World Building Workshop

WORLD BUILDING FROM AN INTELLIGENCE POINT OF VIEW

Instructor: Merien Grey
Dates: September 5-30
PRICE: $25*
REGISTER HERE

As writers we always look for ways to make our jobs easier. If you are building a world from scratch you have enough on your plate. One of the things intelligence professionals do is build country studies. They are very similar to what an author does when they build their world. It is very easy to take one or two country studies that have a characteristic based on something in your story and find dozens of cause and effect relationships to build conflict. All you have to do is know where and how to look. By the time we are done you will know how to build your own country study and how to use the ones already available.

Your setting is a character of its own. It can push characters to kill, love, despair, or feel great joy. Everything in your story stems from and hinges on the world you build it in. When the stakes are high (life, love, money, freedom) the first thing any real organization (military or private) does is do a country study or some version thereof. These studies expose where potential conflicts may arise for those wanting to travel in this new land. As a writer you are after those potential conflicts, they ground your writing in reality and keep the cardboard out of your characters. This course is to provide you with new insights to how everyday things can change your setting. There are over forty key items intelligence professionals know before anyone goes near new territory. You will be given the perspective to look at your world like an intelligence operative would. Links to real world country studies will be provided along with how to understand them and apply that type of information gathering to your world making it fuller, more believable and roiling with conflict for you to capitalize on.

Image Credit: Adobe Stock | Photocreo Bednarek

About Merien Grey:

Merien spent eleven years in the military intelligence. She learned a lot of things and specifically ways to pick things apart to determine what significance each tiny item has. She is always into something and curious about nearly everything. She has multiple degrees specializing in Anthropology, Sociology, English and Communications Technology. She spent a decade traveling the world as a military intelligence analyst learning and observing all manner of people and their behavior. Before becoming an author and speaker, her occupations ranged from bartender to infrared security system instructor and developer to many years as a 911 operator. She currently lives in the shadow of Mount Rainier with her husband, two dogs and a little one who rules the land with an iron hand at least until bedtime.