On Background: Hector Kingsley Landships

So you tend to learn very interesting things about history when you are researching a steampunk book.

One of the things I was researching recently was the introduction of tanks during World War One. The reason for that is the tank gets invented a lot earlier in Hector's world than it does in ours. The Distillation kind of speeds up or alters a lot of scientific advancement, so the Germans (unified much earlier than in reality, and allied with the British during a fight with France) roll out their version of the tank during the 1860s or so.

Except they don't call it a tank. They call it a landship.

You see, the reason that type of mechanized war machine gets called a tank in the first place is due to some interesting stories behind its development. The British who were working on the device didn't want the enemy to know what they were making. After all, tanks had the potential to finally break the terrible stalemate of trench warfare; they didn't want to tip their hand too early. So they mislabeled the product of the Landship Committee as a 'water carrier', supposedly destined for Russia or the Middle East.

At which point they noticed that the acronym for water carrier is WC--otherwise known as the British abbreviation for toilet (water closet).

Probably knowing that soldiers would come up with enough off-color names for the things on their own, the British then decided to change the name to 'water tank'. Eventually the name was shortened to tank, giving the weapon of modern warfare its distinctive nomenclature. Not every language uses it of course, but English typically refers to the vehicles by that name consistently.

Unfortunately for me, in Hector's world that particular series of events would not have happened. Tanks would have come to the British through their German allies, so they wouldn't have had to resort to disguising the invention themselves. As a result, they probably would have stuck with the original term for the device--a landship. Interesting what changes a little tweak in history could create, isn't it?

On Working With a Background

One of the more interesting aspects of writing a sequel is the fact that I have to work around a background that I've written in another book. I have to remember the characters' names from the other book, even if they were background characters. I need to make sure that the universe is consistent; I can't have ships changing the number of guns or missile bays between installments. It's kind of overwhelming at times, and at this point as I'm hopping between series, it can get annoying to have to refer back to my own book for information.

Therefore I need to start a background notebook for each of my universes. Have one for Hector, one for Jacob, one for Iron Angels and so on. The problem is that so far I've been keeping all of my worldbuilding notes in little tiny notebooks. These things are a mashup of pretty much every series, though. On one page I have the weaponry for a Banner-class dreadnaught from Jacob Hull's universe, and on the next I have the order of battle for a Directorate fleet in Broken Halo. That's not even including the side projects I do for the fun of it, or the random notes I take it in for trips, to-do-lists and everything else that pops up. It was worse before Emily managed to convince me to start using these little books; before that I would just use random bits of scrap paper and hope that none of them got lost.

The whole digging through the tiny notebook thing isn't going to cut it now, though. I need to start collecting my little story bibles into separate notebooks. It would be so much easier if I had everything organized, and if I was able to find everything I needed. Although... maybe a binder instead of a notebook? That way I could just slip stuff in whever I needed it? Gah! This is going to be such a mess...