Welcome to Ostrabi Worlds

This site is a record of my progress towards creating a Sci-fi novel. I intend to log what I do, what I learn, and my practice pieces so that in the future I can look back and see the journey.

I have no experience writing any fiction since GCSE English, which was a long, long time ago. I had the idea of a sci-fi setting back in 2022, and made copious notes about a potential storyline and the technology, but I didn't know where to start so I shelved the project. Now I am ready to pick it up again.

I'm aware it's a vast undertaking. I need to "world build" to create the rules of the fictional universe, such as how the technology works, the alien species and their star systems, and where Earth fits in to this. In addition, I need the story to be engaging while still making sense within those rules. Plunging directly into writing the story chapter-by-chapter doesn't work for this sort of project. A key plot point that I may need to write in Chapter 5, or 10 or 20, may require breaking a rule that I set up in Chapter 1 and require rewriting everything in between.

My plan is to start with the world building side, and in parallel write short stories based on the aspects of the world that I flesh out. Those short stories will allow me to start learning how to write, as well as test out the fictional world I'm building. For example, I may draft some information about how asteroid mining works, then write a short story about a space miner to test whether it makes sense. Based on the results I can refine further.

Once I have the world building side more mature, then I'll start outlining the main storyline. That will allow me to see where there are gaps on the world building side that need filling for key scenes.

As the information of the fictional universe will not be a secret to the inhabitants of the story, I will have those details in this blog. However, I will not reveal details of the main storyline, I'll just describe my processes and what stage it is at. I will keep my practice stories outside of that main storyline and not involve any main characters. That way the final novel will allow all the world building done here to come alive through those characters' eyes.

A further intention I have is to create a cosy slice of life story in the same world, which also will be separate to the main novel's storyline. This will get me writing longer content and practice character development until I'm ready to start writing the novel itself. I will publish that slice of life story both in this blog and on Royal Road so that it's available for free. An additional reason to do this is to find an audience, and Royal Road is a great place to find readers for fiction that is in the process of being written. I've found many authors through that site and then went on to purchase their novels. My hope is that readers who find my work on Royal Road will then discover more about the universe in this blog and will be interested in my novel once it is written.

Final note, in case anyone is wondering what "Ostrabi" is, I needed a name to refer to my story that I could also use as a domain and social handles. I started by combining the Spanish word for "star" (estrella) and the Japanese word for "playing" (asobi/遊び) and after a few scrambles ended up with "Ostrabi". So in the language of an alien species that I've not yet created, Ostrabi means "playing in the stars".

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