A great panel at Life the Universe and Everything SF/F symposium. This topic is on history and folklore.

– It is important for you to be familiar with the topic that you want to write about. To do so. You need to research the topic and there are multiple ways to do that. One source might be the Internet. Another might be asking experts. Experts love talking about what they know. You only have to say the Golden statement. “I’m writing a book and I have a question.” And often, people will be overly eager to give you information about what they specialize in.
– Other sources of knowledge can be a call up a museum of the item or time. You want to ask questions about. People are eager to tell you what they know. Check out the website, the minimum wage historian.
– In Wikipedia articles will provide sources of where they got their information. Check those sources for further research.
– An additional source of knowledge is to go to original/primary source.
– Another idea is to check out is Google the word scholar. Then look for the more option and scholar
– You can make a scene seem plausible by providing a couple of accurate details. You can even base a story on the culture element. For example, the word bye actually came from the Christian culture of when people would say goodbye. There is a God be with you. That was shortened to the foreword bye.
– When you share your story with 10 people, and eight of those people accept and like it then the story works. If less than eight accept the story, then the story needs further work. You need to get feedback to find out what works in story and what doesn’t.
– Don’t use any element that does not move your story forward.
– World building can be done even by what type of food and lifestyle. The culture and society are influenced by if they have a steady source of food and resources. If the world does not have metal than their society has to find other ways to evolve without medal. They wouldn’t have the mindset to even think of metal as it never existed in their world, so they don’t miss it.
– When writing, If you have an important detail you need to put into the book; some authors will put a note with [] brackets as a reminder, to act as an anchor to remind them of that detail. Please be added later in the rewrite. If you come up with a new plot element then go back to the earlier part of the story and add important details. Nice to be foreshadowed or insert note and put in brackets. There are actually write the additional information. So the story can have that right detail when you know they need it
– ARN: is the word for a hand span Lang of the sun traveling across the sky
– Want to create a map? Choose a spot on earth and twist that landscape and angle and you have a new map
– Plot idea: lots of the timekeepers: a society has measured their time by the number of bamboo notches of a plant that grows everywhere around the world. It is from that of their society is based. Then that particular plant start dying and it becomes chaos because the very foundation of where they have based the society is crumbling. The eventual solution is on the brink of extinction. They create artificial bamboo in painting or metal work.
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