Tag Archives: world building

a cheater’s guide to worldbuilding (and other noises)

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Confession, part one, the confession part (you can skip this if you like): This last month has pulled me in a dozen different directions at once, a bit like taffy, only less delicious. I have the unfortunate problem of having too many ideas and too little time. At first it was an energizing sensation, since I am far more familiar with writer’s block than I am with creative overload, but now I feel fragmented and distracted. Because I have to choose, and I am haunted by what I choose not to do, constantly pestered by the sensation that I’m forgetting something. Which self-fulfills, driving me into what I think of as “flake” mode, a deeply distracted and self-agitated precursor to a bout of depression. I guess I can’t do anything about that but keep working, because I know damn well that it’s when I stop writing altogether that the trouble begins.

Confession, part two, the useful part: So, with that cheerful forward, I’ve been simultaneously working on final edits for my novel and doing some top-down worldbuilding for a new science fantasy novel. I’ve always used earth, near-earth, or alternate earth type settings, so inventing a planet has been a novel and educational (and occasionally frustrating) experience. I’ve learned why we have seasons (axial tilt), the upper limit on how short a day can be without the planet spinning to pieces due to the force of it’s momentum overwhelming its gravity (about 3 earth hours) and lots of other tidbits that have enabled me to cobble together a world I am currently calling Planet A (so creative!).

I have a touch of dyscalculia, so grinding out elaborate physics equations is just not my bag. So my two main resources for cheat-sheeting my way through a full world-build are:

The Khan Academy. Educational videos make understanding scientific concepts a whole lot easier.

Creating an Earthlike Planet Do not be fooled by the 1.0 design of this bad boy; it has everything you need, including a handy table that breaks down the minimum and maximum number of earth days that would be in a year for a planet rotating around any given star type. SUPER USEFUL if you’re not going for a G-type star like our sun.

So I’m bouncing between world creation, culture creation (based on what I already know about the world, and I am having a ball with this), and just plain writing out the first few chapters so that they stop eating holes in my brain. Once I’ve got things solidified, I’ll write out a beat sheet and get everything plotted properly so I can really go to town.

In a month or so my kid will start preschool and I will get a few hours to myself three days a week; until then I just have to tough it out and work in the stolen moments between this, that, and the other. It’s not ideal, but life never is.

In the Beginning, there was a dilemma.

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So you’ve got this really amazing fantasy novel idea. Maybe you sat down to write a short story and it just exploded on you. Maybe you actually did write a short story and your critique group said “this feels more like a first novel chapter” (that one happens to me all the time). Maybe you’ve just got this burning image in your mind that haunts you every time you drive your car or do the dishes.

Awesome, sit down and start writing, right?

Er… yes and no.

The problem is that fantasy contains too many $*(#&$#$ variables. Granted, if it’s urban fantasy, you’re probably good to go (and I hate you, because I just don’t write urban and it would make my life much easier if I could). But otherwise, you’re kind of SOL, because you can’t write a story set in a world you don’t know anything about. Well, you can, but chances are excellent it’ll end up completely crappy and derivative, and if obvious crappiness is the sort of thing that bothers you, you’ll end up wasting a lot of time trying to remedy your issues in subsequent drafts (says the weary voice of experience. Be smarter than me, please.). Half-assed, Medieval Times world building will hem in your story in unpredictable ways. It will deny you fully-rounded characters and plot possibilities.

Hey Nonny Nonny Myrtle Beach Piggly Wiggly

Now, I’m not saying I’m against swords or sorcerers. Hell, if I get peckish while I’m reading I’ll most likely grab a mid-book snack of bread and cheese and apple; the only thing saving me from straight-up Hobbitry is that I’m too lazy to be frying any mushrooms. Sad but true.

So it would be fair to say I like high/low/epic fantasy best, and that is why I’m especially critical of it.

The problem with diving head-first into writing fantasy is that you’re gonna get stuck if you don’t do the homework. What’s the climate like? Terrain? Major food sources? Technology levels? Population density? Physical traits (what do these people look like)? Religion(s)? Politics? History? Gender equality? What is a normal family unit? Is queerness a nonissue, or will it get you run out of town? What social taboos are there, then? What about art, music, literature, and other expressions of culture? Figure all that out and you’ve got one race/culture. One. Then you get to suck it up and do it three or four more times, because even if people of other countries/races/cultures do not currently figure into your plot, their existence will inform your work in unconscious ways, especially if you have a large city in there anywhere.

And that’s not even touching the magic, which has to have some rhyme and reason to it, or languages (Though I love etymology, I’m not a big conlanger myself, and thus of the opinion that just making a working vocabulary is enough, so that you can consistently name people and places and create a few good swears).

Even if you end up making a lot of choices that cause your world to resemble medieval Europe, reasoning that this is an alternate earth or is actually our world but set incredibly far in the future, your setting will still have an inherent genuineness to it.I mean, let’s face it, there’s only going to be so much that is strange about your world as it’s hard to get away from oak trees and rabbits and sheep without getting into the weird smeerp thing anyway (warning! that link leads to TV Tropes, see you in six hours). It gets exhausting, so the main thing is to develop the cultures, and not worry too much about the rest. I mean, bread is bread, unless it has some sort of specific quality that makes it different from bread as we know it. Like, it makes you telepathic, or is actually made of the ground up bones of Englishmen. You get the idea.

Worldbuilding is a lot of work, something that is magically onerous and fun simultaneously. But if you want to make a world or a city that people remember, a Middle Earth or a Bas Lag or a Hogwarts or an Oz, you have to do the homework. If an idea for a fantasy novel is burning a hole in your head, by all means dive in, but do your worldbuilding in tandem, and save yourself some grief in the long run.

Building Characters, One Trait at a Time

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Write what you know. It’s one of those Creative Writing 101 Rules. But what about characters?

A week or two ago on a twitter chat, (I think it was #writechat, but it might have been #litchat, I lurk in both as smolderingink whenever I get the chance) there was a discussion on character building that got me thinking. Many writers model their characters after people they know. This seems to me to be a dangerous way to go about character creation. What if the modeled person recognizes themselves? Maybe they will be flattered. Maybe they will be offended. And if you base your character solely on yourself, you run into the danger of Mary Sue-ism.

Say your character is stubborn. Many of mine are; stubbornness can be a heroic quality, but can also lead to downfall. Instead of making your character behave exactly like the first stubborn person that comes to mind, think about all the people you know whom you would consider stubborn. Compare and contrast them. I have a stubborn friend who is principled in her stubbornness. She never caves in to what she thinks is wrong, and sometimes this behavior rears up and bites her on the buttockal areas. But the way she always stands up for her beliefs is admirable to me. I, on the other hand, am only stubborn at my worst, when I am also being petulant and childish. So I have tried hard to eradicate the trait from my personality. I also know someone else who was raised to believe flexibility is weakness, and so he never gives ground on anything, be it a political stance or where to go for lunch. So, that’s three ways to be stubborn, right there.

How do these different behaviors fit with the other traits of my stubborn characters? Well, one of my characters, Sahrel, is an ex-concubine. Because of her past, she is used to either being spoiled and indulged, or having to obey her owner in totality. She is also used to manipulating others to get what she wants, but she is aware of and doesn’t like this part of herself. So she is often childish, but can be principled on occasion. Over the length of the story Sahrel may choose to shed her childishness and become a more sympathetic character. Or, she may choose to cling to it, perhaps to her downfall. It really depends on the rest of her personality, as well as how the plot pushes her. Another of my characters, Wil Imbrel, is a death priest. He is always principled, according to the code of his order, but doesn’t like to explain himself. So he often comes off as snobbish and inflexible, especially when the code of his order does not adhere to the same morality as the rest of society. So whether Wil chooses to buck up and lead by example or to sneer and put others down depends once again on the rest of his personality, and the demands of the plot.

As you can see, I don’t hammer things down- I like to give my characters a little breathing room to surprise me. If I give my characters enough nuance they begin to act on their own. And the moment  a character begins acting on his or her own is the moment I know I have created a real person who just happens to live in my head. Sure it’s a weird zip code, but it’s not their fault.

This is how I have always written characters, by observing traits in others and melding them into what would be most appropriate for my character given their current situation. This trait-melding is instinctual to me, I had to really think about how to explain it before I sat down and wrote this post, because setting and plot are tied up in this method as well.

So, how do you create your characters? Do you start with a template of someone you know and change things? Or do you piece traits together from scratch, based on the needs of your plot? Or do you do something else altogether?