Worldbuilding

Devotion to "world-building" is the Achilles heel for a lot of aspiring Fantasy writers. I used to frequent a local writers' group which had one guy who wanted to writer epic fantasy, and everything he presented to the group was total world-building, with nary the echo of a shadow of a whiff of a Higgs boson of a story involved anywhere.

Build your world in your mind or in your notes, and write the damn story. In case you missed it, the "write the damn story" part is the important part. Don't inflict your world-building on your readers. If you even get any.

caw

I agree with blacbird. Don't forget to write the damn story when you're world-building, because like your friend, you're just dreaming, and you're not actually putting those dreams down on paper. If you feel the need to do an in-depth mapping-out of your world, do so. It can be fun and can even get the gears a-turning for a story...which you shouldn't forget to write (now just saw that you have 100,000 words of a manuscript, so actually that's not a problem).

A good book I'd recc - World-Building by Stephen A. Gillett and Ben Bova. I studied it a lot when building my own worlds, and found it to be useful (even though I never really finished my big fantasy project...but that's another story).

Good luck!

I write science fiction, science-fantasy, and on occasion pure fantasy.

I used to use this: http://www.sfwa.org/2009/08/fantasy-worldbuilding-questions/. It took roughly four months to build everything in the world. And guess what? I barely used any of the stuff I built.

I don't worldbuild anymore because I don't recycle the same specific world. The concept of the "world" I use is more vague and somewhat amorphous.

I probably don't do as much worldbuilding as I should. I find it boring. I prefer to get to the story and build the world as the characters interact with it.

Darrach - I just listened to a super good program on Wisconsin Public Radio about world building. Patrick Rothfuss of "Name of the Wind" fame talks about building his world (second link down I think)


http://www.wpr.org/search/ideas_program_search.cfm?StartRow=1&startyear=3&keyword=rothfuss

don't be too discouraged. There's a lot that you can do to give your world more dimension.

World building is useless.

Culture buildings is pure gold. Create a intriguing, understandable culture and you're got something good.

I built cultures, groups of people, who live in the same world. That is what drives my world.

Of course, what we know as the world, is only a collection of people. A group of those people who share the same qualities is a culture.

I say focus more on figuring out how to give readers the impression of a living world than deciding on all the details. As a reader, I don't care if all the months have funny names based on ancient emperors in their history, but sometimes the smallest hint can open up the feeling of how alien and huge and wonderful and alive this world is. And then my imagination hints at all the unspoken details out of the corner of my eye.

Maybe for you a big binder of all the facts with the months and days and feasts and the name and profession of every person in the village is the petticoats under the dresses in gone with the wind that you know is there even if the audience doesn't, giving you the confidence and attitude to convey it all.

On the other hand, maybe you will write better if you discover details as you go, ready to invent people and places and customs at the drop of a hat whenever you need them.

Don't feel like you haven't done your homework if it turns out the second works better for you than the first. You aren't writing a show bible for others to follow. The important thing is the end result.

Imagination...it does work wonders.

If your having trouble "envisioning" this original world of yours, go find some inspiration for it. Go watch some cartoons, open up a comic book, etc. It may just spark something.

I assume you already have the bare bones of your world, right? To flesh it out, look for the "open doors" your work is presenting.
In other words, imagine your manuscript as a passage you are walking down; It's sole purpose is to take you from one point to another. Now, if you looked a little harder, you would realize you're constantly passing rooms or opportunities to leave the passage for a time and explore all these other interesting spaces. Open a few doors and see where they take you.

For example, your characters visit a shop and meet the store owner. That is pretty generic. You are now being presented with an open door, go in and see where it takes you. What kind of shop? what is it about this shop that will wedge itself in your readers imagination? what do they sell that no one else does? who do they sell to? What is going on with the owner, and how does he react to your characters. You can take this as far as you want.

Not only do you break the impression that the word is just a prop waiting to support your character's performance, but you also give yourself a few more blocks to play with. Oh this store sells magical flying brooms, perhaps I can interest my characters in a wizards sport.

It seems a doubled edged sword. I've found myself caught up in world building and it is easy to lose track of the story sometimes. On the flip side understanding the world your character inhabits can often lead to story points you wouldn't have though of.

A person is shaped by the world and culture they inhabit. Yet we identify with the characters. I think it comes down to balance between the two.

I've gotten comments on my book from critiquers that I didn't do enough world building. In fact, any time I get comments on anything fantasy, they're nearly always revolve around me mucking up the world building. I don't enjoy it. I stayed away from fantasy for years because all I heard was that you had to do a 3-ring binder and maps and build all this information that I might never use once I start writing the story (I'm a panster, so the story can change drastically during writing).

So this is what I did to add world building to an existing book:

I started out researching an existing culture and location. I'd seen several fantasy locations where it was obvious the author had done that, so it was a way for me to be able to deal with the world building without having to create it completely from scratch. Most of the research was in culture and life in the location, more than anything else. Since mine is a contemporary fantasy/action-adventure thriller, it was a blending of modern setting research and the culture of the past (which no longer exists in the place). It was like the research gave me the big picture so I could launch from that into parts I could make up.

Then I started revising each chapter. Based on comments, I had to both establish this was a different place and set in modern times, so I had details that brought in both. Since this is a society where the women often stay in the background and there's a cultural clash (the sidekick is one of the first women who served in the country's army), I show the business community attending a ceremony as being all male, and later the antagonist fusses over the changes the queen has made (which is his motivation for doing what he does).

What gets into the story is because what's already in the story. So I mention religion (there's a goddess character in the story), then I have to develop religion and culture in relation to that. If I go to a new setting, I have to build something for it. Magic has been the hardest thing for me because I treat it like a soldier would treat a weapon in the story. He doesn't know how it works; it's a tool that's available to him. So I struggle with getting how it works in -- and this is often not already in the story.

What did surprise me was, despite how little I had in the original draft, people did pick up some things like the type of government and that the society is in transition about gender roles. So, if the story is already showing us this, then further development is about working it more in depth.

Darrach said:

So, for the first time since starting my novel, I decided to do some real world building. I mean, I'm really trying to make this place unique (with the exception of time it takes the planet to travel round the sun , etc. etc.). The problem? I have no idea where I should be going with this. Sure I named my seasons, months, weekdays, and even constellations. Made some sketches for religions and a few customs, but other than that, I'm at a loss.

You who have accomplished this daunting task, what are some of the things you have done to build your world?

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Seasons, months, weekdays, oh my! In my experience of writing a fantasy universe with my husband since 2007, I can honestly say we have never gone so far as those nitty-gritty details. Sure, we've contemplated and organized some details that we agree will likely never see time on a page, but really, our world-building, for the most part, is kept to what will influence the story itself. We've scribbled some maps, to help us plan travels and wars and such, constellations came up at different times because they were important to different characters, but we kept the seasons earth-normal, and really didn't get into months and days, because we felt those were arbitrary details for us. We haven't felt the need to specify that something happened in July, mid-summer is good enough for us.

Some people benefit from more lengthy details, your mileage may vary and all that. But our story is big and twisted enough for us without packing a writer's bible of referendum on top of it.

Then again, more often than not hubby and I discover our world-building information by writing the story.

So you've written a novel and your friend hasn't, yet you're thinking of adopting his approach. Sounds barmy to me.

Some people definitely enjoy world building for its own sake. But if that's not you, and you already have a story written, look to the story to guide you. Are their places in it where you can add detail to the world? If you do, will it help your story? Is it necessary or just window dressing?

For instance, if you already have people talking about the days of the week, then maybe come up with new ones. If that never appears, then don't bother. Instead of world building in the abstract, just do what you need to do help the story you already have.

Interesting. I always thought that "worldbuilding" meant how convincing your setting was based on the text of your story.

Darrach said:

I've been writing fantasy for, oh, twelve years now. My bits all take place in other worlds, of course (I see Earth in real life everyday, why would I want to write about it, too?). Anyhow, after taking a creative writing class in college about three years ago, I became friends with another fantasy author. Okay, so maybe he's more of a plotter than a writer...but the point here is that he has done so much plotting and worldbuilding for his (still unwritten) novel, that it made me realize that my world is...well...empty. Naturally, it held all the expected aspects of a fantasy setting, but it lacked individuality, which is far more important when you get down to the nitty gritty. So, for the first time since starting my novel, I decided to do some real world building. I mean, I'm really trying to make this place unique (with the exception of time it takes the planet to travel round the sun , etc. etc.). The problem? I have no idea where I should be going with this. Sure I named my seasons, months, weekdays, and even constellations. Made some sketches for religions and a few customs, but other than that, I'm at a loss.



You who have accomplished this daunting task, what are some of the things you have done to build your world?



Any advice is very much appreciated!

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I wonder why you refer to your plotting friend as an author when he hasn't written anything.

As a reader, I want the setting to provide a backdrop to the story and, more importantly, the characters. I don't want to be clobbered with descriptions of things I find it difficult to picture, nor do I want the world so complicated that I have to make notes to myself to keep track of which things do what. I seriously doubt your worlds, whatever they are like, are as boring as you've let someone convince you they are.

My fantasy novels are earth-based. But one will have a world within this world and another will have one off-world. Right now, I have a vision of them in my head. I plan on making a few notes. Maybe a map. I always appreciate maps in books I read.

Something I always enjoy in a book is the concept of content mirroring form, but in this case, setting mirroring characters obviously works really well. In some cases, creating a world where the symbolism can be masked in scenery is something that really captures a reader's interest.

For example, LOTR is crafted in such a way that a lot of the scenery, and the entire world, is enormous, and is on such a big scale, filled with deep lakes, tall mountains and vast plains. This contrasts with the plight of Frodo, who is a hobbit, small by nature. The scenery echoes that which he has to overcome, a large obstacle, that in comparison to his stature, seems impossible.

Now, while this is pretty obvious, it's always nice to allow the characters to drive the story.

Ultimately, it comes down to the philosophy you want to impart into your reader as an author. Do you want to emphasize the nature of your characters as strong individuals or as just pawns in the endless game of chess that is said world?

A world shaped to the characters certainly focuses on the importance of characters, but a larger world will definitely key in on the importance of the environment.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that world-building for you is clearly about making a unique world, and as we all know, unique characters really separate the good from the bad stories. So just take some of your characters' best and most unique qualities and materialize them in something of symbolic importance in your world (the color scheme, the plants, etc).

Hope that helps!

Ehj~

The purpose of world-building is to allow your story to inhabit a context that is credibly solid and conveys the impression of being broad and deep. That doesn't mean it has to have all the attributes of a real world, any more than a stage set does - it just has to seem substantial enough the reader isn't forced to notice it's just canvas and paint.

I like Pat Wrede's set of world-building questions Riley mentioned above, not because it's necessary or even desirable to answer them all as part of a world-building exercise per se, but because they cover a broad range of topics that are all potentially useful to consider, but you may not think of on your own. Some of them may prompt you to think of aspects of your world that are directly relevant to your story, or connect to the setting and background in a useful way, or contribute interesting elements of local color or characterization that can help create the illusion of a fully-realized world.

But to echo what other people have said - don't mistake world-building for story-building. It's a tool in your creative kit, not an end in itself.

When I think of world building, I think of the back stories, background information, and rules of the world that I need as a writer to make the world real for my readers.

I may not mention much of anything in it, but for example, I want to know if werewolfism is a curse or a disease, if it's inherited or can be passed down by biting someone, can be cured or if the person is stuck with it forever. I need to know the best ways to kill werewolves, ways you can't kill a werewolf, and what kind of jobs werewolves tend to have and the company they tend to keep. How long do they live, do they prefer to travel in packs? And then I do this for every single aspect of the world. If I have fictional towns, I ask myself how big they are, who lives there, and what important businesses are in the village or city or whatever.

I don't talk about werewolves much in my stories, but knowing all those things about them helps make the ones I do have more real and three-dimensional. I make a point to spend a week before I start any story now to plot out all the important aspects of the world. Starting with the ones I need to actually tell the story (names of towns and characters), then adding a few background details for my own benefit (character personality profiles, size of the towns & important stuff in them). The rest I come up with as the story calls for it.

The most I do in world building is sketch a map, labeling regions and places of interest, and decide what kind of government rules each region. I transfer the sketch map to a large poster board where I have room to add in geographic details, names of locals as they come up , and miscellaneous things that could be important later on. I discover the additions while I am writing, make a note of them on scrap paper and then add them on the poster when I take a break. Off to the side of the map, I usually list whatever pantheon is in use, seasonal/time information, etc. I do everything in pencil so it can be changed as needed. I try to stick to a 1:2:7 rule, as in 1 hour of world building and 2 hours of character building for every 7 hours of writing early on in the first draft. As I progress, that drops down to something like .5:.5:9 or more, but my world and characters are always evolving so sometimes I get thrown for a loop and have to reevaluate information.