A couple of weeks ago, I finally figured out one of the several reasons I’ve been having so much difficulty booting up The New Thing. It’s because for my last eight to ten books, I haven’t had to do any deep worldbuilding, because all of them came with that part ready-made. The Frontier Magic books, the Star Wars middle-grade trilogy, the Regency books – all of them had either plenty of actual or well-developed imaginary history to work from. I had plenty of decisions to make, but the foundation was already there. So I’ve been trying to do what I “always” do, which is to skip straight to the plot and the immediately necessary specifics of the background.
This is complicated by the fact that one of my best friends and story-noodlers is highly character-centered and dislikes having to make up much/any deep background in advance of the story. So her noodling questions have all been focused on the characters and plot (because she knows I do plot), which sometimes hits the “deep worldbuilding” button, but mostly doesn’t.
What I mean by “deep worldbuilding” is all the background, from geography to cultural history, that shapes the place and time the characters are living in. When I’m writing alternate history, I have many libraries’ worth of information to use or choose not to use. I can look up where the rivers and active volcanoes are, or where certain crops originated; I have the Han Dynasty, the Egyptian Pharaohs, and the Greco-Roman Empire that can be assumed with all their real-life consequences, or tinkered with, or eliminated with all those consequences (what if the rulers of the Indian subcontinent had chased Alexander back home and conquered Greece? Or Cleopatra had managed to annex Rome, instead of Rome getting Egypt?). Even if I made the world unrecognizable save for the geography (because, oh, aliens messed around with life on Earth at the end of the Mesozoic Era, so we have civilized dinosaurs instead of us), I’d know where the mountains and rivers were, and what the climate was like in various places, and so on.
But the New Thing isn’t alternate history in any way, shape, or form. Bits of it are modeled on Real Life History, but it’s more like visiting a museum exhibit of Michelangelo’s work and then coming home and trying to build a Cubist version of the Pieta out of cardboard boxes than it is like a mash-up of actual places and events.
Doing a lot of deep worldbuilding in advance is not for every writer, but it helps me. In fact, as has become quite clearly obvious, I need to know a fair amount of it, or I can’t get things to hang together properly at the immediate-backstory stage. That doesn’t mean I do all the deep worldbuilding at once; on the contrary, it develops in fits and starts, forwards and backwards. That is, sometimes I know something (like “this is a coastal city”) that implies a bunch of other things (a harbor, trade, seafood dishes). Other times, I know something (there are three distinct and mutually exclusive types of magic) and it begs a question (how were they discovered, and why do they have more-or-less equal status and emphasis?). The answer to that (three major empires back in their early history, each with a different attitude/philosophy toward What Man Is Allowed To Tamper With) implies some more things (my city must be somewhere that was either not directly influenced by any of the empires, or influenced equally by all of them, there are going to be at least some people who still have very strong opinions about whether each type of magic is good/bad).
I like the idea of a trade crossroads at some point in the middle of my three empires, which fits with the harbor-and-trade part I established earlier, but it might be inconvenient. I’ve already got a three-way magical conflict; do I really want a three-way philosophical and political conflict as well? Even if it ends up being just the historical remnants of the empires that my present-day people have to deal with? On the other hand, can I really avoid it, given what I have so far for background, even if I stick the city far away?
If I make the location somewhere well away from the ancient empires, then it’ll need to have some local resource that’s valuable enough to stimulate trade with all three, but not so valuable that any of the empires would come all the way out there and conquer the place to get it. So not iron or gold, but maybe silk or purple dye or porcelain. That will probably also affect their trade and lifestyle during the period of the story, and possibly the prosperity of the city, depending on whether said trade item is still in demand or has been made obsolete by some new invention or discovery.
There’s also the question of when and how those empires collapsed. Rot from within and barbarians from without, like Rome? War, leading to mutual exhaustion? Plague? Is any of that still a danger? And what’s left of them – a handful of more-or-less equal countries, or some small new places trying to expand into the decaying core of the original empire? I don’t plan on getting into lots of geopolitics in this story, but if my city is a trade center, what’s going on in it will be of interest to the rest of the world, and vice versa. Also, at least one of my characters is from away, so I’ll need to have her place-of-origin developed more than just “up north.”
Then there’s the city government (is it a charter city, like London, with a mayor and aldermen, but still answerable to the king? Or a city-state run by its own prince or council?), what the local factions are (besides my three kinds of mages), and a bunch of cultural stuff, especially cultural stuff revolving around clothes (because my main character is a seamstress).
Which brings in the question of what fabrics and decorations are available, and whether they’re produced locally (they don’t have to be; it’s a trade center, after all), which ones are expensive luxuries and which are the working-class wear, whether or not there are sumptuary laws. I know that unicorn leather is banned, but do they feel the same way about anything else?
I know there are at least some magical creatures in this world – fairies of the small-butterfly sort and unicorns, at minimum – so I need to know whether or not they’re intelligent and/or have their own magic, how different cultures treat them, and how the inevitable conflicts in attitude will get handled in this particular place. Possibly also how they’ll be handled in other places, if I end up with more characters who are From Away or who have traveled widely.
Many of these things, when I get them fully developed, won’t get into the story directly, but they’ll affect it profoundly because the historical and cultural cross-currents affect almost everything in the story. This is particularly frustrating for my story-noodler, because every time another bit of background clunks solidly into place, part of the plot changes, and she’s not used to it because I haven’t done this for the last eight or ten books. Also, because she doesn’t need to do as much of it, or not in advance anyway.
This is a helpful meditation for me. I’ve just put one half-done novel on a shelf so I can do some major worldbuilding and character development; I was trying to write about people living in the aftermath (fifteen to twenty years on) of the collapse of a major empire, but they were forever thinking back to the pre-collapse days. So I’ve decided to write a series of novellas dealing with different aspects of both the older characters (when they were young) and the various worlds in the story.
I’m just at the stage of realising that the basic information — it’s a great trade city at the mouth of a huge, Amazon-size river, requires a whole bunch of research into how deltas work and how people have built cities — Alexandria, New Orleans — on them. And then the role periodic flooding plays. And what exactly is their main item of trade . . . I think paper (from papyrus), miscellaneous related products, and dye; but then probably upriver is a major breadbasket because of the river fertility.
Do you draw many maps while working through world-building?
When you first started talking about having three very different types of magic, I, having just been re-reading Thirteenth Child, thought you were referring to the Avrupan, Aphrikan, and Hijero-Cathayan magic systems! Then I read a little farther and realized you were talking about the work in progress. : )
This new book sounds really interesting, especially the main character being a seamstress. I love stuff about sewing and making clothes, so that will be an additional attraction, aside from the obvious one of it being a new Patricia C. Wrede book.
This sounds so intriguing. I’m not much of a deep world-builder myself, so it’s a little bit of a brain stretch for me to try to combine all your different elements.
In some respects, part of what you said reminds me of the town situation in The Princess Academy by Shannon Hale. With their city, their commodity that they have is mining – no one really wants to take it away from them or take over because it’s so much work. At least, that’s how I remember reading it, but it’s been a few years… Silk or porcelain would work well too I think. Does your book have a working title?
“Even if I made the world unrecognizable save for the geography (because, oh, aliens messed around with life on Earth at the end of the Mesozoic Era, so we have civilized dinosaurs instead of us), I’d know where the mountains and rivers were, and what the climate was like in various places, and so on.”
And if that isn’t enough for your purpose, you can mess around with plate tectonics and put the rivers and volcanoes where you want them. 🙂
When I was world-building in Dungeons & Dragons, I always went one level deeper than the level I was developing. For that one level deeper, I would get some idea of what it was and used that to inform the more detailed level.
Why do orcs serve evil wizards? I do not think that when the heroes have fought their way to the evil wizard that he will be found sitting at his desk doing payroll. Instead, I figured he used a show of power to impress the orcs, flipped a ring of invisibility to the leader, told them to make their own money, and that when he needed them, he would call and they had better come.
I find the same approach applies to learning things. I am a computer systems analyst and programmer. I do not know the details of how a computer works electronically, but I have some appreciation of it.
Hmm, it would be interesting if the three type of magic were linked to the trade crossroads, in some way. Perhaps it’s reminding me of Barrayar, where we’re informed that the term Count is a contraction of accountant, and the military and social status came later. There might be a cool possible world where the three forms of magic were all linked to trade. They were developed in order to protect caravans, create honest bonds, etc. If magic was used in a mercantile rather than advisory capacity, it would shift the usual class dynamics of wizardry, which might set a lot of dominoes tipping…
Deep worldbuilding is usually my double edged sword. I love it. I don’t think I’ve ever written a story based in a real place, alternate world or not. But sometimes the worldbuilding can take on a life of its own and completely envelop the story. Finding the balance of what’s necessary and what’s not can be difficult, especially when there is so much world building that goes into the story, but not onto the paper
People talk about a plot-driven story, or a character-driven story, but I don’t hear very often about a setting-driven story. Although, of course, it’s true — the setting has a lot to say about what the characters can and cannot do.
I ran across this ages ago about the importance of place in story: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/preseence-200803.html?c=y&story=fullstory It touches on the importance of place around the last third of the story.
(-: You’ve got a bigger place to work with, that’s for sure!
Thank you, Micki. And what a wonderful geek-out moment for the author!
On rereading this essay a few days later, I’m minded to do some geography-noodling.
Imagine (as an analogy) the three Empires to have existed on the shores of the Mediterranean. Say you had the Roman Empire to the north, the Persian to the east, and the Carthaginian to the south. Rather than one swallowing up the other two, each expanded till their borders touched, and stayed that way for however long they endured before they fell.
The trade city is on the island of Sicily, between two of the Empires and not impossibly distant from the shores of the third. It’s big enough to have had (originally) at least two cultures of its own (as Sicily did before Carthage and Magna Graecia grabbed off chunks of it, and before Rome took over the entire island). It has survived since the Empire-building days by playing off one Empire against another in turn, until all three realized the economic and political usefulness of its neutrality (rather like Switzerland in recent centuries).
When the Empires fell, the island retained its independence, and those nations that have set up in the ruins of the Empires still recognize the usefulness of its central position, its independence, its function as the trading center of the Known World.
It might even, if your plotline takes you that way, be a good starting place for your story, since representatives of many nations and all three schools of magic will be found there, some as permanent or long-term residents and some as visitors. A viewpoint character (or one of them) arriving there for the first time could be the target of as much information as you care to share with the reader at that time.
A wonderful scenario, Dorothy!
It could be a good place for countries to have negotiations.
Given the concommitant information flows from trade, it might also be a center for intrigue, presumably, with certain understood limits.
I can understand where you’re coming from. I’m working on my own alternate history. I wrote down about five solid chapters and then all the sudden needed to figure out where this history diverged from the real thing. I stuck my nose in some text books for a while and came out with a world that didn’t match. Revisions, Revisions Revisions. Great Stuff.
Of course.
Lots of plot-fodder.
Unless Patricia’s already decided on something else.