Photo © Authoraveryanova  / Dog travel. Jack Russell Terrier is lying and playing in a suitcase

I’ve never been able to world-build the way the experts tell me. The first time I decided to write a fantasy novel, I read about how to do the world-building. The various books and websites on the topic advocated spending time before writing to create the world. A typical recommendation: buy a three-ring notebook and a pack of tabs, create sections for the different parts of the world, and answer lots of questions.

Heck, I have trouble getting pieces of paper into the rings. They usually just end up stuffed randomly in the binder. Spreadsheets, apps, same result.

The problem is that world-building in this manner forces me—like outlining—to know everything up front. Much of my discovery process results from the characters interacting with each other and their setting. And I don’t know that without writing the story.

I do cheat. As I write, I start the world from a place I already know. Cuts back on the amount and type of research. Instead of trying to research everything about Hawaii from tour books (which I have done on a past project)—a place I visited on vacation twice—I picked where I live. The heavy lifting was done with everyday personal knowledge, and I filled in with details that I researched.

The question—though I didn’t actually ask myself this—was what if Washington, DC and magic met? It just kind of worked out that way as the story developed. Everyone wants an itemized list of steps. Sometimes it doesn’t work that way.

DC is political ground zero. When I was getting out of the Army, I attended classes in preparation. The instructor told us that if we went anywhere else, we would be in “culture shock” over the lack of politics.

It is on extra strength, double steroids here.

Or, as one of my bosses said, everything is framed from the perspective of how it will look on the front page of the Washington Post. The Federal government could no longer book conferences in Las Vegas in the middle of summer when it was dirt cheap because of front-page scandals. My boss said that the rest of the country would immediately think, “Government employees are being paid to gamble!”—not attend a conference.

I’m finding it surprisingly fun to make up politics as part of my world (better than the real-world nonsense). It’s mages vs. Congress. How would Congress react to an official Convocation of mages in Virginia? They’d hold a committee and subpoena people! Of course, the media would have talking heads, including a group of mages to comment on magic with fancy titles from Georgetown University. I learned what a “senior fellow” is with that question.

There are also all kinds of weird and fun and sometimes downright bizarre things that I can pull from. Like when the DC government misspelled “Capitol” as “Capital.” Whoops. Or during a blizzard, they discovered they had no operational snowplows and needed volunteers with four-wheel drives for the hospitals. A driver who was ticketed for parking took a picture of conflicting signs (on top of each other) to show that he was legally parked according to one of the signs and not the other.

Though DC itself is a small diamond-shaped area with a weird wagon wheel inside and a horrifying number of one-way streets, Northern Virginia, Maryland, edges of West Virginia and Philly are all part of the commuting area. I thought it was interesting for magic when I discovered that the Potomac River outside the Alexandria Waterfront has all three state borders. Ah ha! Confluence! Or at least people can think it is.

And we mustn’t forget the traffic. We have a traffic culture here. Every weekday morning, the traffic pours into downtown DC. Many workers live as far as 50 miles away. Driving in rush hour from Virginia to Maryland can translate into 2 hours one way. We have a freeway interchange called the Mixing Bowl and many, many places that you have to be familiar with to get through them. One is the 7 Corners, which my father, who is from L.A., was horrified over. Another is a section of freeway that is the DC line before you cross over into Maryland. Every local knows exactly the section I’m talking about. DC told the Federal government, “Give us money and we’ll fix the sign.” Over ten years later, and the sign’s still wrong.

A writer friend also pointed out that the Convocation location should be one of those places everyone says is in DC, but actually isn’t in DC. We have three now: the Pentagon, Reagan Airport, and CIA Headquarters. All are in Virginia. The Pentagon does have a Washington, DC address, but it’s in Arlington. I decided to use Tyson’s Corner.

Meanwhile, I was trying to figure out where my main character lived. Everything in the area is well, ugly. Builders have put these big two-story monster houses to fill lots. No backyard, a scrimpy front yard, and you could open your window and ask your neighbor for a cup of sugar. No personality to the houses other than “I have a huge house, so I’m important” vibe.

But I remembered a place I’d driven through a few years back…just turned down the street to see what was there and found a lake with private beaches (darn). I thought that might be a good place, so I returned to it to investigate further. The houses were all different shapes and sizes. I was surprised to see ones with carports. You just don’t see those in this area. And no curbs, Yup. That was the place.

It’s an organic view of world building. I didn’t set out with a specific view of how the magic should work, or how it would be governed; I simply followed things that ignited my curiosity, or made me laugh at the absurdity—and added bureaucracy that comes with the area. Sometimes that’s all you need.