World-building - Fantasy - part 1

photo by Marko Blažević on Unsplash

Once again, a post written in response to a paid subscriber’s question.

While this part I of a collection is “spec fiction,” know that, as a post on “setting,” its usefulness goes beyond. There will much interplay between the three parts of these “world-building” posts. More soon!

While the subscriber’s questions were around “fantasy,” world-building is part of any fictional work: fantasy/speculative fiction; historical fiction; contemporary/realistic work.

In the January newsletter I wrote about “fences.” World-building is all about creating such parameters for story. It’s deciding not only what is in your world, but what isn’t. (Why isn’t it? Might be useful to know.)

A quote from Robert McKee’s Story:

“The first step toward a well-told story is to create a small, knowable world…” (p. 67)

This word “knowable” is a fence or boundary. “Knowable” might be seen as a limitation, but its about making some choice, setting up parameters to be free to get on with creating.

“Setting” is significant for plot-building and character building; I pull “story” from setting in terms of both place and time. And more. If you don’t know—intimately—your setting, you can bog down in your story and writing. So McKee’s idea of keeping it “small”—and therefore knowable—is key.

Of course, many spec works have entire worlds in them, and do not fit in the category of “small.” Tolkien did world-building to the point of creating a new language.

One of the most basic questions to ask yourself is whether you are creating an entirely new and unknown world… or are you working with some alternate world or time-line… or are you working with a place here on our earth but not as we know it…? (Think Harry Potter’s world-within-world.)

And is your story re-writing the past? Or looking into distant future? Or not so distant? Is it present day, but elsewhere?

If you are re-writing the past you need to be deeply knowledgeable of that piece of history in order to turn it on its head and re-envision. (Man in the High Castle comes to mind: what if WWII had turned out differently? “Spec” has a lot of “what if” to it. “What if” has a lot of connections to setting/world.)

As we did with the recent newsletter and monthly prompt: think about your FENCES or your BOX. Write about these decisions. Define your box.

One caveat:

Don’t spend all of your writing time building your world.

In my years advising creative writing theses, a number of them—the majority in the last half dozen years!—were spec/fantasy. Over and over I saw apprenticing writers getting mired in the building of their world, with no characters growing, and little story. The world-building efforts became a gerbil wheel. And yes, the writers probably heard it running running running through the middle-nights of their minds.

It really is a challenge to discover the questions you might have and those you might learn before you begin to write the story. (I’m not talking about a productive challenge here!) You can know the diet of a particular place, but until you seat you characters mid-scene at a table (wait a minute: do they eat at a table? high? low? a bar and stools? indoors? out?) you don’t know if they have utensils or use their hands. Or do they have a special/ritual/customary order in which to eat or imbibe foods/drink? Can they belch openly? Is it acceptable to talk with their mouths full…? Does it matter? (Does it serve the story?)

What does your reader need to know? What do you need to show?

One issue, with a lot of world-building done before actually beginning to write the story, is that it fuels an urge to tell the story instead of showing it. There is value in discovering the world as you progress, as your readers do. It’s finding a balance. It’s writing and researching in tandem; let your questions grow and be answered as the readers’ will be, too. This is not an exact process. It can’t be. But the Q&A that both writer and reader experience will be more closely connected.

Later, as you’ve smoothed holes and polished, the sense of exploration has a way of remaining in the text even after multiple drafts. How you approach becomes a part of the fabric.

For the purposes of building the setting, you might want to split your process journal in two, with one half for the usual—story process—and the other half strictly for this piece. You may even want to block it into sections and use some of the categories I’m going to outline/question below. You do not need to know everything! You need to know enough to build. Of that “enough” you will probably use about 10%. Using more can begin to fall into “showing off”… and fight that urge! (Though I do understand, after the work involved!)

Some basics

So much of our daily lives we take for granted. Yet each piece plays some role in how we grow up, develop, live. The structures and institutions we live with form the very stuff of our lives.

Let’s look at some:

What are the politics of this world or place? That is, how is POWER structured? What is the hierarchy? What is it in the home, the neighbourhood, community, country, at-large “world”? (Is there “neighbourhod”? What does “community” look like?)

What are the values of this place? What is right and what is considered “wrong” and what happens when people do “wrong?” What is the legal system? Who/what is in the system?

What is the physical? That is, the geography and topography. This includes the maps, surely a favourite piece of fantasy and world-building. I end up creating maps for most of my novels, whether it is a map of the place/town/area, or of a house or street or the layout of a park… even a classroom (where are the characters’ desks and tables? windows? teacher’s desk?) or campground. The main character’s home is a mainstay for my “mapping.” Do they have parks? Mountains? What is the weather like? Moon/cycles? Go outside, look around. What is this in your fictional world?

How do they travel? Is it a world of movement? or static? (Can’t help but think of the covid-related shifts here.)

Arts. Dance, music, theatre/drama, visual, crafts. What do these beings or characters create with their hands? Do they have an art form we do not have? (My mind leaps about at this point!) What would that be and “look” like? What are their pastimes?

Food and drink; meals; rituals around food and drink—do they give thanks? do they clink glasses and what do they say if they do?

What are their societal rituals? I was watching my annual “It’s A Wonderful Life” and wondering: when did we stop wearing a back arm-band to indicate we are grieving? Why did we relinquish that custom? (Or have we?)

What customs and rituals are in your world around grief? loss?

What about “life”—birthday celebrations, holy-days? Acknowledgement of maturity, such as adolescence? Anniversaries…? The list is long.

What is the place of spirituality? Is this a “group” piece, individual, or divisive? Is it formalized, organized, or personal? Is there thought to be a supreme being or multiple or none?

As with any of these pieces, ask yourself what does this have to do with the story?

As you read other novels of spec fiction, note the facets of the world that they bring into the light, that play roles in the story-telling, the characters’ lives.

The intellectual life. Education: how do the characters learn? What do they learn? What is their learning day and year? (Do they have “years/grades?”) Mentors? Classroom? different ages all together or… ?

How do these people/beings relax or have fun? Ballooning? Parkour? Shopping in malls? What are other-world equivalents? Or is it so removed from our world?

Or does something provoke some whole new idea in your head?

This list is only for thought-provocation! You do not need to know all these points.

But you do need to:

• Create in internally consistent world (even if your plotline is concerned with some one thing/person/being upsetting this in some way)

• Stick to these rules you have created—work to consistency

Does this all feel like far too much work? The rewards for working to create a unique world for your story are many. From the uniqueness, will come your story and characters.

…the source of all cliches can be traced to one thing and one thing alone: The writer does not know the world of his story. (McKee, page 76)

Review the post on Setting.

To sum

I’ll repeat: write and research/build simultaneously. Because setting so profoundly affects the story and its inhabitants, it is necessary to build it, and to extract from it, and to play with it; the setting works dynamically with the whole.

You’ll have days where you are stuck for story, and on those days, research. Research invariably coughs up a few story threads. On days when you feel bursting with knowledge about your world, story will grow without huge effort, and those are prime writing days.

If you work in tandem thus, it might mean having to toss some of your work if your research renders it void. Most often, I find, I’m stopped by the need to research and I’ll go down a few rabbit-holes. I allow myself to be taken down these; I often find that I am pulled in the direction I need to be, if I’m open and searching.

I’ll have more thoughts on this porcess in the “historical writing” part, but the thoughts there will apply here, too.

Questions? Post away… and also post any pieces of world-building I am missing—there is so much, too much for a short article.

It would be good to hear what you have grappled with. Or stumbled over.

To read the next two parts of this post:

World-building-Historical fiction - part 2

And:

World-building - Contemporary Realism - part 3