How much world building is really 'needed' to establish a setting?

[Naruzeldamaster]

Before someone says it: yes, I'm aware that 'how much the story needs to get moving' is the answer but this amount also differs depending on the story. It also depends on tone too. Let alone if the 'lore' is important to the plot at all.

If we want to talk about games as an example: how something like Elder Scrolls handles it's 'intro' is vastly different from something like I dunno, Kirby or Pokemon.

Flavor text in RPG's is some of my favorite things (especially about food, yes, I made the joke) but in other media such as films and books. I feel like there's a limit to how much 'lore' you can dump and still have things be interesting. ESPECIALLY at the start of the first chapter. I tend to struggle with establishing my settings and not bogging them down with extra lore that doesn't need to exist, yet.

My biggest weakness is the 'establishing shot' if we were talking in film terms. I kinda wonder if there are any tricks to get better at these bits (beyond just experimenting)

 

[skip.knox]

There's more than one way to think about this. I'll trot out a couple.

Is really needed by whom? You could think about what *you* need from a story by way of establishing a setting. I can't think of a way to ask readers, but if there were I bet you would get a range of responses. Let's suppose that's the case: what then? How would knowing that help? OK, let's consider what *you* need. Are you happy with how your stories establish setting? If not, where--specifically, exactly--do they come up short? Then you might have something you could work on.

Another way to come at this would be to ask what you mean by "establish". Do you mean to say enough about the setting that you don't have to mention it again? Probably not. Getting clearer in your own mind about the goal will help you reach it.

And a suggestion. Forget for a moment about setting. Think about a character and ask the question again. How much description or background is "really" needed to establish a character? Dealing with a character can be easier because it's more limited (in some ways, anyway).

 

[pmmg]

Given the reasons you stated, might you not get better advise if you put up the portion of the story you are having trouble with?

In general, I think you can leave a lot of it out.

A woman stands in the woods, her head looking back in the dark. She hears the howling of a wolf, and it is answered by many. It is close. She starts to run again.


There....how much setting was there? Do I care where the woods are? Or if it hot or cold, or even if it is light or dark?

All of that can be filled in as the story goes.

 

[Queshire]

Hmmm.... start with establishing the tone and aesthetic first and then you can look into what you can add afterwards.

 

[Penpilot]

Flavor text in RPG's is some of my favorite things (especially about food, yes, I made the joke) but in other media such as films and books. I feel like there's a limit to how much 'lore' you can dump and still have things be interesting. ESPECIALLY at the start of the first chapter. I tend to struggle with establishing my settings and not bogging them down with extra lore that doesn't need to exist, yet.

My biggest weakness is the 'establishing shot' if we were talking in film terms. I kinda wonder if there are any tricks to get better at these bits (beyond just experimenting)

There are three things that every scene can do, show character, advance the plot, expand the world. Good scenes do two of the three. Meh scenes only do one. Great scenes do all three.

When I approach any scene, introduction or not, I think about what I'm trying to do with the scene, What specific things about character, plot, and world, do I need to establish, move forward, and/or introduce. I then design the scene to allow me to have those those things come out naturally as the scene plays out.


Here's a quick, cheesy sketch of an example scene. Let's say I have the following list of things I want to establish in a scene and see how they can be stitched together.

-the main character is a comic shop owner
-he's having trouble with his supplier
-he has girlfriend troubles
-gremlins are real
-Vampires are not
-he hates Superman
-he loves Wolverine
-he forgot to pay his rent for his shop
-he has heart of gold
-after work he's going to play DnD.

So how do you design a scene that covers all that?

We could start the scene with the comic shop owner, let's call him Bob, behind the counter and on the land-line phone with his supplier. He's been on hold for 15 minutes. He knows they're not busy and are just F-ing with him. A goth-kid walks in dress ups as a vampire. Make up to the nines with fake-blood and dripping fangs to match.

Bob's iPhone rings. It's his girlfriend. He presses ignore. He's got save his fight for the supplier, if and when they pick-up his call again. He notices the goth-kid slipping comic books into their trench coat. A second later the goth-kid makes for the door, but Bob doesn't move.

As soon as the goth-kid grabs the door handle, poof, a guard gremlin appears and jumps on his face. Bob says to the goth-kid, "You either leave here with your face or the comics. Your move." The kid stumbles to Bob and dumps a pile of Superman comics onto the counter. Bob tells the kid "If you going to risk it all and steal, at least steal something interesting. Not books about that big, blue, Kryptonian turd. Take something with a little more class and violence." He hands the kid a stack of old Wolverine comics as well as some old Superman ones and tells them they're on the house.

The goth-kid looks at him stunned and says, "You ain't going to call the cops?"

Bob says, "No. But don't do that again. Else the real monster--" Bob points to the guard gremlin floating by the entrance "--will eat the boy dressed as a fake one." Bob jerks his thumb towards the door. "You can go now. It's almost closing time, and I got a DnD game to get to."

The goth-kid leaves just as the landlord comes in and hands Bob an eviction notice.

Not sure if this is what you're looking for, but that's my approach.

 

[Prince of Spires]

It always depends.

The main things to consider in my opinion are:
- how different is your world?
- how steep do you want the reader's learning curve to be?
- what does the reader need to know for this particular scene?

Depending on the answers to those questions, your writing is going to be different. To go through them:

How different your world is determines how much explaining you have to do. Simply put, if you have a generic medieval england, Lord of the Rings look-a-like setting, then you don't have to do all that much world building. If on the other hand you have a weird flat world carried on the back of 4 elephants carried by a turtle flying through space you might have to do a bit more.

What I mean with learning curve is how easy do you want to make it for the reader to follow what's happening? Harry Potter has a very shallow learning curve for instance. This is partially done by making Harry Potter an outsider to his world, which means he gets every weird thing explained to him, which in turn means that the reader gets everything explained. The Stormlight Archive on the other hand has a fairly steep learning curve. Very little is explained to the reader. Instead, we're simply shown the world and have to figure out what's happening as we go along (I remember that the first time I read about plants hiding I back-tracked just to double check I'd read it correctly). It's a matter of taste and style, but one requires more explaining than the other.

Lastly, what does the reader need to know to make sense of what's happening. It sort of follows from the other two, but not completely. The reader should know what's going on (even if he doesn't understand the why). So you need to establish that either in the scene, or before it. Another example, in the first Mistborn book, In the opening scene a character shows up and performs magic to rescue a family. Now, because the reader has no idea about the magic, and it would really slow down the opening pages to both show and explain it all, all that magic happens off-screen. That way, the reader doesn't actually need to know it all to make sense of what's going on.

Lastly, keep in mind that a picture is worth a 1000 words. That makes film and games different from novels. A game can easily show you the setting without actually using any of your attention. Also, many games don't really care all that much about the story. It's more a frame for the game than anything else. That means a game like Kirby can get away with limited, or almost no world building. Skyrim people play for the story (in part) which means you need to do more work in that regard.

 

[The Dark One]

Always remember that the reader brings their entire history of reading and life experience to your story.

If your setting is fairly standard then the reader will already be familiar with it and you won't need more than brush strokes.

If your setting is unusual, or even unique, then some finer granularity will be needed.

 

[Lynea]

My typical strategy--though it's not an end-all-be-all solution, is I draft something with the bare minimum of 'worldbuilding' within the first three chapters. I establish things, yes, but I focus much more on the characters and their motivations before adding in peripheral lore and such. More often than not, a beta reader or friend will tell me that they'd like more grounding at a certain part before they can continue onward, and then it basically flourishes from there. The first three chapters are imperative to fiction because it encompasses many aspects of your story, but if you allow lore to take the farthest seat back, it might resolve your own insecurities about establishment.

Also, while it's true that in films and TV, fantasies typically have this introduction part to help ground the setting, you'll notice that it's almost always two minutes or less of lore. So, I'd encourage you to ponder on what this might say to you about its true importance at a beginning. Books don't need to be handled like films, though, and most often they have a prologue or quotes before a chapter for the same general purpose.

 

[Ban]

Worldbuilding in SFF fiction IS the setting. The better you do it (not the more) the better it will service your work. How much is required is dependent on your writing style, the length of the book, the target audience and the sub-genre. A Young Adult novella written in clear and simple prose set in a world similar to ours requires far less than a Dune-style epic. Mind you, regardless of these factors the worldbuilding does need to be coherent and convincing (in the context of the story). My advice is to look at established works in the sub-genres you wish to write in and see what their authors' approach to unveiling their world is. How much do those works reveal? At what pace? In what manner?

 

[Naruzeldamaster]

I think my main issue with my plot idea is that it's too similar to one I'm currently writing.
The characters, setting, and world are different, but the whole thing of the two main characters initially disliking eachother and they eventually get along because plot happened is still there. I should really finish my current idea before I start/get distracted by my next one.

 

[pmmg]

I agree, you should finish one before starting another.

It would seem to me, if you want to break the pattern, just write the opposite. Maybe they start liking each other and grow to hate instead. Or give a reason it cannot happen, like they are siblings. But the plot you describe is typical of romances and they have much success with them, so....can it be all bad?

 

[Naruzeldamaster]

I agree, you should finish one before starting another.

It would seem to me, if you want to break the pattern, just write the opposite. Maybe they start liking each other and grow to hate instead. Or give a reason it cannot happen, like they are siblings. But the plot you describe is typical of romances and they have much success with them, so....can it be all bad?

I mean the general vibe of the story is different (the protagonists are a lot different, especially the male lead) but the main plot thread is pretty similar. I'll see what I can do to change that while I work on and finish my current one. I just don't want to fall into the trap of 'writing the same archetypes/plot threads with new names and faces cause it's easy' if I can avoid it.

 

[The Dark One]

I'm always working on several ideas at once so I don't think it matters whether you finish once before continuing with the second.

Unless you're working towards someone else's deadline, it doesn't matter.

Whatever works...

 

[Devor]

There was a different thread a while back about the "minimum" needed for worldbuilding. But this one strikes me a little different because of its focus on establishing a setting.

And the setting is all about the details.

In a hypothetical medieval world, you probably thought of names for the castle, the king, the order of knights, the political history, weaponry, and so on. But then in the first chapter of the story we find that your character takes a stroll through the marketplace. Now on the fly you've got to think of fruits, beaded jewelry, pots, tapestries, and the castle bread. Where are the merchants from? Which of them stand out? Two thirds of your chapter is on the sights and smells and details of this scene. That's just the cushion, the delivery mechanism, for your plot and worldbuilding, about the underground freedom fighters serving a disgraced prince, represented by the shifty side character trading stolen gold.

But those marketplace details can be rich in worldbuilding. Which fruits grow in this climate? What kind of symbolism is in their beads? What country were the pots imported from? Who are the old men on the tapestries? Did the castle bread change under the new king - is eating the wrong bread a sign of defiance (it sounds weird, but each castle had their own style of bread). The potential depth of your worldbuilding is never ending.

So how much is needed to establish the setting? As much as your characters are going see, hear, taste, smell, touch and otherwise experience, on every page of your book. But you've got to work on the fly. You cannot possibly plan for the sheer volume of details that exist in a world.

 

[Naruzeldamaster]

I'm always working on several ideas at once so I don't think it matters whether you finish once before continuing with the second.

Unless you're working towards someone else's deadline, it doesn't matter.

Whatever works...

My problem is if I start working on a 'second' idea I get distracted by the new idea for long enough that a new NEW idea pops up, it's a vicious cycle i really need to curb. It gets to a point where I'm working on 5+ projects at once sometimes. And that's half of the reason I made my current project short n simple.
On one hand it's good because I'm never 'out' of ideas, but I sure would like to actually finish a project lol

I could always write the first chapter of it and tell the idea to wait in line. But that doesn't always work.

 

[pmmg]

If you are having trouble completing, see the rules below. Get a few to the end, and you can come back and try differently. Get some to the end, and some of those ideas will start to be one in hand, and stop being two in the bush.

 

[The Dark One]

My problem is if I start working on a 'second' idea I get distracted by the new idea for long enough that a new NEW idea pops up, it's a vicious cycle i really need to curb. It gets to a point where I'm working on 5+ projects at once sometimes. And that's half of the reason I made my current project short n simple.
On one hand it's good because I'm never 'out' of ideas, but I sure would like to actually finish a project lol

I could always write the first chapter of it and tell the idea to wait in line. But that doesn't always work.

It works for me. My typical model is that I have the big idea - write feverishly for a month - then stick my 30-odd pages in the bottom drawer to percolate. It might be five years until I come back to it but I always do.

 

[Joe McM]

Interesting question. I’m a visual writer. So, as a write a scene, I’m in it. After my first book draft, I realized that I had too much info that didn’t contribute to the story. So, I removed what wasn’t necessary but kept it available in case that information is needed later.

While I currently edit the first book in the series, I’ve started the second. As a school is central to the story, I essentially drafted it. Now, as I move forward in the writing I can include the details that are necessary. That said, the world of my series is not fully formed. So, I’m leaving that more flexible as ideas for later chapters and books arise.

 

[Foxkeyes]

Before someone says it: yes, I'm aware that 'how much the story needs to get moving' is the answer but this amount also differs depending on the story. It also depends on tone too. Let alone if the 'lore' is important to the plot at all.

If we want to talk about games as an example: how something like Elder Scrolls handles it's 'intro' is vastly different from something like I dunno, Kirby or Pokemon.

Flavor text in RPG's is some of my favorite things (especially about food, yes, I made the joke) but in other media such as films and books. I feel like there's a limit to how much 'lore' you can dump and still have things be interesting. ESPECIALLY at the start of the first chapter. I tend to struggle with establishing my settings and not bogging them down with extra lore that doesn't need to exist, yet.

My biggest weakness is the 'establishing shot' if we were talking in film terms. I kinda wonder if there are any tricks to get better at these bits (beyond just experimenting)

Your book cover and blurb (or agent cover letter) will already have established an expectation in your audiences' mind about what the world, characters, story is about. So you don't need a huge amount in chapter 1. A few details that mark your world as unique could be enough, just enough to give the reader a solid place to build on their expectations.

 

[Finchbearer]

It works for me. My typical model is that I have the big idea - write feverishly for a month - then stick my 30-odd pages in the bottom drawer to percolate. It might be five years until I come back to it but I always do.

This might be similar to my methods.