Your world-building process?

rwm4768 said:

I wouldn't label all forms of non-writing as procrastination. You might be able to write everything on the fly, but that doesn't work for every writer. I'd rather do a little planning ahead of time. If I don't have at least some of the basics down, I struggle to write the story.

Not to mention, a little planning ahead of time can prevent you from having big problems later. Problems that would take longer to fix than the planning would take.

I'm not advocating spending years on worldbuilding ahead of time. That goes well beyond a little planning, and that, I think, is procrastination. I can't imagine spending that much time building a world. I'm usually too eager to write the story.

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Unless it's your first book, and you just decided to become a writer, you should always be writing something. If you aren't, you're procrastinating.

If you can't work on this story because of all the world-building, you should be working on another.

Research one, write on the other.

Jamesaritchie said:

Unless it's your first book, and you just decided to become a writer, you should always be writing something. If you aren't, you're procrastinating.

If you can't work on this story because of all the world-building, you should be working on another.

Research one, write on the other.

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I'm sure that works if you're a full-time writer, but most of us aren't. We're lucky if we can find the time and energy to work on one project at a time.

These are my thoughts. If your process is resulting in completed novels, it works. If you spend all your time worldbuilding instead of writing, then you aren't completing novels, but a little bit of time worldbuilding ahead of time can actually make the novel writing go more quickly because you're not getting stuck as often.

rwm4768 said:

I'm sure that works if you're a full-time writer, but most of us aren't. We're lucky if we can find the time and energy to work on one project at a time.

These are my thoughts. If your process is resulting in completed novels, it works. If you spend all your time worldbuilding instead of writing, then you aren't completing novels, but a little bit of time worldbuilding ahead of time can actually make the novel writing go more quickly because you're not getting stuck as often.

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For me, the big question is "Does it serve the story?"

If you have an epic fantasy and you're working on the marriage customs of one particular society because you plan on having the protagonist tricked into an arranged marriage because he didn't know the customs, that's one thing. If, on the other hand, you segue into an essay on the marriage customs of all the societies on that continent, rather than worrying about the two customs in question and where they conflict, then you're probably procrastinating.

Generalities are fine, but don't spend time on the details unless they matter.

Dave.C.Robinson said:

For me, the big question is "Does it serve the story?"

If you have an epic fantasy and you're working on the marriage customs of one particular society because you plan on having the protagonist tricked into an arranged marriage because he didn't know the customs, that's one thing. If, on the other hand, you segue into an essay on the marriage customs of all the societies on that continent, rather than worrying about the two customs in question and where they conflict, then you're probably procrastinating.

Generalities are fine, but don't spend time on the details unless they matter.

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Yeah, I don't do that kind of stuff in the worldbuilding process. It bores me. I work to get the basics down, mostly the political situation, climate and geography, the magic system, and the other important stuff. Anything else I need I fill in as necessary.

I've just finished one WIP (D vs D) and am about a hundred pages into revising it. Really, I let the world-building 'happen' as I wrote the story so now I'm just taking notes of where I spot any inconsistencies and changing them as I go.

I love worldbuilding.

The process varies from story to story. Things tend to develop organically for me though - There will be a scene that interests me, and the initial worldbuilding will come from considering how this scene was possible. What led to it happening in the way it did, and why?

I usually start with one idea, then build a support system up around it. For instance, once in college I asked a friend of mine to build me a realistic world government and, once he did, I started building a history around it, then added characters then decided what their crisis would be.
For another, I started with a drawing I made of a physically enhanced commando, then started coming up with why one would be needed and what level of technology could spawn it.

I had the idea of the characters' dilemma before I knew the geography, but right at the beginning I knew what the place looked like. The more difficult thing is laying out the rules for the universe you're righting in, especially for fantasy. You can't just have people flinging magic spells around or have creatures pop out of the mud you didn't know they lived in. I had to flesh out those rules before my second draft.

I usually start with a fair idea what my world is like, but that comes from a bit of quiet time before I begin--no notes, excel sheets, notecards, etc.....I start with a story idea, and turn my car radio off for my commute to and from work.

When you turn the radio off, and the car is quiet, things in your head get pretty damn loud. So I bounce things around a few days before starting, and have maybe half my world figured out (75% figured, but 25% changes and the other 25 I just didn't have to begin with) before I write. The rest comes along the way.

I love buying plain composition notebooks. I'll fill them up with hand drawn maps and snippets about my setting. I use it for my characters as well. I always thought it was a nifty little way of keeping all of my notes organized and in one spot.

Most of this happens throughout my writing process though. The basics of things are rewritten down before I actually start writing my story. Then while I'm writing, more is added to my notebook. I also use it after I've finished writing my story, and it's a great editing tool.

I wish I was one of those folks who could outline it all beforehand. Sometimes I feel like I don't have enough details because of that. Usually though, I get the basic premise, fuzzy ideas of plot and characters. I build the characters because I need to know them or at least how they look before I start. When I wrote a fantasy, I had the characters all sketched out as well as rough ideas of where they were from. That gave me some sense of my world. I also had one location that popped into my head when I was planning. That gave me an anchor. All the rest I developed as I wrote, including a map. At some point, I will go back through, revise, and add more details. Most of my work tends to need revisions but I'm okay with that.

I also love world building. Since I work full time and can only write a couple of hours a day (if that) I spend my time thinking about the world that my characters will live in. When I'm doing a tedious task at work, I make it a little less boring by imagining how the job would get done in "my world". When I'm commuting (if I don't get a seat on the train allowing me to read or write), I think about how the people in my world get from point A to B.

I find world building, and thinking about what I'm writing in general, a great way to make a not so interesting task a lot more tolerable.

Lainey

World building isn't my best skill, but I've been working on it a lot lately. For my possible WIP (yeah, I know, "possible WIP" sounds pretty flimsy) I made a rough map, came up with the different races, and then briefly though about what each kingdom\faction wanted. Then I started thinking about locations that I would need for the novel. I'm hoping a lot of little details will work themselves out as I actually (maybe) write the thing.

This is definitely something I could see differing from novel to novel. An epic fantasy with a lot of political elements would need a lot of detail on politics, a story about a mage would need more magical detail, stuff like that.

For my projects with any meat to them, I've started with a core idea of the world, and then built supporting details around it, similar to RikWriter's process. I need to have a good, solid world before the story will come out of it...I can have all the interesting characters I like, but if I don't know how they'll interact with their world, nothing seems to come of it.

I'm still figuring out what methods work for me, but I tend to just write the story, and fill it out as I write. I fill in as much as the story needs.

The way I can describe it is like a bit like that scene in which the blind girl tries to find out what Raggedy Ann looks like in that old Raggedy Ann animated short:

The girl got a doll. All she knows about it is that it is a doll. She starts feeling the doll. The screen is black.

As she keeps feeling the doll, she discovers a feature of the doll: button eyes, yarn hair, etc. For each feature she finds out about, that feature shows up on the screen. This keeps going on until Raggedy Ann's entire face is filled out on the screen.

(Here is the video if my description doesn't make sense, lol.
http://m.youtube.com/?#/watch?v=hcekUBpYYK8 )

Basically, it's like being in the dark, and exploring with a flashlight. You can only see the areas exposed by the flashlight as you go.

I usually have a time frame and place on Earth a world will be like, and then any and all details of the world grow naturally from the characters and plot.

I try to use mainly the 'grown from my characters' part of my way of doing things, because if I focus too much on the real world roots I start researching that and never dig myself up to do any actual story writing.