General approach to worldbuilding
Aug. 20th, 2007 04:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
velvetpage"Worldbuilding" is the act of creating a fantasy world in which to set a work of fiction. Some authors worldbuild for years, to the point where their world is extremely well-developed when they finally start writing the books that are going to be set in it. I believe Robert Jordan is one of these; Tolkien is another decent example.
Most authors, however, don't do that. They do something a lot simpler, but that requires more backstory later on. They choose a framework, usually a pre-existing one - say, generic medieval/renaissance sword-and-sorcery, recognizable in three-quarters of the fantasy fiction on the market - and then they build the individual details onto that framework. Instead of wizards, my world will have mind magic. Instead of the usual constant level of corruption, my world has such-and-such to keep the high-and-mighty honest. My world has dragons. My world has elves, only they're not called elves, they're called this other thing. My world has anthropomorphic characters. And so on, and so forth.
This kind of worldbuilding serves a valuable purpose. If the author is using a semi-generic framework, it means they can evoke that framework for the reader, who gets to use their prior experience with the same framework as a route into understanding the book. The semi-generic framework is triggered by certain details - names of weapons, styles of architecture, names of people or places, or landscape features (try writing a fantasy novel set in the high north without evoking either Vikings or Inuit or Russians! Go ahead, try it!) Sometimes this use of a framework is so deliberately historical that you can learn a lot about the framework being used by reading it (see Guy Gavriel Kay for an example of that.) Other times, the framework is loose at best.
The problem I see with this kind of worldbuilding is twofold. First, if the book/series actually succeeds, it invariably requires a lot of backfilling to make the setting rich enough to support the wealth of sequels that eventually get written. Anne MacCaffery and Mercedes Lackey have both experienced that problem over the course of their careers - the worlds in their later Pern and Valdemar series use the worlds in their first books more as guidelines than as canon. Dedicated fans can easily plague your life out wondering how such-and-such a detail in the first book is consistent with such-and-such a detail eight books later. However, any author who manages to get eight or more books out of one world, and have fans that dedicated, doesn't deserve my sympathy so much as my envy. No, the more common problem is the second: what is a good ratio of generic framework to new material? How much can you draw from history or other fantasy books before your book looks and feels exactly like six dozen others published in the last four decades? How little can you draw from those frameworks before your world becomes impenetrable and dense, too far "out there" for anyone to understand without a complex system of charts and maps that no one wants to keep flipping to while they read?
The goal is to achieve a balance, where your readers will be able to visualize the backdrop and understand the comparisons, but will still find your writing to be fresh and interesting.
Most authors, however, don't do that. They do something a lot simpler, but that requires more backstory later on. They choose a framework, usually a pre-existing one - say, generic medieval/renaissance sword-and-sorcery, recognizable in three-quarters of the fantasy fiction on the market - and then they build the individual details onto that framework. Instead of wizards, my world will have mind magic. Instead of the usual constant level of corruption, my world has such-and-such to keep the high-and-mighty honest. My world has dragons. My world has elves, only they're not called elves, they're called this other thing. My world has anthropomorphic characters. And so on, and so forth.
This kind of worldbuilding serves a valuable purpose. If the author is using a semi-generic framework, it means they can evoke that framework for the reader, who gets to use their prior experience with the same framework as a route into understanding the book. The semi-generic framework is triggered by certain details - names of weapons, styles of architecture, names of people or places, or landscape features (try writing a fantasy novel set in the high north without evoking either Vikings or Inuit or Russians! Go ahead, try it!) Sometimes this use of a framework is so deliberately historical that you can learn a lot about the framework being used by reading it (see Guy Gavriel Kay for an example of that.) Other times, the framework is loose at best.
The problem I see with this kind of worldbuilding is twofold. First, if the book/series actually succeeds, it invariably requires a lot of backfilling to make the setting rich enough to support the wealth of sequels that eventually get written. Anne MacCaffery and Mercedes Lackey have both experienced that problem over the course of their careers - the worlds in their later Pern and Valdemar series use the worlds in their first books more as guidelines than as canon. Dedicated fans can easily plague your life out wondering how such-and-such a detail in the first book is consistent with such-and-such a detail eight books later. However, any author who manages to get eight or more books out of one world, and have fans that dedicated, doesn't deserve my sympathy so much as my envy. No, the more common problem is the second: what is a good ratio of generic framework to new material? How much can you draw from history or other fantasy books before your book looks and feels exactly like six dozen others published in the last four decades? How little can you draw from those frameworks before your world becomes impenetrable and dense, too far "out there" for anyone to understand without a complex system of charts and maps that no one wants to keep flipping to while they read?
The goal is to achieve a balance, where your readers will be able to visualize the backdrop and understand the comparisons, but will still find your writing to be fresh and interesting.