Following a few of the great discussions taking place in these forums, I've seen a number of tips for world-building and on making that world interesting and exciting and believable and in-depth. And always someone points out, the world has to follow the story, instead of overshadow it.
In both of the stories I'm working on, I've built the world into obsessive levels of depth and detail that might not be important, but I have always built the world around the story, and not the other way around.
I want to tell a story about a person who has been afflicted with a transformative curse, which is heavy in unique and interesting characters. To keep the story personal and the characters relevant, I need a small landmass - hence, a single small country. I want to make the curse edgy and dangerous, afflicting others, which makes the entire landscape dangerous. I've had to build the history and society around these limitations and others, creating a unique picture, a unique history, a unique landscape - to some extent, I feel that given these limitations which I've chosen, I've had little choice in concluding what the world and the societies involved actually look like. They have to look that way in order to balance out the details of the story I want to tell.
I feel the same way in the other story I'm working on, a mythological piece set in a Norse/Viking culture. I'm locked, in many ways, by the story I want to tell and the research I come across. It's high in action, high in visuals, with probably too many characters. There are over fifteen distinct types of magic. For instance, based on the research, dwarfs turn into stone if they're out in the sun, unless they've done something which transforms them into an animal instead. This plays out in the history, has consequences for certain half-dwarf characters, and so on. Because I want to bring the mythology to life in a particular way and story, I have to build the details of the world around what I want to do, and not just because it's "cool" or interesting by itself.
But those are just examples. The real question is: How has the story you want to tell dictated the world you want to build? Are there circumstances unique to your story which you have had to build your world around?
In both of the stories I'm working on, I've built the world into obsessive levels of depth and detail that might not be important, but I have always built the world around the story, and not the other way around.
I want to tell a story about a person who has been afflicted with a transformative curse, which is heavy in unique and interesting characters. To keep the story personal and the characters relevant, I need a small landmass - hence, a single small country. I want to make the curse edgy and dangerous, afflicting others, which makes the entire landscape dangerous. I've had to build the history and society around these limitations and others, creating a unique picture, a unique history, a unique landscape - to some extent, I feel that given these limitations which I've chosen, I've had little choice in concluding what the world and the societies involved actually look like. They have to look that way in order to balance out the details of the story I want to tell.
I feel the same way in the other story I'm working on, a mythological piece set in a Norse/Viking culture. I'm locked, in many ways, by the story I want to tell and the research I come across. It's high in action, high in visuals, with probably too many characters. There are over fifteen distinct types of magic. For instance, based on the research, dwarfs turn into stone if they're out in the sun, unless they've done something which transforms them into an animal instead. This plays out in the history, has consequences for certain half-dwarf characters, and so on. Because I want to bring the mythology to life in a particular way and story, I have to build the details of the world around what I want to do, and not just because it's "cool" or interesting by itself.
But those are just examples. The real question is: How has the story you want to tell dictated the world you want to build? Are there circumstances unique to your story which you have had to build your world around?