How deep are your worlds?

[Laughing_Seraphim]

I think balance is key here. Authors who don't put forth enough detail about their worlds are prone to easily forgettable worlds. Books have changed, and so have readers. No doubt the average reader has come to be more a little lazy. There is a line to be drawn between florid or descriptive work and excessively wordy work.
I think the Terry Brooks novel "The Elfstones of Shannarra" does a really good job of achieving a solid rhythm while still painting beautiful imagery. Shogun, on the other hand can be difficult to get through for even seasoned readers.
A point to be made is that one of those is something of a classic, while the Terry Brooks book is somewhat obscure.

 

[Fnord]

I'm only 17 and I'm attempting my first real work in my free time. I've worked on designing my world and I was just wondering how in-depth your worlds go. I saw the topic about time and if you really think about it, a new world would require a new time system (days, months) and even the one o'clock, two o'clock is questionable. Many words would have to be taken out, curses, and other things I can't think of. And for all the British people on the forum, even bloody couldn't really be used. It can get really frustrating at times when you think of the scope of it all. To what extent do you guys manufacture your new worlds?

Well, if you want to be really authentic, the people would have to speak in a completely different fictional language!

 

[Elder the Dwarf]

Well, if you want to be really authentic, the people would have to speak in a completely different fictional language!

Haha that was essentially the point of the thread. Obviously that was overkill, but I was trying to see where you guys draw the proverbial line. How much should be left similar, and how much should be created? The conversation kind of took on a life of its own, but I've enjoyed all of the responses.

 

[Shadoe]

I've created a very detailed world. It's got a history that spans a couple thousand years I've got the royal family's timeline set up in detail for the last century or so. I've got a book-sized document that details customs from marriages to games to eating habits.

Most of it never shows up in stories. But it's there. I feel like I have to know my world before I write about it.

 

[Laughing_Seraphim]

Overkill is a matter of taste. Some of my favorite books integrate alien units of time and other measurements. Unfortunately there isn't actually a solid and universally accepted amount of description one would use. The thread on exposition might help here.
be aware this is the part of the world that gets put into the script. The worlds I dream up are always far larger and more complex than what goes into the book. The last thing I really wrote I had staked out units of time, how paper goods were made, religions, marriage rituals, methods of commerce, local agriculture, pornography, bias against gays and orphans, gender roles, political system, planetary weather and layout.
However, that didn't all get covered in the writing, or to the extent it was covered in the build. That planet alone I have 4 or 5 different races that aren't covered at all or mentioned only briefly. I could likely write another novel starting from the errata therein and the world would be consistent across two hefty tomes written years apart.
The best part if, in setting up the world I had a couple of major plots lines (challenges) present themselves from out of the aether where ink and paper met.
World(universe/domain) and Character building is one of the best creative development tools I can think of.

Look at P.E.R.N., a well known series of novels that emerged from a single acronym, which led to the creation of a world, characters and TONS of stories.

 

[Terra Arkay]

It's pretty simple at the moment but I'm developing on it, It's going to be one deep world...

 

[Worldbreaker]

I love world building, so my worlds are pretty in depth. It just depends on how much writing I want to do in the world.

 

[Hans]

Most of what I could say has already been said. This is a forum for writers, so I don't expect most worlds here to be much deeper than the story needs it to be. That is the right thing to do for story authors.

I like my worlds to be detailed. And I like to read about different worlds. Sometimes even wold "fact sheets".
IMHO a good world needs to be coherent. I don't believe it to be good style to throw elves and dwarfs to Cimmeria (world of Conan the barbarian). It does not fit. Such a "building block world" might be god t write stories fast, but these stories normally don't intrigue me. Maybe I am ruined for these from the link below.
Pure authors might probably not to want to read any further.

For those who really into world building and speak any German I would like to invite you to the German weltenbastler forum at weltenbastler.net. A fair warning: Don't go there if you want to get your story done in reasonable time.
There we have not only story authors, but also role playing game authors, artists that like to draw in their own phantasy world or people who like worldbuilding just for the sake of worldbuilding.

 

[FictionQuest]

I must say that I found a great deal of the Tolkein world building to be too much. In some ways it also left me frustrated. I still want to know whether the Entwives are out there somewhere!

 

[Terra Arkay]

I'm younger than you and I like to go real intense when it comes to world-building, I've planned to have at least 1 year of developing the world.

 

[Devor]

I must say that I found a great deal of the Tolkein world building to be too much. In some ways it also left me frustrated. I still want to know whether the Entwives are out there somewhere!

If you don't know, you'll probably be pleasantly surprised. They're in the Shire. All the clues are there.

I will say, though, I found Tolkein's "World-Building" to be just right for the story he's telling, in the sense there's nothing on the map which doesn't show up. I find it's the histories which get dumped on you to at times be a little much. I don't mean necessarily to contradict you, but I think that's a distinction some writers might find useful to make.

 

[Jabrosky]

I don't think my worldbuilding's too deep yet. I have an idea of what kind of cultures and animals I want as well as the history of a few of the cultures, but I have only a crude Paint sketch for a map and little else.

 

[Johnny Cosmo]

I have only a crude Paint sketch for a map and little else.

You ought to come and show us in this thread! I really enjoy seeing everyones maps.

 

[Ophiucha]

Depends on the story, and the world.

My pet project of the past few years, in spite of the time I've spent on it, isn't particularly deep. It's rich, certainly, with hints of a lot of depth - but I've never decided on what those depths really are. I don't need to, I just need them to exist for the sake of the story. That's very much the case with most of my stories, as well. Most of my stories are developed exactly as much as I need for them to be in order to write the story, and not very much further. How much that is can vary widely. "The Memory of Stone" has no worldbuilding notes at all, because all I really needed to know was a few city names and one major historical event to get the story going, and everything else works well on the fly. "Three, Seven, Queen" has some notes, though it is more research into Slavic mythology than genuine worldbuilding. Again, I named a few nations for passing reference and had to map out a bit of a family tree and a literal map of the city, but there are many, many details that are left completely unknown, even to me.

But, then I have my little "#soundworld" project as it's become known as, where I am setting about nine stories (all of which I have a plan for, because going in without a plan leads to a lot of retconning, I find). That one is getting the whole, Tolkienian shebang. Well, in certain areas. Trade is way, way more important and language is sort of half-and-half. Not doing a real language, not *fully*, but I do need to invent a music notation system, and that involves math, so it is infinitely more challenging, in my opinion. Though I do say this as somebody who both majored in linguistics and has number synaesthesia, so my perspective may be grossly skewed.

 

[RobW]

Story building is my Achilles' heel. I'm terrible at it. My approach is to construct characters that are interesting(to me, at least) and then throw them together car crash style and see where all the pieces land. At that point i develop the world around what i have in terms of story content, being careful not to overload or outshine the story itself. Being a fan of the the Sakaguchi/Uematsu era Final Fantasy games, my emphasis is on story content and heart. Everything else is pure mental aesthetics.

 

[Garren Jacobsen]

Really wouldn't depth depend on the story you are telling? If your story revolves around the ancient past that is affecting the current time then history and other things that makes a world deep would by necessity would have to be included in the world building. However if what matters is only the present action and history has very little to do with the story then the best approach would be to only get down the necessary details and a few extemporaneous ones that would make your world feel full.

For example of the first my, shall we say dream work, deals with the events of a war that occurred a thousand years ago with events that spawned that war affecting the current story. Many of the major developments of that war also happen to affect the story. Therefore by necessity of the story I have to delve deeper into the history of the war and create, by extension, a "deeper world".

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

RobW, that's exactly how I build my stories. Not because I think I'm "bad at story building," but because good stories always depend on quirks of character. Good stories are all about people having agency; confronting dilemmas and making choices. If it makes no sense for character X to do Y, then you either wrote character X wrong, or you're trying to make Y happen regardless of whether it makes any sense for characters to do that.

At the same time, you (usually) need to have a decent narrative structure, building up toward a climax. Not all stories do that but most do, and there's a reason for that. What I think produces the best stories is the process of creating good characters, and figuring out plausible choices they can make that also happen to lead to an interesting narrative.

 

[RobW]

I actually meant to say "world building is my Achilles heel". I have some elements in mind when it comes to character/scenario creation but its usually pretty generic at the point of conception. I'm not saying this is how all stories should be created its just that I personally struggle with it.

 

[UnintentionallyHeroic]

As for world building... I'm kind of feeling overwhelmed as well. I'm 16, and just starting out too. Naming countries and towns and mountains... that's simple. I have different names for the different days of the week, keeping rather cheesily close to our English ones (Mirdal, Thordal, Wirendal, etc.) The 24 hour day remains the same, as do the seasons. But my advice? Don't sit and think on it. Trust me, if you sit there long enough, things will come to your head that you need to come up with and it will KILL YOU until you come up with it. Besides, having a ridiculously complex world is a big no-no in the fantasy fiction department. But, if you don't think so, it's probably for the best, considering I'm freaking out about it as well.

 

[Devor]

Besides, having a ridiculously complex world is a big no-no in the fantasy fiction department.

Welcome to the forum!

I think there's levels of complexity. I think it's okay to have a hundred different monsters if they're all crawling out of the same demonic warp gate, but it might not be okay to break into histories explaining each one's relationship with the warhost that released them. To put it differently, I think there needs to be a simple throughline off of which the complexity of your world is hanging. Anything which doesn't connect to that throughline should probably be cut. That often goes for stories as well, but that's another post.

Of course it's not always as simple as that, but generally speaking it's a good guideline to follow.