I seem to have acquired a reputation as some sort of worldbuilding maven, probably based on the Fantasy Worldbuilding Questions I came up with as a personal crutch during my middle career. I don’t actually think the reputation is deserved – really, it should belong to someone who does a much better job of worldbuilding than I do – but it’s really not worth trying to argue.
The thing I actually want to talk about is why I came up with the Worldbuilding Questions in the first place. I’ve said before that they were a way of keeping track of the worldbuilding problems I’d had when writing – a sort of mnemonic device to keep me from making the same mistakes again and again – and that’s true as far as it goes. But what they’re really about is thinking things through.
Every time I make up a bit of scenery for an imaginary world or a paragraph of history for a character’s backstory, it implies a whole lot more than the few words that are on the page. Some of those things will be relevant to the story, if only in small ways; other things will not. But even the ones that don’t get mentioned in the story are still there in the reader’s mind.
If I mention a bird for instance, it’s a safe bet that this world includes feathers and eggs. The eggs may be mentioned as breakfast and the feathers as pillow-stuffing, or they may not appear in the story at all, but they’re part of the subconscious background that comes along with “bird.” Similarly, if I mention feather pillows, the reader can safely assume that there is some source of feathers in this world, with birds as the most likely default (though in fantasy and science fiction the existence of feathers may not imply the existence of birds, so readers tend to keep an open mind a bit longer than they otherwise might).
The existence of birds (and therefore feathers and eggs) is relatively trivial and unlikely to cause problems in most stories. But there are a lot of things, from magic and wands to anti-gravity to a character’s wicked uncle, that have implications and potential ramifications far beyond whatever immediate point the author was making. And one of the easiest places to get into trouble with worldbuilding is to neglect to think through just what all those implications and ramifications are.
Thinking things through is also one of the more difficult bits of worldbuilding, in my experience, because I have to think about what things mean and how they work and all the larger implications of that, and I have to do it from the viewpoints of many characters, not just my own or my POV character. I find this particularly difficult because I tend to get a little…over-focused sometimes, which makes it hard to see the Big Picture (much less notice how the effect of changing one or two specific details might propagate to other aspects of the Big Picture).
The Worldbuilding Questions are my attempt to make myself think about implications and ramifications. I have never done well with general questions like “What happens next?” or “How does this society view magic?” They don’t poke the bits of my brain that develop the background, and they certainly don’t do anything for helping me keep it consistent. I do a lot better with specific detail questions like “Does a magician need a license?” and “Are there spells to help with housework?” (My answer to that last has always been a resounding YES – I mean, come on, I’m allowed some wish fulfillment, as long as I keep it consistent). Hence the worldbuilding questions.
But the important thing is not actually answering the questions. It’s thinking through the implications of whatever bit of magic or technology one has stuck in one’s imaginary world. It’s thinking about how real people would actually use this interesting new technology or spell (which is probably not going to be the way the inventor – or the writer – expected them to use it).
Good article. One place I find I especially have to think through implications is background myths. When I read Watership Down the first time, I was hugely impressed with the whole idea of legendary figures existing in the (semi) made-up world and wanted to do the same thing.
Background myths can play absolute havoc with worldbuilding if you’re not careful, though. There’s a huge danger of tossing off a mythic tale because it sounds cool, then discovering that it contradicts everything else about your world. Yikes!
When I started to write actual stories in the fantasy world I’d been developing for years as only a worldbuilding game, it became much more pragmatic and I lost a myth or two because they just plain didn’t fit. The world is probably the better for it, but I do miss them.
Ha, I had the reverse problem to Irina. I started the story first, and then when I started adding myths, i found out that the myths were much more interesting and coherent than the story. I eventually threw out the story entirely and used the world to host a D&D game. It was an excellent game. There was suspense, and moral ambiguity, and it actually integrated with the mythology. That’s the story I should have written to begin with.
Of course right now I’m trying to work out what a theatrical performance would be like in a city of wizards. Are they using puppets, or singing? What do they think is funny, and why? Are there political or religious elements? And what are the cultural myths being used? The primacy of romance? Of bloodlines? Of honor?
And of course, what about it would my character be interested in, and what does it do to advance the plot?
(My favorite myth of course is always going to be “Rikiki and the Wizard.”)
Chicoy – Myths aren’t the only thing that you can toss in and then realize it contradicts everything; anything can have that effect (which was, of course, my point). But as long as you notice what’s going on in time, you can take them out again or change them so they work.
Irina – Save the missing ones for later, maybe? Or write them up as their own, unrelated stories?
Cara – The theatrical performance will depend to some extent on what point theater is at in your culture – whether it’s mostly part of a religious celebration, as it was for the ancient Greeks, or whether it’s worked its way to being purely for entertainment, or whether it’s something else entirely. But the idea of having magic for special effects is neat.
A la Gandalf at “THE party”?
Your post really got me thinking about that and I feel like I’m seeing a whole new depth of the story with the little connections, myths, and details! Thanks!
I’m not a big worldbuilder – actually I find the process a drain on the actual story, so instead I focus on making sure the details in the story make sense and create a whole picture after the first draft. In the first draft I just let my muse go and be free to create whatever is necessary to tell the story I want.
And then in the second draft I remember the whole “If you show a gun in the first scene, you gotta fire it at some point” thing making sure everything is there for a reason.