· 13 August 2026
How Aevum was born: building a world from a single image
Aevum did not start with a map or a magic system, but with a loose scene. Here is how I go from one image to a world with rules.
Before Aevum had a map, houses or ancestral stones, there was only an image: a girl standing in a ceremony, and something answering her when it should not have.
From image to rule
My process almost never starts with worldbuilding. It starts with a scene that will not leave me alone. Then comes the uncomfortable question: what has to be true in this world for this scene to be possible?
That is where the four houses, the Vaerith ceremony and the gifts of the Primia came from. I did not design them to show off; I designed them to hold up a scene.
My three worldbuilding rules
- Nothing exists without a cost. If there is magic, something is paid.
- Politics rules. A world without conflicting interests is just scenery.
- The reader does not need my encyclopedia. I do, but it stays in my notebooks.
The notebooks
I use paper notebooks for messy ideas and digital documents only once an idea has survived a week. That filter saves me enormous amounts of time: most brilliant Tuesday ideas are dead by Friday.
In the next entry I want to tell you how I illustrate while writing, and why drawing solves plot problems for me.