JWC Secondary Worlds: Planetary Map

I doubled down on my dreams after some years of darkness and uncertainty, and out of this friendships, partnerships, and new realms of the muse opened up to me. I got into Podcasting heavy-duty, creating an experimental network (Olk n’ Us Network) in order to explore what could be done. Since boyhood I was fond of making radio shows on cassette tape, having the most fun fooling around with friends making dramas or time capsules. 

That secluded prototype network developed some fun content, but never went public. My channels were cool and of a wide demographic variety, even so, they were test programs seeking a certain result. Then came the result, and gradually it evolved into the Joe’s Writers Club Podcast of today, for which I am extremely grateful. 

To take a step back… One of the channels on Olk n’ Us Network was called Elucidation of Creative Baptism, and this content was at the very heart of my contribution to our club through the JWC XYZ Writer’s Accelerator. 

Check out JWC Secondary World, the next phase of our Writer’s Accelerator wherein is showcased a reworked version of the original E.O.C.B., our method for creating a layout for a secondary world. 


Photo by Daniel Olah on Unsplash

JWC Secondary World 

1: Planetary Map: Crafting a Secondary World 

2: Star Map: Crafting a Secondary Sun / Stars 

3: Cosmic Map: How many Universes?  

4: Mythic / Temporal Outline: Prehistoric to Historic 

5: Origin / Migration Outline: Shelter, City, Nation 

6: Regional / Territorial Outline: Resources, Population, Fame 

7: Cultural / Economic Outline: Goods, Services, Prosperity 

8: Tribal / Guild Outline: Trades, Traders, Trading Routes 

9: Muse / Thread Outline: A-? Narrative Layout 

10: Thread / Chapter Outline: 1-? Narrative Layout 

Using this 1-5-10 list (like the Paragraphic Rift section), it is possible to layout whole planets for the secondary world exercise, and by so doing add data to an already vibrant fantasy world’s muse. 

Secondary Worlds = A Refined Story Setting 

Follow our instructions and use the template to make your own. Follow the posts thereafter to read my blovel. Then, JWC Paragraphic Convergence updates will be posted. Follow the “Blissful Blovelist” as he outlines, writes, and edits his first blovel. 

Hereafter is the first entry on that list. 

1: Planetary Map: Crafting a Secondary World 

Each time you pick up a book or watch a film a sense of otherworldly travel should commence, and in proportion with that feeling of timeless/spaceless a transference of experience. That’s how it is for me anyway… The more you journey the more a map grows, and when the destination is not to be found on a map from our world a new map must be plotted out. 

The Planetary map section laid out here inevitably leads to “out of this world” questions. Sometimes they are “like in our world” answers, offering clear explanations derived from scientific observations of earth. However, as sci-fi and fantasy have always openly suggested, other worlds, planets, or continuums where things operate differently, or at least dissimilar enough to require explaining, would almost certainly exist in a vast space such as a universe evidently contains. 

Infinity + Eternity X Potentiality = Endless Cosmic Variety 

Here is the JWC Secondary World Template. Feel free to use it to make your own secondary world. Consult the following examples and use the 1-5-10 list to refine your maps. 

The goal behind this experiment is to take an already vibrant world written on the page and help to fully define it by imposing a global horizon (Planetary conditions in spacetime).

Be sure to align the polar and equatorial regions before drawing the continental/oceanic delineations, so that geology/oceanology has a deep time access point. You need to establish the planetary surface conditions and overall climate for each region to ensure that the story you wish to tell can take place there, and this is done by following the template. 

(I would recommend studying our own world and the worlds of other great authors who mastered planetology in their work, such as Dune and the Dune Encyclopedia by Frank Herbert.)

Once you have your secondary world drawn and its lands and seas have been passed over in spirit, then the goal is to populate that world with ages of time and locations of mythic peoples to live and die in. 

These tales can be backdrop legends for your narrative’s contemplative characters to have knowledge of. In this way many minds may be networked into one, and comparisons between worlds may continue. 

If you already have a fictitious world in which you write, bring what data you have to your own example. Don’t have a fictions world yet? 

Here are a few examples of JWC’s Secondary World exercise. 

Have fun exploring the limitless possibilities… 


EX1: Planet Malathoria: a.k.a. Disaster world, the story setting for Malathoria vol 1 by Richard Andrew Olkusz and David Michael Lockwood, Jr.

As you zoom in to check out the planetology, the virtual world space should offer inspirational flames to your already flickering creative expression. That’s the first fruits of such an exercise, a look into another secondary world drawing your muse into those details about your own established project. If you have maps and other logistical data about a story setting, then this task will be easier, but just as important to take your fantasy, sci-fi, space opera, or inter-dimensional story to the beast level of immersive interactivity. Is it necessary? One would think that necessity lays an endless refinement of the creative process, to it’s furthering and greatness, so that a muse and project may be properly honored. Malathoria is a troubled planet, the result of a catastrophe concerning the Zoetic terraforming device that crashed upon its surface. This is evidenced on the map by the large sprawl of blue crystal. (resembling glaciers but at the equator) Please check out the book and use the above map to orient yourself with its characters as they travel during the story. This should also stimulate your muse and or inspiration, allowing for the leap into secondary world simulation and so a rising need to entertain the exercise. EX2: Chronicles of Kyrim, by Richard Andrew Olkusz & Noah R. Assad, a future blovel project.



Kyrim6 is a sentient planet with a populous of created organisms which help to do it’s will and police it’s surface. Acting as part of the planetary immune system as well as providing its central intelligence with data recon of surface functions, these “Kyroges” revere their creator/sustainer as an ecological deification. The planet’s “Core” is alive and speaks with its Kyroges, a multi-limbed race with which it holds a special communion. With conditions like this, it is possible to tell a dual story featuring the whole world’s perspective running parallel with the viewpoint of the Kyroges. I plan on exploring this unique storytelling in the future Blovel project of the same name. 

Hereafter is the Primary example for this 1-5-10 exercise and will be carried through all 10 steps. Use the fullness of the following posts to transpose imaginings of Malathoria and Kyrim6, and by this desire for your own Secondary World build should be already on the move in your unconscious processes. Give it a try and see if this JWC Secondary World experiment doesn’t up your conceptual game. 

EX3: Planet Ezeoth: a.k.a. Storm world. A future blovel project written for Blissful Blovelist by Richard Andrew Olkusz


The Three Planetary Zones:

PZ = Polar Zone – long winter, short summer (Marked N S) TEZ = Temperate Zone – normalized seasonal cycle TRZ = Tropical Zone – long summer, sort winter (relative to equator) Planetary Map Key: List of seas and oceans: (1- 4 is keyed on the map) Designation / Orientation / Range of Planetary Zone (as noted above) 1: Sea of Tribulation – westernmost – PZ, TEZ, TRZ 2: Southern Sea – northernmost – PZ, TEZ, TRZ 3: Northern Sea – southernmost – PZ, TEZ 4: The Dreaming Sea – easternmost – PZ, TEZ, TRZ List of continents and landmasses: (A – K is keyed on the map) Designation / Range of Planetary Zone Western Hemisphere: A: Sethraka: – PZ, TEZ B: Mu Imorum: Continent of Imorum – PZ, TEZ C: Da Imorum: Continent of Imorum – TEZ, TRZ D: Vralathium: – TEZ, TRZ E: Thashum Islands: – TEZ Eastern Hemisphere: F: Yirkahn: – PZ, TEZ G: Da Azorum: – TEZ, TRZ H: Paradon: – TEZ I: Zorthumu: Islands – TEZ, TRZ J: Evalnine: – PZ, TEZ K: GoRo: – PZ, TEZ When you study the above map of Planet Ezeoth, you will notice some cartographic features such as the Three Planetary Zones (Climate chart) and a planetary map key. Use these to study the map for information during the blovel’s reading as well as to prepare yourself for the unfolding secondary world exercise. Nature and supernature behave in certain ways, and by those ways, many factors are established automatically. Science informs through physics the way myth informs through metaphysics, and the author and muse will network together to add or delete features as needed. Relative legends make for cultural comparisons so that a world “feels” real enough when compared to our own. Layers of history become culture. Layers of culture become ways of life. This establishment of layers is crucial for the secondary world and the simulated people within it to come true for readers. How does one write “realistic characters?” By building a “realistic world.” Some say realistic, but I prefer believable because reality is warped by fantastical factors and or unique conditions in whatever part of the universe the planet’s Star moves through. No matter how odd the world and its native starlight, it’s horizons become a marvelous frontier worth further contemplation, and the more contemplations of said world the deeper it’s believability. Workshop your secondary world with other creatives as soon as you are finished with it, regardless of how much of it is actually written already. Consult texts which inspire you, seek your own circle of fiction writers who you may trust or groups such as Joe’s writers Club. Our JWC forums have plenty of resources to optimize the secondary world you are generating, but nothing shortcuts good old fashion creative obsession. Allow your muse to “inhabit” the secondary world so that she lives there and you live on earth. There is a consensus that states that you can only be one place at a time, but they never said that you couldn’t network minds with the unconscious. In that other place, anything is possible. Try our template out and see if you can’t have fun generating a secondary world.

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