fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #4689 ]

[ SECRET POST #4689 ]

⌈ Secret Post #4689 ⌋

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

01.

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02.

[Cookie Run]

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03.

[Emergence]

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06.

[Evil]

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07.

[Overwatch]

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08.

[How to Get Away With Murder]

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 10 secrets from Secret Submission Post #671.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Is this some odd circle around to 'genre stories have less literary merit', since those require more worldbuilding to get to the same place? Or an argument specifically against that?

Worldbuilding is essentially the effort you put into establishing your setting. It is quite important, even in stories set in mostly-the-real-world, because evoking a sense of time and place and society is often quite important to the story/characters. In genre stories, it takes more effort, because the audience can't make as many assumptions about how things work, so good/bad worldbuilding will show up more there, and be commented on more there. And it does have an impact on the quality of the work, in the sense of how easily the audience accepts and works with the premises of the setting. It might not be the MOST important part, and if the story is strong enough in other areas it can get past shaky or bare-bones worldbuilding, but worldbuilding is still definitely one of the elements a work will be judged on in terms of how well the story works for the audience.

Is this some odd circle around to 'genre stories have less literary merit', since those require more worldbuilding to get to the same place? Or an argument specifically against that?

I definitely don't think that genre stories have less literary merit. I think that genre stories can and should care less about worldbuilding than they do, and that worldbuilding is mostly a distraction from good genre fiction.

Worldbuilding is essentially the effort you put into establishing your setting.

This is not what I mean at all, and possibly I'm using the word "worldbuilding" in a different way than you.

What I mean by "worldbuilding" is really the elaborate working-out of the details and systems of a fictional world, not just the general idea of setting, time, place, etc. I think setting and time and place are deeply important from a literary and aesthetic point of view. But the actual rigorous working out of the details of how a fictional world works - that's not at all necessary for that aesthetic sense of time and place. Things like detailed magical systems, worked-out and filled-in maps, trade networks, armies, the rigorous hard details of worlds - that's what I think is unnecessary and that gets focused on too much.

I really, really hate magical systems in particular.

If you mean - pages and pages and pages of this stuff, then yes - that's distracting and boring. If you mean - the author should just sketch out a couple things and not even think about all of that stuff while they write, then..... hell no.

If you have no clue how your world works, you can't write your world. If you go 'oh, there's a big city that runs on dogs!' and then put no more effort into *how* or *why* or *when* or anything else, then nothing you write is going to make much sense.

You don't have to have pages of exposition to have good world building. You *do* have to know how your world works (yes, including the details of money and magic and trade), in order to have it all be a cohesive totality that makes sense as your characters go along.

NAYART

I really, really hate overly complicated magical systems too. UGH. They are the WORST. Obviously, some system is fine but I'm down for more 'here's a few rules, some are better than others, blah blah blah specialties, blah blah blah studies, blah blah blah who cares about the small details'

Now, admittedly, a lot of people enjoy the small details. But if your magic system (I'm looking at YOU, Brandon Sanderson as my most recent example of this since I loved your Mistborn books but OH MY GOD WHAT WAS THAT MAGIC SYSTEM) is too complicated then it literally detracts from the story.

Depending on the story you're telling, each of those things can be quite vital to both the aesthetic grasp of the setting and also to the plot, though.

Magic. Why can the powerful mage the party is allied to not simply wave away the enemy army? You can just flat state that they can't, like a rule in fairytales, or you can build the system to show why they can't. (This also works for non-magic. If you've stated the rules in your world for, say, time travel by scientific means, then by god you'd better stick to them, because there's nothing that comes across as more of an ass pull than breaking your own rules to reset the world. It stinks of bad writing worse than anything else).

Trade networks are excellent for creating regional variation in your world, building a sense of how your location connects out to other ones. Also, can potentially give reasons for an area's involvement/lack of involvement in war or politics, if that's the story you're telling.

Filled in maps. Why could Daenerys Targaryen not simply take Westeros as soon as she got the Dothraki onside? Because there was a honking great ocean in the way. You don't necessarily need the MAP to show that to the audience, of course, but if you're moving huge armies around your world, for your own sake it might be good to have the map so YOU know where they are and where they can go from that point. Also, they're often appreciated by the audience so they can see that too. Which is why you often see fan maps for quite a few fictional worlds that don't have official ones. It's not just rampant obsession on the part of the fans that make them, it's a means to make the world make sense. Names of places mean more when you can spread them out and SEE them.

Now, I think you have a point in that it's often not necessary to SHOW the work you put into worldbuilding in dramatic list form (or in huge infodumps in-story) but the work should be there so that you can actually build it into the world. So that you, the writer, can decide which army can go where based on the geography of your world, what is and isn't possible for this very powerful character you've created, why the sentence 'he's from Gascony' will be considered a good enough explanation by the cast for why this character is honourable to the point of madness and willing to die in battle at the drop of a hat.

Worldbuilding does boil down to how much effort you put into establishing your setting and also making it make sense. And the audience likely will notice if you haven't put the effort into it.

This.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ SECRET POST #4689 ]

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