[ SECRET POST #4701 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #4701 ⌋

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

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 22 secrets from Secret Submission Post #673.
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.

Comments

[fscom]

07. https://i.imgur.com/9XpA0lv.png

[(Anonymous)]

Very true.

A lot of people don't want to read, they want to experience. So when you have deep worldbuilding and blank characters, it allows them to imagine that they're in the story. So they like it. Even if it's bad.

[(Anonymous)]

I get immersed for years in stuff that other people call poor world-building.

So yeah, the concept is kind of meaningless to me and has nothing to do with what makes a good story.

[(Anonymous)]

You don't have to like it, but that doesn't make the two unconnected.

[(Anonymous)]

OP didn't say they didn't like it.

And they didn't say there was an inherent disconnect.

DA

[(Anonymous)]

With the second part of their secret, it seems that it's what they were saying.

About the secret itself : I partially disagree. A good worldbuilding can have litterary quality and enhance the overall quality of a story by making it more immersive. However, a worldbuilding that's more concerned about the quantity of informations/the technicalies and not about, for instance, the beauty of the descriptions, has the opposite effect. Or the worldbuilding can be neutral and the litterary quality can then depend mostly on the characters and the narrative.

So the wordlbuilding does factor into the litterary quality but a very in depth worldbuilding is not always a worldbuilding that adds to the litterary quality of a piece of fiction.

Original Comment OP

[(Anonymous)]

I like worldbuilding on its own terms, actually.

I do not agree.

[(Anonymous)]

A setting is part of a story and while a setting may not include world-building, if world-building exists, it is always part of the setting. Some stories can work with a vague or implied setting, but many need a defined and understood setting to provide context to the story. And context aids comprehension and impact, which are important to judging literary quality. If the world-building is extraneous, distracting, or confusing, that can detract from the setting and thus, the story. If the world-building is clear, well-executed, or interesting, that can make the setting more appealing, thus the story.

Re: I do not agree.

[tabaqui]

THIS.

Original Comment OP

[(Anonymous)]

I think that worldbuilding is mostly irrelevant to and unnecessary for establishing the kind of setting that actually matters to a story, especially the kind of really detailed, worked-out worldbuilding that's prevalent in fantasy and science fiction. And I think it often serves as a distraction, and when the emphasis is on coming up with reams and reams of material, the temptation to put that into the story and show your work becomes much greater, even if it's not actually necessary.

[(Anonymous)]

True, but BAD world-building definitely shows some bad writing.

Take Bright (the Will Smith movie). By making everything basically the same people were brought out of the experience. Everything's the same! The Alamo still happened! Even though having different species would probably change the course of history!

[(Anonymous)]

And yet I really enjoyed Bright. But that might have been because of the relationship building between Will Smith and his partner.

[ninefox]

This is such a weird take to me. "Writing" is not a single skill, or a single bounded skillset. Character, plot, mood, pacing, tension, dialogue, etc are all very different skills with many subskills. "Literary Quality" is basically how all those different skills interact with cultural context and reward sustained attention.

Worldbuilding is one of those skills and it's much more relevant to some works than others, just like writing humor is a very tricky skill that is a kind of good writing but not part of every story. An amazing drama with a few bad jokes can still be excellently written/have high literary quality, but that doesn't make writing good jokes totally separate from literary quality. A comic play or a satire's literary quality is heavily dependent on its jokes!

Worldbuilding contributes to (or detracts from) literary quality based on how crucial it is to the work. In a dystopia, the worldbuilding is an essential component of the literary quality because it's the world and how it reflects on our own that is often the heart of those stories and their commentary/interaction with broader culture.

And some people love great worldbuilding even when it's part of books/movies/whatever that are otherwise clunky or shallow, just like some people love jokes in otherwise disposable sitcoms! But just because it doesn't determine literary quality doesn't mean it's not an element.

Also, there are different ways of creating effective worldbuilding, just like there are lots of different styles of humor. People complain a lot about JKR's worldbuild for example, because it's full of logical gaps, but it's also bursting with with an alluring off-beat charm and unexpected depths of references, like the way she uses linguistic derivation in spell incantations. (It's not all latin.) Do I think her worldbuilding is the GREATEST? definitely not. Just that it involves skill that contributes to the quality of the books.

Original Comment OP

[(Anonymous)]

This is such a weird take to me. "Writing" is not a single skill, or a single bounded skillset.

I do actually agree with this, and I should have been clearer. Worldbuilding can be a really interesting form of writing in its own right.

But I still think worldbuilding is mostly unnecessary for narrative fiction at best, and the emphasis on coherent, detailed worldbuilding is often detrimental to the literary quality of science fiction and fantasy. If what people want is worldbuilding, I think they'd usually be better served by a non-narrative medium.

Re: Original Comment OP

[ninefox]

> detailed worldbuilding is often detrimental to the literary quality of science fiction and fantasy

I feel like this is not because worldbuilding is unsuited to books, but just because people are bad at integrating it, which is part of the skill.

Also, I think you're doing a huge disservice to a lot of science fiction, especially. Literally all of the Foundation series' literary value is in its worldbuilding, and a lot of golden age scifi is that way. It's not "worldbuilding over quality". Not doing worldbuilding wouldn't have magically made Aasimov a character writer. It elevated those books, not the reverse. Science fiction (and to a great degree, secondary world scifi as well) is in many ways the literature of the possible, and worldbuilding is one of the greatest, most thorough explorations of that possibility. Nothing about that is incompatible with narrative, and in fact creative worldbuilding makes entirely new narratives and narrative devices possible, while narrative can be an amazing tool to take someone through a world who would be uninteresting in exploring a sandbox.

"the emphasis on coherent, detailed" - this is specifically why I mentioned Rowling. The magical world in Harry Potter is detailed and vibrant, but wildly incoherent. And I maintain that her worldbuilding contributes to the value of the books.

I feel like what you're objecting to is not actually worldbuilding in all its history and possible use and worth, but a very particular, narrow strain of pedantry within worldbuilding that only a very few people do well, and that happens to be popular and the province of loud proselytizers and gatekeepers at this very specific moment in the (western)(geek) media landscape.

[(Anonymous)]

Bad worldbuilding can break suspension of disbelief and lead to plotholes the size of the Grand Canyon when mishandled. Worldbuilding doesn’t have to be outstanding but it should at least follow the rules the reality sets.

Original Comment OP

[(Anonymous)]

I should probably have been more specific that this is really about how worldbuilding interacts with narrative fiction, because that's what I had in mind. But other than that I stand by the secret.

Re: Original Comment OP

[(Anonymous)]

do you mean that you object to how a worldbuild is expressed in the narrative? like, if you perceive "worldbuilding" as synonymous with "massive infodump in every chapter, a conlang, and constant references to invented placenames that have no relevance to the storyline" then yeah, I could see how you come to hate that because mediocre writing is rife with that method of expressing the setting. truly skilled authors can convey the setting without infodumps and conlangs, but the more unlike contemporary Earth the setting is, the more likely it is that something needs to be done to actually showcase the setting.

worldbuilding is just that - building a world. if you're writing fantasy that isn't urban fantasy (i.e. set in present-day Earth) then the geography, history, culture, and language is actually part of the plot, it's not just window-dressing. that's not even including nonhuman sapient species. worldbuilding is not the infodumps, random placenames, elaborate but ultimately pointless descriptions, complex magic systems, etc. a good author can have a whole world built but sprinkle information in naturally and the reader can still grasp the size and scope of the setting without having to flip back to the helpful map in the front cover.

[(Anonymous)]

Wizards of the Coast, Star Trek, Star Wars, Marvel, and DC have literally encyclopedic worldbuilding. Their literary output is very hit or miss (mostly miss if we're going to be honest).

[(Anonymous)]

And in contrast, you have Lord of the Rings, with bad horses, bad economics, bad politics, deliberate anachronisms, multiple self-inserts, and explicitly unreliable narrators and translators, but is a good novel in spite of it.

[(Anonymous)]

Wait, multiple self-inserts? What's this now?

[meadowphoenix]

The more you make a world similar to ours and the less you are concentrating on the political socio and economic landscape as relevant to the plot, the less world-building matters. HP is essentially about relationships and how they contribute to your moral fiber, so i don't need to know much about the wizarding world except as to how it complicated or enhances those relationships. So the incomplete worldbuilding doesn't affect the quality (to me). And shitting on the quality of HP because of the worldbuilding doesn't make sense.

Buuuuuuttttttttt there are plenty of books for which the political socio and economic landscape is EXTREMELY relevant to the plot and it needs to be good like, 1984 and Brand New World. Those books are about how people connect to their environment so you know what, i need to know some shit about it and it better make sense.

So i have to disagree because i think it depends entirely on what the book is trying to do. But I think the focus on world-building as a shorthand for quality in sci-fi and fantasy does obfuscate what some of those books are trying to do.

I got carried away a bit

[(Anonymous)]

I think that's a very interesting idea.

First of all, terminology. I wonder what constitutes literary quality in narrative fiction. I have to admit I don't have a clear definition for that. It's not the same as financial success or popularity.

I have a clearer understanding of worldbuilding. To me, it's making the reader understand and feel at home in surroundings foreign to them. The goal is to be consistent, leave no giant holes, and make the world feel lived in. It hinges on which concepts and details the author thinks of, researches, and puts in. It is not so much about the creativity behind it (because let's face it, most worlds aren't that creative), and it is not about how good the descriptions are or how elegantly the author can convey the rules of the world (infodumps, show don't tell etc.).

If we had the story of Fifty Shades, a bad story with no worldbuilding, set in Tolkien's Middle Earth, arguably the greatest world ever built, I don't think that book would deserve to be called of high literary quality. (Though I wonder how popular it would be.) In that sense I agree with you.

So amazing worldbuilding alone does not make a quality story, but then, neither would good characters alone, or interesting thematic work alone. Quality to me means it's all at least decent and works well together. And that means I couldn't just dismiss the worldbuilding, because in a good story, the worldbuilding is part of the narrative (which, in Fifty Shades of Gandalf, is probably not the case).

So: I don't think an aspect as integral to a story as worldbuilding should be so radically excluded. If worldbuilding doesn't count, what else doesn't count? And what does?

What about historical novels? I think it's fair to compare that kind of worldbuilding to fantasy or SciFi worlds. It fits my understanding of worldbuilding, anyway.
Would we consider that kind of worldbuilding when judging a historical book on its literary quality? "The plot was okay and the characters likable but what elevates this book from others is the author's depiction of ancient Rome." Is that a thing? I don't think it is. And if it isn't, why should then fantasy and SciFi worlds be different?

I guess I don't entirely disagree you, OP. Worldbuilding definitely should not be the defining criteria for literary quality, but I don't think it's fair to completely exclude it, either. In any book that wants to claim high literary quality, the worldbuilding has to be too much part of the story to be easily excluded from analysis, discussion and judgment.

[(Anonymous)]

I think fandom has an overly inflated sense of the importance of worldbuilding, since a large chunk of fandom centers on expanding primary and secondary works in different ways: catalogs, wikis, fanwork, cosplay, roleplay, etc..

But there's a lot of really wonderful work out there that's limited to the scope of a single city, or even a single room. And that's ok. An author who's doing 5,000 - 10,000 words doesn't necessarily need to start with a multidisciplinary encyclopedia. They don't need to map out a big plan for the next decade of sequels either.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm going to pose the Varney rule: If your speculative fiction work doesn't come with a diagram showing all of the possible sexual combinations in abstract form, then CLEARLY you've not done the minimal amount of worldbuiling work and I can't take you seriously.