How Immersive To Be · 2:21am Sep 23rd, 2014
The following writing is what I had prepared for the panel I was a part of at BronyCon. At the time of writing this, I was planning to memorize it and recite bits of it for the panel, however I quickly realized that doing so would kind of go against the general atmosphere of our panel. So I ended up focusing on a point or two during the panel and emphasizing them as concisely as I could. I never really got around to touching down on all the points I wanted to during the panel, so I figured maybe I'd share what I had prepared.
Feel free to give it a read if you want.
How Immersive to Be
When you take a look at adventure stories, you see these fantastical tales of heroes and adventurers, unlikely or not, going about exploring, growing, struggling, and often forming and achieving their dreams. These stories usually contain unbelievable and impossible events. Is there a magic system that's being used by the characters? Do they come across new towns, cities, dungeons, cultures, and religions that the reader knows little or nothing about? Of course they will, that's part of what makes a story an adventure. And to explore all these unbelievable, unknown, and fantastical things, it has to be handled in a way that is cohesive within itself, otherwise, the reader is going to be constantly reminded of just how ludicrous the whole situation is and that they are just reading a made up story.
To make a cohesive world is what we call world-building: creating a world that allows fantastical elements to immerse the reader instead of ejecting them due to the story's believability. When a character enters a new location, that character needs to react to the location appropriately to who they are as a character, otherwise the reader will begin to question why they did or did not act they way they were expected to, which pulls the reader their immersion. As an author, you must ask the questions in place of your readers. Have these characters been here before? Why and when? Have they not been here? Why not? How do they react to seeing what they are seeing and why? What are they seeing?
With every new place, concept, or character, you have to ask these questions and understand how all these elements fit together and interact with each other, whether it's some nameless guard by the city gate, or your main character starting to use magic for the first time, you have to understand how they fit together within the scope of your world and universe, and the more you can define these things, the better. The way you define them is by asking an endless slough of questions, question every element of your world as you use it, and if you can't provide a satisfactory answer, you should think about it until you can.
This is the mentality which is at the heart of world-building and adventure in general: exploring the world and understanding how it works. However, it is very easy to get carried away with these questions while trying to figure out how your world works. Many times I've seen authors become very interested in exploring a particular element of their story. Let's say for the sake of an example, that the author wrote some bit of history that is set before the story. I've seen authors present a two-thousand word mini-story about an ancient kingdom and a war surrounding it just to give a bit more depth to the ruins that the characters are currently going through. And while the idea behind doing such a thing is great, the author needs to be careful not to lose sight of their original story while trying to supply reasons for the elements in their story. The readers are here primarily for the main story, while some might be entirely enthralled to read about the history behind some fallen kingdom, many other readers will grow irate that they are being told a story that doesn't involve the characters that they are already invested in.
So here's the advice that I want to give on how in-depth to be with your story: Look at your story's world and question it ruthlessly. Figure out the histories, what led things to be the way they are, and how the characters fit into that world. Keep asking questions about everything, and never stop being inquisitive and scrutinizing your world. These questions are as a pair of glass that allow the reader to look into your world, and for every answered question, the glass becomes more transparent, allowing for a clearer view.
While you craft the world in such a manner, keep your focus on the story that you want to tell, and on the characters that the readers want to read about. When you think a reader might have a question about the world, see if there's a way to present that information in a manner that fits into your story. Maybe the character pauses to question a situation right when a reader would have as well. Maybe you'll have a question asked, but not supply an answer for it right away. Maybe the characters will find a book that tells them about the ancient ruin that they are passing through. As an author, you have to find ways to provide the depth to your world without pulling away from the story that you are telling.
The most fascinating and frustrating thing about writing a lengthy adventure story is all the world-building that goes into it. I know I've spent hours and hours thinking up, writing up, and typing up hundreds of pages of questions and answers about my world. And of those pages, maybe ten percent at most are ever going to be explicitly stated in the story. It can be hard to look at those pages, knowing so much of it will never see the eyes of your readers.
But what you have to remember is that these unseen questions and answers about your world will play a huge part in your story. All that work will have made your characters' underlying motivations and passions defined, and in turn, that will give their actions believable reason, and thus help bring the world to life. The readers will pick up on the subtle nuances of your defined world and begin to trust that your world works as a cohesive whole even if most of it is out of sight, and because of that, they will be able to experience your story in its purest form. And that's what you want your reader to do when they read your story.
Now I do want to say one thing in particular. I've said that you need to question your world and its elements, however, I want to point out that a lot of authors do a ton of this subconsciously. Sometimes I will write something and pause for a moment and think that it just doesn't feel right and change it until it does. While I hadn't actively questioned that part of the story in detail, something about what I had just written was in contradiction with what I had already written about my world so far. It's an instinct that I think most people have, and you have to learn to trust it as you write. Writing tends to be about half conscious, critical and planned out, while the other half is born of the subconscious, emotional and spur of the moment instinctive thoughts.
Your world-building is never going to be complete or perfect, but it will always be better to have spent time refining your world.
Thanks for reading,
~SilentBelle
P.S. AHoC chapter 22 is over halfway proofread. I'm hoping to post it tomorrow if possible.
As someone who is currently working on an adventure story, this couldn't have come at a better time. Thank you very much for taking the time to write this up.
2476196 I'm glad you find it useful. Good luck on the adventure story. Let me know when you publish it and I'll give it a read. I like a good adventure.
2476228 I'm not a good writer, hence why I'm always asking for help on a specific topic.
Anyway, thanks for wishing me luck!
Some interesting points here which I shall have to remember. Thank you for this.
And I do hope that the next chapter of AHoC does make it out tomorrow. I have been DYING here waiting to see what happens!
You know, it's you and D that are to blame for my love of Sweetie Belle!
Ever 'refined' your world and then realize the original thing you wrote was better? Cause I have...
2476662 No, I can't say I have ever experienced that exactly. Sometimes I entertain a number of different possibilities with how my worlds work (magic styles, what characters have been doing for five years, or whatever it may be). I find refining your would is merely exploring some ideas you already have in place, or finding answers that you need to have. If anything refining your world might show you what flaws lie inside your universe, contradictions and such, and that may make your original idea seem as though it was better prior to your inquisitive meddling. However doing so just highlights that you need find a way to fix it in a believable manner.
I have written and not been satisfied with what I wrote and then rewritten it, but the story has always been better for my attempts at refining it (even if I have to backtrack a bit once I realize what I was doing isn't working).
2476629 I've been dying to bring out the next chapter, even as the author and being able to read the incomplete thing, I'm getting antsy. I feel that even if my proofreader is too busy to finish it off, I'll dive back into it and fix what I can (Curse my biased eyes. It's so hard to see my own mistakes.)
This is indeed something that bothers me a lot when I'm reading even big name published authors. Same thing with authors that spend too much time from the POV of secondary characters. Sadly, they're not always avoidable—in fact, I ended up spending my most recent chapter on a flashback to the lives of ancient alicorns.
Two-thousand words? Pfft, amateurs
Ironically, the conclusion I came to with my latest chapter is that I didn't spend enough time on the flashback... All the information is there, but I trimmed, pared and refined it so much that it became dense enough to confuse a lot of people. Even in hindsight, I don't have a clear image of how I would have done it instead; only a vague idea of spending more time on each subject.
One of these days, I need to write a slower-paced story so I can get a better handle on having characters just living.