Victoria Aveyard

New York Times Bestselling Author of "Red Queen"

Blog

New Website and More!

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Hello and welcome to the revamped website, not to mention what I hope is going to be a semi-regularly updated blog! I’m so excited to have a dedicated space to feature blog posts, let alone one so beautiful. Thanks to Moxie Design Studios for the incredible new site.

In the future, I plan to use this blog space to touch on a parade of topics, ranging from craft posts to draft updates to personal photos of trips, book events, panels, or just fun moments. Let me know what you’d most like to see from me, and I’ll do what I can to facilitate. I’ll also be maintaining a newsletter (sign up here ) featuring some of the above as well as exclusive or early content. I won’t lie to you, I’m really excited to start talking about my new project and can’t wait to share some glimpses of what I’m cooking up. I’m also more than happy to talk RED QUEEN and the world I have the rare privilege of sharing with all of you.

I’m also including a few old posts from my now defunct blogspot, the oldest of them coming from all the way back in April 2013. These were written pretty far back in the day, but I think they have valuable glimpses into publishing and just my personal journey to where I am now. I hope you enjoy! It was a real time capsule re-reading some of these.

What’s up next for me?

Drafting, mostly. I’m doing as much as I can to prioritize the new project, as it’s the launch of a new series and I’m shaking out of my skin with nerves. I don’t have any more work travel or events planned until next spring (more on that, and the location soon), but I do have a dream trip planned for when I hit my first draft deadline. And then it will be time for more drafts, edits, the holidays, and beyond! See you through it all!

Cheers,
Victoria

You Call It Play God, I Call It Worldbuilding Part 1

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Based on notes and comments and my own inflated ego, my greatest strength is worldbuilding. I’ve patrolled a lot of blogs and how-to’s and they’ve helped me so much in my WB process, so this is my attempt to give back a little. Of course, what works for me might not work for others and vice versa. And then there’s the little Tolkien on my shoulder saying “Oh you drew a map? That’s cute. Try inventing a language next. Try inventing ten languages. SASSY TOLKIEN OUT.”

Let’s just get it out there. I’ve been worldbuilding since I was about six, opened the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time guidebook, saw the map of Hyrule and decided to draw my own. (Sidenote: I always think, wow that’s the dorkiest sentence I’ve ever written/said. And somehow I always find a way to out-dork myself). Anyways, I was drawing maps before I ever started writing stories. It was only after the Crayola-scribbled wonder was done that I started thinking about what went on in those cities and poorly-drawn mountains. I have a habit of doing things the wrong way, so it only makes sense that I started worldbuilding before I ever started writing. And now, sixteen years later, the habit still stands. I always worldbuild before I write.

As I did with my Hyrule-knockoff, I usually start with a map. I did it with THE RED QUEEN and, because I am a fool for maps, I even did it with all my screenplays. Luckily the zombie western, the castle thriller and the WWII spy movie actually required maps (I honestly think I only write things that need maps). Yes, I even drew a suburban neighborhood/built a Sim house for a teen comedy I wrote. I won’t mention the frat row I mapped out for the “fratire” comedy.

When it truly comes down to it, I didn’t need the maps to aid the story, I needed the maps to help myself. The draw of worldbuilding, for me at least, isn’t just about setting the stage and fleshing out a world. It’s about becoming part of your story. There are probably a thousand bits of worldbuilding for RQ that never made it into the final draft, but they still exist. They’re still in my head. When I write a particular scene in a particular place, I know what’s going on in the next room. I know who has a pretty sister and has a complex about it. I know who that rando guard walking by in the hallway is and what family he comes from. All this just deepens the world for me, which in turn allows me to live, breathe and, hopefully, write about it as truthfully as I can.

I truly believe that worldbuilding is meant to aid the writer as much as the reader, and perhaps more so. That said, there’s a point in time where worldbuilding stops being a crutch and starts behind a burden. I’m talking about the dark side of worldbuilding. *thunderclap*

It’s a trap I’ve fallen into with shocking regularity. I’ve got the map, some family trees, a brief history of world/characters and maybe even a plot outline for posterity, and I’m ready to write. But wait, I need to flesh out language parameters! But wait, I need to step this family tree back another 10 generations! But wait, I need to made coats of armor and 20 different color-coded maps depicting trade routes! But wait, but wait, but wait. This is the danger of worldbuilding – you get sucked in.

Worldbuilding is, in my opinion, very delightful quicksand. Once you’re in too deep, it’s almost impossible to get out and therefore, to actually start writing. In my experience, this is usually my way of not writing while tricking myself into thinking I am actually am. And then suddenly it’s six months later and I’ve got some pretty maps, cool names, and no story. My inspiration is gone. I can’t tell you how many binders of family trees I have lying around. (Beat that, Mitt Romney). And no matter how much work and color-coding I put in, they’re never going to result in anything more.

It’s taken me a long time to figure out the happy medium, at least for the style and subject I’m pursuing right now. For example, my YA fantasy THE RED QUEEN has the least amount of worldbuilding I’ve ever done for a story. It also happens to be the first story I’ve ever finished. Coincidence, I think NOT. I started writing RQ with a single, very rudimentary map, a plot outline, three pages of world background, and an excel sheet full of characters, tiny bios, and other miscellaneous details that I filled in along the way. For the first time, I didn’t fill entire binders and for the first time, I finished a book. The world and characters evolved on the page and I let them. The world existed more in my head more than any excel sheet or map. Edits were made, characters were cut, but from page one I was in the world and I was in the story. I found my happy medium of worldbuilding, at least for this tale. And it was a lot less than I thought it was.

Now the challenge comes in not falling off the worldbuilding wagon. The other project I’m currently working on is a worldbuilding extravaganza. But now that I know less is much, much more, I hope I can rein myself in long enough to actually write it. Today I did some historical and cultural work in the world, but didn’t flesh out what didn’t need to be fleshed out. I made up some religions, but restrained from writing ten pages on them. THIS IS PROGRESS.

Of course, the amount of worldbuilding required varies from tale to tale and genre to genre. The only way to figure this out is, unfortunately, to make a lot of mistakes and fill a lot of binders and build up a lot of self-control. No, Victoria, stay away from the Photoshop.

New Map of the RED QUEEN WORLD!

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Hello! Some info about the newly expanded map of the Red Queen world can be found here on the Epic Reads website! Here’s a bit of a breakdown on how this new map came to be.

I started with this smaller and very simple map to give the Harper artist the nitty gritty to work with.
After the artist took a crack at expanding the map to include Montfort, and beautified the map (LOOK AT THOSE GORGEOUS MOUNTAINS), I had some notes. It can be tricky communicating map stuff and our biggest issue came when we realized the new map had been translated to Robinson projection, which was throwing off some rivers and locations in a big way.
Now that we decided to expand the map to include Montfort, I expanded the original map underlay I was working with. I decided to go with Google Maps/original Mercator projection for ease of use to match up with the old geographic locations already established in Mercator. This helped immensely when planning out where old (and new) cities would be.
Here’s an idea of the overlay, and how much this part of North America has changed several thousand years in the future. Most rivers follow similar courses to their paths today, although they have been renamed.
With the new map underlay, it was easy to build out Montfort and the western reaches of Prairie and Tiraxes. I loved the style the artist developed for this map, so all I had to do at this point was get rivers, cities, and new borders in order. I included a key to the numbers naming new cities and rivers in an email.
Maps are my favorite, and working on this one was a dream come true. I’m so excited to keep growing the Red Queen world and can’t wait for this map to be included in King’s Cage!!

RED QUEEN Cover!

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So as most of you know, the cover for RED QUEEN was revealed last week. For the .01% of you who missed my avalanche of tweets on the subject, here it is again:

Sorry, I started to drool. I’m so in love with this cover. It’s everything I wanted, and then some. The folks at HarperCollins were really open to my original idea of a cover, and then ran away with it and made something better than I ever imagined. So who wants to see my original thoughts (because I procrastinate by designing covers)?
Back in the day when I was first penning the RED QUEEN manuscript, I would dip into Photoshop whenever I hit a roadblock. I designed symbols and covers or just manipulated photos until the ideas started flowing again. Here’s the first real RED QUEEN centric image I made (and stupidly included on the first page of the manuscript):
Pretty basic, but definitely gets across a clear message. Girl, crown, chess piece. Bam. And then I started to simplify even more, and tried my hand at a minimalist (hard to understand) cover:
The symbols are nonsensical until you read the book, and even then, they’re kind of hard to figure out. Also, I very clearly made this with rudimentary paint tools in Photoshop. Well done, me.
This is the final sketch I made when I knew a cover would be a real thing, and I wanted to jot something down so I had a better chance of explaining it to Kari Sutherland, the editor of RED QUEEN:
Not too bad, but definitely nowhere near the level of beauty we ended up with. And to illustrate exactly how easy the cover process was for RED QUEEN, this was what I told Kari when she asked about cover ideas:
“Uh, simple? I figure a crown upside down to show the world is not quite right. I’m big into simple, symbol covers.” And then I sent her a bunch of covers I liked, including:
 
Kari had the idea to add dripping blood and the Harper art wizards translated that into our first comp cover. It was a rough draft, but I still loved it, and leagues ahead of where I thought the cover would start:
First Cover
Second and Final Cover
So close to the final right? It only took Harper a single comp to nail down the cover of my dreams. A true miracle, if all the cover horror stories I’ve heard are true. A giant thanks to Kari, Suzie Townsend, Kristen Pettit, Jennifer Klonsky, jacket artist Michael Frost, jacket designer Sarah Nichole Kaufman, and the whole team at Harper who made this a real thing.

You Call It Playing God, I Call It Worldbuilding Part 2

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Wow, don’t you want to start worldbuilding after that long, meandering post about the dangers of worldbuilding? Follow me!

But really, a quick step-by-step of my WB process. Hopefully I haven’t turned you off the subject.

(I don’t usually write contemporary genres, at least not without supernatural or fantasy undertones, so this will probably be overkill for those who do write contemporary. Or maybe not.)

  •  MAP.
    • In case you didn’t catch my drift the first time, I always work off a map. Geography has shaped our own history so much, it only makes sense that it will shape your story too.
    • Tools: first I draw out said map on graph paper, usually with a pencil, then transfer to Photoshop via a scanner or a cruder drawing. From there, I can duplicate and do certain maps for certain things (borders, roads, geographic formations etc.). I don’t have a tablet, but I have a violent need of one for map purposes.
      • It may also help to have an atlas or Google Maps on hand to help, if you need inspiration. I was that weird kid who spent school library trips looking at the atlases in the back so I have a bunch of favorites at my house
  • A BRIEF HISTORY
    • Now that you have your map, check out the cities, the rivers, the mountains, all that cool stuff you just drew. What’s going on down there? Is that mountain range a border? Do the people on either side like each other? Why or why not? Continue into perpetuity or until you die in worldbuilding ecstasy. (Don’t do that).
      • At this point, it might help to already have a story in mind. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t.
      • How does it fit into this greater history you’re shaping? How does the history shape your story and its characters? What happened to make the world this way?
      • The trick here is to be brief. Don’t get stuck in the quicksand.
    • Tools: a simple word processor will do, or pen and paper.Your choice. For larger stories that require intense background, I dabble in Excel and make color-coded timelines. This was before I developed self-control, but someone with willpower could do this quite easily and survive.
  •  CHARACTERS
    • The fun part. Where do they fit on the map, in the history, in the setting you’ve created?
    • Here we can get a little deeper. Parents, grandparents, education, language, religion, culture – how does this shape your character? You have to know where they come from to know where they’re going and how they’re going to act when they get there!
      • Of course, as you start piecing together your character, you can use this stuff to inform the rest of the world you’re shaping. It’s a two-way street.
      • I love family trees almost as much as maps.
    • Tools: Graph paper is my lord and savior. Great for family trees and character maps or character wheels. Of course, there’s always a word processor or pen and paper to be used as well.
  • PLOT
    • By now, you’ve probably got some idea of the story you want to tell. Your worldbuilding has got you thinking like your characters, living in the world you know, and so you understand exactly where they can take you. You started this process wanting to tell a fantasy Romeo & Juliet. Now you know you’re going to undercut it with a magical civil war that ruminates on the destructive power of revenge.
    • GO WRITE THAT PLOT. Outline, bullets, numbering, word-vomit, whatever. Just get it down.
      • I personally go for the 8 sequence, three act structure when I’m outlining. I studied screenwriting and that was the style hammered into us and it works for me. (I can do another blog post on this if anybody wants). Basically this means my stories are structured like movies, or at least they try to be.
  • FINAL OVERVIEW
    • Get your lovely pile of worldbuilding together. Go through it, see where the gaps are. Where did this religion come from? What city did her parents live in? Why is the king so damn mean and what made him this way? Is there anything special about that island you drew in for fun? (Maybe it’s a holy island haunted by angels, who knows).
    • This is like plugging up holes in the front yard because someone is coming to look at the house. You don’t need to fill them up, but just put a little grass over the top. You might fall through later, but at least you’ve gotten to later.
    • Remember, don’t get stuck. Keep moving. Things can always be filled in when you need to fill them in.
    • Tools: coffee.

I can’t promise you’re ready to write (you could’ve been ready to write back before the word ‘map’ left my fingers), but this is usually the point where I am. And then it’s off to the sometimes slow, sometimes fast, always wonderful and excruciating races.

The Agony and the Ecstasy

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I am not referring to Michelangelo here, but the impulse that drives – and destroys – anyone who voluntarily puts pen to paper or fingers to keys and creates worlds out of letters. I’m talking about the fundamental need a writer (or screenwriter or author or storyteller or bard or whatever you are, you freaking nitpickers) has to write. To tell a story. I get these quite often and, quiet frankly, they are the best and worst thing I’ve ever felt. Except for watching Real Housewives.

My moments of pure, unbridled I MUST WRITE OR I WILL DIE usually come when I’m walking out the door or in the shower or anywhere besides right next to my computer. This is a phenomenon all writers know and love/hate, because it reminds of who we are and what we do, but also the terrible pain behind that urge. If I can’t write the exact paragraph that’s marching through my head at this exact moment, I feel like jumping out of my skin. I’ve jumped out of the shower, shampoo in my hair, to jot down a sentence or a phrase, or left a party to go home and write. I’ve even attempted to narrate  to some recording app while navigating standstill traffic. The latter I only did once because I was too embarrassed by the sound of my own voice (I mean, isn’t everyone?) to listen to the recording.

But that need is nothing compared to when you actually sit down, crack your knuckles, open up that word processor and suddenly find that all those stories and sentences and oh-so-smart turns of phrase are gone. You are dried up and you haven’t even begun. The blank page taunts you. And you deserve it, right? You’re a damn writer, you can bang your face against a keyboard and get a coherent sentence out of it! But despite all the button mashing, all the furious playlist creating (because a new playlist WILL help you and no it’s not a distraction) all you end up with is the blank page and a lot of frustration. You go to bed pissed, wondering where all that drive went. And, for me, that’s exactly when it comes back.

When I was writing THE RED QUEEN, I kept a legal pad behind a pillow so I could jot stuff down. Usually I woke up to incoherent scrawling and pen on my face, but it at least gave the illusion of help. I went back to my computer knowing the drive was somewhere, I just had to find it. So I pushed and typed slowly and fought myself. And that’s where the third pain comes in, the one that might be worse than all the others.

I don’t know how it is for anyone else, but for me, when I’m really going, I mean when I know every damn letter that’s coming for the next twenty pages, I go into a weird little trance. My headphones go in, ambient Nine Inch Nails comes on, and I am a zombie. It doesn’t happen often, at least back when I was writing screenplays it didn’t, but the last 2 weeks of writing TRQ resulted in two full weeks of blank space. I remember waking up, eating a bagel, and then realizing it was sunset and two chapters were done. The only memory of the moments in between that stays with me is the thought I always have when writing: I am bleeding.

Because that’s what writing is to me. I bleed. The connect between my brain and my fingers goes away and the words just happen. I open a vein and somehow pour it all out into a Macbook. This doesn’t mean what I write is devastatingly serious or tragic or beautifully intelligent. Quite the opposite, I write to entertain, because that’s what I see as my primary goal. Theme and moral and message come later, or else you’re just writing a sermon or, at best, an episode of Seventh Heaven. I’m even crazy enough to feel this way when I’m writing something cliche or juvenile or just plain fun. (By fun I mean the zombie vs. cowboys melee that was the third act of my first screenplay). And because it’s my blood on the page, it hurts that much more. Where is this going? Is it good? Am I good? All those questions that we all know way too well come haunting, a shadow behind every single letter.

No one answers back, not for a long time, until the draft is done and you’re ready to put that black blood out in the world. I was lucky enough to study screenwriting in college, and get four years of workshop classes under my belt to help me develop a hopefully thicker skin. But I still feel the sting (oh man do I feel it), and I’m sure you do too.

I was never good at conclusion in those five paragraph essay things they made you write in school (or introductions or theses either, come to think of it), and I’m a rambling writer. Again, I’m bleeding out a jumble of words. There isn’t much advice in here, if any, but hopefully this post is more of an outstretched hand to remind us that other people understand the agony and the ecstasy. Other people, other writers, know exactly how you feel and how hard it is to do what you do every single day. Writers are, by nature, insular creatures and so we, above all others, need to be reminded that we are not alone.