Recently some stuff happened in a story I like by an author I utterly respect that really bothered me. Discussing it further with the author in question would likely be toxic and cause trouble in any case. But I have to deal with it, and so the way I will do that it talk a bit about an aspect of writing I feel is utterly important and that no author should ever neglect: Their most important character.

The world.

The world is a character in any story. Whether the world is a protagonist or an antagonist, what the personality of the world is, and how it grows and changes during the story are all just as relevant and important as whatever one might do with a character who is a pony or a human or whatever they might be.

Worldbuilding isn't some fancy trick, it isn't some gimmick and it is not superfluous or anything less than absolutely vital.

We write pony, and in the Bureau, we also write earth. Often it is a future earth, and both worlds are vital, changing characters with lives and story arcs all of their own. It is vital to grasp this, and to respect the worlds you create. A world is not merely a backdrop for mobile characters to prance upon - it defines literally everything any other character does, can do, or is.

I can best prove this by example, I think.

Let us posit a Standard Protagonist. Let us make him human, about 22 years old, African-European with green eyes and medium brown skin (like a dorm person I remember from college). He is college educated, partially, and is otherwise relentlessly normal for a middle-middle class person in the First World.

Now, our Character, let us name him 'Curtis' and continue, Curtis wants to get to his cell-phone to make an important call. Unfortunately, his cell phone is out of reach, and he has to get ahold of it. That is our starting situation and protagonist.

The world this Curtis is placed in defines what happens next. It basically writes the story for us. We know our character, we know what he wants, we know his values and limits (we are all mostly computer-using people here, with the equivalent of first-year college level knowledge, are we not?) because we know what an 'average' person in America or Europe is basically like. So we know Curtis well enough... for an average schlub with a few defining details.

If you know your characters, and you know your world, you need not fear even ten thousand pages of story. - Petal Chatoyance

Let's stick Curtis, and his phone, in some different worlds, and watch how the world does the writing for us, because it is a character too, and it interacts, pushes, motivates, limits, and defines everything that interacts with it.

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Curtis In Anytown, British Columbia:

Curtis had to make a call. His phone was around somewhere... had he left it at Tim's when he stopped to buy some Timbits and a coffee? No, wait, there it was, right on the table. Of course. Curtis reached for his phone.
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Nothing too difficult there. This is our 'Control' example. Let's try something a little more dramatic.

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Curtis In Luna City, Moon Colony 3

Curtis had enjoyed his trip to the site of the first lunar landing. Tranquilty Base was carefully roped off, to prevent contamination and destruction by tourists, but he had gotten a good, if slightly distant, view. Suddenly, he remembered... he needed to make that call. It was probably already too late.

In the colony, it was impractical to carry around little boxes everywhere, especially considering the issues of universal pressure suits and the daily issues of living in a hazardous environment. Curtis's 'phone' was actually a software appliance integrated into the main base computer system. The regional A.I. governor for the base allocated usage units based on work credits and relative need and circumstances. It was dispassionate and ruthlessly fair, but it could be negotiated with.

And that was important, because Curtis was already out of communication units, which meant that his 'phone' was basically out of reach. It would take some clever logic to hope to get his call made.
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The world defined what Curtis had to deal with. It defined the nature of his next action - arguing his position. In the first example, Curtis needed to physically search for his phone, and take hold of it. In the second example, the world defines what the phone is, how it may be used, and what separates Curtis from it. Curtis must convince a secondary character to permit him to make use of the phone. His actions are now cerebral, rather than physical. The world, and worldbuilding, have defined what Curtis must do. The world has effectively written his behavior for us, all we must do is fill in how he does it, and whether he succeeds.

Just like any character, the world, the setting of a story, must be treated with respect, and consideration, and authenticity. It must be consistent from scene to scene and not break from itself. In a serious story, a character that is defined and then suddenly breaks that definition for no reason upsets us. It feels like the character becomes a lie, it feels like the author is poor, it destroys the ability to trust the author, or to take anything seriously.

Let's break Curtis, to show this. Let's make a world, let it define things, and then deliberately fuck up everything -

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C.U.R.T.I.S - all mechanical machine man!

Curtis was made of gears and switches. He was metal, through and through, a walking, talking automaton manufactured in the City Of Sprocket on the third day of Brass. His favorite thing was oil, the thing he feared most was water - rust was ever the enemy of the Matons.

Every month, on the last day, Matons were required to use their Ironphones to call the Central Automaton Center and report their current repair status. This was necessary and to their benefit, because the great mechanical mind of the center kept track of every Maton, and arranged all necessary repairs and upgrades. Because Matons could neither heal, nor grow - being made only of metal and plastic - they tended to accumulate damage over time. Tiny damage that, if ignored, would inevitably lead to a catastrophe... or even permanent loss of function - death, as far as Matons were concerned.

Curtis clanked about his metal apartment. He had left his Ironphone magnetically clamped to a surface, but he could not remember which. Was it a wall? The ceiling? Perhaps the edge of a hatchway? Curtis ran through all the mechanical registers in the microscopic Napier's Bones-like memory section of his machine brain. He simply could not remember.

This was why Matons shouldn't drink, he ruefully thought. Last night had been quite a party. He had downed vodka after vodka, and followed that with beer. His stomach had become so upset that he had needed to vomit copiously into the copper basin he normally used for his oil changes.

Now the entire metal apartment smelled of partially-digested beer and vodka and the pizza he had scarfed. Oh, how he loved pizza! That delicious cheesy taste was just too much. Now, his mouth was like a sewer, and the taste inside it made him feel queasy again.

Grinding his gears loudly, Curtis stomped to the bathroom. Maybe he had left his Ironphone there? Suddenly, a cramp made him bend over. He dented his metal skull on the toilet seat. Oh, there was the Ironphone. Curtis feared to reach for it, for it was in the toilet, and the water would destroy his hand.
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If you are the least bit intelligent, at this point, you are going "What the flying fuck?" and your mind it likely torn between being angry and frustrated that the cool machine person suddenly made no sense at all, and trying to come up with some kind of explanation that could excuse the flaws. Maybe Curtis is part organic? No, it was stated, early on, that he is all machine. Maybe he is just imagining it? No, it is clear that this is happening to him, there is no reason to believe otherwise.

The only conclusion is that the author failed. She did, of course, in this case deliberately, to make a point, but - the above is broken. Curtis the Maton was pretty neat. But now it sucks, because I was not true to the character, or to what you were told to know about him.

And this very sort of thing is what angered me so much that I have written the above.

Curtis the Maton is a product of his world. The world defined him, and he was defined to us, the reader. Once this is in place, it must never be violated without an accompanying explanation, somewhere, that makes sense. It isn't wrong to take something expected and twist it into something new - rather it is incumbent upon the author to make that new something logically self-consistent and believable (in a serious story).

If the world is mechanical, and the protagonist is a machine, then he cannot have a stomach, he cannot poop, he cannot vomit, and he cannot get drunk. If we make him so that he can do these things, we need to give a damn good reason why, and how, and do it so that the reader does not feel betrayed.

It's not hard:
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Curtis had been equipped with the latest in all-plastic synthetic human-like organs. While incapable of true digestion, in the sense of permitting him to heal, or grow, or repair himself, the false organs did allow Curtis to socialize with his human friends. This made all the risk of rust and damage worthwhile to him.
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BAM! Now, it's acceptable again. Maybe even more interesting than before. Maybe not. But whatever the case, at least there is some explanation that is self-consistent and allows the reader to not feel cheated, and to be able to suspend their disbelief.

This fix is thanks to worldbuilding, it is thanks to the world itself. Now, in this world, there are humans, and in this world they socialize with machines, with Matons, and because of this, it is not irrational to consider that Matons might want to be capable of doing the things their human friends do, with them, together.

The world makes that happen. The world, who is the un-named character beside Curtis in every scene. A character that Curtis must deal with, interact with, and even play second fiddle to, from time to time.

If you, as a writer, give your readers a defined thing, and offer no reason why that defined thing should be anything other than what it is, and you make sure your readers know what that thing is... you must be true to it, and if you mess with it, you must explain why and how, and how come, and make it all make sense.

To do less is worse than cheating, it is failing at a fundamental level.

The answer, in almost every case for such a situation, is in your world. Your world defines everything else about your story.

Can a character fly at will? The reason is in the world itself, as are all the limits and constraints on that flight - as well as its necessity.

Can your protagonist stand on a cloud? The world, worldbuilding, is why that is acceptable at all. If the world makes that believable, then it works. If the world denies that power, all your empty words will not satisfy the disgruntled reader that sees where you broke your own reality.

The world, the universe of a story, is ever present. It is in every scene, it is the hidden motivation for every action. No matter how much you love your protagonists and antagonists, you must love your world as much or more - because if you do not write for the character that is the world as well as you do all other characters, nothing will work, and everything will feel hollow and empty and wrong.

Equestria is a character. In the Bureau stories, it has a character arc. So does Mundis and earth. Both grow, or die, both have a tone, a feeling, a personality. The situation is fantastic, strange, bizarre. But it is believable to the extent that it is self-consistent and makes logical sense within its own conceits.

Your story world is a character. It may even be your most important character, sometimes. And if you do your job well, as an author, your readers will be as excited to learn something new about the world-character as they will be to learn about your protagonists or antagonists. Worldbuilding is character-building, and worlds are characters too.

But in writing stories about magical or scientific worlds, strange worlds, worlds that are not outside our doors, the author must be very careful, and consistent, so that they do not begin to crack and shatter the fictional reality they are creating.

“Of course truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.” -Mark Twain

I witnessed a great story go down in logical flames, and it broke my heart. The excuse, essentially, was that the story world was unimportant, and that the only thing that mattered was the emotions of the characters.

In an absurdist, crackfiction, Dadaist novel, I would not argue the point. But in a serious work, a broken world breaks everything. It's hard to take seriously a totally realistic depiction of the disaster of the Titanic sinking if - for no reason at all - the two main lovers somehow, without explanation, can breath water and are not killed by cold. Arbitrarily. Just because the author wanted them to kiss and live and go home anyway.

No. That is not good storytelling. That is losing credibility.

So, my conclusion is that, if you want to be an effective writer - tend to your world! Treat your world well, and honestly, and keep to its consistencies. Strive to make your world as real as any character, because it is a character, and it is more than just a painted screen. The world defines all possibility, and all meaning for all actions.

And if you truly know your world, and you truly know your characters, then your story really can write itself for you. And, if this happens, it will make sense, and be satisfying, because the actions of the characters will proceed logically from what is reasonable and likely within the world.

If you know your characters, and you know your world, you need not fear even ten thousand pages of story.

And you need not fear that you will fail your story... or the readers.

Thank You! I have felt the same way about many stories I have read (and not just pony stories either), but I have never been able to convey my disappointment politely. This essay is a constructive guide for fiction, which is sorely needed for today's writers. I had never thought of the world as a “character” before. Until now, I have found no way to express the failures listed above as anything other than “the author failing to think”, because when I write (although that is rarely), I put myself standing beside the main character ever invisible, and I cannot do this without first knowing the ground upon which I stand, so the world character is by necessity the first character I must know before I can begin writing.

To play Devil's Advocate, the issue with the original story was that the author was (due to self-imposed restrictions) not in full control of the world. By trying to roll with new events in the source material that happened well after the world was built, while still trying to stay true to the characters as they had developed, some inconsistencies were introduced. This is not unlike the poor schmucks who had to come up with this week's excuse for why the transporters couldn't save the day in the first five minutes of Star Trek's latest episode.

That aside, your points stand. Poor consideration of worldbuilding can easily kill a story.

3484313 I don't know what this is all about, but if an author is going to hold themselves to the absolute of someone else's mythos then if the original author writes something that voids their work, they should respect themselves enough to drop their story right then and call it null and void. Regardless of what the reader knows about another person's story, shoehorning a story into someone else's mythos makes it both unfit for it's own canon and too broken to be considered good for the other.

3484386
The specific events were a ponyfic which started seasons ago, but the author decided to include FlutterBat [because reasons], which threw a monkey-wrench into her characterization (from some points of view; the author had been pushing the FlutterBitch angle at times, so he rolled with it). This started things down a path that had some of us scratching our heads by the end of the story, because it had profound effects on 'Shy's romantic situation, and certain parts of the resolution were a bit "iffy".

TL;DR: author adopted FlutterBat from that one episode, but it didn't quite match with the worldbuilding he'd been doing, and the resulting gaps were less than perfectly patched over.