Worldbuilding
Sherwood Smith July 8th, 2006
I was reading a draft of something recently that prompted this post about world-building. Making up a believable world is tough for most of us. We don’t want it to seem like a Hollywood backdrop–conveying the feeling that if you open that round door surrounded by pretty plants, you’ll see the studio lot just behind it, a bunch of parked cars, a seagull or two, and no home in Middle-Earth at all.
Getting details right is a good plan. The project I was reading showed an enormous amount of research into the making and weaving of rugs, which supported the main storyline (flying carpets in a hot desert world that had a lot in common with Arabian Nights). But. I kept getting that backdrop feeling, the sense that something was not quite right, despite the wonderful detail about the rugs, the cries of marketers, the smell of desert-crossing beasts. Finally I realized that it was the city itself, despite all its wonderful details: here’s this enormous city in the middle of the desert. Well, how can you support an enormous city? That is, the facts of life are simple but inescapable: people need water, and they need to use the bathroom. And if you haven’t planned for that, the reader who has a vivid imagination is sidetracked by wondering where the heck all that sewage is going when there don’t seem to be any facilities for same, much less water for half a million people?
In short, mastering various details is great, but do not forget the, ah, bottom line.
This is why I am so interested in cisterns and plumbing in archaeological sites.
Most excellent points, Sherwood. Nothing ruins a story for me faster than absurd ecologies.
Gaming worlds are the absolute worst for this. I have seen highly polished commercial maps for game worlds that have deserts sitting right next door to jungles, huge cities in the middle of each, high mountains that have rivers flowing to them rather than from, and so on and so forth.
After gaming worlds we have science fiction planets with no climate zones: the jungle planet, the ice world, the desert planet, and so on — every square meter of the planet has the same weather and terrain.
And then there are the fantasy worlds with huge populations but no agricultural technology to speak of. Too many people seem to think food can be conjured into existence rather than farmed.
Doubtless we could go on and on, but the point for new writers is, DO RESEARCH! It’s amazing how many good research books can be found for free in public libraries.
I’m having flashbacks to the time I was contracted to write for Talislanta, a world that had geysers atop mesas (piped in for aesthetic effect) and no source of food for the endless numbers of carnivorous beasties except for religious pilgrims. And a dozen moons, each a different color. I ended up saying that the moons were created by the gods, colored that way for aesthetic effect, and were in perfectly regularly spaced orbits because that’s the only way you could place them without the tides going like a Mixmaster.
I think a big part of the problem is that too many writers base their work on the writings of other fiction writers or on movies, rather than on nonfiction works which by their very nature give a much better flavor to reality.
Another problem of bad worldbuilding is the prefab hovel, the idea that each building has been built for its express purpose, and even if ancient, has never been anything else. WTF? Even in America, land of the short term memory, you can point to buildings that started out as the courthouse, changed to the post office, became the town library, and is now currently the art museum or a coffee house.
And building materials. Unless you are very rich and are making a point of being lavish, you build stuff out of what you have at hand. Ditto clothes. To quote an old Siskel & Ebert review, “How come when we see so much leather in these films do we never see a cow?”
I can relate to this one. I’ve been building my future world for three years now, yet every time I think I’ve really got it down, someone will come along and say “Wait! What about this? How come this looks just like it does in 20th century America?” And I beat my head on the desk for a few moments, and go back to rewrite yet another portion of world. So far this has happened with diagnostic (as opposed to treatment) medicine, education, the judicial system, and the military structure. On the good side, my universe is beginning to look pretty distinctive. On the bad side, I’m living in perpetual fear that I’ve forgotten something yet again.
I’ve always found the world building one of the easiest parts of a book to do (maybe because I’m a Australian farmer’s daughter, so I’ve always been connected to the land and problems of water and labour and food production, the problems of markets and transport, the whole idea of how things fit together) - what presents the problem is conveying that world without interrupting the story.
The world has to be such an intergral part of your writing that everything appears seamless. The world has to appear everywhere - except in an info dump. And getting your book to that stage? Well, that’s the fun part.
The list of worldbuilding gaffes is endless. Homogeneity is a big one - of language, culture, of practices within the same culture (some people are always early adopters, some always lag behind) etc. etc. Thinking about how this world works - the reasons people settle in a place (like resources or defensibility), the reasons they move on (like depletion of resources), the reasons they fight wars (like warm water ports or population pressure) - will lend a reality to an imagined world.
Rather than spending years getting a world “right” before I write, I like to sketch out a few ideas and then develop them as I get to know the characters and how the plot is going to move, developing “rules” and history as I go along. This give me flexibility as the plot twists and turns. But if I introduce a castle, I will make sure I know what it has been built to defend.
When I teach worldbuilding, I always say imagine the world as an iceberg, where most of the structure is underwater. The reader will only see the spikes and pinnacles, but the author must make sure that it all fits together. So I begin with the spikes and pinnacles rather than creating the entire structure.
That’s exactly what I’ve been doing, Carol. I doubt I could world-build well any other way. The parts of my world that had a direct impact on the plot I got straight pretty quickly. All the background stuff was what was defaulting to 20th century norms. So since my protagonist gets treated for illness and injury at a couple of crucial plot-junctures, that part of 25th century medicine got worked out early - while at the same time people were still wandering around taking pulses and sitting on exam tables during the diagnoses part, because those parts weren’t crucial to the story.
Elizabeth Bear talked about this on her livejournal, but she called it “hard fantasy.” While I like the sentiment, I can’t say I love the term.
Coming at this from another direction, it always bothers this viewer to a degree to be watching a movie with castles and fortresses in which the story is set in the era that these edifaces were built. And they are so — old. And weathered. And covered with such picturesque vines. And, oh, well, you know.
It is also anxiety-making to see these castles and fortresses set within luxurious foliage, tall grasses, trees overhanging the curtain wall, blahblahblah.
Love, C.
Yeah…they can’t exactly spiff up National Treasures!
As a rule of thumb, the writer simply has to recall what questions he/she asks during the first-time visit to another home:
1. “Where’s the bathroom?”
2. “Man, I’m thirsty. Is there anything to drink here?”
3. “Dinner? Sure, I’ll stay over dinner.”
3. “I had too much to drink, I can’t drive home. Is there a spare bed where I can crash over the night?”
Bathroom, water, food, sleep. That’s a good start in world-building.
Carol Berg said “Rather than spending years getting a world “rightâ€? before I write, I like to sketch out a few ideas and then develop them as I get to know the characters and how the plot is going to move, developing “rulesâ€? and history as I go along.”
Oh bless you Carol Berg! I was starting to feel terribly paranoid because I didn’t spend a year or two world-building before I started writing my book. I got the rules about magic, religion, and basic social functions down on paper, and I drew a detailed map. I had a basic plot. Then I just dove in and let the characters show me their world and tell me their story for almost 550 pages.
And I didn’t sweat the details that seemed unimportant. For example, I made up a sort of board game my characters play, but I did not work out ALL the rules of that game. I made up enough of it to make it work in the story, but if a reader ever asks for a detailed rulebook I am going to have to tell that person she is out of luck, lol. But honestly, I could have spent a month or two trying to write up the rules and details of that game. It wasn’t necessary to furthering the story.
I am sure there are weaknesses in my book that more world-building might have eliminated, but I know so many writers who never get around to actually writing because they spend so much time taking notes and drawing maps and such. I suspect that one can do too much worldbuilding as well as too little.
But I was very happy to hear a writer I admire say that she works much of it out as she goes along. Thank you!