fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2980 ]

[ SECRET POST #2980 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2980 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Lots of multiple secrets in one comment this week, throwing off the count!

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Yay! I'm super early today! Hope this doesn't misfire!

Well, I'm writing a sci-fi story, and I have a love-hate relationship with worldbuilding. On the one hand, I obviously want to avoid plot holes and create a living world that readers can enjoy.

On the other hand, I don't want to spend all my time figuring out the details of every single blade of grass, instead of actually writing.

The whole idea of worldbuilding is daunting to me. I don't even know where to start! And, yes, I've had a look at Patricia C. Wrede's worldbuilding questions, but it sort of feels like I'm filling out a checklist, rather than doing things with purpose.

Does anyone know of any tips for worldbuilding in an intentional, structured way? That's focused and serves the story? I'm thinking a macro-to-micro structure, like a funnel.

Well, Wrede's questions are about as intentional and structured as you can get, but you already said that didn't suit you. There's really no shortcuts to world building unless you want to half-ass it by taking an existing culture (or a historical one) and changing a few details or throwing in a few words of a made up language.

That said, you don't have to plan out every blade of grass. I'd try focusing on your characters: their socio economic backgrounds, what their family histories were, what their average day looks like, etc. Then on details that are of immediate use to your story, like physical surroundings of the landscape, the geography of your universe, the clothing people wear, what they eat, how they move around, etc.

I guess I mean more like a... structure for worldbuilding?

Like, say, beginning with resources like food and water, and then figuring out how power structures and settlements would develop around that. And THEN getting down to fiddly details that are necessary for the story.

IDK, maybe I should just figure it out myself.

Well, the problem is that it's the fiddly details that will probably come up first when you're writing, so leaving that till last might not work. You probably will have to figure it out for yourself, because only you know what sort of structure you need to best serve your plot.

You could go about it by seeing what resources/climates are where the groups you're going to be having in your novel are and building up from there - because that stuff really does have a strong impact on culture and cultural values.

Also, once you have the bare bones planned out look at who [culture wise] has had the most contact with each other and build some similarities in there. Cultures that had been in contact for a long time tend to pick up traits from each other - even if the two cultures don't get along.

Fuck it, worldbuilding doesn't matter. Write it as necessary for the story and work out any internal inconsistencies later.

Haha, yeah, I guess I could take that approach (it is really appealing b/c I'm lazy and I hate those detailed maps every fantasy book seems to have), but it helps if I have at least a basic idea of how the setting works before I start.

Well, going off what you've said in other comments, if it is about the economic and social implications of a new invention, it probably does require a good bit of economics working out for those purposes. So this is a case where some of it does matter. An edge case as it were.

Re: Worldbuilding

(Anonymous) - 2015-03-03 01:01 (UTC) - Expand

nayrt - I wouldn't say it doesn't matter, but it's not something that HAS to be worked out to the last detail before you begin writing. You can build as you go and then go back and fill in details or tweak the structure during the revision process.

I don't know, I think it only matters inasmuch as it actually effects the novel. I don't really care much for consistency or detail unless it actually matters.

Re: Worldbuilding

(Anonymous) - 2015-03-03 04:26 (UTC) - Expand

It really depends on the story you're trying to tell. If there's a lot of traveling, then you'll need more geography and consider the cultures you'll come into contact with. If it stays pretty close to home, then what affects the characters? Is there a religious conflict? Then you need to develop the religion. Etc.

What does the character interact with on a daily basis? How does s/he get food, shelter, spend the day? You should start with your character and look outward, I guess.

It's good to have a history and geography -- economy and politics -- sorted out to give the story more depth but if you don't like world building and it's not necessary, then I wouldn't sweat it.

Cool, thanks!

It's mainly focused around the application of a particular technology.

I am NOT looking forward to researching economics, though. Ugh. But it's kind of necessary for it to make any kind of sense. I know this is the one area where I'm most likely to have gaping plot holes, because I have zero concept of how numbers work IRL.

Don't worry too much about it. Have a rough idea, but your characters do their things and then catch anything big on the followup drafts. Even then, as long as it is not really mega major, you'll be surprised what your readers will ignore or explain away on their own. World building can be daunting, but the trick is not to get too hung up on it at the expense of story and characterization. Remember the real world does not make 100% sense, so it is excusable if your world doesn't either.

Start with what you know you want, and set up what's necessary to have that logically present. If possible, build from the smaller scale first--not "what I want in this world," but "what I want in this city" or even "what I want in this building." (An organization of monster hunters, you say? What kind of society needs private monster hunters, rather than having that be a military duty? And why can't ordinary citizens learn to deal with or avoid monsters?) And when in doubt, go with something that ties into the theme you want your story to be about.

OK, that makes sense.

Kinda like starting with what you want, and then asking how it got there in the first place?

My setting is restricted to a single city-state/metropolis, so it's not like I'm trying to outdo Tolkien. I really want to keep it simple.

Take an already existing culture or one that existed in the past and use that as a base. Like the way much of the social structure of the the Hunger Games were modeled on Ancient Rome. It will be easier than creating something from scratch.

I was always taught that the most important thing is internal consistency.

Say your main character's called Mary - to become the kind of person she is, what kind of world would she have grown up in? what would make such a world different from ours? What does Mary do different that we would do? What does she eat, how does she dress, what is her transportation;..etc.

Start from simple thing in daily life, and extrapolate how that would affect the world. For example, the fact tat we drive cars makes our cities look a certain way, makes our society work a certain way.

Some thing for clothing - it's a reflection of the world you live in.

So start from Mary and her direct environment, and imagine the world it would make sense in.

You don't have to give ever detail, just pain the scene. Make it believable for Mary to live there.

Thank you!

This really makes a lot of sense to me. You're right - internal consistency is so important!

Work backwards, then forwards.

Start with whatever details of the world you need to build for the sake of your story, and maybe some periphery details that might be relevant/helpful to filling out your story (i.e. let's say you need to plan out a world's marriage traditions - that means you primarily need to develop those marriage traditions, but also need to at least sketch out the relevant religion, social structure, and/or family laws).

Once you've gotten that down, take a look at all the stuff and see what can overlap and try to kill as many birds with as few stones as possible.

That was working backwards - now you work forwards.

In one part of your story, you'll need to write a wedding. In another part of your story, you'll need to write a funeral. Either way, you'll most likely need a religion (or a universe-specific parallel of culturally institutionalized social customs) for them. So, now you sketch out a religion for your world, then use that as a basis for the wedding, the funeral, and now have something to consistently reference in passing in other circumstances (i.e. maybe you can reference other social ceremonies, universe-specific parallels to "Oh my god!" drawn from that religion as an exclamation of surprise, mythological references that characters might make but the story will never or only vaguely explain, common imagery and symbolism, etc.)

This can also go in other directions - since you probably had to at least sketch out some semblance of family customs for the wedding and funeral, you'll already have a strong foundation to build up your inheritance laws when you get to that part of your story. If you went into enough detail of the wedding scene to write out the foods, then you either already have a vague 'meal plan' for another fancy event, or you have a point of comparison for fast/junk/home-cooked/'simple' food when you want to set a different tone in another scene that involves eating (i.e. is this a world where meat is for special occasions but berries are an every-day staple? Or is meat easy to get, but berries are exotic foods you only eat rarely?)

This way, you can focus on worldbuliding only as much as you need, while still keeping things cohesive and not spending too much time on details that aren't important. And I do mean important - if the actual color of the grass is never particularly relevant, then you can just say it's purple, you don't have to explain why.

Remember that the following facts are the major driving forces of history:

- Everyone is stupid and racist.

- Everyone is petty and lazy.

- Everyone is greedy and cheap.

- Everyone is just trying to get laid.

- Totalitarian governments always end up doing the same few things.

- Prophets of good do accomplish a lot of good, but they are always killed.

"There lies the cave of ages, where great dangers lurk because of the prophecy!" reads as bullshit.

"There's the cave of ages, totally full of dangerous monsters, but it's right on the border of our nation and Shelbyvillia, so both governments claim it's the other one's problem. Typical Shelbyvillians, they don't care if kids get eaten so long as they don't have to spend a dime on rooting out the monsters. Penny-pinching bastards." reads as how people around this cave actually talk about it.

It depends entirely on the kind of story you want to tell. I just finished Blindsight by Peter Watts and Player of Games by Ian Banks. Both contain tons of internal narrative about how augmented, post-human, engineered characters think through problems that would stump us lowly evolutionary human beings.

The economic systems of those worlds? Blah blah blah post-scarcity blah blah blah AI blah blah blah post-scarcity wibbly wobbly fuck that's not a moon, it's a spaceship/habitat!

Similarly Chip Delany, one of the masters of the art, packed Babel-17 full of poetic inquiry, theory of mind, and Sapir-Worf. The mechanics of how the undead members of his crew work is left as handwavium.

IMSHO, you need to think through the implications of your big idea and characters and consider how much of the rest can be kept safely off-stage. If none of your characters are going to give a shit about astrology, you don't need to worry about constellations (which might not matter if you have spaceflight anyway). If your characters live in a post-scarcity society where their basic needs can be obtained from the nearest replicator, you don't need to fiddle around with personal finance. If your character's boots never touch the soil, they might not know the mechanics of farming.

Oh god that sounds like fun to read, haha.

In my opinion... I think it's okay to know more details about the world than you actually include in the story. So that it makes sense when you're writing, but you don't always have to tell the readers everything and infodump everywhere.

Watts is often guilty of the infodump. The narrator of Blindsight is the post-human zombie embedded reporter (more or less), which offers plenty of excuses for the other post-humans on the ship's crew to monologue at him about just about everything. Still, it's a nice break from lumpy-forehead aliens, and Watts is one of a few hard sci-fi authors who don't read like a textbook to me.

Oh, I feel the need to add that not every story needs an expansively plotted and mapped universe. Science fiction includes room-sized stories as well as multiverse-sized stories. I've read brilliant stories that were bounded by the walls of a spaceship with one passenger.

So...don't do worldbuilding?

If you just want a space opera or skiffy story, just use a basic template.

If you are about the big weird concept, well, honestly, a lot of books like that are castles built in air, really. You can get away with a lot.

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