World Building

[Nova]

I wanted to start i thread about this topic, its probable my favorite part about Fantasy, when reading i can get a bit cranky one authors don't meet my expectations of world building. When i write fantasy i can be a stickler for the perfecting the culture and history in my world. I was wondering what others thoughts feeling about world building was and if they had any tips or comment stemming from experience about do's and don't.

[scintor]

Read Jeff's writing tips. There is a group of writers who tend to be character-centric, and a corresponding group who tend to be setting-centric. The trick is to provide a balance.

Having said that, I have been complemented many times on my skill at world building. The way that I find the most effective is to ask the question: Given the situation, how can people in this setting go about their daily lives in a normal fashion? How are they getting their basic needs met and keep their lives from daily lives (and therefore their society) from falling apart.

Scincerely,

[e-mail]

[Spokane Flyboy]

I'm not working on a fantasy setting, but I know my sci-fi setting is building slowly in my head. It's a lot larger scale than any single story would need, but I also look to use it for role-play. I know a lot of "why" questions end up in my head. "Why did this nation form the way it did? Why did they form in the first place? Why did the war start? Why did mankind begin dispersing into space?" Then from those seem to come the "how" questions.

[beckyminor]

I'm a fan of world-building as well. Knowing how different cultures relate to one another, having at least a basic history of the world outlined, and understanding how different cultures' pov on historical events gives me, personally a lot to work with when I start building characters. I find that as I write, having my world in place often writes the story for me. I know that if character x is from this nation, and character y is from that, conflict is a foregone conclusion!

I'm a big fan of the world that runs deep with detail. But again, that might have something to do with what Spokane Flyboy said about roleplaying...having that skeleton in my closet makes me demand enough setting that I know how my character should act, culturally. Building a character's personality is what I like best about tabletop RPG's, so I guess it was just inevitable that I would eventually succumb to the itch to write.

[Bainespal]

I also want to see deeply-implemented cultures when I read fantasy. It might be possible to overdue the worldbuilding, perhaps. More likely, I think instead of being "overdone", the details of the culture can be over-presented in one place. However, no amount of detail is bad when it is revealed naturally in the proper place.

The worst thing is for the setting to be vague enough that the reader just substitutes preconceived stereotypes for all the little important details. For instance, I'm currently reading The Elfstones of Shannara. There's some good material in it, but much of it seem tedious because the setting and cultures are just too vague. Even if you are using the standard stereotypes, you should describe them from the ground up, as if you had invented them yourself, and the reader will have no idea what you're talking about unless you find a way to reveal it. I think that's part of what makes a high fantasy seem creative and original.

Just my two cents as a reader.

[beckyminor]

Amen, Bainspal. Even if you're using the old elf/dwarf/race of short people you name whatever formula for your world, just assuming that "vocabulary" in a reader would be to miss an opportunity to enrich your world. I haven't read Terry Brooks' stuff in a good decade or more, but I can see how that lack of specificity would be irksome.

The trick, in my mind, is to describe your world in a way that instills wonder in your reader, even if you *only* use humans.

[Spokane Flyboy]

My role-playing skeleton keeps falling out of the closet, and on occasion it actually lets itself out and wanders off.

My world building is getting pretty deep in my head, but I haven't gotten most of it to my notebook/wiki yet. I do have a planet and all the stats for it (insane stuff like perihelion, side-real rotation, axial tilt, eccentricity, atmospheric comp, and even the highest and lowest points) and it's start system and the other planets around it. I've also developed the how and why they got there. Even though my story revolves around these guys on the fictional planet and system, I've also got a lot being developed back on Earth and the Solar System. While it's a sci-fi setting, the concepts are the same. Sci-fi is fantasy with fanciful technology replacing magic.

[waldenwriter]

I also am a big fan of world-building. I have a whole notebook for notes regarding Walden. Entomology for place names is my big thing. Also, a lot of times I end going into a story in my notes to explain something. (I actually turned one of these into a story for my final project for Creative Writing class this semester). While characters are important, I like to know how the world works as well.

Apr 19, 2010 23:45:08 GMT -5 Spokane Flyboy said:

While it's a sci-fi setting, the concepts are the same. Sci-fi is fantasy with fanciful technology replacing magic.

Or you could have both, like in this video game I played called Tales of Symphonia where there were devices operated by magitechnology, a sort of combination of magic and technology. These include glider sort of things called Rheiards, a Mana Cannon, and the gates leading to the five seals that have to be broken on the Journey of Regeneration, which have locks of some sort that only the Chosen of Regeneration can open.

My sci-fi stories generally have "fanciful technology," but that's because they're more fantasy-like than sci-fi like.

[scintor]

Also, don't forget, just because you create something for the background for your story doesn't mean that you have to describe it in detail when you see it. Let these things be described as it becomes relevant to the story. Otherwise you may bog down your reader in pointless details and lose their interest. It's all a balancing act.

Scincerely,

[e-mail]

[beckyminor]

So right, scintor. I think it's really hard for us worldbuilders to resist the urge to parade all the little details we've thought up for our readers. It's like we're writing along, and the plot makes a close brush with some unrelated, very cool thing about our world, and we can't help ourselves but grab the reader by the arm and say, "Oh, but wait, wait, wait a sec. See this thing over here? I know this isn't the time, you know, with the protagonist fleeing for her life and all, but the history of this particular religious sect is too good..."

Lol. We all can't help but show our baby pictures sometimes!

[momofkings]

World Building is one thing that has completely frozen my writing. I'm working on it slowly.

I figured I'd read some in depth history to get ideas for cultures and intrigues.

In general, how do you go about your world-building? I am no artist, so even drawing a map is intimidating!

[beckyminor]

I try to work on it one culture at a time...deciding what sorts of people I want in my world, and from there connecting to the right kind of terrain for their characteristics (i.e.-my somewhat mongol based culture needs to live on steppes so that they've got plenty of terrain to wander and train on horseback.) The terrain then helps define wildlife, flora, climate and the like. When I focus on a people group, I then get at least a rough timeline for their history together. Some of my cultures have a very skeletal history, whereas others are very fleshed out through most of their generations. My world is a young world...perhaps about 15,000 years old, so that gives me less history to write, at least. And humans have only been on the scene for about the last half of that.

I'm working primarily with one continent for the moment. I know there are a couple others and what sorts of people live there, but one continent with 15 distinct people groups is enough for me to get my head around for now.

I don't know if that helps, but that's my approach. I can't help but work from the "character" out, it would seem.

[Spokane Flyboy]

Drawing isn't nearly as important as information is. Though, it does help to have a drawing pad and pen or pencil handy to at least make rudimentary maps when you're reasoning out things such as wars, migrations, and the like. I also like to do mind-mapping to map out events and work with timelines to avoid jumbling the events around.

[morganlbusse]

Hey Momofkings,
Here's how I've done world building: Lots and Lots of laundry.

Seriously.

Oh yeah, and an iPod ;P

I like to listen to music as I do my housework and many times the music has brought pictures to my mind that eventually morphed into the different societies in my book. I've also googled images to see what places, clothes, etc... could look like for my different cultures.

Another thing I've done is studied real cultures, then taken bits and pieces to form my own world (borrowed architecture, beliefs, foods, etc...).

[metalikhan]

For me, world building depends on what kind of what if question(s) I start with — a plot what if or character what if.

With a plot what if, I'm thinking about how the characters will move through their world as they move through their story. With a character what if, I'm thinking about what influences and knowledge the character has of his/her world that makes him/her the character that stands at whatever crossroads in the story — what of the world shaped that character, in other words.

Either way, it's fun.