Writing: Worldbuilding (part one of...?)

[loaded_march]

Nothing about worldbuilding is quick or easy, so anything I write about it might end up being a multi-parter sort of thing, starting with the bare bones of worldbuilding and how to get started -- or at least, how I get started. It may or may not work for you.





Worldbuilding is an important aspect of any story. It might present itself as the principal character in the story (i.e., quest stories), the backdrop (i.e., an alien world), the atmosphere (i.e., a coffee shop), or it might not figure at all but still have an impact on the story itself (i.e., whether someone is addressed as "Sir" or "Chevalier"). How much the worldbuilding figures into the story, how it fits in the atmosphere and how it's detailed depends on both the story and the writer.

Google "worldbuilding", and any number of helpful links comes up (I got just under half a million hits). Google "worldbuilding questions" or "worldbuilding questionnaire", and you'll get even more links (WTF, Google? You returned just under a million hits. Under what sort of Boolean statistical probability do you return MORE hits with two keywords than only one? -- er. Never mind. It must be a worldbuilding thing -- where the mathematical rules ARE COMPLETELY MADE UP. *ahem*). There's books written about it. I even own a couple.

No matter what definition you come up with for worldbuilding, or how you go about it, I say that it is the ultimate avenue of making shit up. It's your story, your world, your rules.

When I first started writing, I didn't know there was a word for what I was doing when I was writing stories set in some far-flung fantastic or science-fictional world where magic could defeat demons where the sword failed and science operated on the quantum principle of molecular and atomic vibrations. On the one hand, it's not that I'm so old that I predate the word "worldbuilding". On the other, I was blissfully ignorant.

It wasn't until I realized that there was a set of rules to follow that I started freaking out and thinking that I wasn't doing the right thing when I was writing. So I stopped writing and I started worldbuilding. I filled out pages and pages of spiral notebooks and had seven binders for just one world, for example, following those rules of worldbuilding.


However -- if you've been reading my writing posts, you'll probably know what I say about rules in the first place. Fuck the rules.


Sadly, for that one world with the seven binders and untold number of spiral notebooks, all these years later, I don't remember a damn thing. Not the planetary system, not the number of suns, not the number of moons. I don't remember the constellations in the sky in the northern hemisphere, and I certainly don't remember the effect of the tides under the gravitational influence of a galaxy that breaks every rule of astronomy. I don't remember the names of the landmasses, the oceans, the major mountainous ranges, the large rivers or even of the deserts. I don't remember which season was best for harvesting and for planting, I don't remember which season made it snow in the north, and I frankly could care less that the temperature was a balmy 25 degrees Celsius at the poles, but a frigid sub-zero at the equator. None of the particular races I carefully handcrafted right down from the colour of their skin to their society and culture stand out to me now. I couldn't tell you which race followed what religion, whether they were patrimonial or matrimonial, if they were largely literate or illiterate, what their technology level was like in comparison to our own historical growth, or even if they spoke a language (that I of course made up) that is constructed of grammatical rules, or if they formed sentences that was mixed with metaphors based on stories and myths throughout each society's history.

In fact, if you asked me where the seven binders and innumerable spiral notebooks were now, I'd tell you that I shredded them.

I learned three important lessons from my mad worldbuilding phase -- and believe me, I didn't just create one world. I created several, because I was an imaginative kid (who wasn't?), and for some reason there was always paper and pens and crayons in the house. These are the things I learned:

1. Holy crap. A world, any world, needs a lot of things to support it. Doing it from scratch is hard. And satisfying. And ultimately, no matter how thoroughly I'll create the world, I'll end up using less than 5% of it in any story. Hell. Not even 5%. LESS.

2. Research is paramount. A three-moon planet with two suns might not be plausible here, but it's definitely plausible somewhere else in the universe that formed differently to the way things formed in the Milky Way. Unfortunately, the people who live on the planet are not going to care that, on the rare occasions that the two lighter moons are on one side of the planet while the heaviest sister is on the other, the tides will be so low at the equator that people can walk over dry seas. They'll just care that this rare equinox event fucks up their lives.

3. The time that I'm spending worldbuilding is time I'm not writing the story. A happy balance has to be found, and it won't be found in the intricate clockwork mechanism that was constructed by a decrepit race of aliens in the core of a planet that needs a steady supply of workers to keep it turning.


Don't get me wrong. If you're one of those people who writes volumes and volumes of worldbuilding -- you're awesome, and I am not saying this lightly. Worldbuilding is hard work and you have to be dedicated to do it. While you're worldbuilding, you're learning lessons 1 through 3. Lesson #3 is the hardest one to accept, because worldbuilding to fine detail is completely, utterly addicting.

You can't stop. And I don't recommend that you do. Maybe cut back on your intake, or try a different approach. Try every approach. Try something new.


Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien has always struck me as an example of worldbuilding gone wild. Everyone knows that he created several languages for his story. This series of books is a quest story where the worldbuilding figures as prominently as the main characters. We see the landscape, we're exposed to different cultures, we're submerged in the mythology. It's absolutely gorgeous, it's completely epic, and it's worldbuilding done right.

But the question I always have to ask myself is, how much worldbuilding is necessary for the story? It could be a little. It could be a lot.


I usually start a story with an idea or a concept, and then I ask questions:

In what genre would this be possible?

In what equivalent historical time frame would the concept work?

What challenges will be encountered in the sphere of the concept's story?


Let's start with an example off the top of my head. I have a concept (or a mental image) of a man on horseback racing toward a castle. Right off the bat, I know that this is either a straight fantasy, or it could be a science fiction novel along the same scale as Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover series where certain types of technologies are banned and limited to certain cities or familial bloodlines. I want to go the science fiction route -- but I want it to be a post-apocalyptical world where technology is seen as the work of the devil and only a sacred few are permitted to study it, and even fewer allowed to operate it. These rare people are terribly feared for their great power over devices from a long-ago forgotten time.

The next question to ask is the scope of the story. Is it going to be worldwide? Is it going to be localized? For the present, since the man is on horseback, I'm limiting it to the area that the man can travel on foot or by horse. That could be thirty days of travel at a moderate pace in any direction on a landlocked country, or it could be the entirety of a small, isolated island.

Right then and there I can limit how much worldbuilding is actually necessary. It's a post-apocalyptic world; there's been a population loss. What about cities? Well... Let me give you an example -- I was told by someone, which was later verified in a book I read, that in the old days of the United Kingdom, villages were established at distances from each other that were equivalent to what one man could travel in a day on foot (or by ox-pulled carts). Some villages were bigger than others depending on the most important resource of all: food. Other villages were completely abandoned either as a direct result of war, plague, or bandits.

Is it a dangerous place to live? Yes. Any kind of danger is possible. We're now in a world where technology is rare -- so information is difficult to get, too, and knowledge is valued. Physicians and anyone with medical training are so zealously protected that, say, some villages actually chain them to a cell to keep them from escaping -- or from someone kidnapping them. Some people might even cut off the limb to steal the physician. Ouch.

The technological level of the people? Very low, because they're afraid of technology and cast their eyes aside when technology is in operation.

Is technology worshipped? Maybe -- because anything that can be feared can also be worshipped, but if something is worshipped, then something else can be, too. There may be an antithesis to the technology -- perhaps there is real magic in the world, or belief that the old Gods will return. Maybe the word-of-mouth teaching of the ancient Druids persisted the modern age and exists even now, made all the stronger now that the technology that opposed and even drained the land of its magic has been weakened.

What about the customs and the culture? Let's say that some refugees came to this place a long time ago; over time different cultures and languages (look at what happened to the English language -- what is still happening. We are continually inventing new words and adopting other ones) will intermesh. Maybe new ones will be created or old ones revived -- let's bring back a feudal system that works only in selected areas where a Lord or a self-appointed King has the resources to sustain a large area, but be at constant battle with villages that insist on democracy, and with other areas that are completely lawless like the Wild West.


There. I'm done the bare bones of what I need to get the story started. I've got all sorts of potential worldbuilding-based challenges at my disposal now. And it's at this point where I start fleshing out the character -- the man on horseback racing toward a castle. I'll give him a background, a description, a job, and a reason why he's racing toward the castle. Then I'll come up with the plot and start writing. Any additional worldbuilding fact that is needed? I'll work on it as I write the story, because I already have a skeleton to work from. And as I add more worldbuilding, I will keep a log of all the new details. Eventually I will have a notebook (more likely to have an electronic file instead, since it's easier to search and add sections) that I can refer to now and again to make sure I don't turn the three-headed god of wisdom into the guy holding a trident at seaside.

Admittedly, I suck at keeping track of details like these as I come up with them, because I'm engrossed in writing the story, and I have to go back to glean documents for the information for recording later, or keep my fingers crossed that I don't muck up too badly while I write the whole story (this is tough, and I've messed up on more than one occasion, but that's why we edit and revise).


Now if this were one of my original fiction stories, I would keep going with the worldbuilding and the question-asking and the character creation and the plotting, because there's a lot there that needs to be done from scratch.

But what if this was a fanfiction? What if it was an AU? Oh! What if the man on horseback racing toward the castle -- what if he were Merlin?


..

..

Crap. I just gave myself a plot bunny.

*pinches bridge of nose*

Okay. Fine. I'll add it to the list.


Anyway, to get to my point, there is nothing wrong with worldbuilding. I have read the blogs of published authors who completely pants it, of authors who do a minimum of worldbuilding. I also know of other writers who do "a lot" of worldbuilding, although the definition of "a lot" is relative to the person. It might be seven binders worth of alphabetized and categorized information, including three dimensional maps, or it might be just a rough sketch with a few bullet points.

I've done both. The extremes don't work for me but they might work for you. I'm happiest doing the minimum I need for the momentum to get with the writing.

In my opinion, though, there's such a thing as too little worldbuilding, and there's something to be said against too much. But ultimately it depends on what you're most comfortable with. You want just enough worldbuilding to give yourself a trampoline to get started, but not so much that you'll be restricted by the Velcro-covered walls that keep you from going anywhere else easily if you happen to jump wrong and get stuck. Finding that balance where you're comfortable working with is the tricky part -- too little and you can't begin; too much, and you might get worried that you don't have enough.


If there's any specific questions that you have about worldbuilding, ask away and I will do my best to answer them, otherwise I will come up with a random topic.