They say a picture is worth a thousand words, well these pictures were worth creating an entire world!
My friend Monte Jackson, who knew of my passion for fantasy writing and was already a fan of OLZ, sent me photos from a fantasy photoshoot he was in. The photos were amazing, and I felt they had a story to tell. After seeing them I asked to create a story about what I felt took place in the photoshoot. He enthusiastically agreed, and so I started.
This was supposed to just be a simple experiment, to see if I could create a story from a visual aid rather than just my mind, but then I started creating. After I finished the short, I liked what I created, and so did my friend, but I was not satisfied.
Just in the process of creating that short I knew there was a bigger story to tell, one that came before and after the photos. This world started to build and fester in my mind, and I knew I needed to create more, so I decided to turn this short into something more.
At this time, I also discovered a really amazing tool/site called World Anvil and started using it. I thought this new world would be a perfect test for this new online tool I found, and as I would be creating in a different way it would be good to try it on something fresh. So, I started building out characters, backstories, and world content for OLDH.
I was creating a lot of world content for this world pretty fast, and it was fun. I got sucked into this creating content void. All I was doing was creating pictures, maps (poorly), and other things. I came up with a lot of great ideas and it helped me build out a lot of great things, but I lost track of what was important to me, storytelling.
I lost myself in world building and content creation I stopped building the story that was supposed to grow from that world. So I took a step back and changed my approach, keeping what I built but redesigning the story and the deeper lore of the world.
This led to a greater vision for my worlds and how I wanted to connect and create them. So while this world does not have many stories (yet) it may be one of the most important worlds for my overall universe.