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Why does world building matter?

FatCat

Maester
To what extent does worldbuilding effect your story, and why? It seems like a lot of writers in fantasy try to emulate a certain culture to the extent of near historical fiction, just without the actual work of prescibing to details. Sometimes I wonder if world building is an exercise in imagination beyond the narrative or if it's application forwards the role in a story. Now, I know that the world in which you set a story is imperetive, but when does those elements hinder your writing or creative vision?

Let's say I have a story about a young farmer fulfilling a prophecy (I know), how does the world you build around that narrative effect the overall narrative arch? Beyond the basics of 'when' and 'where', like, with most fantasy, Europe in ages past with knights and what-not, isn't 'how' the most important question? The idea behind the world, the reason why the stage is set in such a way.

I'm not sure if I'm conveying my thought coherently in this post. I can see a flood of posts arguing that a unique world sets the tone for a great fantasy novel, and I would not disagree, however witnessing the stress put on mundane concerns of how a certain society would act within the strict guidelines of historical reference make me believe that the whole of world building is an exercise in over-obsessivness, a willingness to sidetrack the true meaning of what you're attempting to convey into a psuedo-historical look on a fictional society.

To stream-line the idea of world-building, I believe, is the key. To understand what is important in your world that builds within the characters dillemas and obstacles and include only the briefest mention of actual, hard-thought societal creations.

This is the problem I have with world-building, and have struggled with while writing. When does the ball stop, so to speak, and when does too much homework ruin the creative process?
 

ThinkerX

Myth Weaver
Poor or limited worldbuilding shows, and detracts from the story.

Tolkien built a credible, detailed world steeped in history and traditions. Weathertop wasn't just a ruin, it was the remnants of a watchtower, an outpost of a mighty nation. Moria wasn't just a hole in the ground, but a fallen realm with a glorious past. And so on. Middle-earth *lived* and that showed through in the story.

Afterwards came the Tolkien imitators: slap dash worlds with the equivalent of cardboard cutout scenery - and that showed in the writing.
 

Jabrosky

Banned
I agree that too much time spent on preliminary world-building or research can distract from or delay the actual writing process. On the other hand, I would very much like the societies I create to be plausible, as in they could actually function as intended within the parameters of a given world. I want things to make sense.

Maybe this is one reason why real historical cultures are so popular as bases for fantasy settings. You can't have a society much more plausible and potentially functional than one that actually existed.
 

Penpilot

Staff
Article Team
I think it's different for everyone. Certain writers legitimately need to know a certain amount before they can proceed. Others just wing it. Me, I consider myself somewhere in between.

I'm getting well into my third novel, and as of right now, what I need in terms of world building is fairly simple. I can't remember where I got this from, but I just need to know three things. In no particular order, religion, group divisions, and moral compass.

These things obviously expand out. Religion can be many religions or none. Group divisions can mean how the world is divided up geographically, as in countries, or societal strata. And finally, moral compass means what is considered right and wrong in the world. Maybe it's considered OK that women are treated as possessions or that slavery is fine too.

I don't need to know these things in great depth, just enough to sketch out a trail. The rest I make up on the fly. For the most part I look at my notes before I start writing, and I generally don't look back until I'm finished my first draft. If it didn't stick in my memory, then it probably wasn't all that important. This isn't a hard rule. I do look back if I remember I have notes on something very specific. Otherwise, what I come up with on the fly to fill the holes is generally better than what I had written down.
 

Svrtnsse

Staff
Article Team
I did craploads of world building before I even started writing. My original intent was to create a setting for P&P roleplaying, not to write a story.
The benefit of this is that I have a very good feel for the world I'm writing in. I know the "rules". When I need to make something up on the spot I know what the limitations are and what I can work with and I can be fairly confident that what I come up with will fit within the bigger picture.

I believe that these rules are a pretty important, but often over-looked part of world-building. It's easy enough to come up with cool races and nations and magics, but it's trickier to try and figure out how their existence affects the world and what consequences they have for how the inhabitants of the world view it.
By setting up rules for how the world works and then sticking to them you're supporting your framework and your world building, making it seem more real (believable) to the reader.
 

Mythopoet

Auror
This is the problem I have with world-building, and have struggled with while writing. When does the ball stop, so to speak, and when does too much homework ruin the creative process?

It sounds like you are searching for an answer that applies to fantasy writing in general, but that's just not how things like this work. The answers that you find to these questions will only apply, in specifics, to you and, more broadly, to writers who share your likes and dislikes when it comes to fantasy books and who share your goals for what you want to write.

If your goal is to tell stories where the world is palpable and yet still mostly in the background, then that's fine. Lots of people tell stories like that. Lots of readers love them.

Personally, as a reader, I've always loved best the fantasy that takes place in detailed worlds I can really immerse myself in. To me, the worldbuilding is just as important as the plot and the characters. If the world is bland or vague I have just as hard a time getting into a story as when the plot or the characters are lacking. As a writer, I aim to write the kind of stories I want to read and so it's important to me to have a strong, detailed foundation of worldbuilding.
 

CupofJoe

Myth Weaver
For me there is a difference between “world building” and “building a world”.
It doesn’t take years of research and thousands of hours in detailed construction to make a realistic world just coherency.
Yes, the rules have to apply to everyone and everything consistently, but on its own that isn’t the same as engaging and believable.
I can’t think [and haven’t read] that Philip K Dick or HP Lovecraft spent any time world-building as we would know it [especially in the case of PKD if what I’ve read about him is true]. Admittedly neither is “fantasy” in the purest sense, yet both these writers create some of the deepest and elaborate worlds in the stories. They leave grey ill-defined parts of their realities, maps with the proverbial [or not] “Here be dragons” legend. They do this because you and I as readers don’t need to know. It doesn’t add to our enjoyment of their stories.
Terry Pratchett has admitted that he made up the Discworld as he went along for the first few books and didn't start world building [or rather world recording as I think he put it] until someone tried to make a map of Anhk-Morpork.
I like “world building” but it is more mportant to “build a world”.
 

Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
Let's say I have a story about a young farmer fulfilling a prophecy (I know), how does the world you build around that narrative effect the overall narrative arch?

I'll stick to a list of three:

- Your characters have already grown in this world. Is the king kind or cruel? That's going to affect their views on authority. Are the neighbors abundant or scarce? Friendly or rude? Magical or mundane? These characteristics of the world will affect the way your characters have developed before the story begins, just as they continue to throughout the story. If you can't give each character a sense of a personality history, a sense that they "fit" the setting, they will come across as shallow and cliche.

- Your characters and antagonists derive their resources from the setting. The setting shapes their choices. Can we scale the castle walls? Magic makes it possible! But if it makes it possible now, it did in the past, too, right? A well-developed world in this case has characters using magic to scale the walls, gives the protectors the foresight to develop defenses against it, and has the attackers anticipating at least some of those defenses. A shallow world leaves out the last third or two thirds of that sentence, creating characters that fail to think through their decisions.

- ...y'know, you mentioned that "prophecy" thing. That's gotta come from somewhere.
 

SeverinR

Vala
World building matters,
1. It allows you to run your characters through known realities rather then making it totally up as you go and maybe conflicting something you made up before.
2. It helps keep reality engrained in your story.
3. It anchors your story into a world, rather then just some story, in some place, at some time.
4. It keeps you from cheating. You have established foundations that will affect how your characters enteract. IMHO it keeps you from or helps you establish a reason something happens. Such as: "Unicorns can't kill something unless it is intent on killing or harming something, even if it is the most pure evil."
5.It keeps the world from revolving around your character. If you establish everything to support your story/character, then it will benefit or hender your character rather then just being part of the world. ie it will seem more contrived if you create it just for that story/situation.

As I said in the Air Force when the military exercise didn't seem realistic.
"It's not in the script!" ie the good guys can't win yet, its not the way they wrote the script for the exercise.
 

Queshire

Auror
In my opinion there's two different ways to go about writing a story, World-first and Plot-first. With world first you start by making this cool and awesome world and then write the story to show off that world. Tolkien's a good example of this, if I remember correctly he started by coming up with his Elvish before starting to write LOTR. Table Top RPGs such as D&D or Exalted are also examples of this, particularly setting books such as Eberron which provide a ready made world to the players and then they make their own story through the action of their characters.

On the other side there's plot-first writing where you start with a story or a plot idea and only do what world building is necessary to advance the story. It feels to me that this is the sort of writing that FatCat is talking about.

Both are valid paths, though I find I lean towards world-first personally.

As for the rest of it, yes excessive world building can become procrastination when it comes to writing, I have seen this and struggled with it myself. It's a balancing act.

World Building is also fun. Imagining other worlds, other people, other ways of life? That's fun, and isn't it what writing's all about?
 

Ryan_Crown

Troubadour
When I started my current WIP, I figured I'd only do the minimal world-building I needed to get me started in outlining the story. But every step I took, I discovered some aspect of world-building that needed to be done. I realized that the character's whole journey was through this nebulous, not-really-developed environment. So I started developing the history/geography of the city that's the starting point of the story. But as I developed this city, I realized I needed to know more about the region as a whole, and as this developed, I came to the conclusion that I would be much better served by knowing the setting as fully as I could before I wrote the actual story.

The other factor that played a big part in this decision for me was that I'm hoping to write a series of novels set in the same world, which meant that my world-building wasn't just background work for my current WIP, it was potentially background work for many (if not most) of my future stories going forward. That was the point where I decided that putting the story itself on hold, and dedicating my time to fully build the world of the story was the only way to go. As I've developed the world, I've come across so many questions about the races and cultures, the geography, etc. that would likely have arisen during my story. This way, I can get those questions answered now, so that I'm not stuck breaking the flow of my writing later if I hadn't done the world-building.

So that's my take on it, at least as far as my own writing goes.
 
I've never needed to build a world, but I've often needed to build a town. What are the local laws? What attitudes do the citizens share? What do they consider prosperity, and what do they consider lack of resources? From there, I may need to build a region, or a society, or even a continent, showing the differences from place to place.
 

Incanus

Auror
I can be firmly emplaced with the world-building proponents. I'd say that the subject of 'setting' in general is often important in any and all genres. There are many non-fantasy stories where the setting is crucial, informing the plot and characters and theme. In fantasy, I think its almost always more important still. I recommend going both wide and deep when world-building. Wide--add more original names, peoples, cultures, creatures, items, places. Deep--think through the implications of these things in the world; think them all the way through, as Devor so eloquently described. It takes work and patience. And yes, continue to world-build while you draft, adding in a new level of detail, and again when revising, sneaking in another round of details. Do this, and see it all the way through, and you might just end up with a Middle-earth, or a Westeros.

(Actually Middle-earth is not likely to ever happen again: Nobody is going to spend 40-50 years working out a backstory to sell two novels (in Tolkien's lifetime). Not that that was the plan from the beginning, but that is how it worked out.)
 

Mythopoet

Auror
(Actually Middle-earth is not likely to ever happen again: Nobody is going to spend 40-50 years working out a backstory to sell two novels (in Tolkien's lifetime). Not that that was the plan from the beginning, but that is how it worked out.)

Well, this is probably more because Tolkien was a perfectionist than it is because of his worldbuilding. He didn't even finish the one book that he really did spend his whole lifetime working on: The Silmarillion. It went through many versions and ultimately had to be readied for publication by his son after his death. The Hobbit wasn't even meant to take place in Middle-earth when he first wrote it. But of course, if The Hobbit hadn't been tied into Middle-earth and LOTR subsequently published due to popular demand, The Sil would never have been published at all. There was no market for it until LOTR became a huge bestseller.

I approach my worldbuilding quite like Tolkien. I have invented one secondary world that I pour my heart and soul into and my goal is to flesh it out at least as much as Tolkien fleshed out Middle-earth (though minus the constructed languages). I will happily spend the rest of my life working on this world. I hope to tell as many of its tales as I can along the way. The main difference is that I don't need a publisher to approve of my work and find a market for it. I can just happily self-publish as I go.
 
Worldbuilding matters to the extent that if you don't give a crap about your setting - then why should anyone else.
You owe it to your readers to have consistency in what you right, and for that consistency to be 'plausable' - not necessarily realistic.
However you also need to ensure that you're not arrogant enough to think that what doesn't concern you won't concern someone else. I've lost track of the number of novels I've stopped reading after I've lost confidence in the author to remember what they've already said about their world earlier, or where they've simply not seen (to me anyway) a blindingly obvious or contradictory flaw in their worldbuilding. For me it breaks immersion completely. Everyone draws that line somewhere different, but we all have a line that breaks a world for us. Your worldbuilding needs to keep well clear of that line.
 

Incanus

Auror
my goal is to flesh it out at least as much as Tolkien fleshed out Middle-earth

I pretty well agree with what you've said in your post, and I'm going to be doing something similar--setting all my stories, or nearly all, in my one, big world.

But, what I quoted above may be a bit more ambitious than you realize; at least in my view. I'm inventing a number on the spot here, but I'd say that the next most fully realized world of any kind after Middle-earth, might contain at most about 25% of Tolkien's work. I've read all twelve of the History of Middle-earth books, in addition to Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, and the LOTR appendicies, and the sheer amount of detail is jaw-dropping. Most fantasy books, including series', could fit comfortably within the borders of the Shire, even many of the 10+ book works that are out there. The Shire alone has somewhere around 150-200 original hobbit names, probably a good 50 place names, history, customs, timeline, and all kinds of stuff. I'm not going to be doing the con-lang thing either, but that's a whole other chunk of detail.

I'd be amazed to be proven wrong, but I still think we shall never see its like again. Ever.
 

Mythopoet

Auror
I pretty well agree with what you've said in your post, and I'm going to be doing something similar--setting all my stories, or nearly all, in my one, big world.

But, what I quoted above may be a bit more ambitious than you realize; at least in my view. I'm inventing a number on the spot here, but I'd say that the next most fully realized world of any kind after Middle-earth, might contain at most about 25% of Tolkien's work. I've read all twelve of the History of Middle-earth books, in addition to Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, and the LOTR appendicies, and the sheer amount of detail is jaw-dropping. Most fantasy books, including series', could fit comfortably within the borders of the Shire, even many of the 10+ book works that are out there. The Shire alone has somewhere around 150-200 original hobbit names, probably a good 50 place names, history, customs, timeline, and all kinds of stuff. I'm not going to be doing the con-lang thing either, but that's a whole other chunk of detail.

I'd be amazed to be proven wrong, but I still think we shall never see its like again. Ever.

A lot of HOME is material appears only in early versions and was dropped from later versions, material that is redundant (multiple versions of the same story), or simply non-canonical (fragments that likely never would have made it into the canon even if he'd had more time to work on it). I'm a bigger Tolkien fan than most people (I have a daughter named Luthien and a son named Maedhros) but I think you're overestimating the actual amount of solid information that exists about Middle-earth. The Shire isn't that big and there are more than a few fantasy writers who have put at least that much work into their worlds. M. A. R. Barker and Steven Erikson come to mind. And I'm sure there will be many more to come, especially now that the world of publishing is opening up beyond what large corporations think there is a solid market for.
 

Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
But, what I quoted above may be a bit more ambitious than you realize; at least in my view. I'm inventing a number on the spot here, but I'd say that the next most fully realized world of any kind after Middle-earth, might contain at most about 25% of Tolkien's work.

I can't tell you how much I despise myself for saying this.

*sigh*

Warcraft.
 

Incanus

Auror
I can't tell you how much I despise myself for saying this.

*sigh*

Warcraft.

Oh, right. I should probably further qualify what I'm saying. I'm talking about a world created for literature purposes and designed by a single person.

I've only dabbled a little in Warcraft, was the entire thing designed by a single individual? I'm guessing not.

I've read the whole Malazan series, and I dig it. There's a lot there for sure. I suppose it would be difficult to quantify this stuff, and who would want to? When speaking of the Shire, I didn't mean physical size, but number of details. I think it is safe to say that the entire Robert Jordan world has less detail than the Shire, for instance.

There is also the matter of quality.

For now, I'm standing by what I said earlier.
 

Incanus

Auror
(I have a daughter named Luthien and a son named Maedhros)

Apologies for the thread hijack--

That is awesome! I'm wondering how you pronounce Maedhros, though. Are you using the voiced th sound (like in the word: then), or the 'D' sound?
 
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