Welcome to Gaia! ::

So I'm beginning work on a short novel that will require a very well fleshed out world to really work well. It won't be the type of "world-focused" novel that needs the reader to have a great insight in the way things work. In this instance it's more for me. I don't want the reader to have to bother with the workings of the world, so I'm going to need to know it well and have it the details all worked out so as to make it seamless for the reader.

Rune-Punk
Hehe, kind of. I've always loved the whole *punk idea of taking a technology and extrapolating it to an extreme/making it a vital part of the world. And while it's less common, I love when that "technology" happens to be magic. So this is a pseudo-futuristic fantasy and I'm sort of going to punk-out the idea of runes.

Basically, I'm borrowing slightly from my incredibly limited (and probably misguided) understanding of Kabbalism, and the basic idea that words don't simply represent ideas, but have their own power and meaning based on their sound and the shape of the letters.

I'm also using the old Aristotelian idea that objects have "natures." Before Isaac Newton came around and actually questioned why an object fell it was Aristotle's explanation that was generally accepted. According to him, objects had "natures." A rock fell to the ground because it was it's nature to go down, and steam rose up because it was it's nature to go up. It was fires nature to be hot and wood's nature to float in water etc.

So I'm playing with the idea that by inscribing runes (letters/words with their own power) on an object you can actually change the "nature" of that object. So by carving a certain rune into a rock that rock's nature is no longer to fall but instead to float in the air. Or glow. Or perhaps you inscribe a rune in a brass disc that causes it to turn constantly in a circle... now you have an engine! And that's the basis for all technology in this world.