# Seed Questions, or, Finding a Middle Ground



## Drakevarg (Feb 17, 2017)

One of the recurring issues I have with worldbuilding is, frustratingly enough, actually committing my thoughts to text. It's a _world_ I'm building, after all. Worlds are big. Where do I start? I have the same problem whenever I write a review for a sufficiently massive RPG. Too much stuff happens in it, too many ideas and emotions pass by to really articulate anything beyond a vague overview.

As a result, all I'm ever able to write about is either the macro - big, sweeping notions that are too big to really play any role beyond a backdrop; or the micro - little, petty ideas that don't warrant any more attention than a margin scribble. I need a middle ground.

Taking a bit of an inspiration from the in-game books found in Elder Scrolls games, the approach I'd like to take is to express concepts through articles - written from either a Watsonian or a Doylist point of view, doesn't matter - and let the world grow organically in the gaps. But just like any other article, a subject isn't enough - it needs a thesis. I can't just grab a header like "Country X - Religion" and write a page or two. It's too vague.

So getting to something resembling a point, does anyone have some good ideas for questions that can supply a direction to write in? Having specific, limited concepts to explore is going to produce a lot more usable thought than broad categories.


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## SpaceAmoeba (Feb 17, 2017)

Maybe what your looking for is an outline? Try focusing on a specific region/country/kingdom in your world. Think about the geography. What's the landscape like? The climate? How do these things effect the way the people in this place live? How would they govern themselves? From there you can come up with a rough outline of what that particular region's culture is.

If you're having trouble with inspiration, or are having trouble figuring out what the hell to put in x or y, try taking inspiration from other media, and broaden your horizons. The books in the Elder Scrolls games are a good start, but maybe draw some inspiration from a book, or even from history and folklore.


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## ThinkerX (Feb 17, 2017)

Open a folder for the world.  Create a file for the planet.  How large is it?  How many continents?  How many moons? Quick one or two paragraph descriptions of each.

Next, pick a continent or region to focus on.  Open up a folder for it.

Inside that folder, create the following files:

1 - an outline description of the major features - nations, key cities, rivers, forests, mountains.  No more than one or two paragraphs per location.

2-? Overviews of specific nations within that region, one file per nation. A few paragraphs each for religion, history, economics.  Expanded description of key cities.

3?-? Typical characters for each nation covered in point two.  Mix it up - elites, soldiers, priests, beggars, merchants.  Again, a couple paragraphs each.  Concentrate on what they wear, what they do, who they associate with.

At this point you have something to work with.  Start writing short stories centered on events and locations in the other files.  A history or geographical work is bland; put yourself in the shoes of somebody who was there.  This fleshes out (that part of) your world even more.


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## Drakevarg (Feb 17, 2017)

SpaceAmoeba said:


> Maybe what your looking for is an outline? Try focusing on a specific region/country/kingdom in your world. Think about the geography. What's the landscape like? The climate? How do these things effect the way the people in this place live? How would they govern themselves? From there you can come up with a rough outline of what that particular region's culture is.
> 
> If you're having trouble with inspiration, or are having trouble figuring out what the hell to put in x or y, try taking inspiration from other media, and broaden your horizons. The books in the Elder Scrolls games are a good start, but maybe draw some inspiration from a book, or even from history and folklore.



I suppose I should clarify: I don't need inspiration for ideas, I was referring to the books in Elder Scrolls as an inspiration for how to _articulate_ those ideas.

What you're suggesting is just more overviews. Wiki blurbs. I've tried those, they're too open ended to direct any sort of line of thought. They're just screenshots in the form of words. What I'm looking for are some kind of thesis questions work off of. I can sit back and think about what a place is like all day, it's translating a dozen overlapping trains of thought into a concise narrative that can be rendered in text that I find difficulty with.


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## CupofJoe (Feb 17, 2017)

Drakevarg said:


> What I'm looking for are some kind of thesis questions work off of.


What question would that be?
You have to work that out and then write the answer.
If you have too many questions to ask, then pick one and start there. It almost certainly, probably, maybe won't be the right question first time, but you will only know when you've tried writing the answer.
My Question will not be Your Question.
I love working out as things ebb and flow, how that affects and effects everyday life.
So when I have a story idea, my first question is usually something like:
What has just changed here?
or
What is about to change here?


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## elemtilas (Feb 17, 2017)

Drakevarg said:


> One of the recurring issues I have with worldbuilding is, frustratingly enough, actually committing my thoughts to text. It's a _world_ I'm building, after all. Worlds are big. Where do I start? I have the same problem whenever I write a review for a sufficiently massive RPG. Too much stuff happens in it, too many ideas and emotions pass by to really articulate anything beyond a vague overview.
> 
> As a result, all I'm ever able to write about is either the macro - big, sweeping notions that are too big to really play any role beyond a backdrop; or the micro - little, petty ideas that don't warrant any more attention than a margin scribble. I need a middle ground.
> 
> ...



Ya. Writing about a whole world is a tall order indeed!

Writing articles is a really good way of delving into aspects of a world in reasonably approachable chunks. And yeah, just "religion" is rather broad. Try to focus that a little. _Perspectives in Bwandovian Religion: Throne Veneration During the Sixth Republic_ or perhaps _Maranderi: a Cross-Cultural Examination of Temporary Tattoo Application Among the Daine of the Eastlands_.

If these are too narrow, just broaden the scope a bit: _Notes on Sandhian Religion: the Slow Decline and Fall of the Old Gods During the Yavannic Wars, an Historiographical Perspective_.

If you're looking to write short articles about a variety of cultural aspects you could try this questionnaire.


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## Russ (Feb 17, 2017)

World building for its own sake can be unproductive.

Why not just write your tale and only commit to paper or screen the stuff about the world that it requires?


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## elemtilas (Feb 17, 2017)

Russ said:


> World building for its own sake can be unproductive.



That I can't really agree with! It can certainly be unproductive if you're writing for someone else, being paid by someone else and doing it all on someone else's schedule. And you're behind schedule...

Generally speaking, more worldbuilding = better story telling, the way I see it. If you tell a story set in ancient Rome, you have the whole of primary creation for your background information, plus all the history and culture leading up to and informing your story. The real and the fictional mesh like fine toothed gears and the whole is an organic unity.

A writer whose setting is fictional, but can't be bothered to sort out those details, ends up writing something that doesn't quite mesh and isn't quite an organic unity. The reader can tell and will be suitably unimpressed with the work as a whole, if not with the storytelling itself. Maybe not enough to put the book down, but maybe so! I've certainly put down enough books because of this issue. And I've kept and read over and over again those whose authors have done a stellar job of it.

Also, not everyone makes worlds as part of the process of writing a novel or creating a game setting. Some of us do this simply because there's a world in our heads & hearts and we want to explore it as fully as we can.



> Why not just write your tale and only commit to paper or screen the stuff about the world that it requires?



Why not just tease out as much as you can about the whole world and tell all the tales you want!


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## skip.knox (Feb 17, 2017)

I agree with your difficulty, Drakevarg. You are looking for themes, and those have to come out of some place within you. Even if the ideas come from outside, they have to resonate inside you in order to carry very far. Here are some notions, more or less random, to see if this is the sort of thing you mean.

Cataclysm. It could be all at once, like Atlantis, or slow like a speeded-up climate change scenario. However it goes, every one of your cultures is going to have to face fundamental shifts in how they react. Then you can create three to seven civilizations, each organized in a different way, and see how things play out.

Another form of change would be to have a world in which magic is entering or in which it is dying. Same corollaries as above.

Alien invasion. Introduction of tech, or destruction of same.

Mongols. That is, you have six civilizations living in close proximity, in delicate balance. Then along comes a seventh. Make them advanced, or the only magic users, barbarian nomads or regimented armies. In any case, they look to sweep all before them. How will the world respond?

Then there are SF-type scenarios. That short story (Asimov? Clark?) about a civilization that has sunlight for a thousand years, but then, regularly, darkness comes and chaos breaks out. Maybe magic dies every twentieth generation, or some such. Some regular catastrophe. Or even a regular boon. Or a _Childhood's End_ scenario, where all the people everywhere have to come to terms with the end of the world. Hard to make a series out of that one. 

Is any of this sounding like it's in your ballpark?


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## Penpilot (Feb 17, 2017)

Everyone's needs are different, but I'm in the camp of figure out enough to write your story. 

There have been times where I've written pages and pages of world building notes and I've forgotten about them during the course of writing the story because they're unimportant, or I end up tossing them away because I think of better things as I write. Sometimes it's a combination of both. 

I usually think of the story first and build the world around supporting that story. There are three questions I ask myself that only need to be answered partially that I find are enough to give me a base to work with. 

What are the major religions of the world?

What are the major cultural divisions?

What is considered right and wrong?

Sometimes these are simple to answer. Sometimes they're more complicated, but they're enough to get me going on the story and avoid world builder's disease.


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## Drakevarg (Feb 17, 2017)

Penpilot said:


> Everyone's needs are different, but I'm in the camp of figure out enough to write your story.
> 
> There have been times where I've written pages and pages of world building notes and I've forgotten about them during the course of writing the story because they're unimportant, or I end up tossing them away because I think of better things as I write. Sometimes it's a combination of both.
> 
> ...





Russ said:


> World building for its own sake can be unproductive.
> 
> Why not just write your tale and only commit to paper or screen the stuff about the world that it requires?





elemtilas said:


> That I can't really agree with! It can certainly be unproductive if you're writing for someone else, being paid by someone else and doing it all on someone else's schedule. And you're behind schedule...
> 
> ...
> 
> Also, not everyone makes worlds as part of the process of writing a novel or creating a game setting. Some of us do this simply because there's a world in our heads & hearts and we want to explore it as fully as we can.



I'm in Elemtilas' camp here. Oftentimes worldbuilding can be its own point. Sometimes the purpose of the story is a lens to look at the world, rather than the world being a framework to build the story around.



skip.knox said:


> I agree with your difficulty, Drakevarg. You are looking for themes, and those have to come out of some place within you. Even if the ideas come from outside, they have to resonate inside you in order to carry very far. Here are some notions, more or less random, to see if this is the sort of thing you mean.
> 
> ...
> 
> Is any of this sounding like it's in your ballpark?



It's inevitably going to sound picky when you come asking for a Goldilocks zone, but these questions are still a bit too big. They're natural for telling exciting stories, but they're describing moments of upheaval rather than just finding out what the world looks like. It's difficult to explain just what it is I'm looking for, as if I knew exactly what it was I wouldn't be here asking.

I guess the best way I can articulate is I have a giant pile of currently-shapeless answers looking for questions to give them form. Questions whose answers can produce a few pages on sporadic, sometimes esoteric subjects that can nonetheless shed light on related topics from angles that might not otherwise be considered.

A big difficulty in finding these questions is sometimes they need to be asked in regards to specific concepts already broadly understood, meaning it'd be easier to be asked them from someone who already has a partial understanding of the matter. Which in my case is a fairly small audience consisting mostly of myself. But I'm too much in the thick of it to see a direction to walk in. Paralysis of options, y'know?


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## skip.knox (Feb 17, 2017)

Hm. I guess you need to provide more information. Maybe provide some of those currently-shapeless answers, or a few of those esoteric subjects, so we have some idea of where your thinking currently lies. Give us some of that partial understanding.


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## Russ (Feb 17, 2017)

> That I can't really agree with! It can certainly be unproductive if you're writing for someone else, being paid by someone else and doing it all on someone else's schedule. And you're behind schedule...



No matter who you are, there are limitations on your time.



> Generally speaking, more worldbuilding = better story telling, the way I see it. If you tell a story set in ancient Rome, you have the whole of primary creation for your background information, plus all the history and culture leading up to and informing your story. The real and the fictional mesh like fine toothed gears and the whole is an organic unity.



While you may see it this way some of the foundational writers of modern fantasy wrote exactly this way.  Even Rothfuss didn't other with many details he thought unnecessary.  For storytelling world building should be secondary to the story.  I quite like a well built world, but I don't want to spend my leisure time reading an atlas or travel guide for a place that does not exist.

I would quote you some Mieville or Moorcock on world building but you might find it too shocking 




> Also, not everyone makes worlds as part of the process of writing a novel or creating a game setting. Some of us do this simply because there's a world in our heads & hearts and we want to explore it as fully as we can.



I have no doubt about that.  But since this site is about writing and storytelling I took the question in that context.

My caution about excessive world building is based on a lot of experience.  A lot of people around here, that I know in my personal life, or have taught, have gotten bogged down in unnecessary world building to the detriment of their development as a writer or storyteller.  

As you will note the OP is struggling with excessive or non-useful world building.  He seeks a focussed middle ground and wisely so.

I am simply suggesting one way of finding that focussed middle ground is to world build from the narrative out.


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## Russ (Feb 17, 2017)

Let me ask you the most basic question then Drakevarg.  What is your story about?


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## elemtilas (Feb 17, 2017)

Russ said:


> No matter who you are, there are limitations on your time.



Death is the only limitation. That's everyone's deadline! 





> While you may see it this way some of the foundational writers of modern fantasy wrote exactly this way.



No doubt. My way isn't the only way, and may not be the best way for everyone. As a rÃ©ader, I appreciate when writers work from the world out to the story: the story comes from the place and is part of it. I can certainly see why a wrÃ­ter might not want to do it this way!



> Even Rothfuss didn't bother with many details he thought unnecessary.  For storytelling world building should be secondary to the story.  I quite like a well built world, but I don't want to spend my leisure time reading an atlas or travel guide for a place that does not exist.



De gustibus. I rather enjoy reading atlases, travel guides, encyclopedias and so forth for otherworldly places. 



> I would quote you some Mieville or Moorcock on world building but you might find it too shocking



Try me. I don't shock easily.



> I have no doubt about that.  But since this site is about writing and storytelling I took the question in that context.



Well, not everyone who writes writes novels! Some of us do actually write atlases, travel guides and so forth... 



> My caution about excessive world building is based on a lot of experience.  A lot of people around here, that I know in my personal life, or have taught, have gotten bogged down in unnecessary world building to the detriment of their development as a writer or storyteller.



Fair enough. Just wanted to interject a differing opinion on the matter!



> As you will note the OP is struggling with excessive or non-useful world building.  He seeks a focussed middle ground and wisely so.



They didn't seem to be struggling at all with non-useful worldbuilding so much ideas on how to go about writing about that world --- how to "articulate" the ideas they have about it. Looking back, "excessive" worldbuilding seems to have been first mentioned by yourself!

And I don't actually disagree with you Ã¬f the point of one's worldbuilding is to write a novel or create a game setting Ã¡nd one is working on someone else's schedule and for someone else's dollar ninety-eight.




> I am simply suggesting one way of finding that focussed middle ground is to world build from the narrative out.



Fine indeed.


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## oenanthe (Feb 17, 2017)

When I was writing WITCHMARK I didn't fuss that much about world building. I barely wrote any of it down outside of the story. I agree with Russ that there's a point where worldbuilding crowds out storytelling.

And I kinda think that's where you're at, right now.


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## Russ (Feb 17, 2017)

elemtilas said:


> Death is the only limitation. That's everyone's deadline!



How can I resist an opening like that one.  Moorcock's great book on writing is called "Death is no obstacle." I highly recommend it.

Moorcock on world building:



> I think the notion of worldbuilding is a failure of literary sophistication... I only invent what's necessary to explain the mood of a character. I haven't thought about an imaginary world's social security system; I don't know the gross national product of MelnibonÃ©. If worldbuilding is a sophisticated working-out of how a world interacts in and of itself, I don't really have any of that... That's why I don't see myself as a worldbuilder. The world unfolds in front of the character as the story develops. If the story doesn't need it, it's not there.




Mieville on world building:



> Worlds are too big to build, or to know, or even, almost, to live in. A world is going to be compelling at least as much by what it doesn’t say as what it does. Nothing is more drably undermining of the awe at hugeness that living in a world should provoke than the dutiful ticking off of features on a map. ‘World-Building’, at its worst and most compulsive inexorably means the banalising of an imaginary totality. How ****ing depressing is that? Surely we want culture shock, which is about not understanding, rather than understanding. And we can get culture shock at home, too. Hence the greatest moment in world-creation ever, that opens M John Harrison’s The Pastel City. “Some seventeen notable empires rose in the Middle Period of Earth. These were the Afternoon Cultures. All but one are unimportant to this narrative, and there is little need to speak of them”. That refusal to speak of them is one of the most awesome and confident moments of scare-quotes world-building scare-quotes ever.
> 
> 
> In fact, while we’re on a Harrison tip, I think one of the most productive things anyone interested in World-Building can do is to go straight to his now notorious, and magnificent, diss of the whole project, here, and read and reread it and be troubled by it. Not that you have to agree with it, of course. (though you can.) But I think that rather than starting with a kind of chippy denunciation with which that passage was greeted by many when it emerged, it would do us all good – especially those of us fortunate enough to look down and see the targets on our shirts, and look up and see one of the most important, savage and intelligent (anti-)fantasists of recent times aiming down the barrel of his scorn-gun at us – to start from the presumption not that he’s wrong, but to try to figure out how and why he might be right. Why does the ‘internal consistency’ of a world matter to us? What does that even mean? How can we map every corner of a non-existent place? Why do we want to? Why are we so anxious when writers contradict their canon statements? What is going on? What kind of urges are these? Again, none of this presumes that the only honourable path is to throw up the project, necessarily – but it can only be bracing to force us to think about it, whatever our ultimate direction, because it’ll make us think about what it is we’re doing, or should be doing. Which is fiction, which is, we should probably hope, literature.






> De gustibus. I rather enjoy reading atlases, travel guides, encyclopedias and so forth for otherworldly places.



Which are almost never published except to serve or support a great story or story telling.  







> Well, not everyone who writes writes novels! Some of us do actually write atlases, travel guides and so forth...



Which is probably not story telling.


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## Drakevarg (Feb 18, 2017)

skip.knox said:


> Hm. I guess you need to provide more information. Maybe provide some of those currently-shapeless answers, or a few of those esoteric subjects, so we have some idea of where your thinking currently lies. Give us some of that partial understanding.



This in and of itself is something of a seed. Doesn't really prompt me to articulate anything new, but at least it's a reason to compose an overview of basic elements that are obvious to me but not organized in any way convenient to an audience. I was busy today but I'll see if I can't cobble something together tonight or the next few days.



Russ said:


> While you may see it this way some of the foundational writers of modern fantasy wrote exactly this way.  Even Rothfuss didn't other with many details he thought unnecessary.  For storytelling world building should be secondary to the story.  I quite like a well built world, but I don't want to spend my leisure time reading an atlas or travel guide for a place that does not exist.



You're hardly all audiences. To go back to an Elder Scrolls example, much of its fanbase has as much fun reading and discussing the lore of the world as they do playing the actual games, if not moreso.



> I have no doubt about that.  But since this site is about writing and storytelling I took the question in that context.
> 
> My caution about excessive world building is based on a lot of experience.  A lot of people around here, that I know in my personal life, or have taught, have gotten bogged down in unnecessary world building to the detriment of their development as a writer or storyteller.
> 
> ...





elemtilas said:


> They didn't seem to be struggling at all with non-useful worldbuilding so much ideas on how to go about writing about that world --- how to "articulate" the ideas they have about it. Looking back, "excessive" worldbuilding seems to have been first mentioned by yourself!



Elemtilas is correct. The middle ground I'm searching for is not "how much worldbuilding is sensible?" but more "what is a sensible scale to articulate upon worldbuilding?" That is to say, not the Big Questions, but not minor details that belong scribbled in the margins (which are still important in some contexts, such as art direction). In other words, topics big enough to discuss but not so big that you can't get your mouth around it.



Russ said:


> Let me ask you the most basic question then Drakevarg.  What is your story about?



I don't have any specific story in mind. I just enjoy worldbuilding, and I like having a solid and fleshed out world in which I can tell stories if I choose.


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## Penpilot (Feb 18, 2017)

Drakevarg said:


> I don't have any specific story in mind. I just enjoy worldbuilding, and I like having a solid and fleshed out world in which I can tell stories if I choose.



From what I'm gleaning here, this is a question that can't be answered. There is no Goldilocks zone. Every story demands something different in terms of world building. Some stories are narrow in breadth but very deep in depth, while others are wide in breadth and shallow in depth. 

You will always run into circumstances where your world won't be deep enough to tell one story or wide enough to tell another.

To me, this is akin to research in the real world. If I were to shift the perspective, and correct me if I'm wrong, to me it seems like you're asking how much research you would have to to do to gain enough of an understanding of the world in breadth and depth to write any story you wanted.

But like I said every story has different demands. But if your only desire is to create a world without necessarily telling a story, then just have at it. There is no Goldilocks zone that makes a world wide and deep "enough". So just follow your muse so to speak. Write about everything and anything that interests you, because does it matter how wide or deep you go as long as you're satisfied with it?


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## Christopher Michael (Feb 18, 2017)

Drakevarg said:


> You're hardly all audiences. To go back to an Elder Scrolls example, much of its fanbase has as much fun reading and discussing the lore of the world as they do playing the actual games, if not moreso.


You're right. Skip is not all audiences. But they DO provide proof that highly successful authors in the fantasy and science fiction genres, people who were trend setters in their day, find the type of World Building you're discussing to be absolutely useless.




Drakevarg said:


> I don't have any specific story in mind. I just enjoy worldbuilding, and I like having a solid and fleshed out world in which I can tell stories if I choose.


And herein lies the problem. If you don't know the story _you can't know the world_. Without a story in mind, you don't know what _type_ of world you need. You can't even begin to build without some instructions- the instructions are the story concept.

I'm of the belief that the story dictates the world building, not the other way around. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love world building. I can spend days tinkering there. But I _wouldn't_ get lost in building the world if I didn't have a story to tell in that world. If you lack a story concept, you lack even the most basic piece of information you need to dive into how that world functions.


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## Mythopoet (Feb 18, 2017)

I think we all need to acknowledge that different authors have their own values and methods and ways of pursuing their own goals and each one of them is perfectly good and legitimate. If a writer doesn't share your goals or methods that doesn't make them wrong or inferior in any way. It just makes them different. 

If someone on this site has stated what they love and what they want to do with their writing, no one should be arguing to try to make them do it differently. You should respect who they are as a writer. If you put words on a page you are a writer. Everything else is a matter of taste.


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## Mythopoet (Feb 18, 2017)

And Drake, here is a link to author Patricia Wrede's worldbuilding questions. It's quite a comprehensive list.

Fantasy Worldbuilding Questions - SFWA


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## elemtilas (Feb 18, 2017)

Penpilot said:


> From what I'm gleaning here, this is a question that can't be answered. There is no Goldilocks zone. Every story demands something different in terms of world building. Some stories are narrow in breadth but very deep in depth, while others are wide in breadth and shallow in depth.



Yep. As I see it, the more complete a job you do at devising the world, the easier it is write either of those stories. If your world is mere windowdressing, then your reader will know right away that your story is out of depth.  If you're deep in one culture only but have never considered what's over in the next valley, then your reader will know your story is out of breadth.

Obviously not going to work for everyone, but something to consider.



> To me, this is akin to research in the real world. If I were to shift the perspective, and correct me if I'm wrong, to me it seems like you're asking how much research you would have to to do to gain enough of an understanding of the world in breadth and depth to write any story you wanted.



As I said earlier in the thread, if you want to set a story in ancient Rome somewhere, you have all of the history laid out, historical linguistics, paleography, religion, social customs, etc. The knowledge amassed is not always perfect (we are 1800 years beyond those times and records are scanty). How much research is too much? Maybe the better question is, have you done enough research? There's always another book to read, another perspective to gain (including that most insane of methodologies: learn Latin and Greek and read the originals!)

Any era will be the same. The more you as a writer know about the era and place, the more you feel comfortable in that time and place, the more real your story will be. Because you've done everything you can do to experience that life and thus will present a more convincing tale to your reader.



> But like I said every story has different demands. But if your only desire is to create a world without necessarily telling a story, then just have at it. There is no Goldilocks zone that makes a world wide and deep "enough". So just follow your muse so to speak. Write about everything and anything that interests you, because does it matter how wide or deep you go as long as you're satisfied with it?



Agreed! Though I might could posit that the goldilocks zone is where information about the subcreation approaches 1:1 with information about the primary creation. Perhaps unattainable, but an honorable goal to strive for!


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## elemtilas (Feb 18, 2017)

Russ said:


> Moorcock on world building //  Mieville on world building:



K. Moorcock is by admission not engaged in worldbuilding.  Mieville can't seem to abide the very notion. Maybe too daunting. 

They've got their way, and I've got mine. One thing I'd note about Mieville is that it's nÃ²t the reader who's supposed to know everything about the subcreation, but rather the author. The author can't really provide culture shock or a sense of compelling awe if she herself does not have any clue what's there to create awe or to shock a reader (or author!).

Re Pastel City: that's a good technique, indeed. The worldbuilder holds all the cards. It's up to her which tidbits to place on the trail for the intrepid traveller / reader to find. 



> > I rather enjoy reading atlases, travel guides, encyclopedias and so forth for otherworldly places.
> 
> 
> 
> Which are almost never published except to serve or support a great story or story telling.



Um. Whoever said anything about publishing?

I mean: I get that a lot of folks here are (aspiring / professional / would-be) writers and publishing their stories is the goal. Not everyone writes in order to conform to what a publisher wants or what the public demands. I have my own vision, and that's what I write. If people like it, great. If they don't, great. If it brought fame and fortune, well and good. If it doesn't, good and well.






> > Some of us do actually write atlases, travel guides and so forth...
> 
> 
> Which is probably not story telling.



Try ibn Fadlan or Westlake or Mandeville. Story can arise in any out of the way place and settle its mantle upon any genre.


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## TheKillerBs (Feb 18, 2017)

Christopher Michael said:


> And herein lies the problem. If you don't know the story _you can't know the world_. Without a story in mind, you don't know what _type_ of world you need. You can't even begin to build without some instructions- the instructions are the story concept..



Yes you bloody well can. Setting is a perfectly good place to start writing your story from.


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## elemtilas (Feb 18, 2017)

Mythopoet said:


> I think we all need to acknowledge that different authors have their own values and methods and ways of pursuing their own goals and each one of them is perfectly good and legitimate. If a writer doesn't share your goals or methods that doesn't make them wrong or inferior in any way. It just makes them different.
> 
> If someone on this site has stated what they love and what they want to do with their writing, no one should be arguing to try to make them do it differently. You should respect who they are as a writer. If you put words on a page you are a writer. Everything else is a matter of taste.



Thank you for this!

Also, just because some Big Name Author (TM) says something, that doesn't mean his opinion is any better or more valid than mine. Doesn't mean I have to follow his lead. Doesn't mean you have to follow his lead. Doesn't even mean he's _correct_. All it means is he's got an opinion on some aspect of art which may or may not be applicable to anyone else and to which other folks may or may not agree.


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## Drakevarg (Feb 18, 2017)

Penpilot said:


> To me, this is akin to research in the real world. If I were to shift the perspective, and correct me if I'm wrong, to me it seems like you're asking how much research you would have to to do to gain enough of an understanding of the world in breadth and depth to write any story you wanted.



No, what I'm asking is that much like in the real world, you don't write a research paper on the Black Plague by just writing "THE BLACK PLAGUE" on the top of the page and writing down everything you can about the subject. You need a thesis, some kind of point to make or question to answer from which you structure the rest of the information. That's what I'm looking for. Reason I refer to it as a Goldilocks zone is that the wrong question (like many on most of the "worldbuilding questions" lists I've seen) can be so basic that they don't really prompt more than a sentence or a paragraph's worth of answer.



Christopher Michael said:


> You're right. Skip is not all audiences. But they DO provide proof that highly successful authors in the fantasy and science fiction genres, people who were trend setters in their day, find the type of World Building you're discussing to be absolutely useless.



For one, I was talking to Russ. For two, why should I care what successful professionals I've never met think about the value of my _hobby?_



> And herein lies the problem. If you don't know the story _you can't know the world_. Without a story in mind, you don't know what _type_ of world you need. You can't even begin to build without some instructions- the instructions are the story concept.
> 
> I'm of the belief that the story dictates the world building, not the other way around. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love world building. I can spend days tinkering there. But I _wouldn't_ get lost in building the world if I didn't have a story to tell in that world. If you lack a story concept, you lack even the most basic piece of information you need to dive into how that world functions.



I *have* the world, I don't get how people keep misconstruing that. Coming up with ideas is the easy part, figuring out a useful framework to put them to text is my problem.


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## skip.knox (Feb 18, 2017)

I'm glad my questions sparked something, Drakevarg. I look forward to hearing what you have sketched. I do think you hit on a key point in your reply--identifying what feels obvious to you, but which may not be to your readers. Even if you don't have any readers for a while, explicating what is in your head can be useful. I know many of my own ideas look one way in my head but somehow change shape once I get them on paper.

I'm not going to respond to the world-building argument raging here because it really ought to be a separate thread. It's not what Drakevarg asked.


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## elemtilas (Feb 18, 2017)

Drakevarg said:


> No, what I'm asking is that much like in the real world, you don't write a research paper on the Black Plague by just writing "THE BLACK PLAGUE" on the top of the page and writing down everything you can about the subject. You need a thesis, some kind of point to make or question to answer from which you structure the rest of the information. That's what I'm looking for. Reason I refer to it as a Goldilocks zone is that the wrong question (like many on most of the "worldbuilding questions" lists I've seen) can be so basic that they don't really prompt more than a sentence or a paragraph's worth of answer.



Yeah  ---  as I understood you earlier, you're looking to whittle down a big topic into a more manageable size.



> I *have* the world, I don't get how people keep misconstruing that. Coming up with ideas is the easy part, figuring out a useful framework to put them to text is my problem.




 Those questionnaires tend to be designed to help folks just getting started. 

Maybe what would be more helpful to you would be a resource like a list of high school research paper topics?

If "THE BLACK PLAGUE" is too big, maybe "How Did the Plague Affect Everyday Life in (Insert a City or Country Name from your World here)?" would work better? Or "How Did the Plague Affect Trade Within the Country?"

Such questions, while relatively simple, allow for some world description without being infodumps or post-doc theses.

* How Did Wandalf IIIJ Gain Power in Angera
* How Does Alcohol Consumption Affect the Body & Mind of a Daine
* How did St. Yoan of Arcureia affect her society and later history

These are questions taken from an online research paper topic list and transmogrified to be appropriate topics for exploration in The World. A little tweaking might make them more appropriate for your own!


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## Christopher Michael (Feb 18, 2017)

Drakevarg said:


> For one, I was talking to Russ. For two, why should I care what successful professionals I've never met think about the value of my _hobby?_


1) My mistake.
2) Because _they were where you are_. A writer who _doesn't_ care what successful authors have to say about the craft? They're no better than the amateur architect who doesn't care what someone like Frank Lloyd Wright had to say about their's.





Drakevarg said:


> I *have* the world, I don't get how people keep misconstruing that. Coming up with ideas is the easy part, figuring out a useful framework to put them to text is my problem.


Because you said you don't have the stories. And I don't see how you can possibly have a _world_ when you don't have a _story_. They go hand in hand, to me. You get the story germ _before_ discovering the world, in my experience.


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## Christopher Michael (Feb 18, 2017)

Drakevarg said:


> No, what I'm asking is that much like in the real world, you don't write a research paper on the Black Plague by just writing "THE BLACK PLAGUE" on the top of the page and writing down everything you can about the subject. You need a thesis, some kind of point to make or question to answer from which you structure the rest of the information.



And...that's actually precisely how I wrote research papers. My first draft was never anything but facts and figures and information I discovered in my research. It wasn't until the 2nd draft that it took shape. Usually the 3rd draft before it became meaningful.


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## Christopher Michael (Feb 18, 2017)

elemtilas said:


> Also, just because some Big Name Author (TM) says something, that doesn't mean his opinion is any better or more valid than mine. Doesn't mean I have to follow his lead. Doesn't mean you have to follow his lead. Doesn't even mean he's _correct_. All it means is he's got an opinion on some aspect of art which may or may not be applicable to anyone else and to which other folks may or may not agree.



But when _multiple_ BNA's say something? And I'm _not_ a BNA, but wouldn't mind getting to that point? I'm absolutely going to pay attention. I'm absolutely going to internalize what they say and decide what of it applies. But I'm not going to shrug it off as irrelevant.


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## Drakevarg (Feb 18, 2017)

Christopher Michael said:


> 1) My mistake.
> 2) Because _they were where you are_. A writer who _doesn't_ care what successful authors have to say about the craft? They're no better than the amateur architect who doesn't care what someone like Frank Lloyd Wright had to say about their's.



It's more like a hobbyist architect who loves designing castles not caring that a successful builder of skyscrapers thinks that castles are an archaic and useless thing to build.



> Because you said you don't have the stories. And I don't see how you can possibly have a _world_ when you don't have a _story_. They go hand in hand, to me. You get the story germ _before_ discovering the world, in my experience.



Your experiences are hardly universal. I point at Elder Scrolls again, not to mention Tolkien, whose stories came from a language he built that needed a world to come from.



Christopher Michael said:


> And...that's actually precisely how I wrote research papers. My first draft was never anything but facts and figures and information I discovered in my research. It wasn't until the 2nd draft that it took shape. Usually the 3rd draft before it became meaningful.



Might work for you, but both the way I was taught and the way I think don't mesh with that approach.


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## Christopher Michael (Feb 18, 2017)

Drakevarg said:


> I point at Elder Scrolls again


An online community that is less than 10% of the players. Not a way to make money. (And, for the record, I think that may be the point of issue between us. You're apparently a pure hobbyist. I'm coming at it from the angle of someone who is looking to make money doing this thing I love doing.)



Drakevarg said:


> not to mention Tolkien, whose stories came from a language he built that needed a world to come from.


Not entirely true. He started crafting Quenya first, it is true. But it was his view that you can't have language without a story- because the true creation of a language required history and mythology. It was from there he crafted what became known as the Silmarillion- the first written and last published of his Middle Earth works.


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## Drakevarg (Feb 18, 2017)

Christopher Michael said:


> An online community that is less than 10% of the players.



Not just the lore community, but the basic approach to the worldbuilding from a development standpoint. Yes, they retcon plenty to justify whatever design choices they need for their central plots, but the in-game books are written as a venue to build the world, not the other way around. "A Dance in Fire" was written to exposit about Valenwood, Valenwood wasn't created so that "A Dance in Fire" would have a place to happen in.



> (And, for the record, I think that may be the point of issue between us. You're apparently a pure hobbyist. I'm coming at it from the angle of someone who is looking to make money doing this thing I love doing.)



Precisely. Which is why I'd appreciate it if you stopped burying the actual focus of this thread by continuing on this superfluous side argument.


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## Mythopoet (Feb 18, 2017)

Christopher Michael said:


> But when _multiple_ BNA's say something? And I'm _not_ a BNA, but wouldn't mind getting to that point? I'm absolutely going to pay attention. I'm absolutely going to internalize what they say and decide what of it applies. But I'm not going to shrug it off as irrelevant.



I actually wouldn't call Moorcock or Mieville "Big Name Authors". They're fairly obscure except among more devoted fans of the genres they write in. And from what I've seen they are not often recommended among readers of their genres. Not compared to Big Name Authors like Tolkien or Martin; not on the websites I've frequented. (And I freely admit that isn't proof of anything, except that there might be another point of view out there.) They certainly have their following, but as far as real lasting success? My guess is that their works are not going to be handed down through multiple generations on any large scale. They are likely to remain pretty obscure, in the grand scheme of things. 

On the other hand, in my experience, the really successful and lastingly successful authors tend to be the ones who craft compelling worlds that readers fall in love with apart from stories or characters. Not all major successful authors are worldbuilders, of course. But I think that most of the ones who are destined to be remembered for hundreds of years are. 

So I don't really see any reason anyone who loves worldbuilding should pay any attention to what Moorcock and Mieville say. If you greatly enjoy their type of storytelling, then by all means take their words to heart. If you don't, then it_* is*_ irrelevant to you.


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## Christopher Michael (Feb 18, 2017)

Drakevarg said:


> Precisely. Which is why I'd appreciated it if you stopped burying the actual focus of this thread by continuing on this superfluous side argument.



The point of this thread was for you to get a hint of a direction or starting point for getting things on paper. Which is kind of the entire point of what I've been saying with this "superfluous side argument." Without a story, a history and base from which to build, you _can't_ get it on paper. At least not in my experience. If you try to start from the world and build out, you're never going to have anything but problems. But if you start with a story? (And it can be _any_ story here, not just The One. I've literally started from the "story" of "A Fire Deity and Water Deity fall in love. How does that work?") If you start with the story and build _in_? You will have trouble stopping.
Because the world will inform the story and the story will inform the world.


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## Drakevarg (Feb 18, 2017)

Christopher Michael said:


> Without a story, a history and base from which to build, you _can't_ get it on paper. At least not in my experience. If you try to start from the world and build out, you're never going to have anything but problems.



I already have the world, the history. I've told stories in this world in the past, I'm just not telling one _right now._

The question might arise to you "why bother worldbuilding in between stories," but in my mind and in my experience, the more you fill in the blanks and look at the origins and implications of elements, the more fleshed out and tangible the world seems in the next story.


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## Russ (Feb 18, 2017)

Drakevarg said:


> For one, I was talking to Russ. For two, why should I care what successful professionals I've never met think about the value of my _hobby?_



If your hobby is worldbuidling then they, or I,  have nothing to offer you, and I misunderstood your question and I apologize for wasting your time.

If your hobby includes storytelling or writing stories, then they have a lot to offer you.


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## Russ (Feb 18, 2017)

elemtilas said:


> Also, just because some Big Name Author (TM) says something, that doesn't mean his opinion is any better or more valid than mine. Doesn't mean I have to follow his lead. Doesn't mean you have to follow his lead. Doesn't even mean he's _correct_. All it means is he's got an opinion on some aspect of art which may or may not be applicable to anyone else and to which other folks may or may not agree.



If BNA is thoughtful, intelligent and analytical, knowledgeable about the history of the genre, and very experienced, yes it does mean their opinion is likely more valid than yours.  

I think I have a different view of writing than you do.  I view writing or story telling as a form of communication.  If you don't "publish" or share your work you are engaging in a fundamentally different endeavour than those who wish to share their work for the benefit hopefully of themselves and their audience.

I thought of a really good analogy but this is a family site so I can't use it.  :cool2:

The difference between not writing for just yourself and writing for yourself and audience is like the difference between me going to a wedding and dancing because I simply enjoy it and someone who dances for the entertainment for others.  

People who simply write for themselves really shouldn't  need advise.  How are someone else supposed to tell you what is useful or good, when the only person who can judge that is you?   The only advice you can give the self-referential writer (or person) is "satisfy yourself."

In the past I have suggested that the avatars note people's writing goals so misunderstandings and conversations like this one can be avoided.  Maybe the admins may wish to consider it again.


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## Russ (Feb 18, 2017)

Mythopoet said:


> I actually wouldn't call Moorcock or Mieville "Big Name Authors". They're fairly obscure except among more devoted fans of the genres they write in. And from what I've seen they are not often recommended among readers of their genres. Not compared to Big Name Authors like Tolkien or Martin; not on the websites I've frequented. (And I freely admit that isn't proof of anything, except that there might be another point of view out there.) They certainly have their following, but as far as real lasting success? My guess is that their works are not going to be handed down through multiple generations on any large scale. They are likely to remain pretty obscure, in the grand scheme of things.
> 
> On the other hand, in my experience, the really successful and lastingly successful authors tend to be the ones who craft compelling worlds that readers fall in love with apart from stories or characters. Not all major successful authors are worldbuilders, of course. But I think that most of the ones who are destined to be remembered for hundreds of years are.
> 
> So I don't really see any reason anyone who loves worldbuilding should pay any attention to what Moorcock and Mieville say. If you greatly enjoy their type of storytelling, then by all means take their words to heart. If you don't, then it_* is*_ irrelevant to you.



Well if you think Moorcock of Meville are too obscure, than perhaps Martin is a BNA:



> How long did it take to do the world-building work?
> Basically, I wrote about a hundred pages that summer. It all occurs at the same time with me. I don't build the world first, then write in it. I just write the story, and then put it together. Drawing a map took me, I don't know, a half-hour. You fill in a few things, then as you write more it becomes more and more alive.



And Moorcock is just _so_ obscure:




> The Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inducted Moorcock in 2002, its seventh class of two deceased and two living writers.[33] He also received life achievement awards at the World Fantasy Convention in 2000 (World Fantasy Award), at the Utopiales International Festival in 2004 (Prix Utopia), from the Horror Writers Association in 2005 (Bram Stoker Award), and from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2008 (named its 25th Grand Master).[32][34]



Who are these Gaiman and Williams people anyways?


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## elemtilas (Feb 18, 2017)

Christopher Michael said:


> But when _multiple_ BNA's say something? And I'm _not_ a BNA, but wouldn't mind getting to that point? I'm absolutely going to pay attention. I'm absolutely going to internalize what they say and decide what of it applies. But I'm not going to shrug it off as irrelevant.



It means they have their own opinions, too. Just like everyone else. 

Note that I'm in no way suggesting "shrug it off as irrelevant". Their path is not mine, and their methods may not be relevant to me. That doesn't mean what they have to say is absolutely worthless.


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## elemtilas (Feb 18, 2017)

Russ said:


> If BNA is thoughtful, intelligent and analytical, knowledgeable about the history of the genre, and very experienced, yes it does mean their opinion is likely more valid than yours.



Well, you're welcome to your own opinion, then.

If anyone's opinion is well thought out, then it is of use. Including yours. Theirs is qualitatively no better than yours, and mine is no worse.



> I think I have a different view of writing than you do.



Viva la difference!



> I view writing or story telling as a form of communication.  If you don't "publish" or share your work you are engaging in a fundamentally different endeavour than those who wish to share their work for the benefit hopefully of themselves and their audience.



Story telling most certainly is communication! Maybe our difference here is in regards "publication"?

What do you mean by "publish" here? Do you mean "make a story public for profit" (i.e., to get a book published by some publishing house or sell a story to a magazine or what have you). That I'm not interested in. Or do you mean "make a story public without concern for profit" (i.e., post stories to web sites or forums or, at most, self-publish).



> The difference between not writing for just yourself and writing for yourself and audience is like the difference between me going to a wedding and dancing because I simply enjoy it and someone who dances for the entertainment for others.



Exactly. I write for the simple joy of it, and I "publish" it with the simple hope that someone else may enjoy what I've written or stories I've told. I don't write in order to entertain others or with the expectation of remuneration. For those folks, I say more power to them! I only know very little about the world of trying to get a book published, from a cousin who has been through all that.



> People who simply write for themselves really shouldn't  need advise.  How are someone else supposed to tell you what is useful or good, when the only person who can judge that is you?   The only advice you can give the self-referential writer (or person) is "satisfy yourself."



Well, this isn't true, either! Those of us who write for the joy of writing may not need advice on matters of publishers and so forth; but advice on story telling and critique of works wouldn't be unwelcome! As with any kind of advice, we take what's deemed best and leave the rest.



> In the past I have suggested that the avatars note people's writing goals so misunderstandings and conversations like this one can be avoided.  Maybe the admins may wish to consider it again.



Well, to be sure some of the blame at least falls to those of us who respond to discussions of this sort. When I saw your response, I didn't (and don't) know who you are, what you write, if you're a professional writer (or even a BNA!!) I think at least for my part, you know a little more where I'm coming from. And I know a little more about where you're coming from. That's where understanding and wisdom is gained!

The idea of using avatars to note artistic goals and perhaps cv is I think a brilliant idea!


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## Russ (Feb 18, 2017)

elemtilas said:


> If anyone's opinion is well thought out, then it is of use. Including yours. Theirs is qualitatively no better than yours, and mine is no worse.



I agree that all well thought out opinions are of use.  But to suggest that all opinions are qualitatively the same despite differences in experience, knowledge, etc is either hubris or intellectual nihilism.  It is like me having an opinion on how to solve a problem with my car's engine and claiming that opinion is qualitatively the same as an opinion from a 30 year Audi Master Mechanic. 



> What do you mean by "publish" here?



I had hoped I had anticipated this question by putting "share" after publish to remove the profit motive.  When I talk about making money at fiction I try to insert the term commercial fiction to make the distinction.



> Well, this isn't true, either! Those of us who write for the joy of writing may not need advice on matters of publishers and so forth; but advice on story telling and critique of works wouldn't be unwelcome! As with any kind of advice, we take what's deemed best and leave the rest.



If you only write to please yourself how can someone advise you on how better to please yourself than you?  In any event writing simply to please yourself is a completely different endeavour than caring about your audience's reactions to your work.  If the writer is  the measuring stick, how can anyone else help value?  What is the value of someone else's critique if all that matters is pleasing yourself?


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## elemtilas (Feb 18, 2017)

Russ said:


> I agree that all well thought out opinions are of use.  But to suggest that all opinions are qualitatively the same despite differences in experience, knowledge, etc is either hubris or intellectual nihilism.  It is like me having an opinion on how to solve a problem with my car's engine and claiming that opinion is qualitatively the same as an opinion from a 30 year Audi Master Mechanic.



Problem is, five different Audi mechanics can still give you seven different opinions! Sames goes for doctors, lawyers and anyone else who is an expert in their field. 

Also, a car, being a thing of machinery and (since we're talking Audi here, a high quality machine at that) story telling being a more personal art, *opinions* in this domain mean much less than they do for a machine. At least the mechanic can plug your car into his computer and the car can dump its diagnostic data. One, two, three --- you get your answer. If the transfloxerator is busted, well, it needs fixing. How much worldbuilding to do? Quite a different matter that!

Art is much different. What works for Moorcock or that other guy or even you may not work for me. So, yeah, their opinions and yours and anyone else's I solicit are basically the same.

Unless we're getting down to nitty-gritty specifics (like, "what's your opinion on how to market this particular kind of story to ABC publishing house"), all opinions, whether mine or a BNA, are just that: opinions. Take em all with the same grain of salt. If you see that as hubris (it's not), that's fine; or intellectual nihilism (it's also not), that's fine too!

Basically, what I'm getting at here is Moorcock's way works for Moorcock. The other guy's works for him. I ain't either one of them, so why should I slavishly do what they do? And if their opinions are to be held on a pedestal and worshipped, why are they different?




> I had hoped I had anticipated this question by putting "share" after publish to remove the profit motive.  When I talk about making money at fiction I try to insert the term commercial fiction to make the distinction.



Fair enough! 



> If you only write to please yourself how can someone advise you on how better to please yourself than you?  In any event writing simply to please yourself is a completely different endeavour than caring about your audience's reactions to your work.  If the writer is  the measuring stick, how can anyone else help value?  What is the value of someone else's critique if all that matters is pleasing yourself?



I think we're pretty much off track here, and certainly talking past one another. You're making assumptions beyond the scope of what I said, so I'll just this aspect of the convo.


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## Russ (Feb 18, 2017)

elemtilas said:


> Problem is, five different Audi mechanics can still give you seven different opinions! Sames goes for doctors, lawyers and anyone else who is an expert in their field.



While that is a cliche, that really isn't at all the case.  In law about 96% of civil cases settle without a trial.  In criminal north of 85% of cases (at least where I practise) resolve by way of plea bargain.  That means that the vast majority of both the lawyers and their clients agree on the outcome on many levels when all things are considered.  Same with doctors, if you give some doctors a list of seven symptoms, the vast majority of the time they will agree on the differential diagnosis and treatment.  Disagreements among honest experts are actually quite rare.

The doctor analogy is a good one.  By your standard the opinion of the second year resident is just as valid as the specialist who has been practising for decades.  Can't buy that.

Since you say everyone's opinion is qualitatively equal I am surprised to see you use the term expert at all.




> Art is much different. What works for Moorcock or that other guy or even you may not work for me. So, yeah, their opinions and yours and anyone else's I solicit are basically the same.



But art really isn't all that different on the process side.  Sure you can't argue with whether or not your prefer Klimpt or Bateman, but that is an aesthetic judgement of the final product.  But that is not the process.  There is a way to produce a note from an instrument or to create an impression with a brush stroke.  They can be mastered and understood, and very often agreed upon.

I used to work with a couple of world class musicians and they both used to say that you can't be creative until you have the mastery of the basics.  The thing many great thoughtful artists say is that you have to understand the rules to know when the right time to break them is.



> I ain't either one of them, so why should I slavishly do what they do?



Nobody suggested you should do anything slavishly.



> And if their opinions are to be held on a pedestal and worshipped, why are they different?



I don't know, a long track  record of success, great respect amongst their peers, well demonstrated intellectual capacity, and demonstrated mastery of technique. Or we could just call them experts I guess.


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## Drakevarg (Feb 18, 2017)

Success isn't a metric of quality. Morons can luck their way into millions despite being complete hacks. Stephanie Meyer for example. Not saying the writers you're listing are, but it's a poor metric to go by.

Beyond that, could you please move this discussion elsewhere? It's not what I asked about and is burying what I did under your debate. Only reason I haven't acted under the only truly actionable response I've gotten so far (the request for a basic overview of my world), is because I came down with a bug and I've been focused on bedrest.


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## Sheilawisz (Feb 19, 2017)

Hello and greetings to all of those involved in this thread.

The Moderators Team wants to remind everyone that we have rules against Argumentative and Hostile behavior. This rule in particular is going to be enforced more strictly than before. Please visit our Guidelines page and read them carefully, because they are important and you can find them right here.

Russ has received a three-day Infraction because it was agreed between three Mods that it was necessary.

Elemtilas: You are a new member here in Mythic Scribes, so I decided to spare you from the Infraction. Please read the Guidelines, and keep them in mind. We give friendly warnings first, and Infractions later.

Please keep this thread On Topic.


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## oenanthe (Feb 19, 2017)

...really?


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## skip.knox (Feb 19, 2017)

oenanthe said:


> ...really?



Yes. But again, please make contributions that are on topic.


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## Christopher Michael (Feb 20, 2017)

Mythopoet said:


> So getting to something resembling a point, does anyone have some good ideas for questions that can supply a direction to write in? Having specific, limited concepts to explore is going to produce a lot more usable thought than broad categories.



I'm not certain how much help this will be, since your writing process is nearly alien to me, but here are some world-building questions I've found useful:

What mythologies and religions exist? Are any of them based in reality? Are any of them completely true? How do the adherents worship? Do any of them grant supernatural powers and abilities? If only some do, why would anyone follow the other religions/mythologies?
What kind of commerce is done? Is there a currency? Is it barter? What goods have the most value? What gems/precious stones exist?
What are the staple crops? (This dictates the society in a large way, as it decides if people can live in cities or if it is more spread out.)
What are the morals of the societies in question?


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## skip.knox (Feb 20, 2017)

I've looked at the OP again. Maybe Drakevarg is searching for middle-ground questions rather than foundational ones. C?hristopher Michael makes some good suggestions. Let me see if I can toss a few pebbles in the pond.

My world has elves. Fine. There's a big statement. Elves. What are they like? Well, right off, I know I don't want them like humans or dwarves, though they can share characteristics with other fae folk (sprites, pixies, etc.). At this level, I know I need to address politics, society, culture, religion, and economics. I also need to figure out where in my world they live--do they intermingle with other folk or live separately?

I already have some historical background, so fundamentally elves live separate from humans and dwarves. Do they have cities? Are they 80% farmers, like humans? Deciding how they live helped me decide where they live.

Fairly quickly, I decided that the elves had a diaspora--they can be found all across Europa. So, not one big kingdom or anything like that. Smaller communities. From there, it was easy decide on Fisher Elves. Fishing villages tended to be self-contained if not completely isolated. This in turn helped me place them in certain specific areas.

I went through a similar process for social structure, religion, and so on, but at some point I began thinking about what sort of stories I might write that would illustrate aspects of elves that I found intriguing. For example, in another story I made casual reference to an elf chevalier, but I didn't have my elves fleshed out enough to do much with it. Now, though, I'm very much interested in having a character like that in a story. Why would it be just one? Do they travel alone like Sir Pelinor after the Questing Beast? That turns out to fit nicely with another notion I had that elves sometimes go on dream quests or walkabouts. That's an interesting notion in itself, but what social role would this tradition play? And how would it intersect with human and dwarf society?

The key through all of this is asking questions. What about X? What would that mean for Y? And so on. Keep asking questions and sketching answers until you get down to the level of story ideas. Then you can work your way, upward and outward, to fill in the spaces.


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## Drakevarg (Feb 21, 2017)

Gotta say, this weekend *suuucked*. Was down with an awful throat bug and probably consumed my weight in tea and medicine. Didn't do a thing in the meantime, didn't want to sit up long enough to process complex ideas. Finally got around to that setting overview though, so I'll show you what I've got. I'm sure I'm missing a lot of details between not being able to shut up my mental editor, not wanting to ramble on about ancillary nonsense, not wanting to "spoil" certain details, and simply forgetting what elements are pertinent or not.

Anyway, here it goes:


Spoiler: Legacy - Setting Overview



*What is Legacy about?*
The fantasy setting Legacy is set on the world of Kardia. Other worlds exist beyond it, but it's the narrative focus. The setting is called Legacy because one of its primary themes is that everything builds on each other - the new world is built from the scars of the old. There is roughly 5,000 years of recorded history to work from at the setting's current "present day," which is in turn decended from untold eons of prehistory.

*Basic Timeline*
History is roughly divided into five eras: The Primordial, Antediluvian, and Mythic Eras of prehistory and the First and Second Eras of recorded history.

_- The Primordial Era begins with the inception of the universe (which may have no actual beginning making such a starting point an abstraction at best) and ends with the creation of worlds.
- The Antediluvian Era begins with the first nondraconic lifeforms and ends with the extinction of the Titans.
- The Mythic Era begins with the birth of the new races and ends with the fall of the Fterota Empire._

The prehistoric eras are deliberately ambiguous, and while broad strokes might be developed, the specifics will never be outright defined. Even the actual spans of the eras could be anywhere between thousands and millions of years.

_- The First Era is recognized as beginning with the first True Eclipse, though written word did not develop until several centuries afterwards. Human civilization begins at that stage, though what exactly that means is a matter of debate. It continues for roughly the next 4,000 years before ending with the Dragonfall.
- The Second Era begins in the wake of the Dragonfall and continues to the setting's present, 2E945._

*Cosmology*
While different cultures have their own image of the cosmos, the one shared by dragonkind - the first non-abstract beings to exist - is generally considered among academics to be the closest to the truth. To that end:

Legacy has a heliocentric universe. That is to say that the sun - called Einai in the dragon tongue - is the center and font of all existence. From Einai is birthed Dini, the untamed chaos from which all things are born. Its counterpart is Toichos, which rests paradoxically at the outer edge of the infinite universe and is the unchanging shell encompassing all of creation. Beyond Toichos is Den, where nothing exists.

Between the extremes of Dini and Toichos is what mortals would consider the true universe, where life and matter can flourish between absolutes. Ola-Dasous stretches through this infinity, the flow of innumerable spirits. It is the light of Ola-Dasous that is seen as the night sky as the starscape.

Kardia has its own celestial bodies in the form of two moons, one red and one gold. Their names and cosmological role vary from culture to culture, but their importance to the spiritual activity on Kardia is universally recognized. History is measured reative to the True Eclipses - a celestial event that occurs every 500 years in which the sun is eclipsed by both moons, giving the closest moon monumental dominion over the world. True Eclipses are invariably accompanied by some enormous historical event, if not several worldwide.

*Geography and Cultures*
There are three continents within the known world of Kardia - the tropical Chonan Tochi in the south, frigid Pohjois-Seina in the north, and Vythismena Nisia between them. The nations that make up the continents have changed many times over the centuries, but cultural identity has remained fairly consistent despite that, particularly amidst the archipelagic central continent. There are seven primary ethnic groups active during the Second Era, though there are of course dozens of subcultures amidst them:

*Kenjin* - Easily the most widespread group, the Kenjin make up the vast majority of the southern continent, having chased off or assimilated most competition in the early First Era. They tend towards lithe builds, almond-shaped eyes, slightly pointed ears, dark eyes and straight hair. Being spread across an entire continent there are some obvious variations, with those found in the southeast of the continent usually sporting reddish skin and black hair while those in the mountains of the far west are practically albino, with pale skin and white hair.

*Steinfolk* - Found in the southwestern parts of Pohjois-Seina and in the far north of Vythismena Nisia, Steinfolk are short, broad-shouldered folk of fair skin and brown or blond hair. Blue eyes are an uncommon but unique trait to the Steinfolk, considered to be a sign of their Frost Giant parentage.

*Detivoinov* - Living east of the Steinfolk, Detivoinov are a tall, visually striking race with dark skin and red hair, frequently remarked somewhat derisively by outsides as being closer to their Giant heritage than other races. There is a long history of animosity between the Detivoinov and the Steinfolk, but the harsh environment of their territory creates such a high turnover rate for rising powers that the Detivoinov remain mostly isolationist, splintered into constantly-shifting national identities.

*Sim'ya* - Descended from the Detivoinov, the Sim'ya are a diminutive group born from Detivoinov exiled for their physical frailty. Averaging at less than five feet in height, the white-haired and dark-skinned Sim'ya survive through close familial bonds and a deep distrust of outsiders. A completely nomadic culture, the Sim'ya are found all over Pohjois-Seina and northern Vythismena Nisia, seen by outsiders as barely-human pests.

*Ferropeli* - The dark-skinned and wiry-haired people of Aquila Cresta, the Ferropeli have a more distinct national identity than most thanks to geographical isolation and a military culture spanning from the early First Era up to present day. They share a great deal of cultural identity with the Epeiste du Soliel of the south, thanks to centuries of warfare and periods of conquest in both directions.

*Epeiste du Soliel* - Southern counterparts to the Ferropelli, the Epeiste du Soliel of Sud Griffe were originally from the northern regions of Chonan Tochi but were routed in the early First Era to their current homeland. Sporting pale skin, fair or earthen hair and distinctive yellow eyes, their stark physical contrast with their northern neighbors belies their close cultural bonds despite and because of centuries of mutual animosity.

*Drachesohne* - Distant relatives of the Epeiste du Soliel, the Drachesohne were driven east rather than west off of Chonan Tochi and settled what is now known as Weitenfeld. Their appelation is actually adopted from what is now referred to as the Schwarz-Drachesohne, a culture they shared close bonds with but were wiped out by the Dragonfall which began in their homeland. The modern-day Drachesohne share many similarities with their distant cousins from the west, though their pigment is somewhat earthier, sporting brown or red hair and brown or occasionally green eyes.

Outside of humanity, there are a small number of nonhuman sapients known to exist, including the Fterota, the Vathies, and until the Second Era, Giantkind.

*Fterota* - A diminutive flightless avian race often described as resembling humanoid crows, the Fterota are a refugee species found scattered in small numbers throughout virtually every human nation. Often treated with benign neglect at best, Fterota tradition maintains that they once ruled a global empire of cities in the sky, which was laid to waste by some unknown cataclysm. It was only in the early years of the Second Era that archaeological evidence was first found to support this claim.

*Vathies* - Living beneath the waves of the world's oceans are the Vathies, a sharklike race of completely aquatic people. Widely dismissed as tall tales by sailors, Vathies are almost never seen by surfacers except on the rare occasion that they take umbrage to ships traveling over their waters.

*Giants* - Ancient progenitors of humanity, giants were a rarely-seen race of people found in the most remote regions of the world, before going utterly extinct in the aftermath of the Dragonfall. They had four distinct cultures - the South Giants of Chonan Tochi in their remote mountain bastion of Sinseonghan San, the Frost and Fire Giants of Pohjois-Seina in the inhospitable northern edge of the known world, and the Low Giants, majesty forgotten in the forsaken mountains of the wild. Giants varied in size, but averaged out at around nine feet in height and were often described as having alien, unnatural colorations to them, like stony grey skin or pale blue hair. With the exception of the generally barbaric Low Giants, the race was feared for their great intellect and odd magics, but were mostly given a wide berth, allowing them to largely fade into folklore.


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## Drakevarg (Feb 21, 2017)

Had to give this one its own section because I went over the character limit:



Spoiler: Legacy - On Spirits



*Spirits*
Everything that is has a spirit. Spirits are living abstractions, proto-beings that exist in a dreamlike fugue state, building their identies around what is around them, representing everything from a candle's fire to the notion of language. Simultaneously formless and eternal, spirits grow through force of inertia, with passing ideas being forgotten and taking on new ideas while deeper, more concrete concepts may grow into gods.

Spirits are both the dream and the dreamers of reality - every natural law is a memetic recurrance within the spirit world, a way of doing things that repeat again and again out of habit. In the uncommon happenstance that a spirit behaves in ways that are not consistent with what the layman observer might describe as outside the normal way of things, this what is identified as the supernatural.

One of the few truly immutable natural laws, older than any spirit, is the permanence of the soul. A soul which exists cannot otherwise not exist. However, since spirits are by nature abstract, its commonplace for a group of spirits to, once gathered, lose the distinction between individuals and behave as a single entity in  a manner vaguely analogous to a school of fish. These amalgam entities can be divided, and indeed do so relatively constantly, with individual souls incidentally falling away or melding with the central amalgam identity. However, as the amalgamation of souls coincides with an increasing clarity of concept, it's rare for seperate amalgam beings to merge unless the concepts they represent are already similar, as it remains easy for the bulk of the composite souls to differentiate their identity from the foreign concept in their midst.

This indistinction of individuality can manifest in spiritual interactions with living entities as well. Lycanthropy is the best-known example of this phenomena - an animal spirit's identity becoming entangled with that of a mortal and producing a hybrid identity with the properties of both. This can be traumatic for the mortal portion of the identity, as their perspective is fundamentally unlike the spirit's, and the attempt to reconcile the two often causes schizophrenia or, at best, disassociative personality disorders. The phenomena is found in baser animals as well, producing a being often called an "Elder Beast" due to the subject usually being the eldest or strongest representative of their species in the area and attracting spirits centered on such traits.

The distinction between a living soul, a ghost, and a spirit are largely a matter of perspective, but are part of a natural cycle and have some measurable differences. A living soul, unlike a spirit, is bound to the material world and thus has a stable perspective from which to view the world. They can't alter reality through force of will as a spirit can, but without that stable perspective spirits would have no point of reference to build off of and reality would remain abstract. Dragons were the first non-abstract beings to exist, not quite living or spirit but observant of both, and from that perspective came the concept of meaning and by extention all other things.

A ghost, on the other hand, has very little functional difference from a spirit and the distinction is mostly a matter of psychology. Ghosts retain their identity from life, and thus tunnelvisioned in their perspective, often becoming obsessive in the process, either focused on some 'unfinished business' or compulsively repeating the same routines over and over. Eventually all other details bleed away in the dreamlike reality of the spirit world and their sense of self falls away, becoming a spirit and perhaps one day reborn.

Spirits range in size and power from practically inperceptable and fleeting to so cosmically influential that they can be described as laws of nature. In respects to Kardia, there are six entities whose influence is felt above all others: the two moons whose influence is constantly felt, and the four Dragon Gods.

The Dragon Gods are the oldest entities to dwell on Kardia, mostly slumbering away since the earliest days of the Antediluvian Era. They are depicted, to some extent, in every mythology ever to develop on the planet, representing first and foremost the basic elements of land, sea, sky and life. The most well-documented appearance of one of the Dragon Gods was the cataclysmic event of Dragonfall, in which the Dragon of Earth, commonly called the Behemoth, brought about the collapse and near-extinction of human civilization and wiped out Giantkind in its entirety.



Now, how much this will actually help the subject at hand in respects to helping come up with questions that need answering, I don't know. But after a long miserable weekend I was more focused on getting the thing done than remembering why it was going to help.


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## Michael K. Eidson (Feb 21, 2017)

Does your world have any holidays / holy days? If so, what's the basis for each? Who celebrates them and why? How do they celebrate them? Do any of these special days create conflict between two or more groups of people? Why? Do any of these days bring certain typically antagonistic groups of people together briefly? If so, how and why?

What sorts of interactions (e.g., trade) are there between different groups of people? Do any groups of people hold other groups in reverence or contempt? Why? For races between which animosity exists, what is the foundation of the animosity, and why does it persist?

Who are the archaeologists and historians of the world? How are archaeological finds preserved? How are historical records maintained? How is knowledge distributed throughout the world? Are some races ignorant of the world's true history? Do some races believe certain lies about the world's history? What are those lies?

What are the seasons of the world like? How do the seasons impact the various groups of people? Is there anything about the seasons / weather that force some groups of people to interact with others? If so, what is the nature of that interaction?

What other aspects of your world can force or obstruct interactions between different groups of people? How and why do these aspects of the world affect people the way they do?


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## deathofmice (Feb 22, 2017)

Drakevarg said:


> Taking a bit of an inspiration from the in-game books found in Elder Scrolls games, the approach I'd like to take is to express concepts through articles - written from either a Watsonian or a Doylist point of view, doesn't matter - and let the world grow organically in the gaps.



How about an epistolary story written from the perspective of an ambassador of one race to the court of another? The ambassador will be trying to achieve the aims of their home country, while keeping an eye on the maneuvering of the other political actors at court (that gives you the macro level) but they will also need to maintain a network of contacts and have a good understanding of local personalities and goings on (that gives you the micro level). As well as official reports you could include letters to friends and family back home illustrating all the ways that the cultures are different.


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## C. A. Stanley (Apr 19, 2017)

Although I agree that excessive world building can be unproductive, I am happy to be a victim of world builder's disease! The thing I enjoy most about planning my novel is building my own world, and thinking about how everything interacts. Creating religion, culture, geography etc. and playing them against each other can be so much fun.

I think if you enjoy the process, make the most of it. I know that most of the ideas I develop will not be necessary for my plot, but it gives me a deeper understanding of the world my characters will live in, and helps keep the ideas churning in my brain. The finer details help give the world depth and authenticity that will help suspend disbelief.

IMO Brandon Sanderson is the master of world building. I keep turning pages not only for the plot and characters, but for the extensive world building too, which keeps me asking questions and searching for answers. In a highly developed fantasy world, the setting and history can be as much a story as the plot itself.


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