Markdown, your favorite text editor and Git is a free, portable and ever lasting solution. Yes, the setup takes a lot longer and may be difficult to learn but you'll have no dependencies to platforms, operating systems, or anything. If you need some of the more advanced features, take a look at Logseq.

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Call me old-school or paranoid, but ever couple of months i make copies of all my writing between Google Docs, OneDrive, my PC, and even a thumbdrive. I got burned in college 1 too many times.

12:01 I’m going to call this “time warp” thing Author’s Blindspot until something better comes along. The concept is you the author know what something is supposed to look and sound like so your brain fills in the gaps. It’s pretty much the same thing programmers go through when they can’t find a bug in their own code and it ends up just being a simple missing punctuation mark, looking at you semicolon. The only cure is to have multiple people read your finished work specifically to find grammar problems. Our brains are extremely good at filling in the gaps and turning patterns into sensible constructs. Pareidolia doesn’t just affect ghost hunters and Bigfoot researchers.

Your first point is a falsw dichotomy you state two things one to do instead yet both are normaly done together in basicly every fantasy novel thats ever suceeded

I read this in a comment on another worldbuilding video and it really lines up with the 5th mistake "When I'm enjoying a great story, I don't need to know everything. But I need to **feel** like the author knows everything"

I was reading a book that was supposed to be a medieval fantasy, but it distracted me with modernity in 2 ways- -The modern usage of the word “Black” in reference to humans. The word black was definitely used in reference to humans in medieval times, but it meant any person with dark coloration. It wasn’t used to point out a specific “Race”. Likewise, they used the word “White” basically meant “Not tanned.” But in the book characters where described as black in a very modern way. It was t odd because people with Asian features where described using in-universe cultural descriptions, so I don’t know why black people didn’t get the same treatment. -Their is a museum in a king’s palace that has dinosaur fossils on display. But they describe them about the same way someone in the 1920’s would. I expected that in a world with dragons and bird men, dinosaurs would be thought of as something even greater and very mysterious. But no. They have the same scientific names for them and everything.

Hey, I've just discovered your channel, and it really resonated with me. I'm just finished with the 3rd draft of my book and feel that the start is much weaker than the end. Right time, right place, I guess.

Great video; decided to sub.

I’m want it but the problem is can I seriously justify an extra 220 dollars over the Kindle Paperwhite? I’m also an author and my notes app on my phone is so messy because I always have so many random ideas and notes for books as I’m walking. I don’t carry around notebooks so I have to type on my phone which I HATE. I either type keyboard, or I hand write. I want a scribe. But my E-reader will primarily be my E-reader. In that case, is it really useful? I want a device that I’ll take everywhere with me to READ. I go everywhere with my physical reading book like you go everywhere with your notebook. I can be carrying around five different books at the same time. That problem is solved by any kindle. So is the convenience of writing on my scribe rather than just pulling out my phone and jotting it on my notes app, which I keep open while I’m writing the actual book on my computer, really worth 220? I’m getting it for my birthday on September 29. Is it worth it? Another small note, how would you compare it in size to a book? Will I be able to just take it in my hand everywhere or is it a big IPad type device. I know the Paperwhite is tiny and i can take that everywhere in my hand. What do y’all think? Is the extra money worth it?

Okay, but what about alien planet settings, where the beasts there are sort of convergent with Earth animals? It’d make no sense to call a huge, cetacean-like animal that lives in the clouds a whale, since the alien race would have absolutely no concept of an Earth whale. It may superficially resemble one, but again. Alien planet. Plus, it lives in a vastly different habitat. Can’t avoid Shmerping there, or it kills immersion.

So glad I found your channel! It feels like there’s a ton of ways to mess up telling a great story. I’m definitely going to rifle through all your videos!

Danke. Nice and clear. Reedsy sounds great. I'm tired of dealing with Scrivener.

This was very helpful, thank you ❤

Counterpoint against 1: the problem isn't schmerps themselves, but how they're structured in a sentence. If you just copy and paste the entire fauna of earth into your world, it's gonna feel like a coat of paint onto our world. However, when making neologisms, we tend to hyperfocus on them and forget how normal people talk. Much like we have general worlds for horses and dogs and we very rarely say "oh look, that's a Cocker Spaniel! They're very common 'round here in the London area", we just say "oh look a doggo!" or not say it at all. The solution to schmerping isn't not to schmerp the world, but to not schmerp your writing. Introduce your schmerps, make as many as you want, but introduce them slowly, and be careful around the places and roles they have in your actual sentences. This is writing, you control every last character that you put, so you can overload your sentences with a metric croton of schmerps, or you can have people talk normally, and leave hints of those schmerps all around like real cultures do when translated to English. It's not exactly realistic to have a translator's note every fifth word, but there must be some things that just don't translate, else they'll just feel like we're in the western hemisphere of our own planet all over again. Counterpoint against 2: nope, nope nope nope nope nope. Do *not* change units. While we CAN make new concepts, really anchoring ideas like the passage of time or distances should not be touched, because else you run the risk of taking your readers into a journey they're absolutely not equipped to understand. If everything living in your world is roughly bipedal or tetrapedal, round 1.30 to 4 meters in size, houses are house sized, mountains are mountain sized, continents are continent sized and cities are city sized, then unless you really, REALLY REALLY know what you're doing messing with the sense of scale is a recipe for disasters, not only because your readers will have to read your novel with a calculator on the other hand to make conversions, but also because you really expose yourself to mistakes of your own if you mess size too much. And much like that, when time is a factor in a story, messing with the length of a day or the length of a year can really throw your readers off. In Avatar, for example, a day lasts a day on earth, the planet is roughly Earth sized, and even though they use a different calendar based on the 100 year war, a year is still a year because then we know instantly what it entails, and we know the stakes for knowing when Aang has to fight the Fire Lord in one year's time. Counterpoint against 3: it depends. Your world can have major structures, as long as you know how to handle them. Yeah it's true, having "the barbarians of the north" is not a very interesting idea, but having "the barbarians of the north (according to the perspective character) is an EXCELLENT way to then subvert those expectations by actually going to the north and seeing what those barbarians are actually like. This trope is called the planet of hats, it's a whole area where everybody wears the same hat. We all have planets of hats, we understand the world via monolithic structures like "The Roman Empire", "The United States", "the Chinese", "the ancient Greeks". And that's ok! The world is complicated and only via active learning we can dig out its full complexity, and sometimes you need a multi-week excavation operation to do so, going through multiple geological layers like "So ancient Greeks lived in Greece and spoke Ancient Greek, they wore togas up and followed the Ancient Greek mythology". And then you go to "actually Greece wasn't a monolithic structure, rather it was a combination of self-sufficient city states called polis that were roughly self governing and shared many cultural elements", to "actually Ancient Greek isn't a monolithic language, rather it had many many dialects, some of which utterly unintelligible to each other. In fact even though all of them had literature some literature like Sappho's poetry is way less preserved because her dialect wasn't as widely popular" to "actually the polis weren't as monolithic as we thought, like yeah you have Athens and Sparta, but they constantly conquered and allied and enligued and founded each other, making the task of making "A mapnof Greece's polis almost a "which year are we talking about?" undertaking" to "actually the ancient Greek mythology wasn't that uniform. Some gods were adored in different places. Athena was adored in Athens, Arcadia primarily had Hermes, Ares had Sparta as protectorate, but even though some gods were adored in most places, each region had its own subset of deities that they primarily followed and built temples to" to "actually there wasn't even a "Greek mythology". The Greek gods were an incredibly fluid concept. City states changed gods all the time when a better suited one came to be. Pan and Hermes used to be the same guy, many polises switched to Demeter as her popularity evolved. Persephone used to be a dark queen of the underworld until it became the daughter of Demeter boys evolution, Poseidon used to have Hades' job until he popped into existence and Hermes' name might have been an epithet for a different God or even the very concept of road and travel that became a god." to "damn, the more I read the more I realize the city states were incredibly complex and our idea of Greece was basically the golden age of Athens with a bit of Sparta thrown in there". And it's true, a lot of "Greek architecture" is in Athens, the Parthenon, mount Olympus, Greek democracy started in Athens, Greek philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, Socrates and our boy Diogenes were all Athenians (Aristotle was actually born in Stagira but joined Plato's school in Athens at 17/18). But all of Greece did its own thing, all of them had a loosely connected Hellenistic identity and what was "Greece" evolved over time as they responded to different internal and external conflicts. But we still understand them all as "Greece" because it is hella convenient. Counterpoint against 4: nothing to say here. Change is natural. The Roman Empire was a complex and multifaceted empire with hundreds of peoples but when we think of Rome we think about what the city of Rome was during a relatively short time during the golden age of the empire. Again with Greece, notice I didn't say "Athens", but "golden age Athens". What we think when we think of Greece is really just 200 years of time when Athens was ridiculously rich and everything was going very fucking well for them and they built temples and edifices and buildings and were so well off they could focus on arts and philosophy. But Greece was a complex and multifaceted 4000+ years long endeavor, a borderline uninterrupted process from whatever the fuck the Minoans were (Pre-Bronze collapse civilization that lived in Crete. We don't know a lot about 'em) to Myceneaen Greek (Commonly thought to be the earliest form of Greek language and culture) into Roman Greek, sporadic conquests by just about every empire under the sun, to modern day Greece. At no point what "Greece" meant was ever stationary. And those changes are what makes history so exciting, seeing the perspective of different people across time, how they evolved and changed to face ever changing challenges Counterpoint to 5: I'm tired already so I'll make it short. There is good exposition and bad exposition. You're 100% right that not putting *everything* that you know, but rather leaving factual buffers between what you show and what actually "is" out there, is a very good idea. However, "no history lessons" is a bit too much. Much like those ideas informed the world today and the reader doesn't have to know every battle China fought with itself to understand the 69420 times it broke into dynasties, it's useful to have context of why the world is in the current state that it is via CLEVER exposition, that uses the world and its current events, as well as characters to drive in an understanding and familiarity of what happens. You can know "so yeah this is the Qing dynasty" and that's about it, or you can know what came before the Qing dynasty and why its existence is so important (It was a major unification of all Chinese provinces, a very hard fought position). History lessons can be interesting, but they have to BE interesting. Like there's a fundamental divide between the highly technical way world builders make their worlds and the vibes based way the readers learn about it, like the divide between the formal linguistics-heavy way conlangs are developed (I would know, I'm a conlanger myself and have developed over 5 languages) and the methodical and structured way in which language is acquired. You never learned about Deontic modality when learning English, did you? Or about the three degrees of conditionals? The same divide happens in world building, you have this very formal and very thorough understanding of the world and you know that the best way to communicate it is via formal academic teaching, but writing isn't a history lesson. It can be if it's managed right, but that's hard and requires you to take a whole new perspective of your own work, one much more naturalistic and almost street level sometimes.

I’d buy Scrivener, but it won’t work on my Windows S mode. Windows App Store insists I turn off S mode off before downloading. Two people I know turned off S and ruined their windows computer.

Begining/Ending - they fit.

FACTS. It's just funny how people be like:"owh yeah , first 100 pages is quite boring and slow , but in 2nd book it really starting cool action , and final plot twist in the 9th book is stunning "...

Excellent!

Not all world building is for "readers". I hate this thing where worldbuilding = for novelists.

This video just freezes at 17 seconds that is so strange. RU-vid must have broke cause no one else is complaining about it.

Great tips, thank you and best wishes! :)

I'm fine with Word and being a power user I find its pretty adaptable too. Combined with MS Office 365 I have copies running on four different computers in sync including an M1 MacBook Pro. I also find it easier to work with AI as well such ProWritingAId. Also have Final Draft and use SudoWrite but never got into Scrivener. Your mileage may vary.

A way the earth kin could've retained an earth posture and deal with the betrayal: "You're in a cave. It protects you from the predators outside. But if you start chipping away at the walls, breaking the load bearing core pillars, you're just asking to be crushed."

I realised three key ways magic is used in other media and restrict my cast to one of them. There are those who can only direct their magic on themselves, these ones become magic warriors. There are spell casters, and tbere are those who make magical items (magical items are different to spelled items, which are ordinary objects with spells cast on tnem after). Each character is restricted to one of these paths, and their magic is essentially an extension of their personality (so a fashion mad character excels at making magical garments, for example).

This video was awesome! Great content. 1) An integration I can think of is some sport where the different elements compete. Especially if society and geographies are separated by element, you would naturally get some tribal behavior, and sport could be a healthy way for a integrated society to express that. 2) My magic system starts hard and moves to soft. i) The input is a resource called denny. ii) The outputs at first are the 4 forms of matter--turning denny into solid, liquid, gas, or plasma for various reasons. As we get deeper into the magic, the outputs get more squishy, like fortifying your own body or flying. iii) Limitations are the resource availability, individual ability, and a loss of one's self to the cosmic all, iv) Opportunities center around the divide between those who can use magic and those who can't--and we learn it's all a lie, and anyone can use magic. v) Magic is completely integrated as the "haves" and "have nots" that is the theme of my first book in the series. In later books, we learn the roles magic plays in religion and historical power dynamics, health of the planet and more. Thanks!

I did finish my first novel called the devil's dairy part 1 and I showed it to some of my family members. My dad was the last one, but he wanted to go to the documents to see what was written, and one of them was the prologue. he did say i did a good job writing the story, but it needs more historical information like the range war and so on and so forth. he was giving me some tips on how the publishing company works and most of it is more so business stuff, because if you send out the manuscript, chances are neither one of the people will say that it doesn't have more info. Right now, I'm going back to finish up adding information so on and so forth.

It feels like you are shouting in my face. I have no idea what your studio looks like but can we get twelve more inches of space?

I’ve been trying my best to make my magic system make sense. Different races have access to different magic in my world. It’s been difficult for me to make it all make sense. I’m trying not to do too much or too little. It has been difficult to figure out where that balance truly lies.

This was an absolutely fantastic video, thanks man.

I'm not sure if this has been mentioned in the comments already, but Dabble is an excellent middle ground. It has a lot of the same tools Scrivener does, like being able to write scene-by-scene, keep character and story notes, etc. It's browser-based, so you get that nice autosave/cross-platform (handy in my case, because I work between Windows, iOS, and Linux). It also saves your work locally, so if you lose your net connection, you don't have to worry about losing work. And while they are primarily a subscription service, you can choose to buy a lifetime membership. It's pricey, but it's been worth it to me. Another option if you want a one-and-done download is yWriter. It's entirely free, has a lot of the same tools Scrivener does, and downloads and installs to your computer. I actually found it because I was looking for a Scrivener alternative (since at the time I looked, Scrivener was Mac only). But since yWriter is free, there is zero risk to giving it a look. :)

I like that my novel starts out in a specific house, and that house incorporates a lot of elements which are brought up more often, including emotional conflict. The house is present in the subsequent two parts as well. By being forced to leave the house, my first book's MC is invested instead in understanding her mother's complicated journey and also being put into that same space.

00:00 Intro 01:23 Hard vs Soft Magic Systems 03:54 Inputs 08:33 Outputs 10:10 Limitations 14:10 Opportunities 17:39 Integrations

My magic system is still a WIP, but I have the foundation. Magic is fuelled by emotion. For instance, your magic will be stronger when protecting something you care about. Being angry might cause your magic to lash out violently and uncontrollably, while being calm might give you more precise control. Now I just need to figure out what's stopping a really angry farmer from tearing down a castle. 🤔

Good stuff! Subscribed! 👍

My WIP is a Percy Jackson meets Hellblade. I have created my own Pantheon of Gods and Goddesses. Children that are born half god and half human/elf/dwarf are called Godlings. A godling inherits a piece of their godly parents' abilities. For example, a godling who is the child of the goddess of Nature may be able to talk to animals, whereas the other child might just be really good at keeping plants alive. Godlings are the only ones BORN with magic, and this magic could consume the child if they do not learn to control it. The only other people that can posses magic are the Elves and the Dwarves, and only through a crystal that the Earth, Fire, Water and Air gods have created together. So the powers that someone wielding this crystal could control would be related to the four elements. This crystal has to be on them in order for the magic to work. So they have found ways, like wearing the crystal as jewelry, or they crush it and put it in the metal when creating their sword or dagger. Still trying to flesh things out, but I'm happy with what I have so far lol

This is the second time i see someone adress magic inputs only yumesuke's library tackles this point where he mentioned that with books inputs are more revelant for drama creation where as in a medium like anime almost all imputs are the same but the output is superior.. although in anime magic systems are called power systems

Just came across your channel. I am Loving this breakdown of how to build a magic system and applying it into our stories. Exercise for the imagination muscle. Lol Thank you!

I love this! I especially love the idea of inputs and integrations. Those two aren't something that's usually discussed when it comes to creating magic systems, but it's the part that I both struggle with and enjoy figuring out the most. Great video!

The magic system I made is both hard and soft if you ask me, because there are endless possibilities to magic, but all of it has a defined limit and weaknesses. Input: every mage needs knowledge of general magic first before using elemental magics, the three foundations of magic being the command, control, and commencement, more commonly known as the 3C, in order to cast magic, without knowledge to the 3C would result in uncontrolled magic release which is proven to be quite dangerous especially to high levels of mana used. Output: higher usage of mana will result in more powerful magic, and using a higher rate of magic will also result in stronger attack, healing, empowerment and defense. Limitations: the ignorance of your limits when using magic is proven to be insanely dangerous, that being said, "if magic has no other energy left for it to consume, it will feast on your own life", the over usage of magic can easily kill anyone, even an immortal would be gone if it gets drained out of energy, energy is what makes us exist, with no energy, you'll turn into nothing, boundless or not, it is the prime concept of inhibition that inhibits the abuse of things, no matter how powerful they are, everyone must sow what they can reap, death, is no exception. Opportunities: "magic is the might of our will, the will that the god gave us, for as long as you follow him, your will shall be proven almighty and unbending!" Magic is the base of every being, even if someone has no magic, they still have normal magic with them, which is used as a utility, such as ground control, no matter how blank someone is, magic will always be there for them, for it as the embrace of god. Integrations: every single being in the world has the capability to use magic, everyone can use every single magic, and everyone can create their own signature magic, but for different levels of course, "nothing is equal, but there will always be equity, for the god who taught us how to keep balance and unity." Bonus info: Religion: in my world, there is only one so far in which it is Christianity. "There is only one true god, not the strongest, but he is the mightiest of all things, he is not the most powerful, yet he is the only one who can protect us, not everyone believed in him, but he always protected all of us, despite all of our sins, he was the only one who was there besides us, he was not the most powerful, because he made us the most powerful things ever, but even with our shameful existence in which he regretted that he created us, he still sacrificed himself for us, he might be dead on the eyes of the close minded, but he will always be there for us, no matter what."

I created 5 magic systems and now with this video i can integrate and perfect them, thanks man.

I like that you went over input and output. Because most Magic system writing advice talks about them as if they are the same thing.

Very intriguing! Excited to see additional videos on it, I'm a real estate agent using Boox 10.3 for notes.

What are some of your favorite magic systems from a fantasy story? Are there any that have really stuck with you since you first read or watched them?

i’ve had an idea of my fantasy book since i was like 12 (i’m 23 now) and lately i’ve been working on it. so the thing is that my magic system is an elemental magic, and during past 11 years i stopped myself from working on it so many times because “nah it’s too obvious and familiar and repetitive blahblahblah”, and now i think that i finally did it pretty unique and deep so it can’t be called plagiarized. and then this video pops up. i mean, my magic system is still pretty different, but the concept of plenty elemental spirits and some type of bond with them - man, you made me question myself really hard 😭

In Berserk the elemental magic seems to be based on personality. The magical items begin to bond with the characters. A young wild fighter is given a fire dagger and he immediately stabs the wooden table just to watch it burn. One character is given wind elemental items. He's a very will of the wind type of person who tries to reconcile being pulled around by the will of other people. The main character has a sword that has been soaked in the blood of demons for so long that it's become a dark elemental weapon capable of damaging strong spiritual forces. The magical system is very associated with elemental spirits, but the human world is seen as a spiritual force in itself that is consuming the natural world, destroying all other magic.

I'm just going to throw my protagonist into a generational civil War in a different land he's not from. 😅 As absurd as that may sound right now, That IS the premise of the first leg of his journey. Having the protagonist be confronted with "history in the making" is just a fascinating perspective to me

Your content is brilliant and this video is on point. Thank you very much.

but my prologue is a past event that is also as gripping as my chapter 1 hook. who doesnt like a double hook

My story starts after the first inciting incident. I want to take the approach where what lead to the situation the character is in is revealed later in the story after it gets some setup. The focus of my story is magic. The premise is basically "Harry Potter but set in another realm". More specifically, my character is sent to another realm to learn magic. The story starts on Earth as my MC waits at what is basically the Kingscross Station of my story. This chapter is meant to be juxtaposed with the following chapter when she enters the otherworld-- the setting jumps from a cold winter night to a sunny spring morning. This is meant to reflect my characters mindset and how this is a new chapter for her. Since my story is about magic, i want to introduce it in some way in this opening chapter, i just haven't decided how yet. I'm also worried there won't be enough of a hook introduced here.