If a world was three times as large as Earth, how long would a day be?

[John Carroll]

Smaller humans are a great idea, but it just doesn't fit in my mind, plus the first book already makes them . . . human-sized. *grin*

Human travel and civilization is fine in and of itself, but there really are dragons in this world and an Earth sized planet just isn't big enough for them. Magic also changes matters. It's more of a highly evolved magic similar to the level science was at in the early 1900's . . . only different.

As far as reading goes; I'm putting that book on my list, but even though I used to be a voracious reader, I haven't read in 3 years and don't know when I'm going to get back to it. Writing has become my new form of reading.

I really am okay with a larger than Earth world. It works for me even though it might not be real scientifically. It's not so unbelievable as to break reality with the reader.

[dwig]

Originally Posted by John Carroll

It's probably not necessary to say it's large and I don't compare it directly too earth, but . . . I want to give the reader the impression that it's a large world. ...

Unless some other world is known and described in the book there is no need to think in terms of any dimension (spatial or time) relative to Earth or any other planet. A planet is large or small based solely on its size relative to that of the characters. A planet the size of the Earth, in absolute terms, would be extremely vast from the viewpoint of individuals the size of a squirrel riding "beasts" the size of a domestic cat.

[Worldwalker]

Originally Posted by John Carroll

Human travel and civilization is fine in and of itself, but there really are dragons in this world and an Earth sized planet just isn't big enough for them.

Why not?

Earth is (or has been) demonstrably large enough for dinosaurs, blue whales, and jumbo jets; why not dragons?

I really am okay with a larger than Earth world. It works for me even though it might not be real scientifically. It's not so unbelievable as to break reality with the reader.

One thing you may be forgetting: Readers, nowadays, read -- and write -- reviews. They're not just connected but, perhaps, even more connected than the average person. You don't need all of your readers to catch you in scientific bloopers; you only need one or two, and they'll tell the others. Or, in your case, don't need, because getting snarked in your reviews is not going to help your sales in the least.

If you're going to tamper with physics and planetology, understand them first, so you can understand your changes and their effects. And if you're going to write, read! These things are not optional -- not if you don't want the kind of reviews that start "When I read it for humor value, this actually wasn't bad" -- and you didn't write a humorous story.

[dadioflex]

Originally Posted by John Carroll

As far as reading goes; I'm putting that book on my list, but even though I used to be a voracious reader, I haven't read in 3 years and don't know when I'm going to get back to it. Writing has become my new form of reading.

Well that's a mistake.

[Freeshadow]

the original link is 404 , therefor: http://webcache.googleusercontent.co...ient=firefox-a

[queentess]

Originally Posted by John Carroll

As far as reading goes; I'm putting that book on my list, but even though I used to be a voracious reader, I haven't read in 3 years and don't know when I'm going to get back to it. Writing has become my new form of reading.

You don't read? I've never heard of a musician who doesn't listen to music or an artist who doesn't view other art... Who's your favorite author? How do you know what you're writing is marketable or will appeal to today's audience? (Unless you're not trying to make a living at this, in which case, as you were.)


From here:

5. Read Everything You Can Get Your Hands On — Even the Crap That Bores You.

And here’s why the crap that bores you is worth reading: Because someone sold it, which means the writer did something right. Your job is to figure out what it was and what that means for your own writing. It should also give you hope: If this bad writer can sell a book or magazine article, then you should have no problem, right? Excellent.

This suggestion is actually more difficult to follow than you might think. People like to read what they like, and don’t like to read what they don’t like. That’s fine if all you want to be is a reader, but if you want to be a writer, you don’t have the luxury of just sticking to the stuff that merely entertains you. Writing that’s not working for you is still working for someone; take a look and see if you can find out why. Alternately, pinpoint why it doesn’t work. Fact is, you can learn as much from writers you don’t like as you can from writers you do — and possibly more, because you’re not cutting them slack, like you would your favorite writers.

A corollary to this is: Read writers who are new to you. Don’t just stick to the few writers you know you like. Take a few chances.

[Steven Lake]

Another thing to consider when designing any planet is the distribution of natural resources, including food and water stocks, plants, mineable minerals, weather conditions, temperatures, etc, etc. For example, if you setup a city, and it's very arid, you need to be conscious of how and where you'll get water, how you'll grow crops, how you'll feed people, feed your animals, etc.

In other words, for every society there has to be some for of natural or artificial infrastructure and support system that makes said civilization and/or settlement possible. Now obviously you don't need to go into HUGE detail on this when describing everything to the reader, but you do need to cover these details in your background world because even though the background isn't brought to the front very often, it has a massive effect on the world the reader does see.

Let's use a car for example. Someone might see a four wheel metal box running down the road carrying anywhere from one to five passengers. What they don't see is all the parts working together to make that metal box (aka car) possible. Writing is the same thing. Another way to look at it is the "tip of the iceberg" principle. 99% is not seen, but it's what makes possible that 1% that is seen.

[John Carroll]

Originally Posted by queentess

You don't read? I've never heard of a musician who doesn't listen to music or an artist who doesn't view other art... Who's your favorite author? How do you know what you're writing is marketable or will appeal to today's audience? (Unless you're not trying to make a living at this, in which case, as you were.)

No, no, no! Please don't misunderstand. I've read literally thousands of books. I grew up without a tv. My mom and dad would read while listening to records every evening and I spent most of my time at the library when not at school. When I turned 14, I learned about fantasy and began reading Piers Anthony. My wife and I have been avid readers and I generally chew up a fantasy novel in a day.

My favorite authors are David Eddings, Anne McCaffrey, Alan Dean Foster and Glenn Cook.

When not reading, I took long walks . . . (not on the beach, I live in the mountains), listening to my walkman and imagining different worlds. I'm also an avid D&D player, DM and world builder for my group.

I haven't read a book in the last 3 years, not because I've lost interest in reading, but because I've been interested in developing the stories in my own mind. I just finished the first draft of my second book, and I made a couple of game modules for Neverwinter Nights that totalled 400,000 words of dialogue. I have a full time job and write in the evenings and weekends when not spending time with the family. My hobbies of reading, gaming and painting miniatures have been set aside for now until I either succeed or fail at writing.

I still like reading, but I want to get the ideas that have been dancing around in my head down onto paper. I know what I want to write and like the way I'm writing at the moment. At times, I look at examples to get a feel for how other authors have done things I like, but the system I have works for me at the moment.

And I know the world doesn't HAVE to be larger, but I like it that way. It works for me and fits the vision of what I'm writing.

[John Carroll]

Originally Posted by Steven Lake

Another thing to consider when designing any planet is the distribution of natural resources, including food and water stocks, plants, mineable minerals, weather conditions, temperatures, etc, etc. For example, if you setup a city, and it's very arid, you need to be conscious of how and where you'll get water, how you'll grow crops, how you'll feed people, feed your animals, etc.

In other words, for every society there has to be some for of natural or artificial infrastructure and support system that makes said civilization and/or settlement possible. Now obviously you don't need to go into HUGE detail on this when describing everything to the reader, but you do need to cover these details in your background world because even though the background isn't brought to the front very often, it has a massive effect on the world the reader does see.

Let's use a car for example. Someone might see a four wheel metal box running down the road carrying anywhere from one to five passengers. What they don't see is all the parts working together to make that metal box (aka car) possible. Writing is the same thing. Another way to look at it is the "tip of the iceberg" principle. 99% is not seen, but it's what makes possible that 1% that is seen.

You mean no gigantic cities with absolutely no farmlands nearby like in Lord of the Rings? *grin*

[Worldwalker]

Tolkien never specified that the cities lacked farmlands. We never see enough of the area around them to know. Likewise with the movies. We see cities, and some battlefields, and the deserted areas orcs frequent, but Minas Tirith could have a whole farming hinterland that just doesn't happen to be in the small spot we're looking.

Using Tolkien as an example, though, consider his languages: what we saw in the books (especially LotR) was only a tiny fraction of what he actually created. He had a lot more than ever went in the books, more than even his son has published. The purpose of research and worldbuilding is not to shove a reader's face in it (the Civil War guy comes to mind) but to know, very intimately, how things are put together and how they work, so you can naturally do things which do work, just as you would if writing a modern novel about the real world. If you want to write well, you need to know so much about your fictional world that someone who doesn't know it at all could ask you random questions and you wouldn't have to think about the answers (or not much). That's why writing non-real fiction is so hard: we all know how things work in the real world, so we've got that basis to start from. Figuring out how they work, and work together, in a world that has some significant differences from the familiar one can be wrenchingly hard.

The things you need to ask yourself:

1. What changes do I want to make here?
2. What purpose will they serve in my story?
3. What will the fallout from these changes be?
4. What other changes are necessary to permit the changes I want?
5. Iterate 1-4 for each of those other changes.

For example, let's say you want a world where copper is much rarer than it is in the real world, even rarer than gold. It's unlikely that such a world would develop telephones as we know them, for instance, because they, and the telegraphs that preceded them, require thousands and thousands of miles of copper wire. Aside from the difficulty of procuring so much, think of what would happen if you strung up that much solid gold: it would be stolen. So all of the things we have been accustomed to using phones and telegraphs for, going back to their invention, would never have happened. Electrical distribution lines are copper, too. You can't cheat with aluminum, either, because purifying aluminum requires ... wait for it ... copper wire. Lots of copper wire. And the electrical infrastructure to support it. Think of every significant telegram, every significant phone call, every newswire story, never having existed at all. That alone (leaving out all the other uses of copper) would change society drastically.

I just read that the old TV series "Connections" is available on YouTube. It might not be a bad idea to watch that. Everything ties in to everything else; that's how the world works. Not only no man is an island, but no toothpick is an island either.

And make some time to read Guns, Germs, and Steel. It's not that long, relatively speaking, and it's a book that someone who's trying to do what you're trying to do just read.

[jehane]

Originally Posted by Steven Lake

There's also something else people fail to consider. Gravity is inversely proportional to mass. The more heavy elements you have, the heavier the gravity will be. Why do you think Jupiter can be 11 times more massive than Earth and yet have only 2.5x's the gravity of Earth? It's because Jupiter has no heavy metals. The heaviest known elements in Jupiter's atmosphere are helium (10%) and hydrogen (90%) and given that we have elements as dense as plutonium on our planet, plus a massive sphere or iron at the planet's core, our gravity is naturally heavier.

If you go to Mars, our nearest neighbor, which is slightly over half the size of Earth, it has only about 1/3rd our gravity, and the only reason it has that is because of the very high iron and lead content on the planet. (it's not called the "red" planet for nothing) So there are a lot of factors that affect the gravity of a planet. The best thing to do in cases like that is simply to go with my first suggestion and avoid really getting into the details of the size, gravity, etc of the planet.

I'm sure you meant to say the gravity is *directly* proportional to mass. Assuming Newtonian physics, the gravitational equation is F=G*m1*m2/r^2,
where F is the gravitational attraction force, G is the gravitational constant, m1 and m2 are the masses of the two bodies (in this case, the planet's mass would be several orders of magnitude larger than anything on it) and r is the distance between the respective centres of gravity (in this case the radius of the planet).

THe important thing here is that size is *not* the only factor determining mass. The density, which is determined by the composition of the planet, is a huge factor. Hence the differences between the rocky planets (inner 4) and the gas giants (outer 4).

[jehane]

John, I'm going to echo some of the other sentiments above. Given that you have slow transport (I will find it hard to believe that a dragon will go faster than a 747) you really *don't* need a world vastly bigger than earth. And to your characters, so long as there are places which are further away than a day or two's travel (by whatever local means), the world will be a vast place.

There's an appropriate conversation from Pride and Prejudice to illustrate this:

"It must be very agreeable for her to be settled within so easy a distance of her own family and friends."
"An easy distance, do you call it? It is nearly fifty miles."
"And what is fifty miles of good road? Little more than half a day's journey. Yes, I call it a very easy distance."

IMO, if the reason for making the planet bigger is just so that it is sufficiently vast, it's completely unnecessary. Generally in fantasy readers will accept that they are only looking at a tiny part of the known world. If anything, flying, fire-breathing dragons are much harder to believe although they have a sufficiently long fantasy history that most readers can ignore their complete implausibility if you don't draw attention to it. I think that's what turned me off Pern in the end.

[Worldwalker]

Along with reading Guns, Germs, and Steel, I'm going to advise you to track down the Jordin Kare song Wanderer and listen to it. Actually, track down everything he's ever done and buy it, because it's that good. But you need to listen to Wanderer.

Yes, people have suggested things that are going to take time. You're going to have to take time away from thinking about yourself as a writer to become a reader again. You're going to have to take time to learn a little bit of geology, a little bit of physics, a little bit of planetology. I've even insisted that you listen to a song! But that's what goes with writing. That's what separates the good writers from the people who spew unmitigated crap. You want to be a good writer, I assume, or you wouldn't be on MobileRead. Instead of explaining why you don't do things ("I used to read three years ago") buckle down and do it.

[Freeshadow]

Id check speeds of other flying beings as a reference + speeds of gliding vehicles etc - if your world is earhhlike , so the speeds of air currents, and behaviour of thermics would be too

[BookCat]

Most of the replies to the OP are vanishing up their own bums imho. If the science of a novel needs to be based on fact, please explain to me the last episode of Dr Who I watched: screwdrivers which could open anything; fish which floated on fog; cryogenically frozen people in a Victorian setting; etc not, of course, forgetting that the Tardis is bigger inside.

This is just a small example of how vast the imagination is. You can do anything you want with fiction, even have a world 4 times as big as earth behaving any way the author wants it to. Let water flow upstream, I find the idea rather fun, or maybe the leading species are horses as in one part of Gulliver, or Apes, as in Planet of the. Or cats, as in any world I'd love to live in. Maybe everyone speaks in a variety of meows and different types of purrs. Humans would be their slaves, farming and providing them food. etc etc

In a novel you can make anything do and be anything, unless you're writing a gritty fact-based book about someone dealing with cancer, or nuclear catastrophe. In situations like this, facts based on real-world reality are important. But this isn't what the OP seems to be writing.

A world with gold-greedy dragons sounds exactly the type of fantasy where anything can be what you want it to be just because that's where imagination takes you.

There are too many po-faced non-rules about writing which inhibit freedom to be original imho.