Things to Consider While World-Building · 7:51pm Sep 9th, 2013
This is going to be a deeper look at World-Building than my previous blog post: Adventure Writing, World-building, and the Importance of Questions. As I stated there, World-Building is a cornerstone to the Adventure genre, and when writing Adventure, you will need to consider how you go about your world-building.
World-building is essentially exploring any facet of a fictional world and is entirely necessary in any work of fiction. Although you can get away with doing a lot less of it in fanfiction, simply because it supplies us with a pre-made world and (almost) everyone who will read your story will have an understanding of that base world to start with.
But world-building covers many more things than you might initially expect: Geography and introducing new locations, new cultures, monsters and animals, plants, history, economics, politics and intrigue, and even off-screen character actions (including gaps of time in between scenes and the bad-guy's actions and the repercussions of such actions, and other off-screen characters actions).
So why World-build? Simple. You want the readers to have an understanding of where the heck your story is taking place, and how it works. Supplying them with a world allows them to be immersed in the plot and characters of your story, and overall it allows them to enjoy the experience. Also, answering some of the questions about the world that the readers might have, even as they come up with them, will be a very welcoming experience for the readers and help keep them reading.
Things to focus on while world-building:
Running Themes: When writing any story really, you are going to be aiming for certain themes in your work. Generally it's a sort of broad theme, something that is explored from beginning to end. It provides a certain feel to your story that makes each section of the story feel like it belongs to the other sections due to them sharing those themes. These themes are usually concepts that not all the readers would necessarily have experience with or have a comprehensive understanding of, and they are to be explored further in your story in a manner that those who do not comprehend those themes, should by the end have a better understanding of how they work.
Take for example in Scion of Chaos, in it, a running theme is 'magic'. As an author I knew I had to (and wanted to) explore it throughout the story, and thus, most new areas that Sweetie Belle approached usually had its magic described in a way that revealed a bit more about how magic worked as a whole in my fanfic universe. It, as a main theme, made the scenes feel distinctly as a part of my story rather than a part of some other author's fiction.
Other examples of main themes include (but are not limited to): Politics, War, Religions, Love, Society, Culture, Morality, etc...
How to Explore these Themes:
These themes are awesome, and because they are awesome, they are entirely worth exploring through your story. But how you go about exploring these concepts is a bit tricky sometimes. I'm sure by now you've all heard the term show vs. tell tossed about and probably have a good idea of what they mean, but for those who might not...
Telling is when you give the reader these facts that they might not have known about your world. It's when you straight up tell them, 'This (insert event here) happened'. It's unavoidable in stories and has its place. Usually it's used to update the reader on an event rather quickly, allowing them to get to the more interesting scenes. Sometimes you need to catch a reader up to something that's relevant to how your world works for the scene to make any sense at all.
The problem with telling the reader about these fantastic and fascinating parts of your world is when you do it too much, the reader is usually going to lose interest, because it is not related to the characters that they care about, and they just want to get back to hearing about what one of the protagonists is up to. So when you tell, you should only do so if: You can't think of a good way to show it, if it's a small detail that's not worth emphasizing through showing, or if it is something that a quick explanation would allow for greater benefit than a long drawn-out one.
Example of Telling:
Sweetie had seen her sister's anger, and over the course of her childhood had managed to summon it all too often. But ever since the Sisterhooves Social, it seemed Rarity had tried harder than ever to reign her temper in.
From the first chapter of Scion of Chaos. See this is a small bit of world-building via telling. Basically it quickly caught the readers up by the author (me) telling them what Rarity and Sweetie Belle's relationship had been like in the past, at least in regards to her anger issues. This is the type of text that, if used too much, will have a large number of the readers innocuously skip past, probably to the next bit of dialogue.
A good way to handle excessive uses of telling is to cut out any telling that is not vital information that keeps the reader from getting lost. We don't need to know that it's a sunny day in Ponyville, and the birds are chirping, and all the ponies are out and about doing their daily routine. Generally you should cut that out of your story unless it is somehow important information. Once you've narrowed down your telling and if you still have massive walls of it, get that vital information transferred to the reader through some other more engaging means, such as two characters talking about the subject (so long as they naturally would be talking about the subject in question).
Showing, on the other hand is a means of getting your world-building points across while developing characters or pushing the plot forward. It's achieved through actions, thoughts, words, senses, and implications. Doing it this way also helps to keep your readers engaged by your story. Because even those who don't care about how this new city works will be able to see the characters interacting with one another and overcoming struggles while also coming to learn about the city, all without even really realizing they were really handed out that information.
Its effectiveness operates on engaging the reader, which is decidedly the best way to get anyone to learn anything. It may be hard to figure out how to do it, but I primarily go about it through a character approach. Because the readers tend to care most about the characters, I describe the parts of the new scene based on how the character in question sees it. What would Apple Bloom find important about this new city? What about Scootaloo? Sweetie Belle? What would they, as characters, compare this new sight to? Why do they care about that? Etc... (questions are your friends)
Example of Showing:
“You look rather unimpressed my dear, but perhaps you will change your mind when you get a closer look at the true marvel that these ruins are. These ruins are not only a mere testament to the architects of yore, but they remain here after all these years, and still perform most of their original function.” Scoddri proclaimed in sullen praise. “A formidable fortress it was, indeed. How sad to see it slowly succumbing to the gentle flow of time.”
“I thought the point of walls was to keep things out. How can a dusty broken wall still perform its function?” the unicorn asked, not too keen on spending the night where any monster from the forest could just sneak up on her. “I see a bunch of ways to get past the wall. I don't think it's doing a very good job.”
You see, here, we have two characters talking about a new sight. Instead of just describing it as an old dark stone wall that doesn't seem to be very protective, I used the two characters to describe it by means of their dialogue. Simple showing. It basically writes itself once you figure out who your characters are.
Pacing:
Yes this is another thing to look out for in handling your world-building. It's pretty simple. Vivid descriptions are awesome and some of the creative ideas we get about these places and features is nothing short of stunning. I like describing how magic works, but sometimes I go on a bit too long, and a reader might be thinking, “That's nice and all, but I'd really rather like it if the story was actually going somewhere instead of Sweetie just playing around with a magical spell for a whole page.”
So basically, you need to make sure not to overdo it with describing your new features. In general, I'd recommend maybe two paragraphs, at most, for a description of a new vista. Or maybe up to half a page of back-and-forth dialogue with the characters talking about the new place and how it relates to them. If it goes on for too long, if the readers are not interested in exploring that particular bit of world-building, then they are going to skip ahead past the paragraphs until it gets interesting again. (I know I'm just as guilty as anyone for doing this as a reader. And if it keeps happening I usually stop reading the story.)
Likewise, you do need descriptions and depictions of new concepts and areas that the characters come across. Otherwise, your readers will have a whole bundle of questions that they'll want answered, and will feel like the character should definitely have asked or answered some of them through their actions (verbal or non-verbal). You just need to find that middle ground of not-too-much and not-too-little.
So to restate it, you want to world-build to make the world understandable and recognizable to your readers which helps them suspend their disbelief. You want to answer or address their pertinent questions even as they come up with them, which keeps them from gaining a huge list of things that they need explanations for (having a huge list of things is entirely distracting for the readers, and will turn the reading experience into an unbearable thing for them).
I hope this helps in some manner with how you go about building your worlds. If you have any other ideas for me to write about, let me know. Thanks for reading,
~SilentBelle
Nice blog as always! Great advice! I think you should do a blog about how to make a good villain or (you know Imma say this) action sequences.
You do write the nicest blogs. this would've helped me a year ago, but I feel like I'm beginning to taking these kinds of things into consideration while writing. Regardless, I still enjoy reading your blogs.
1389700 That's great to hear. I still plan on writing many more of them.