Fantasy worldbuilding frustrates me

[Architect_of_Aurah]

I have the same rather objective and scientific approach to worldbuilding as you, but have told myself not to get too hung up on things. If you overanalyse your work, you're bound to find fault with it somewhere. I remember an article in Empire once that tore holes in the plots of some of the best movies ever, for example, in Jaws all the shark attacks take place near the shore. Why then do Quint and the others go all the way out to sea?
Build a world in your own way and worry later if it doesn't make sense. Set a few rules, but don't be super-rigid.

 

[It's a Squirrel...Moose?]

I am sympathetic to the view in the OP. I dislike the notion of world building for fantasy (crazy I know) - simply because I feel people go to the extreme in trying to build a 'different' world to our own in their (in my opinion) misbegotten opinion that our world is boring. Or, they commit (in my mind) the sin of trying to 'spice' up our own history by transplanting dinosaurs/magic/fantasy into actual historical events - whilst managing quite successfully to completely misunderstand the event in question or portray it in a deeply childish light - the most common being the crusades.

I personally dislike worlds that are built around a single premise. Now, I'm not trying to be harsh to the original poster, but a book about a hot female hunting dinosaurs would be one that I would immediately put down - it's not my forte at all - I like my fantasy to be very realistic. Oh, I like magic, dragons, etc - but I find that such things have to handled in such a way that I can believe in it. A world has to feel real - it has to feel that it exists because it does.

What do I mean by this? All too often I read stories where it feels fake -that characters, events and magic exist solely to answer a question that the writer has posed. For example: 'I want a city deep underground' - so I've written a story about a city underground. This sort of writing infuriates me, simply because I can not believe that a city could exist underground in the way they are describing. Such a world to me doesn't feel real - unless it's done in such a way that makes sense - for example if the city is in terminal decline because by some odd disaster it's found itself buried underground.

The OP idea of huntress hunting dinosaurs strikes me in the same way. I can't help but think 'why?' - is this story existing solely so I can read about a women hunting dinosaurs? Why would they be dinosaurs? Why not mammels - like mammoths? We know that humans hunted mammoths - why do we need a story about humans hunting dinosaurs?

I'm not trying to be offensive here - and I understand the reasoning 'well, why not?' - but in my mind that is simply not the fantasy I like to read.

And it brings me back to a previous point: why do writers feel the need to be utterly inventive? Just because our world doesn't have flying dragons and orcs running everywhere - doesn't make the world suddenly boring. The world as it currently stands is a heinously complicated structure - with natural laws that in many ways go beyond the imagination of even the greatest of writers.

Just because the natural world is the thing we experience every day doesn't mean that in order for an exciting and worthwhile fantasy story we suddenly need giant lizards who can fly. Blantent breaks in the laws of physics (a lesser understood concept by most, including me) limits realism - and limited realism nearly always goes hand in hand with an unsatisfactory story.

Let the reader do the work for you! Work within the laws that surrond us, there is no need to completely rewrite the world around you!

My argument would be: don't even bother in world-building - or if you do - make the world building so subtle that for all intensive purposes you are using the world around us just with one or two different things. Or go for the other extreme: and add magic, etc but don't go into too much detail.

What do I mean? I find that any stories that use magic, then try to explain it, nearly always falter on the simple point that what they are talking about is by its very nature unnatural. I don't care how the rune works - because I'm fairly sure it can't - but I can accept that in this world, it can! If you try and explain something, you are in dire straits of writing complete gibberish.

There is a level of this 'believable-disbelief' - most commonly shown through Mary-Sue antics like shooting an explosive cannon-ball from a 200 year old cannon through a helicopter front-shield (and the 900 other pieces of utter stupidity from Sahara).

But, another issue in world-building is that it often involves writers forcibly putting their moral opinions in their writing. This is the greatest single sin of writing in my opinion. There is nothing more infuriating then having a character in a medieval fantasy setting suddenly splurging into a diatribe against monarchy using modern language of freedom and democracy. Or a knight in the crusades suddenly shifting from <shudders> ye olde speech into the atheist writer's voice gleefully pointing out the evils of religion.

Why is this so annoying? Because it breaks the flow. You are forcing your ideals onto the world - the world no longer feels natural but instead now feels like an extended metaphor for your own morality. Keep your world realistic! I quite generally don't care when I'm reading a book about the evils of dictatorship - esp. when the image of the dictatorship is so misconceived that it demonstrates the writers lack of thorough and objective research.

An example: Goodkind's Sword of Truth series: it started ok... then completely destroyed itself in the later book with a horrific combination of Mary-Suism, diatribes against communism, borderline-offesnive black and white morality and around 5 books endlessly repeating Goodkind's opinions on the state of women throughout our history.

Another example in this very thread: The belief that the world is round. I've read so many stories of historical-fantasy that portrays everyone thinking the world is flat - when there is more evidence to suggest that people thought the world was round - to the point that whenever I see a scene of a group of greek scholars laughing at the (often young) genius who says the world is actually round I throw the book away as an example of someone simply repeating myths.

A world should never simply be a vehicle for morality - because whenever it does you get the idea that the world is a fantasy world being described by someone in the 21st Century.

This has become something of a rant - and for that I apologise. But, in core:

1) Keep it realistic - you're saving yourself a lot of work if you just use the current world laws, etc. Remember: we have the perfect example of a functional world around us - with the added advantage that all your readers already know the basic details

2) Keep it subtle - the less details you give, the better. One doesn't need a guidebook to magic. Good examples of magic handled well are Game of Thrones, Farseer and Tawney Man. Excessive rules = waffle.

3) Don't be stupid - just because you are writing fantasy doesn't mean that the laws of making sense need not apply.

4) It's not our world - keep the characters and circumstances true to the world in question. Don't force 21st century thoughts and opinions into your story - only use opinions that make sense. A world is not something to do as you please with - it has to be a self contained unit within itself. Remember: the reader doesn't know what you know, and will be judging the story and world on purely it's own.

and

5) Avoid the crusades. Otherwise I will have to hunt you down.

 

[Jabrosky]

Wow, someone seems to misunderstand the point of fantasy. The whole point of fantasy (and I say this as someone who doesn't bother with "scientific realism" when worldbuilding anymore) is "anything goes". If I wanted to write about the real world, I wouldn't write fantasy in the first place, would I?

 

[Mindfire]

[RANT]"..."[/RANT]

I sense an argument coming on.

 

[It's a Squirrel...Moose?]

My point was that excessive world building often results in a decrease in realism, which (again, in my opinion) is a very, very bad thing; and that a fantasy book need not necessarily be based around magic, dragons and excessive amount of Gods. I enjoy Game of Thrones as much as the next man; and I know that dragons feature quite heavily in it; and I love the work of Robin Hobb which, also features dragons and magic quite a bit - but in both examples the lack of 'realism' is countered by an otherwise immensely sense of realism, and the unrealistic elements are handled with enough tact and skill that the 'suspension of disbelief' is easy to cross.

Stories I personally dislike however is when the sense of disbelief is so strong that I struggle to enjoy the story.

This is not say that the world has to be a perfect replica of our own! When I say realism, I mean it that one could possibly consider that it is real - that one can reasonable suspend their disbelief and work within the world - to believe in it. As soon as I stop believing in a plot/story - BAM, lost reader - bad reviews. Now, I understand that some people are fine with such escapism - and I'm fine that people want to write it - but I personally dislike it.

It is normally not the simple act of casting spells that is the problem. Magic, instead, suffers from the problem of MarySuism - it's the classic 'why don't they just fly to Mordor' plot hole that magic nearly always brings into the problem. It comes to the point where the writer has to place limits on their world simply because they need them to solve a plot hole - for example, in a world of magic transmution - the law that 'wizards can't make food' rears its ugly head as the fact that wizards should be able to make food brings into direct question why your plot is about a famine. Or, the wheel of time issue - when Rand can do everything, except when the plot demands that he can't - for instance raising the dead.

I find that the most simple way around these plot-holes that result from magic is to massively downscale magic in all my writings.

I can accept a flying dragon (albeit grudgingly) - I can also accept a runed sword that can melt through ice (again... very grudgingly) - but it's not my personal taste at all. Nor do I think that fantasy needs that outlandish edge to make it effective.

My point was simply that the world around us is already such a powerfully concepted world - simply because it exists! It's a world we can work with, and indeed, a world we all work in! My point against worldbuilding is that often the world that exists is less wonderful and complex then the world around us - that in trying to develop their own 'take' writers are needlessly complicating a story so it becomes more about the world and not the story.

The real world is also so vast that a multitude of fantastical events can take place! A giant lizard doesn't need to fly for there to be majesty, a wizard need not draw fire from a rune or a word to invoke power - a city need not be in a cave for there to be strife.

Also: excessive world-building nearly always requires more work for the writer; and I'm a firm believer that the least amount of background you need for your world to work, the more you can focus on plot. The best fantasy books are, in my mind, when the writer walks a narrow line between 'anything goes' and 'what is real.'

 

[Mindfire]

I think you're conflating "realism" with believability. Fantasy must be believable- that is, internally consistent- but it doesn't have to be realistic-that is, conforming to the rules of our own world. Increased amount of worldbuilding does mean an increased amount of internal rules that the author must remember and stick to, meaning the opporunity for plot holes and inconsistencies is multiplied. But I don't think that's a very compelling reason to give up worldbuilding altogether. Imagination for imagination's sake is a great thing, after all. Rather, an author should be careful, efficient, and elegant in their worldbuilding.

 

[ThinkerX]

I am sympathetic to the view in the OP. I dislike the notion of world building for fantasy (crazy I know) - simply because I feel people go to the extreme in trying to build a 'different' world to our own in their (in my opinion) misbegotten opinion that our world is boring. Or, they commit (in my mind) the sin of trying to 'spice' up our own history by transplanting dinosaurs/magic/fantasy into actual historical events - whilst managing quite successfully to completely misunderstand the event in question or portray it in a deeply childish light - the most common being the crusades.

I personally dislike worlds that are built around a single premise. Now, I'm not trying to be harsh to the original poster, but a book about a hot female hunting dinosaurs would be one that I would immediately put down - it's not my forte at all - I like my fantasy to be very realistic. Oh, I like magic, dragons, etc - but I find that such things have to handled in such a way that I can believe in it. A world has to feel real - it has to feel that it exists because it does.

You are touching on things which bothered me at a background level for a long, long while, and finally prompted me to my current solution:

'The aliens did it.'

I finally decided that a race or races of 'aliens' had been visiting earth now and again over a period spanning tens of millenia - at a minimum, collecting frequently very large 'sample populations' of earth flora and fauna - including humans.

For reasons of thier own - utterly alien reasons, because these beings are most emphatically NOT human, they terraformed a dead or nearly dead world somewhere else for their own purposes. This is where they brought the vast bulk of the life forms they picked up on earth. Much of what they brought back they simply turned loose, with some of the rest they conducted long strings of occassionally brutal experiments.

Some humans ended up being 'transformed' into elves or dwarves by these experiments. In others, dormant psionic abilities were awakened (magic). I should point out that by fantasy standards, most of these wizards are wimps.

They also imported flora, fauna, and even sapients from other worlds to this terraformed world as well.

And then the aliens went away, and are barely more than a legend among the races they brought to this world.

Now...I have no plans for dinosaurs in this world, but this model would phausibly let me include them: the ancient aliens made them from ancient DNA, using superior technology to fill in the gaps...then simply turned them loose when their experiments were finished.

Characters learn bits and pieces of this backstory in the various tales.

Sound a bit more phausible, Squirrel Moose?

 

[Zero Angel]

My dinosaurs were created from the relics left behind in their ancient citadels and warped/twisted to the ends of the race of creatures that created them.

That is, in the beginning there were saurians, a civilization that was overthrown and all but wiped out. Then about 65.55 million years later, their closest genetic relatives discovered the remnants of the civilization and went, "Hey, we can create a bunch of slave/animal creatures out of these guys and use them to our own ends!"

Unfortunately, hot females do sometimes hunt them, but hot females also hunt mammals if this helps...or anything else they want to do I guess (unless they're slaves too! and FORCED to hunt dinosaurs! Gasp!)

 

[J.D. Hallowell]

I got interested in writing fantasy fiction in the first place because fantasy, with its "anything goes" spirit, is the only genre out there that allows me to combine my various interests. For example, as I've said before, it's the only genre which would allow me to write about sexy African warrior chicks fighting dinosaurs in the jungle. Few genres are more favorable to the Rule of Cool which I deeply cherish.

Unfortunately, as an atheist and a metaphysical naturalist, I tend to take a highly scientific approach to world-building. I want my worlds' physics, geology, and other mechanics to resemble the real world's as much as possible, because I believe that a world with completely different mechanics would end up incomprehensibly alien to us. I could never write a disc-shaped world balanced atop giant elephants for instance. Everything in my worlds must make sense from a scientific and mechanical point of view. For that reason I usually don't like to have magical, supernatural, or any other scientifically implausible elements in my world-building.

This causes me major headaches because keeping within the limits of plausibility precludes certain creative ideas or at least makes them harder to justify. Take for instance the sexy dinosaur huntresses I described in my opening paragraph; even if humans and dinosaurs could co-evolve in the same ecosystems, in most pre-industrial cultures women have the burden of producing and nursing children from the moment they reach fecundity at ages 13-16, so most can't really afford to hunt big and dangerous game. The only way I could get around this is to give my tribal chicks implausibly modern attitudes about gender roles or distort their biology to the point where they don't resemble humans any more.

I really wish I could take more creative liberties with the world and revel in fantasy's "anything goes" spirit, but on the other hand I understand the need for consistency and a certain degree of realism so that readers don't feel completely weirded out. Am I thinking too rigidly about this?

I don't necessarily think that you are thinking about this too rigidly, but you may need to be willing to look more deeply at the underlying reasons why things are the way they are, and what the consequences would be of changing them. Women were tied to child-bearing and child-rearing roles in most pre-industrial societies primarily because they didn't have control over their fertility. Give your tribal women birth control, and you solve the problem of rigid gender roles inside of a few generations without the need to turn them into aliens. The story of the social upheaval that results from the discovery of the birth control herb, dinosaur gland preparation, or other biologically active substance might even make great fiction. So would the story of the struggle to control access to it. The ancient Greeks knew of an herb, native to a single island, that was reputed to prevent pregnancy - they harvested it into extinction. There is a lot you can do and still stay within the bounds of the reasonable.

 

[Saigonnus]

For the most part, I disagree. I think a certain amount of worldbuilding is necessary in "fantasy writing "; even if the writer purposely leaves it obscure to the readers; he/she should still have that working knowledge of his world to avoid the annoying plot mistakes/holes. The only way that no worldbuilding is needed is if it uses earth for the world, then it becomes common knowledge to reader and writer both.

As for the whole idea of writing something just for a specific something to happen; that is the basis of MANY fantasy novels. The author has an idea in the shower or on the way to work or whatever and decides it would be a cool idea to have a story based off of a walk to work that goes terribly wrong... or a psychotic pizza delivery man. Boiled down far enough EVERY story comes down to a basic premise; most can be said in a single phrase or even question.

For example: Jurassic Park: What if man brought dinosaurs back from extinction?
Harry Potter: A young boy goes to a wizard's school.

I think it's HOW the story is told, the characters and environment that makes the story good or not. I myself prefer a world of rich characters, immersive background and world I can sink my teeth into a escape reality; the reason I enjoy fantasy and science fiction.

I do agree with most others however, in there is a such thing as TOO MUCH world building (I have been guilty of this myself in the past) as it tends to create unnecesssary restrictions to the story that perhaps could limit the story within the framework. A fantastically intricate world populated by bland, lifeless characters would be a tragedy of infinite proportions.