Discusses my philosophy of worldbuilding and world creation essentials.
  • Way With Worlds Book 2 – Looks at common subjects of worldbuilding like conflicts in your setting, skills for being a good worldbuilder, and more!

When you need to focus on specifics of worldbuilding, I have an ever-growing series of deep dive minibooks.  Each provides fifty questions with additional exercises and ideas to help you focus on one subject important to you!

The current subjects are:

Creativity

I’m the kind of person that studies how creativity works, and I’ve distilled my findings and advice into some helpful books!

  • The Power Of Creative Paths – Explores my theories of the Five Types of Creativity, how you can find yours, and how to expand your creative skills to use more Types of Creativity.
  • Agile Creativity – I take the Agile Manifesto, a guide to adaptable project development, and show how it can help creatives improve their work – and stay organized without being overwhelmed.
  • The Art of The Brainstorm Book – A quick guide to using a simple notebook to improve brainstorming, reduce the stress around having new ideas, and prioritize your latest inspirations.
  • Chance’s Muse – I take everything I learned at Seventh Sanctum and my love of random tables and charts and detail how randomness can produce inspiration!

Careers

Being a “Professional Geek” is what I do – I turned my interests into a career and have been doing my best to turn that into advice.  The following books are my ways of helping out!

  • Fan To Pro – My “flagship” book on using hobbies and interests in your career – and not always in ways you’d think!
  • Skill Portability – A quick guide to how to move skills from one job to another, or even from hobbies into your job.  Try out my “DARE” system and asses your abilities!
  • Resume Plus – A guide to jazzing up a resume, sometimes to extreme measures.
  • Epic Resume Go! – Make a resume a creative act so it’s both better and more enjoyable to make!
  • Quest For Employment – Where I distill down my job search experiences and ways to take the search further.
  • Cosplay, Costuming, and Careers – An interview-driven book about ways to leverage cosplay interests to help your career!
  • Fanart, Fanartists, and Careers – My second interview-driven book about ways to leverage fanart to help your career!
  • Convention Career Connection – A system for coming up with good career panels for conventions!

Why I Wrote It: Epic Resume Go!

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

Epic Resume Go! is my book on creating a great resume, focusing on a “storytelling” style – making a resume fun to make (as a kind of narrative media) and interesting to readers. It’s origins illustrate just how an idea can develop – in this case, over a decade.

The origins of Epic Resume Go stretch back about twenty years. I was reading some article in a local employment newspaper (think of it as “Dice.com” before the internet was the job search place) about resumes. The article noted that you wanted to make your skills and experience apparent.

That lovely little article kicked off my interest in making good resumes. Over time I polished my method of making resumes, and got good results from them – people liked them. A person interviewing me for a job mentioned I’d covered everything, that I told a good story. That’s when it struck me – I was telling a tale.

It was pretty obvious in retrospect. I had an introduction (setting a scene), skills (showing what I can do), a history (like a backstory), and bits like hobbies that showed me as a person. It showed who I was and where I was going – and that bit of feedback helped me further perfect my method.

As life went on, I found myself giving people advice on resumes. This meant I was learning more, but also I kept giving the same feedback. So why not a book?

Writing the book was pretty easy, since I already had a system, I just had to give it structure. Thus Epic Resume Go! was born – the idea was to make it an exciting title evoking things like Sentai and anime. Because I’m a nerd.

I also paired the book with speaking at cons and developing handouts. This helped people out more – but also it meant I now had several things to send people who needed advice. Sometimes reading my stuff was far more productive than letting me ramble.

I even rewrote the book later, wanting to make it clearer and more up to date. Surprisingly, little changed – mostly you had to sync it with your other social media.

If there’s a lesson to take away from Epic Resume Go! it’s that we probably all have something very useful to share that should be in book form. Maybe for friends, maybe for a limited audience, maybe for the world. So why not go for it?

Steven Savage