First, a couple of announcements. The audiobook of Sorcery and Cecelia is now available. Audiobooks for The Grand Tour and The Mislaid Magician will be coming in January; The Grand Tour is currently available for preorders.
The second announcement is that in January I will be teaching a class on worldbuilding for the Odyssey Online workshop. See https://odysseyworkshop.org/worldbuilding.html for further details. Because of this, worldbuilding is at the top of my mind at the moment, so that’s what I’m going to talk about today.
Worldbuilding can be separated into two different parts: 1) Figuring out the setting, and 2) conveying it to the reader.
Figuring out the setting is something every writer has to do to some extent. The amount of “figuring out” ranges from checking out a couple of details for a contemporary novel set in the writer’s current home town, to making up aliens and fantastical worlds out of whole cloth. The farther the story wanders from the place and time the writer already knows, the more work the writer has to do to compile the details for the world of the story.
The figuring out part of worldbuilding requires two kinds of work: research, and making stuff up. How much of each is necessary depends on how realistic the writer needs their portrayal to be and on how familiar the writer is with the setting already.
A contemporary novel set in New York City needs research, even if the writer lives there. Readers who live in or have visited New York are likely to drop out of the story if the writer randomly relocates the airport or gets the order of the subway stops mixed up. The making-stuff-up part is still needed for places that don’t exist in the real world, like the main character’s apartment décor, or their favorite hang-out, but the landmarks, the culture, and the general ambiance will be lifted from real life, and therefore require research. (Visiting a place and taking notes is one kind of research; reading other people’s memoirs is another kind.)
At the other end of the scale, you have the totally imaginary fantasy world, where magic works and the laws of physics are more like incomplete guidelines. Obviously, this sort of story requires a lot more making-stuff-up than research (and this is what is usually meant when people talk about worldbuilding). However, if the writer wants their invented cultures, history, technology, and politics to be convincing, they’re very likely to need to do some research in order to make sure everything hangs together.
Conveying the world to the reader is actually the important part of worldbuilding, because it happens inside the story, which is the only thing most readers will ever see. (Nobody gets away with publishing many pages of appendices and multiple volumes of the imaginary history of their imaginary world except Tolkien.)
All stories need this part, even if their setting exists in real life. There are always going to be readers who have never been to New York City, and to them, New York is as imaginary as the deserts of Tatooine. They may have a few mental images collected from movies and TV, but they don’t know what it is really like until the writer shows them.
In most novels, portraying the world is like blowing a giant soap bubble. A soap bubble appears to take up a lot of space. In reality, the soap bubble is a couple of drops of water stretched around empty air, held in place (barely) by soap and surface tension.
Similarly, the in-story worldbuilding is a collection of bits of description and details that imply a lot more. The main character tosses on a summer cloak lined with fox-fur – this is a really cold world. The slang in this city all has to do with boats and fish, and a particular fish sandwich is standard pub food everywhere; clearly, there’s a harbor and fishing industry, even if the main character never sees it.
This is why it isn’t one hundred percent necessary to do in-depth figuring-out stuff in advance. As long as the author knows that summers are cold enough to need fur garments and the city is a fishing port, they can make up specific clothes and slang as needed. Depending on the story, the writer’s pre-existing familiarity with the setting, and the writer’s ability to make up telling details on the fly and keep them consistent, they may be able to start with a general idea of the story-world (“Magic works, and there are lots of small countries and different races run them”) and write their way into the world the same way many writers get to know their characters as they write.
Most of the writers I know fall somewhere in between “It’s a port city, and magic works” and Tolkien-level background notes in terms of the amount of figuring-out they need to do in advance. Exactly what they make up is different for every writer – it depends on what kind of foundation the writer needs in order to be able to make things up on the fly.
Some writers want all the “hard” details nailed down – technology, the exact rules for magic, maps that show the terrain and local landmarks – but they need to leave out the socio-political stuff, so they can make up history as they need it. Other writers want the history and backstory laid out in detail, but they like to keep the physical surroundings a little vague until they need the town to have a river running through it, or need an impassable mountain range to keep their characters corralled.
Worldbuilding is something I get for free, or at least cheap. It’s fun for me, which is one reason why I’ve never really written fanfic. (Another reason is that I also find it fun to create original characters.)
I am intimidated by the “figure out all the details” worldbuilders. But I do try to figure out what I think of as the critical supporting details so that the cool bits I put into the story remain consistent.
In particular I try to come up with numbers. If the protagonists need to talk with a sculptor, for example, I’ll stop and try to work out “How many sculptors are there in this city? One part-timer? A sparse handful? A couple of dozen?” Or if an issue with a wealthy noble’s servants crops up, I may need to work out the turnover rate. How common are Old Family Retainers as opposed to those who rarely stay for more than a year?
“It’s fun for me”
Me too!
I will say that worldbuilding is key to what makes sf and fantasy the genre they are, so it shouldn’t be skimped. Which isn’t to say it all has to be worked out in advance.
(I usually do anyway. Maps, histories, magic systems, tech details… As Deep Lurker said, it’s fun.)
Well, the worldbuilding on my current book is done. it’s the so-called “Dark Ages,” between the fall of Rome and the coronation of Charlemagne as Emperor. With some changes.
I didn’t need to do much research on the period; I’ve been reading it up for years and I’m tolerably familiar with it. But I can’t expect the reader to be. Some mention of the physical and cultural setting has got to go in fairly early, always remembering that one must not hit one’s reader over the head with it.
Then there are the additions of the photophobic elves who raid human settlements for janissaries who can go out in the daytime; clerical magic, for which one needs not only the talent (inherited) but a clean conscience (achieved by effort), and a bit of backstory including Saint Virgil Magus, who developed in the early years CE.
I finished the second draft and sent it out for review to several people who had asked to see it. No one has replied except my agent, who is busy as heck, read the first few chapters, and said the story didn’t really take off till the young heroes start off on their quest.
During the course of the war, the protagonist has several prophetic dreams, which are better understood by those with more experience, than by him.
So I suggested to my agent, should I (a) open Chapter One with a frightening dream of battle, setting up the arrival of the messenger (several pages later) who announces that battle is at hand, and take it from there; or (b) start on the following day, as the human forces prepare for battle, when the protagonist wakes from another dream, tells the cleric on duty about it, and proceed to fill in the cultural details with a lot of “as you know, Bob”?
I would much prefer (a), and have started working on the new opening. Meanwhile, my agent replied that he’d have to reread the first couple chapters as they stand. And he is still as busy as heck.
Anyone have any opinions?
I prefer a to b.
The only more general comment I’d make is, if it’s not taking off, you can always see if you’ve established some kind of tension at the start, whether dramatic, character-based, romantic, or other. If readers can feel there’s trouble ahead, you don’t have to foreshadow, *if* you’d rather not.
The reading up on the era in advance is indeed a beautiful technique.
One advantage of it is that if you read a lot of history — particularly primary source — you know to doubt whether they did things back then like they do them now.
Thanks; I like to start with a sort of establishing shot … a paragraph indicating the time (spring, right after Easter), the place (outside the hall, in the sunshine), “where Heribrand and Wayland sat side by side on a bench, watching their sons fight.”
(It’s sword practice for two young men who have never seen battle yet, but they’re about to.)
But I’m willing to start off with a bang, if its echoes will lead the reader through another page or two (after Prime and Mass, Hildebrand tells his dream to the local priest; then breakfast and on to the swordfighting).
Some writers I know value world building over story, and end up with what I call Template Syndrome: “I have a planet with some continents and a lot of water, with different countries where they speak different languages, and they have wars and do exploration and stuff. Doesn’t that sound like a great story?”
No, that sounds like a template for Earth. What story are you telling: A Tale of Two Cities, The Right Stuff, or Masque of the Red Death?
Which brings up a salient point best illustrated by John Crowley when he said, “I am going to ask my students to read one book of travel, history, cultural anthropology, or similar account that will… shame them out of concocting another pseudo-medieval non-society peopled by folks like themselves (and a few dragons and vampires, also much like themselves).”
Yup! Exactly.
World-building is key to sf and fantasy, but less so to a quality, enjoyable story. All the world-building in the…world won’t save wooden characters, flat dialog, dull description, and so on.
I’m very much aware that a cool setting with cool bits is not a story. Which is why I overdose on therapeutic whining about needing to grow plots.
That John Crowley quote makes me want to go write something that’s shamelessly pseudo-medieval and peopled by folk who are like myself with certain inhibitions removed.
The slang in this city all has to do with boats and fish, and a particular fish sandwich is standard pub food everywhere; clearly, there’s a harbor and fishing industry, even if the main character never sees it.
I remember noticing this in The Raven Ring – the Ciaronese characters all tend to use fishing and sailing metaphors and slang, while Eleret uses fighting-related ones. It inspired me to work in more of that kind of character-specific language use in the novel I was writing at the time.