Shaping a new world...pros/cons?

I'm not the best person to listen to on this, as I started my current series about four or five times over the span of 14 years before I decided it was really go time, but I thought I'd contribute anyway.

World building is important, but you have to be careful about how long you daydream without getting anything on paper. It's great to know the ins and outs of your world (not to mention mandatory), but I'd suggest writing while daydreaming. Get SOMETHING on paper so that you have some concrete stuff. Who cares if you change something big later? At least you'll have a springboard.

I have 99.9% of my series plotted out, world built, everything, but the truth is until you give some stuff a test run and let some betas look at it, you'll never know if all those days/months/years planning might be leading you down a false trail, and if you'd have written something earlier, you might have caught it before your daydreams carried you too far in the wrong direction. It's possible to become so enamored with your world that it becomes your baby and you're not open to changing anything. Be careful of that.

Detail the world as much as you need to immerse you and your readers in it. You can start writing and tinker once you you get going.

A writer I knew laid out a general theme: This world has the same general culture and beliefs of 2nd century Rome then built down from there.

I usually paint in broad strokes. The hero is from a land like bronze age England, down there is ancient Egypt, somewhere else are Vandals, etc.

The most important thing to remember about worldbuilding is that it is always, always secondary to character and story building.

focus on the story. story shall set you free.

I lived in my worlds for a long, long time, so I thought I knew everything about them. When the story appeared in my head and I sat down to write, I quickly realized that I only knew a very small part of the landscape.

My characters told me the rest. I could never have made it up on my own.

So my advice would be, imagine the characters' relationships and let them do some talking.

badducky said:

The most important thing to remember about worldbuilding is that it is always, always secondary to character and story building.

focus on the story. story shall set you free.

Click to expand...

True, however I never like it when people try to make it this black and white. The characters have to live in the world you create, and it will affect them, and they will affect it. I've often been thinking about the world and it's rules and suddenly gone 'aaaah, so *that's* why Ronim is such a grumpy sod!' or some such.

It's a rich tapestry.

It's interesting how my world has developed. Not a single bit of it is down on paper. Well, the odd note that I took down a year or so ago when the idea was first concieved, but nothing consistently concrete.

I've been allowing it to stew in my mind. Rather then creating the world from scratch on paper, the world seems to have developed independently as a bi-product of my general contemplations. In a sense (without sounding like a pretentious wanker) I mentally live within my world.

The entire thing currently exists in my head. I sense that the gruel's done simmering now, as I'm pretty keen to get started. I'll soon consolidate all of my ideas on paper then get on with it.

My advice is to take your time and give your ideas the freedom to evolve and develop on their own. That includes not taking down any detailed notes, as that suggests that you're having a direct influence on their creation, rather than a passive and somewhat dislocated one.

badducky said:

The most important thing to remember about worldbuilding is that it is always, always secondary to character and story building.

Click to expand...

That is advice to follow. I started my fantasy novel (which is in the query blender right now) with characters. As the characters unfolded through action, I began to understand things about their world. So, writing the story created the world, and in many instances, I discovered things about the characters' cultures only as I was knee-deep in telling the story. (And of course, had to go back and build those cultural aspects into earlier parts of the story.) Write the story, the world will build itself.

badducky said:

The most important thing to remember about worldbuilding is that it is always, always secondary to character and story building.

Click to expand...

Exactamundo. I've seen many many many a manuscript that has foundered on this shoal.

caw

Let it grow

I'd say, take what you have so far and write about it. See what comes from that. With the Kritter stories I do, I started with a map -- which grew after story 1 and then more and more. Other tales (non-Kritter) I have no map. But believe me, Kritter has evolved and in my case it's been half and half world-building/writing. In other words, sometimes I have no idea what I'm writing unless I look at my Kritter folder, and sometimes I find a character or a new place that I have to develop before I can figure out what I'm doing.

I first got into fantasy writing about maybe 16 or 17 years ago by making up my own world, and I fiddled with that for years. Looking back at those stories I can see I was going about it the wrong way, writing stories to fit the world rather than the story being foremost. Things ended up twisted and convoluted because I wanted to show off a particular place I'd invented.

This time, I had the idea for a story and more specifically for one particular character's story, and I went about making up the world to suit that story, to make it as interesting and exciting as it could be (hopefully). I've found it a lot easier to work with and I believe in it a lot more than I did those early books.

One thing I've found is that as I've written the story, more and more details of the world have come to me, so I've been tweaking earlier chapters to fit in with these new ideas I've found to give the whole thing some coherence. I tend to spend ages world building if I don't check myself, whereas most of the best ideas I've had have come from actually writing the story.

Best of luck with your world!
JessR

whatever else you do, draw a map before you start to write. trying to do it the otehr way around is nigh on impossible. This was JRRT's best bit of advice to aspiring writers. IT doesn;t hinder you in any way but enables you to give a physical context to the story very, very easily. You can always flesh it out later, but draw it and put the big bits on it. That is my tuppence worth.