How to "show" instead of "tell" this aspect of my fantasy world?

[ClearDragon]

So my fantasy world is in a slow apocalypse. The laws of physics are breaking down, there's "patches" of the world where stuff just doesn't work right. For instance there's a place where no matter how hard you try, you just can't ignite a fire. Combustion just doesn't happen there, flammability literally doesn't exist anymore in a few square miles. Then there's another place where the freezing point of water has been tripled and there's hot snow!
The entire world is littered with these "patches".
Instead of having my characters explaining something they should already know, should I have the characters struggling with something that should be super simple but its just not working? Is that a good way to show the concept?

Next because the people are at dark ages to medieval level, they would have no concept of vacuum decay, how would I imply that's end result of the breakdown without using a modern style explanation?

 

[pmmg]

Well...the way I would approach this is just show it with the same lack of understanding as the characters. They go to light a fire, and it just does not happen. They dont know why. They may make wild guesses, but cannot explain. Maybe later in the story, they will get clued in, but if they dont know, they dont know.

I would use such scenes to reveal the characters and not try to explain the world. I would hope it would seem more immersive that way.

World building is overrated. Give me characters instead.

 

[ClearDragon]

Well...the way I would approach this is just show it with the same lack of understanding as the characters. They go to light a fire, and it just does not happen. They dont know why. They may make wild guesses, but cannot explain. Maybe later in the story, they will get clued in, but if they dont know, they dont know.

I would use such scenes to reveal the characters and not try to explain the world. I would hope it would seem more immersive that way.

World building is overrated. Give me characters instead.

Interesting idea. I might just do that, although I do like world building.
I was going for the "epic" theme where they know the world will end but there is a small chance they actually can do something about it.
Like they wouldn't specifically know the laws of physics are breaking down, but they would be aware that the world was decaying in an unnatural way.

 

[Mad Swede]

I think I'd ask you about other aspects of your world building, starting with trade and travel. If people travel for trade or other reasons then they will eventually build up a sort of verbal (maybe even written) guide to the roads, including areas where you can't light a fire or where the snow is warm. They might not know why this is so, but they would know to avoid some places or time their journey through the area so that they weren't troubled by whatever the problem was. There might be inns or hostels either side of areas like that, to provide support, hot food etc. Here your characters might learn or hear more. Maybe there are people investigating these areas who can provide some explanation (which need not be correct) to your characters?

 

[Naruzeldamaster]

Well...the way I would approach this is just show it with the same lack of understanding as the characters. They go to light a fire, and it just does not happen. They dont know why. They may make wild guesses, but cannot explain. Maybe later in the story, they will get clued in, but if they dont know, they dont know.

I would use such scenes to reveal the characters and not try to explain the world. I would hope it would seem more immersive that way.

World building is overrated. Give me characters instead.

World Building works best when it's balanced out with good characters (who also fall well into the world building) I personally feel like you can't have one without some amount of the other. World Building/lore is useless without a good amount of good characters to fill it.

There's a plot twist in Xenoblade Chronicles that doesn't happen until the last act, but there's foreshadowed barely 10% into the game. (A game that's a little over 100 hours long if you do everything)

That's all chalked up to good world building and character building.

 

[pmmg]

World Building is over-rated is not the same as dont have any.

This is a statement aimed at the number of writers who are stuck putting the energy into this and not writing their story.

Balance is a tricky word. Do you mean by that 50/50, 60/40, 80/20? I think a better statement is give the story what it needs. Characters matter more than worldbuilding. If you have a choice tell stories that lean towards showing them more.

A better way to look at it is as the world is a character. It too has a story to tell. But land scapes and trees wont make a world come alive. It has to matter to the characters as well.

 

[ClearDragon]

I think I'd ask you about other aspects of your world building, starting with trade and travel. If people travel for trade or other reasons then they will eventually build up a sort of verbal (maybe even written) guide to the roads, including areas where you can't light a fire or where the snow is warm. They might not know why this is so, but they would know to avoid some places or time their journey through the area so that they weren't troubled by whatever the problem was. There might be inns or hostels either side of areas like that, to provide support, hot food etc. Here your characters might learn or hear more. Maybe there are people investigating these areas who can provide some explanation (which need not be correct) to your characters?

Ah, thats a good idea. I imagine that the patches near major cities would be well known and also if any are near trad routes.

 

[Naruzeldamaster]

World Building is over-rated is not the same as dont have any.

This is a statement aimed at the number of writers who are stuck putting the energy into this and not writing their story.

Balance is a tricky word. Do you mean by that 50/50, 60/40, 80/20? I think a better statement is give the story what it needs. Characters matter more than worldbuilding. If you have a choice tell stories that lean towards showing them more.

That's kind of what I was tryina say, I do a lot of world building myself, but like I don't waste a ton of time building an excess of the world that I'll never use. Readers won't need to know why the cheese trade routes are so risky and only certain mages know how to make it. They just need to know that cheese is a luxury and that it's very expensive. I say do the world building that fits the story, but also use the characters to do some of that for you, instead of Hmming and Harring about all the minute details of the world that might not even be featured in the story itself. (I used to be bad about that)

A better way to look at it is as the world is a character. It too has a story to tell. But land scapes and trees wont make a world come alive. It has to matter to the characters as well.

Dark Souls does exactly this, there is a TON of environmental storytelling (And it's very good at show don't tell) But the characters that are friendly are there to reinforce it. There's almost always a character dedicated to the lore. Dark souls likes to put a lot of the 'fluff' details in item descriptions, which are optional to read.

 

[pmmg]

I'm sorry, I gave up on Video games like 20 years ago. Maybe one day I will go back, but I have too much to do to let it suck my life away again.

Dark Souls is just some nebulous new fashioned video game to me. I don't follow it. If you wanted to talk Tomb Raider and X-com...

 

[minta]

Wow, that is a great way to show it.

 

[Naruzeldamaster]

I'm sorry, I gave up on Video games like 20 years ago. Maybe one day I will go back, but I have too much to do to let it suck my life away again.

Dark Souls is just some nebulous new fashioned video game to me. I don't follow it. If you wanted to talk Tomb Raider and X-com...

I'm not a 'regular' when it comes to Dark Souls, so my skill ceiling is likely as low as yours (though yours might be higher tbh I'm really bad at DS, my reflexes are horrid for those types of games, particularly ones that punish you hard for mistakes) what I can say is they are a master class in environmental storytelling, almost as good as a studio ghibli film. Makes sense since one of their directors is the main creator/director of the series. If you do bother to try it, you're in for some pretty stunning scenery. (depends if you like grimdark atmospheres or not) Even if you don't play it, no harm in checking out videos of the game on youtube.

Getting back on topic, my main point is that the characters are as much a part of the environment/world building as the trees for the forests, after all, who's chopping them down to build houses? My favorite kind of games (and other media) is where the lore isn't explicitly 'dumped' on you in excess. The characters play an important part of the lore but it isn't like, dumped on you. Deliver enough to get the job done well, and you're off to the races. Plus you can as I said earlier, save the 'extra' stuff for additional media like lore books, if that's your thing. Though I would save that content for after you've finished your manuscript to begin with.

 

[xena]

Thanks for sharing.

 

[Zilver]

Instead of having my characters explaining something they should already know, should I have the characters struggling with something that should be super simple but its just not working? Is that a good way to show the concept?

Yes.

I like what pmmg says about giving the story what it needs. Saying it then only needs characters and no worldbuilding, is maybe a blunt way of putting it. In another perspective, it could just mean that you need to let go of the worldbuilding a little bit, and just start writing. If you say nothing about the world-building, holes will probably appear in the story, apparent gaps in the internal logic of the world. When that happens, find a nice narrative way of filling those holes up for the reader, then move on.

This is my trick, I guess: Step one, I explain nothing. In an early draft, I make no room in the story to go off about any of the laws or inner workings of the world. Things just happen and my characters deal with it the way they would - being natural inhabitants of that world.
Only when I come across things that they would logically discuss or need to discover, I'll write down how they discuss or discover it.

Then I put that draft to beta readers. It's seriously amazing how much readers are able to infer about the inner workings of my world, from just this type of unexplanatory draft. Readers are really quite smart, and happy to piece things together. Only when my beta readers point me towards things they couldn't piece together, do I weave in some more context/details about how it works.

I like this method more than explaining stuff up front. That's because: if I add full explanation and have readers read it, they can never tell me what parts of that explanation were essential to their understanding and which parts weren't. So I learn nothing.
While if I flip that, and explain them 'too little' in the first go, they'll come back and tell me what they missed. And I'll come away from that with an understanding of what is neceseary, and why.

ow would I imply that's end result of the breakdown without using a modern style explanation?

Good point. So yes, don't even mention it. Anecdote: there have been times that I thought up some complicated mechanism in my world, then let it work through in the story without explaining, and then one of my readers came back to tell me how they interpreted it - and their explanation was a more logical, concise and elegant mechanism than mine.

Trust your readers, is all I can say.

 

[SamazonE]

I like to put in description, but it gets too long. There are some things I say that end up being an info dump and I always take it out and put it back in. So I don’t know why my stories seem so long, they could just as easily be too short. That would make sense. There is nothing particularly more interesting than a good long book, but short books are just the same, it is a difference in style, not proficiency or excellence.

There was a point in my life when I wrote hastily anything at all, I would stare at the computer, and edit like a few sentences or paragraphs. That was the days before windows and word however, I was better off writing on lined paper, which I did, and eventually I got into it. Then I started school at a more advanced level, and suddenly more time was spent on writing than should have been. It was like I was cleaning out my closet.

The way I would approach it, is to imagine clearly a tree or something, and then try to figure out if there is a river, or a fire starting rock, and just baby it. Get the ideas out of your head by listening to silence, hoping for some rain, be with the character, understand their dilemma. Then go through, well, okay, I’m screwed. I need to find an animal to digest. Where is the nearest tavern. How well does the night sky guide my path.

I have a few stories that are very difficult to handle. They involve time machines and it is an ever changing landscape of speculation. If I was asked to write it again, well it would come out completely differently. It also causes arguments and headaches, so I slip it beneath the door.