Who tells the stories in your fictional world?  Are all stories allowed or are some prohibited because your societies feel they are threatening, immoral or whatever?

Can all in your fictional world read or is oral storytelling still a huge part of people's lives?  Who pioneered schools in your creation?

Is there a flourishing story/book industry in your fictional world?  Who runs these?  Can anyone write stories or is it limited to a certain species/class>?

These are particularly good questions to work through if your ficitonal world does not have a means of broadcasting,

My latest Chandler's Ford Today post is an interview with Kate Day, CEO of Chocolate Muffin Publishing who enable young and old alike to write and illustrate their own stories and publish them.  CMP also work with care homes and dementia patients and I love idea of helping as many as possible to be creative and to really enjoy the process of that.  (And to love having their own book as proof afterwards!).

So how are the arts treated in your own fictional worlds?  Do they have a therapeutic value and, if so, who benefits the most from this?  What impact does this have on the society you have created (and also on the characters concerned)?

Or are the arts treated with contempt, something indulged in privately and quietly?  (To me a world like that would be very bleak.  Could that bleakness continue or would someone find a way of challenging it and breaking it down?).

How important are stories to your characters and your fictional world?  Are there "authorised" versions and who dictated they should be the official stories put out for the public?  Who can enjoy the arts?  Are there restrictions (on terms of the cost of taking part or moral objections)? 

I can't imagine any world without some sort of art, even if it is suppressed, but what importance is given to it could lead to a range of stories.

Hard to believe half of the year has gone already but it led me to think about the changing of the seasons and how this would work in fiction.

In my fictional setting, I follow Earth's seasonal settings but this doesn't necessarily have to be the case.  After all our northern and southern hemispheres are in opposition to one another here - spring in one hemisphere is autumn in another and so on.  So how does your fictional world work with regard to seasons?  Do you have the usual 4 or say 2 winters, 1 summer, 1 spring, 3 autumns or what have you?

Whatever you choose, you need to have thought through why you have the seasons the way you do and to be able to show your reasons, even if you only drip feed this information into your story.  Your readers need to be able to "see" your world working for it to seem real.  When it seems real, they will be gripped by what you have written.  And the setting for your characters (the world itself, its geography, history and politics to name a few examples) adds to that sense of reality. 

I stayed with the traditional four seasons as I felt setting up the Fairy Kingdom's government, some of its history, the way the Fairy News Network works and so on were more important things for the background of my novels and stories.  So what is the most important things about the world(s) of your stories you need your readers to know?

What would your characters change about the world in which you've placed them and why?  Are they actively plotting to change that world and if so how are they planning to do this?  Are they for revolution or for reform?

How has your world come to the point it has politically?  Has it always been this way or were there historical figures campaigning for change?  What would their legacy be these days? 

Who keeps the official records?  Does change happen quickly, not at all or at such a rate continental drifts are thought to be quicker (!)?

My Eileen dislikes many of the ways in which the fairy government is run and she speaks out bluntly against this but that is her form of campaigning.  So how do your characters act here?