World Building

Haven't you answered your own question there, Ricardo?

Established writers afford to spend more page-time worldbuilding. But it's the usually the people/characters in these worlds that make readers want to turn pages, so if the world building can be slipped in at the same time as the people and characters build up the story, the better.

With all your reading, did you note how these authors blended worldbuilding with the actions and reactions of the characters in the developing story?

What kept you reading to the end - the worldbuilding or the story that took place in the world?

Good luck.

Bufty said:

Haven't you answered your own question there, Ricardo?

Established writers afford to spend more page-time worldbuilding. But it's the usually the people/characters in these worlds that make readers want to turn pages, so if the world building can be slipped in at the same time as the people and characters build up the story, the better.

With all your reading, did you note how these authors blended worldbuilding with the actions and reactions of the characters in the developing story?

What kept you reading to the end - the worldbuilding or the story that took place in the world?

Good luck.

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That's exactly the way I build my worlds. Characters first and then their story builds the world.

I like Robert Jordan's worldbuilding. You just get it bit by bit as you go, just enough to hint of a really huge world but you don't get to see much at a time, you have to wait for another three or four volumes before it's revealed

Ricardo Salepas said:

Hahaha yeah I suppose you're right Bufty
For some reason I always thought it would be good to create something first and then let the characters kind of flesh it out. A drawback with that though is that I might find myself taking too long explaining the world instead of what's about to happen.
But if characters are mainly used to do that then yes I do see where you're coming from.

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The methodology is going to be different for each of us - some people are much more comfortable creating the world thoroughly before they start thinking about character, or sometimes even plot. In the end, though, it's all symbiotic: you need all three pieces - world building, character, and plot - to have a good story.

Stories consist of Setting, Plot, and Characters. Combined with conflict, the three can be worked however you prefer. You can start wherever you like of the three.

Setting is your worldbuilding (cultural and physical). Cultural can consist of social class, governmental structure, whatever. For me, I prefer beginning with setting. Characters and plot fill in after. The process is different for everyone.

Here are some questionnaires you can use in your worldbuilding....

https://www.eadeverell.com/worksheets/

You can focus on these worksheets....

A Better World
Worldbuilding Cities
Found Flora
Geography
Politics
Set the Scene
The World at Large

Start a Pinterest file and fill it with images that fit the world you have in mind. For me, it makes describing places easier. Pinterest has everything from fantasy worlds to ghettos.

MaeZe said:

Start a Pinterest file and fill it with images that fit the world you have in mind. For me, it makes describing places easier. Pinterest has everything from fantasy worlds to ghettos.

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Nice idea. I heard of people doing something like this with photos they take of people and imagining their character descriptions from them (and it helps them remember what the characters look like when they write).

If you want an overview of worldbuilding, try Orson Scott Card's Writing Fantasy and Science Fiction; not personally fond of the man himself, but he does know his craft, and it's still about the best explanation I've read of the process and how to balance it depending on what kind of story you're telling.

As an author, you're going to want to know more than the reader. The trick is conveying enough to the reader so they can get a sense of the world and its possibilities without cramming every scrap of information and every last bit of the work you did behind the scenes down their throats. Different readers have different tolerance thresholds, too, so there's a fair bit of subjectivity, but as a general rule of thumb the reader should never, ever, under any circumstances be bored. A bored reader is an ex-reader. Don't just assume they'll plow ahead through multiple pages of worldbuilding alone because there's something cool up ahead; your reader doesn't know that, and after the third history lecture they may not care.

MaeZe said:

Start a Pinterest file and fill it with images that fit the world you have in mind. For me, it makes describing places easier. Pinterest has everything from fantasy worlds to ghettos.

Click to expand...

I took MaeZe's advice and started doing this and it has been awesome. I'm kinda trying to break my habit of obsessively worldbuilding so I'm not as hot & heavy with my boards as I used to be, but it's been really great not only for figuring out finer details of the setting but also for characters, tone, and atmosphere.

Kjbartolotta said:

I took MaeZe's advice and started doing this and it has been awesome. I'm kinda trying to break my habit of obsessively worldbuilding so I'm not as hot & heavy with my boards as I used to be, but it's been really great not only for figuring out finer details of the setting but also for characters, tone, and atmosphere.

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Oh I'm so glad because I was just thinking my Pinterest posts probably sound like a broken record.

Ricardo Salepas said:

Hahaha yeah I suppose you're right Bufty
For some reason I always thought it would be good to create something first and then let the characters kind of flesh it out. A drawback with that though is that I might find myself taking too long explaining the world instead of what's about to happen.
But if characters are mainly used to do that then yes I do see where you're coming from.

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We all have our own ways of processing our stories and getting ideas written down. That said, IMO you've got it backwards. The background / world is where your characters play their roles - characters drive the story much more than the world does. Characters come to me first, and from them I derive the world in which they live. My method is to be within my MC's head and describe what they see / hear / encounter as it comes to them. For backstory about the world, the character can remember. I do my level best to avoid core dumps about my character and the world they live in, and bring these things in as they become relevant to the story; most of it comes in within the first few chapters. IMO it's easier for the reader to digest this much information in chew-able bites.

Compares to most everyone else here I'm an uneducated oaf, so you should take that into account before following my advice.

lizmonster said:

The methodology is going to be different for each of us - some people are much more comfortable creating the world thoroughly before they start thinking about character, or sometimes even plot.

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Agreed. There are even a couple of authors whom I read primarily for their worldbuilding. In certain books of theirs, I found the characters either flat or one-dimensional or just plain off-putting, but the worldbuilding was so spectacular I would read those books again just for that.

The setting is a critical factor of writing fiction.

On developing worlds it takes a vast array of characters.

Always think forward to what these characters are up to, and what will become of them. Don't get too bogged down with what is happening within a scene.

An art teacher told me to 'draw big'. Don't draw on a piece of printer paper, draw on something large.

Just think big!

My response is . . . it depends. Sometimes I get ideas for characters and then build a world for them to play in. Sometimes, I get a "what if X or Y happened, how would people react to that" and then I build characters and a world to go with the plot. Sometimes, I sit down a just doodle up a map and something about the way the terrain and waters lie tell me the story of the people who live there.

Being the child of a highway engineer and having been taught to read maps since I was four years old, I do admit a fascination not only with creating maps, but also with researching old maps. One of my claims to geekdom back in HS (which wasn't nearly as cool as it sounds) was being able to not only name all the countries in Africa as a freshman, but to name the colonial map of Africa (pre-1960s).

How to build a world is a very mobile target. It really depends on how your approach to your own world works. Me? I prefer the outside in method. If I know I'm creating a secondary world fiction, I start with the outline of the continent/region/island and then figure out where the mountains are. Once you have seacoast and mountains, you can see where the rivers might be. Once you have mountains and rivers, you can see where cities might logically fall. Once you have cities and terrain features, you can see where country boundaries might fall AND might be disputed (automatically creating a tension point for the story). Then I start populating the world (and noting if it makes sense for them to be native or immigrant bodies of people (again, more tension), and then where and what resources might be available for any of the countries (as well as what they might be missing) which encourages trade and potential holds . . . (You have all that gold but you have little grain. If I don't ship you wheat and corn, how long can you eat gold? Oooh, more tension), and don't even get me started on potential religious disagreements.

*Will someone tell Tiddlywinks to pick up all these plot bunnies that are bouncing around here?*

That's honestly a quick synopsis of Terra Incognito, a book based on a collection of world building essays I wrote for a now-defunct e-magazine--I published it in 2015 and it's still my best selling small-press book. I'm going to be going up to MA in a few weeks to speak to a college about world building--they're using Terra as a text book for a Video Game Design class.

Ricardo Salepas said:

Hahaha yeah I suppose you're right Bufty
For some reason I always thought it would be good to create something first and then let the characters kind of flesh it out. A drawback with that though is that I might find myself taking too long explaining the world instead of what's about to happen.

Click to expand...

That can be one of the big traps that comes from overly focusing on world building. You have all of these cool and amazing things you've built for this setting, and you really want to show them off! But you're doing that to the detriment of actually telling the story.

The other one is writers getting hung up on having to do ALL the world building before they can start the story, feeling like if they don't have a total understanding of all the peoples, places, and things, they're not ready to start writing their story. That's the thing though, you don't need to have everything finalized before you even begin. For one thing, parts that don't quite fit might fall neatly into place once you're starting to tell the actual story and moving things around in your head.

There's also the fact that some stories don't need you to have a detailed map showing every step of the way. Broad strokes will suffice, and anything further required can be added along the way.

This is a timely thread for me as I am embarking on the most complex 'world' of any of the novels I've previously written.

Most of the story occurs on cylindrical space ships that spin to simulate gravity. So you can look up and see upside down people looking back at you.
Native to the ships are androids that once ran everything, but now have no say over anything. One is a character in the story.
The space ships have been out there for 600 years, and they're falling apart.
Various sized robotic spiders are running around trying to repair the ships. One is a friend of the MC.
The human government and command structures have fallen apart, and street gangs run everything.
People living in the ships have forgotten that there is anything outside of their vessels - "outside the ship" has no meaning for them.
A defect in the Y chromosome has led to males only making up 20% of the population.
Male / female roles are somewhat swapped because of this.
Males were valued at first, but then came to be seen as commodities and became possessions that could be sold / rented out for profit.
MMC is a former sex worker.

The track of the story will have these people first realize there is an outside, and the populations of all the ships will be combined.
Then they will visit an planet tidally locked to their sun, and experience agoraphobia.
They'll meet another human culture that is experiencing the same Y chromosome, but deal with it differently.

To accomplish all this, I started with that MC having a nightmare about his past life. Then discuss it with FMC.
The ship environment I am bringing in with description when he ventures outside - to deal with a street gang issue.
Today I am writing meetings with MMC's spider friend and an android.

The trick is to keep the plot moving while dribbling in details about their world.

I'm having fun - and am hoping it all turns out ok.

Ricardo Salepas said:

Hey Everyone,

I've been thinking about world building a lot lately and how masterfully it's done by the likes of Patrick Rothfuss and even Brent Weeks or Brandon Sanderson.
(all fantasy authors)
How would anyone go about world building?
Is there a particular process to use or what's the deal?

Every author I've read books by has always managed to do it so flawlessly and I'd love to be able to create something where the reader would esaily be thrown into the world and feel "Wow this could really be an actual place"....except it's not.

Thoughts?

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I see it as an arc, which can be both up and down. A reflection of the character's change.