Yora
Maester
The last months I've been playing some old fantasy games and rewatched a few old movies, and I noticed that many of them are almost painfully straightforward generic European medievalesque fantasy worlds with very little originality. And their worlds are still really quite good.
I've also recently been thinking about how I want the world that I am writing about to really not feel generic medieval Europe with magic and much more like an alien world with unique creatures and cultures, but I also want readers to almost effortlessly get into it. To just follow the story as it goes along without really having to do any work to create a complex mental picture out of mountains of exposition.
And a bit to my own surprise, I think this is not actually that contradictory.
If you want to, you can invest absolutely stupendous amounts of time and effort in worldbuilding to create a setting of huge details and originality, and you'll have no problems finding piles of advice on how to approach such a process. But I have come to see settings like that as something that primarily exist for their own sake. Which is of course a perfectly valid and sufficient reason to create such words. But I am feeling that this is not actually adding much to the storytelling of a story. Complex and detailed settings have a value of their own, but they don't contribute much value to a story. My hypothesis is that great stories with a unique setting would still be pretty great stories in a terribly generic setting.
When I make it part of my concept that I want to have an "alien world", I am not actually thinking about creating something that is really new or original. What I mean by that is that I want to capture an overall feel and style that I really enjoy in a good number of already existing stories. Not the generic medieval Europe style, but a different "generic" style nonetheless.
My priority is more to evoke the feel of that style efficiently in a way that seems effortlessly to readers, without them feeling like they are going on a long educational tour to learn about new cultures, special powers, and supernatural creatures. The whole idea of having "lore" is something that doesn't quite sit right with me.
Two great examples come to my mind about great works of fantasy that do something in that general direction.
The old classic that you can reference over and over is of course Star Wars. If you just take the three classic movies before all the tie ins and later movies brought in mountains of lore, the setting is stupidly simple. You have Rebels fighting the Space Nazis with a little bit of help of a few Space Smurai-wizards and there's also a skeleton knight and some gunslingers running around. But it's in space! Star Wars probably does not have a single original idea and yet the result is amazing.
The other one is the world of the Witcher series, with Sapkowski infamously being known to have said he really doesn't care about worldbuilding. And his world also is really very unoriginal. You have human kingdoms, an "evil" empire, elves, dwarves, dragons, undead, and sorcerers. Nothing about these elements is really noteworthy, and it only feels unique because the people inhabiting the world see it in the terms of 20th century society and science. Which is a bit quirky, but not really complex worldbuilding.
Now to perhaps my point to all of this. Has complex and original worldbuilding perhaps become too emphasized and put on a pedestal? Do generic elements have real beneficial values of their own, which are being falsely dismissed and overlooked?
How has the balance between originality and the benefits of familiarity affected your own worldbulding?
I've also recently been thinking about how I want the world that I am writing about to really not feel generic medieval Europe with magic and much more like an alien world with unique creatures and cultures, but I also want readers to almost effortlessly get into it. To just follow the story as it goes along without really having to do any work to create a complex mental picture out of mountains of exposition.
And a bit to my own surprise, I think this is not actually that contradictory.
If you want to, you can invest absolutely stupendous amounts of time and effort in worldbuilding to create a setting of huge details and originality, and you'll have no problems finding piles of advice on how to approach such a process. But I have come to see settings like that as something that primarily exist for their own sake. Which is of course a perfectly valid and sufficient reason to create such words. But I am feeling that this is not actually adding much to the storytelling of a story. Complex and detailed settings have a value of their own, but they don't contribute much value to a story. My hypothesis is that great stories with a unique setting would still be pretty great stories in a terribly generic setting.
When I make it part of my concept that I want to have an "alien world", I am not actually thinking about creating something that is really new or original. What I mean by that is that I want to capture an overall feel and style that I really enjoy in a good number of already existing stories. Not the generic medieval Europe style, but a different "generic" style nonetheless.
My priority is more to evoke the feel of that style efficiently in a way that seems effortlessly to readers, without them feeling like they are going on a long educational tour to learn about new cultures, special powers, and supernatural creatures. The whole idea of having "lore" is something that doesn't quite sit right with me.
Two great examples come to my mind about great works of fantasy that do something in that general direction.
The old classic that you can reference over and over is of course Star Wars. If you just take the three classic movies before all the tie ins and later movies brought in mountains of lore, the setting is stupidly simple. You have Rebels fighting the Space Nazis with a little bit of help of a few Space Smurai-wizards and there's also a skeleton knight and some gunslingers running around. But it's in space! Star Wars probably does not have a single original idea and yet the result is amazing.
The other one is the world of the Witcher series, with Sapkowski infamously being known to have said he really doesn't care about worldbuilding. And his world also is really very unoriginal. You have human kingdoms, an "evil" empire, elves, dwarves, dragons, undead, and sorcerers. Nothing about these elements is really noteworthy, and it only feels unique because the people inhabiting the world see it in the terms of 20th century society and science. Which is a bit quirky, but not really complex worldbuilding.
Now to perhaps my point to all of this. Has complex and original worldbuilding perhaps become too emphasized and put on a pedestal? Do generic elements have real beneficial values of their own, which are being falsely dismissed and overlooked?
How has the balance between originality and the benefits of familiarity affected your own worldbulding?