World Building After the Fact

[Philip Overby]

So I used to be a pretty extensive world builder in my early days as a writer. I understand the appeal of it and why some feel it makes their work that much better. However, as of late, my world building mostly consists of "Here are some countries, creatures, etc. OK let's go with that." I prefer writing the story (with a decent outline) and allowing some things to come out as I go along. I feel like that approach also really works. However, I'm planning on making a central world to the majority of my novels and I'm bouncing around how to tie the novels together when they weren't necessarily in the same world to begin with. Since some of my stories take place in one country, with only brief mentions of outside countries, I think it might not be too difficult to do so. Being that my world building is minimal in some cases, it would be easy to go in and do world building after the fact and make two novels in the same world by doing some editing. Maybe it's not as easy as I suspect, but yeah, I think it's worth a shot.

Do any of you ever world build after you've finished your story? Just to flesh out details or keeps things consistent?

I'm actually thinking of doing some extensive world building here soon to solidify the primary world I want to work in going forward and I wonder how difficult it might be perceived to be when you have two unrelated stories, but you want them to take place in the same world. Since I'm only editing right now until I get these two novels finished, I feel like having a meaty project can't hurt.

 

[ThinkerX]

Hmmm...

...the 'short story' I submitted for one of your challenges - 'Jhaegothu' - originally took place in a world of its own. I merged that entire world into my primary world.

Likewise, 'Falling Towers' originally took place on a world of its own - that world being the moon of a gas giant. After giving it a bit of thought, I combined that setting with my second world - though primarily an ocean world, I figured there was room for one fair sized continent and attendant islands, and the northernmost of those islands fit in fairly well with the second worlds other landmasses.

What makes this work for me is the sheer separation: 'Jhaegothu' is set in what will become Cimmar, and while I do have some tales set there, most take place an ocean away.

Likewise, the entire continent 'Falling Towers' is set on is little more than a myth to that worlds other civilizations, and vice versa.

 

[Chilari]

My worldbuilding approach has always been to add detail during the planning/writing process. I'll have only the vaguest idea of the world to begin with, the key details, and as I flesh out the story and characters, I'll flesh out the world alongisde too. Sometimes I might get a burst of inspiration and do a lot of work on the world all in one go - and then I'll do the same with a character. At the moment, on my WIP, which is just shy of 17,000 words, the world is still a bit vague - the island the whole story takes place on is best developed, but even then I've got only the vaguest idea of it (basically, New Zealand climate, fauna and flora, but a bit smaller and no native human population). I don't have the exact dimension and I haven't drawn a map. Beyond the island, I've got the technological level sorted (c 1800) and some idea of the situation "back home", but most of what's going on across the sea was to give the antagonist a backstory and a goal the rest of the islanders don't know about. I made about two pages of notes on it a few days ago, how the antagonist is descendant of a royal line from a city taken over a few generations ago by the "main" city-state from which most characters originate. Fleshing out her goals, I created a rival nation to the main city and considered their culture, politics and general approach in contrast to that of the main city. The geography of the continent is not particularly well defined, besides that the main city, Narricol, sits on an Isthmus with a canal cut through it, that allows it to control trade routes.

I fully expect to give the world a bit more detail as I continue writing the story. As and when I need to decide certain elements, I'll think about how the makeup of the world is going to have an impact on that. It might include stuff like religions and so on soon.

I don't know if I'll reuse this world in another story. I might. There's the scope for it. But just as I can't commit to writing a sequel, I can't commit to working in this world again. There's another idea I've had recently for a different world, and I've got an idea for a story I could tell in it, so I might move on after this story, or I might try to see how I can tell that new story in the context of the world I have. It certainly won't be set on the island of my WIP, but it might work in Narricol, at a much earlier point in its history.

 

[Braveface]

I needed 3 to 4 key locations and I needed the journey my characters take to make sense this way. I didn't want any arbitrary 'we've got to change course' moments if I could help it. I also wanted the two cities to reflect the ideologies of those who lived there and this came to me a little while later. As for details of those cities...there aren't many at the moment. I have my influences in the real world and beyond, but nothing concrete. As I work out more about characters and culture, it is morphing my world, but not really changing the action...really or potentially. I am still a slow, rather self-conscious, writer.

 

[Devor]

Whether worldbuilding beforehand helps or not depends a lot on the story you're telling and the type of worldbuilding you're doing. In most of my projects I've done extensive worldbuilding, in part because it was tied in to research about the cultures I was writing about. For the most part I've come to be a fan of worldbuilding first, but by using lots of "placeholders" so that you have room to be flexible.

The only issue I have with a minimal building first approach is that the worlds sometimes end up feeling smaller, like the setting is in a bubble. When I worldbuild, and I create a country beyond the placeholder, inevitably there's a way that country will affect my story, even if it's small. It helps me brainstorm. It adds a little depth that isn't there otherwise. I don't mean to make too much of it, as the opposite is also often true for people who world build too much. It's about finding the best-of-both-worlds balance that fits your story.

As for putting two stories in the same world, for me, I would try to you think "Easter Egg," more than anything else. I learned that the hard way. I worldbuild to fit a story, and it generates new ideas for that story and for new stories. The times I've worldbuilt without a story in mind have ended up cutting off my best ideas and coming out bland. If the stories are in different regions, I wouldn't want to try and force myself to fill the gap between them until I had some idea for what I was using it for.

 

[TWErvin2]

I think it's too time consuming to world build such that all nations and persons of importance, all cultures and norms, specific borders, cities, commerce, size of armies, populations, languages, quirky things can be determined before a writing project begins.

I have the basics developed and fill in the necessary details as needed during the novel-writing process.

This method allows me to remain consistent while being flexible and efficient with my time.

 

[Noma Galway]

For my current WIP, I worldbuild as I need to. For instance, I realized I needed to flesh out my deities recently. I knew there were three, but I didn't know anything about them. I needed rituals and everything, so that's what I'm working on now. It works for me because I much prefer the writing over the building. If I need something, I'll create it and have done with it.

 

[Aspasia]

I tend to do a lot of worldbuilding initially. The land I create tends to be a major influence on the story's plot and on characters, but I don't plan everything out beforehand. I create the land, make a basic map and divide it up into nations, with all the important geography in place. I spend quite a bit of time on the history of the cultures that my chars come from, but for the most part I leave a lot of the nations blank and unplanned. If they need to be important later, I can fill it in. The history is really important to me. I have a general timeline of important events with more detail on those that directly affect the story -- events that lead to the political / social climate of the current time. Once I have my basis on which to set the story, I start writing. I leave a lot of current events and places untouched until I encounter them in the story. I'll know the history of this particular city but I won't know what it's like now until I start writing it. So I guess a good deal of my worldbuilding occurs after the fact. Actually writing the story tends to flesh out the world a lot better than sitting in front of my wiki and trying to make up interesting cultures. But I can't even start writing until I have a solid basis of things I cannot change : the geography, the maps, the history, the politics, the important cultures and anything that I know will play into the plot. Otherwise I start contradicting myself and getting confused.

 

[skip.knox]

It's a dialectic for me. I come up with an initial idea and pretty quickly I imagine a story set there. I start writing the story and find I have to build out some areas in order for the story to cohere. The story sharpens up, which calls for more world building, which lets the story progress, which ... usw.

 

[Malik]

Most of my rewrites over the past 20 years have involved world-building issues. For this reason, I'm hypercritical of world building in fantasy. It's possible that it went the other way; that my hypercriticality of world confluence while reading fantasy made me even moreso with my own work. Chicken, egg, whatever. Your mileage may vary.

 

[Jabrosky]

While too much world-building can distract from the writing process, on the other hand pretty much every story I've ever finished involved at least a basic knowledge of the setting beforehand. There are details I can make up as I go along, but I need to start with something to build on.

 

[PaulineMRoss]

I tend to world-build as I go along. All my novels are set in the same world, although different parts of it, so they share a world history. I'm finding that they tend to ping off each other, so although they're all stand-alone, so far, characters in setting A will know about settings B and C, and may have visited. Sometimes characters or objects from one turn up in another. Each successive story fills in a bit more backstory of the world. It sort of works.

Only trouble with this process is that the very first story I attempted but never finished has now been somewhat left behind by the way the world evolved in the other stories. I still love the idea, but it will need a major rewrite to get it canonical again, and I'm not good at rewrites. That's the downside of making the world up as you go along, I suppose.

 

[kimsmithauthor]

So glad to have someone ask this question! I am a sketchy worldbuilder for all of my work. I think I have adult onset of ADD or something. I struggle with this a lot.

 

[Saigonnus]

I tend to start with a rough idea of the world and build it as I go. If I feel it warrants 20+ pages of background etc before I even start that is my prerogative and I just do it. For my larger projects I tend to lay it out ahead of time, at least more than for a short story.

 

[Svrtnsse]

I'm actually thinking of doing some extensive world building here soon to solidify the primary world I want to work in going forward and I wonder how difficult it might be perceived to be when you have two unrelated stories, but you want them to take place in the same world.

I guess the main issue would be one of consistency. You'd have to figure out if there are concepts that work in opposite ways in your stories and resolve those issues. Once you've gotten around that, the rest should be easy enough.
Where I see the main difficulty lie is with magic. Most other things can be explained by regional, cultural or geographical differences, but magic (the way I tend to think about it) is something of a law of nature, like gravity - it doesn't change.

Best of luck with your project - sounds like it could be a lot of fun. I'm a big fan of the idea of using the same world/setting for multiple different stories.

 

[Philip Overby]

Thanks for all the comments! Having been on both sides of the fence (extensive world builder vs. minimal world builder) I know what each one feels like for me. That said, I always tend to shift toward the middle, trying to find a balance between the two. For my last novel, I made political map (no geographical details or anything), and established some of the different races of people. Other than that, there was some brief calculation of the different planes of existence and then I got to writing. I found that it served me quite well and if there was something that popped in my head while writing "Oh, that is cool!" I would just add it to my world building notes.

I agree with TW Ervin, that building every single thing just doesn't work for me anymore. I mean, I used to sit and draw flags for each country and write out their whole history. While that may be helpful for some, I'm always reminded that writing is like a glacier. The tip is the only part the reader sees, so the rest of it underwater is only for my own use. If I don't need to know something to write my story, it doesn't prove helpful for me.