fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #4701 ]

[ SECRET POST #4701 ]

⌈ Secret Post #4701 ⌋

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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.

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.

> 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.

Edited 2019-11-20 03:12 (UTC)

Of course science fiction is the literature of ideas and possibilities, but I don't think that worldbuilding is actually the best and most useful way of thinking through and playing with those possibilities and putting them into the form of narrative fiction, whether it's the sort of Campbell-derived rigorous speculation of Golden Age science fiction, or the more contemporary form of fantasy worldbuilding.

And, well, I don't want to be a contrarian but I don't think that Asimov's writing is much good from a literary point of view, except for a handful of short stories. He's still a towering figure in the genre for other reasons but I just don't have a high opinion of most of his fiction as fiction. And I would argue that JKR is a good example for my side of the argument - her worldbuilding is not very good by the standards of worldbuilding, as worldbuilding goes, but this doesn't matter at all to the success of her fiction.

Of course some of this is semantic. If your definition of "worldbuilding" is "any kind of information about a fictional setting", then of course it's important. I don't think that's the way the word is actually used and the way that people think about worldbuilding as a concept but it's a point of view.

1) I honestly think you're wrong, but I also don't think anything has to be the best way of doing something literary to have more than "no relation" to literary quality. That's a very strong claim, and that's what I object to most. "I think open world video games are better or more engaging than some dry or clunky books" does not equal "worldbuilding has no relation to literary quality".

2) You're missing my point about Aasimov entirely. MOST of his writing is mediocre, but his books still have literary value, specifically because of the worldbuilding. That can be true even if you personally don't enjoy them. (And THAT can be true without denying that there are overrated classics.)

3) My definition of worldbuilding is between the two extremes of "everything is a perfect Sanderson puzzlebox" and "any setting". Not every setting is a world. But Rowling does create something that feels like a world, that has depth and breadth and texture that works together and feels like a real, coherent place, even if the way it works together is more by tone and resonance than by raw mathematically calculation. For a totally different example, I think you'd be hard pressed to find someone who thought Mad Max: Fury Road didn't have excellent worldbuilding - but almost all of that was done with prop design and there's almost nothing that's explicit enough to check in the rigorous-pedant way.

NAYRT: If you look up worldbuilding advice for fledgling writers, you'll see tons and tons and tons of articles saying that one needs to commit an entire novella worth of trivia like "what are the names of the constellations in your world" and "name every denomination of currency" before one even addresses things like conflict and character. The world according to worldbuilding advocates needs to be independently credible.

Generally I think that's a bad way of thinking about SFF, which is driven by big specultive thought experiments. Using Foundation as a good example of a priori worldbuilding strikes me as weird because Asimov changed the rules as he developed his original thesis. So did Tolkien and Le Guin. I'd go further and say that if you don't find the cracks in your world through developing it, you're proabably not being speculative enough.

In fact, I'd say the problem with the Wizarding World is that it's centered on class and ethnic conflicts from a particular U.K. perspective and gets very fragile when you try to look beyond that perspective.

You need those notes and stuff otherwise it feels shallow as a world.

I just don't think that's actually true.

In what way is the price of tea in China essential to a story about a man in a space suit on Enceladus waiting for medical evacuation?

SA: The short story Nesting Habits of Enceladan Jade Beetles does have a lot of setting detail. However every single detail about the setting is:

1. Relevant to the impending breakup of the primary character's relationship, or
2. Establishes the labor and risks of doing ecological assessment of a non-sentient species on a moon of Saturn.

Most worldbuilding advice is a wild goose chase at best, or at worst, active gatekeeping.

Oh so you're one of those people. Sorry, I'm not gonna have this convo, since it's clear you think having a clear and concise world behind your story and not a slapdash mess is A-OK.

Not at all what I wrote, but you do you.

The key words there are "clear and concise" and "not a slapdash mess." Stories need to be thoroughly and exquisitely researched and developed. But you can't know how to do that unless you know what your story is about. If you're going to build your story around, oh, (goes to Wikipedia Roulette) The University of Leeds, you need to cultivate a deep understanding of the The University of Leeds. You probably don't need to cultivate an equally deep understanding of the history of Russian aviation, the Ruthenian Peasants Party, or the AD-AS Model.

If you follow any of the "worldbuilding" questionnaires pushed onto fledgling writers you'll end up wasting a lot of time answering questions that are not remotely applicable to your story. And characters and settings that come out of a workbook are not credible.

For example, "Passing Strange" won WFA, Spectrum, and BFA in 2018, in part because of meticulous research into lesbian culture in San Fransisco in the early 40s. But if you go by any of the worldbuilding guidelines thrown around, it's rubbish because it spends more time on the legal standards to avoid getting prosecuted as a cross-dresser than the military technology of the period.

Having "a clear and concise world" behind your story is usually largely irrelevant to the literary and artistic requirements of the story, and often a distraction from those aspects of the story. Having an understanding of the aesthetic details of your setting and the details of your plot is, of course, very important. But I don't think that necessitates "a clear and concise world". Definitely not in the sense understood by advocates of worldbuilding.

Agreed, and the importance of military matters on these checklists is a big tell about what kind of SFF is expected as a result.

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[ SECRET POST #4701 ]

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