Is worldbuilding pointless?

[Culhwch]

To return to the original point of this thread...

I was just musing upon another useful aspect to worldbuilding: it can very often unearth characters, plots and settings that may not only enrich your narrative, but take it to places or in directions infinitely better than you'd first thought or imagined. For instance, my current work in progress began life as a simple action/adventure story focussing on one character. But as I fleshed out his world, I discovered that he was but one facet of the story, and in fact the narrative drive lay far from his wanderings, and embraced a host of other interesting characters. He's still involved, but his role is much smaller - to the benefit of the story, or at least so I hope. But if I'd just dived straight into his story, I'd never have discovered what else was going on in the world outside of his line of sight. And, knowing me, it would have petered out very quickly indeed.

I might just add a caveat (so I don't kick off another back-and-forth debate) that I'm not saying worldbuilding is essential or that everyone must do it. Just sharing my experience...

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I think, Culhwch, that you've just summed up several points I was trying to make earlier on, and much more lucidly than I could have done it.

 

[JDawg2.0]

Hi! I'm new here, and I couldn't wait to post in this thread.

When pondering the question serving as the topic of this thread, I almost immediately typed "yes, it is pointless". I suppressed that urge, and thought on it some more.

It ultimately depends on what you are trying to do. Someone else in this thread wrote that the answer is dependent on what the reader is looking for. I believe that completely. Some readers want glorified summaries, with a lovin' spoonful of melodrama. And that's fine. Others want a rich world, full of places and people and creatures and kingdoms and castles and...well, convolution! And that's fine, too.

When talking about what is widely considered to be good fiction, the definition shrinks, generally, to tightly-written narratives. For my money, the best writers can pound out a great story in ten thousand words.

To be fair, there is something to be said for grabbing a sheet of scrap paper, and drawing the map of an alien world. I've done it as recently as yesterday! There is something very fatherly about creating your own universe, and the feeling is nearly god-like. It truly is.

In reality, however, to expect your readers to enjoy a story that is comprised of 1000 countries, 10,000 people, and 100,000 battles, equates to asking them to fund your "I want to build a robot out of empty Diet Pepsi cans" project. As others have already mentioned, info-dump is no one's friend.

And info-dump is exactly the cliff's edge on which we breakdance when we undertake world-building. In my opinion, world-building is best used for the author's purposes, and not meant to be revealed in full to the reader at any one time. If you want to build yourself an epic planet, full of strife and battles and drama, then feel free. Draw a map, write a thousand-page outline, hang both on your bedroom wall. Feel free to use it as a path to spinning your highly-complex weave of stories in the YOUniverse...but don't give it all away. It is a sound guideline, but never an entertaining storyline.

Just my two cents.

 

[Sephiroth]

What a great post. I agree with all of it.

(Yes, things are great if they fit in with my views.)





Welcome to the forums, JDawg.

 

[lin robinson]

Glad this thread is back because we were talking about this topic last night.

Somebody mentioned a LOTR marathon and said they couldn't imagine sitting through ten straitght hours of a film they had already seen.

I told him a friend of mine did exactly that three times in one week.

It's not that she is caught up in the story. She is paying money to live in that world. She'd give anything if it never ended. Or better yet, if she could slip through the screen and stay there.

So there are people for whom the cleverest story is merely a game played out in what really matters to them: a world their mind and soul inhabit.

So, no, it's not pointless. There is a big audience out there for whom it's the only point.

 

[Sephiroth]

I agree that it isn't pointless, and I'm counting on the fact that people like your friend exist (I'm one of them).




But when it's a book, and not a film, it has to be well written. And being well written involves not bogging us down in details and descriptions.

 

[JDawg2.0]

Yeah, I fully believe that there is a great difference between film and literature. In film (especially now) you can do all the info-dump you like, simply by showing this grand world you've built. The same is not true in literature.

You have to be concerned with narrative. While a lot of people say the same is true with film, it really isn't. There are enough special effects out there that you can effectively distract people from the fact that you are throwing in needless details.

I would like to think a talented writer could distract me with pretty prose, but it really isn't possible. So, the writer must be certain they aren't straying far from the plot, drifting off into things that really are better left unwritten. It may appeal to some, but the point of writing isn't to appeal to just a few people--even if there was no money and fame as a reward for it, you still want as many people as possible to read and enjoy your work.

 

[iansales]

I would like to think a talented writer could distract me with pretty prose, but it really isn't possible.

But... how would you know?

 

[Giovanna Clairval]

Well, the discussion has been evolving around the question of the necessity of building a world that has consistency, and whether this building of a world should not take front stage in the stead of story and characters.

But now, after marvelling at I, Brian and his full-fledged universe( World building gone mad ),
I'd like to ask another question.

Is it necessary and indispensable to build a complete world before starting to write a novel?
Or is this need for building a world beforehand an effort to be in control? Can it be seen as a way of not accepting the challenge of, simply... writing? Or, at least postponing it?

 

[iansales]

Isn't that the whole point of M John Harrison's comment? That the worldbuilding should come out of the writing? It's all very well spending years drawing a map of fantasyland, but it should only really be used inasmuch as allows you to determine routes and times for characters on their journeys.

 

[JDP]

To say that the world should suit the writing, and the writing alone, suggests (to me) laziness on the part of the author and usually results in internal inconsistencies that I'm sure a lot of readers do not appreciate:

Bodrick pulling out his 'changer-stick' just so that he can defeat the bad guy is weak! What the f^€[ is a 'changer-stick'? Where did it come from? What a cop-out.

Had the rare-but-reknowned use of changer-sticks been thoughtfully included in the built milieu, then that makes it more consistent (instead of just another MacGuffin). I would constitute this forethought as worldbuilding. You don't have to narrate every second of the ChangerTree's growth and the biography of the Magi-Lumberjack who felled it and the Grand-High-Whittlemeister who turned a branch of said tree into a functioning changer-stick through the power of prayer and onions.

NB: This is perhaps not a good example, but I had to fit my 'changer-stick life-cycle' in somewhere, or I'd have wasted the last six years of my life.

Bad writing is bad writing and should be avoided. Writing that has been put off in favour of worldbuilding is not writing (it's thoughts in a brain).

I maintain that: Worldbuilding (as the vast majority of people would define it) IS necessary to SFF literature.

And that: Every moment of a science fiction (and fantasy) story should aspire to be a triumph of writing AND worldbuilding.

STET.



Blimey, I must be on the same medication as Harrison, judging by that rant.

P.S. Bodrick and the Changer-Stick will be in a Critiques Section near you SOON.

 

[iansales]

The example you gave is more of a deus ex machina than a worldbuilding inconsistency.

Let's just say that your fictional universe is like an iceberg - but rather than 10% seen in the story, 90% hidden underwater, the ratios should be nearer parity. But that doesn't mean you should stick as much of your worldbuilding material in your story as possible, of course

 

[JDP]

Hmmm... I guess I should have qualified my example as not being that relevant. Perhaps in bold.

When it comes down to it, you should only INCLUDE as much of the worldbuilding info as is directly relevant. The rest should, perhaps, remain unwritten like the bit of an iceberg you can't see.

I rest my case.

 

[Ursa major]

Bodrick pulling out his 'changer-stick' just so that he can defeat the bad guy is weak! What the f^€[ is a 'changer-stick'? Where did it come from? What a cop-out.

Given that the name, changer-stick, is made up of two words that can have (approximately) opposite meanings, the reader may think that the sudden appearance of the said item is some sort of joke (well, I thought it was funny ); or, worse, that the author is having a laugh at the reader's expense.

By the way, I agree with the sentiments of your post.

EDIT: Now I've seen your post in Critiques, I know the joke was meant.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I always do some worldbuilding before I begin, but after that the story and the background tend to develop right along side of each other. Often, I'm thinking ahead, and while I am writing Chapter Five I may be scribbling background information needed for Chapter Nineteen in my notebooks. Then, of course, I have to go back later to bring Chapter One and Two into line with these new revelations -- except that often I discover that they're already there, I just didn't realize it. As a result, I have learned that a lot of my worldbuilding goes on subconsciously, which tends to keep it from piling up on the page, since I don't even know it consciously until I need to. And sometimes I leave gaps in my knowledge, where it isn't important yet to fill something in. By the time I get to the point where an answer is necessary, the story and the background are already evolved to the point where I usually don't have to pull something out of the air, the answer is already there, somewhere, I just have to look for it.

But even though this is how I do it, I still have favorite authors who put an enormous amount of world-building on the page, and because they are great artists they do keep me enthralled with "pretty prose." I can't do what they do, but I can appreciate it.

 

[JDawg2.0]

But... how would you know?

I would know by reading the story. I would ask myself if all this pretty description and fantastic history actually fit the story.I said I would like to believe that a talented writer could achieve an info-dump by dressing it with pretty words, but I also said I don't believe it's possible.

To say that the world should suit the writing, and the writing alone, suggests (to me) laziness on the part of the author and usually results in internal inconsistencies that I'm sure a lot of readers do not appreciate:

That really doesn't make any sense, JDP. If you include elements to the story that do not suit the story, then you are just adding filler, cheating for a higher word-count, and being dishonest to the reader. Writing is self-serving only in the aspect that it is done to satisfy your creative urges. If you over-indulge yourself with needless actions, descriptions, histories, and things of the sort, then you just aren't writing well.

Had the rare-but-reknowned use of changer-sticks been thoughtfully included in the built milieu, then that makes it more consistent (instead of just another MacGuffin). I would constitute this forethought as worldbuilding. You don't have to narrate every second of the ChangerTree's growth and the biography of the Magi-Lumberjack who felled it and the Grand-High-Whittlemeister who turned a branch of said tree into a functioning changer-stick through the power of prayer and onions.

Right, but then how can you say world-building that only serves the story is lazy? Your example of the changer-stick, as you said, isn't a great one, and I appreciate that you cleared it up later. I still am a bit confused as to how you believe world-building that does not suit the story is a good thing...

 

[Ursa major]

I'm not entirely sure what you're getting at, JDawg2.0. Are you asking for all extraneous information to be absent from a story? If so, what is left? (And if it's next to nothing, I would hope that all of us could tell just about any story in 10000 words.) If it's not next to nothing, what is it? Where is your boundary between setting and character, on the one hand, and filler?

In my view, the problem with a too-stripped-down approach is that it assumes the reader reads only for the story. Is that really true, even of non-SFF? (And some people read books for the beauty of the prose, so the "story" might as well be absent for them.)

 

[The Pelagic Argosy]

But even though this is how I do it, I still have favorite authors who put an enormous amount of world-building on the page, and because they are great artists they do keep me enthralled with "pretty prose." I can't do what they do, but I can appreciate it.

Anyone can go to a museum and admire a beautiful painting. But there are those (art students, for example) who look at them up close to see the brush strokes.

I like a Good Story as much as the next person. But I find that the more fantasy I read, and as I am trying my hand at this world-building business myself, I have more patience and appreciation for "atmospheric digressions." I love it when an author can, by dropping a few interesting details or setting a scene in a few descriptive paragraphs, give the illusion that the world we are entering extends off the pages in all directions. A skilled author can write a brief description of his hero waking in the forest to find a strange animal pawing through his knapsack, and suddenly, without providing a full bestiary, I can imagine that this world is full of strange, fascinating, and potentially dangerous creatures. I don't need to know the population of Fantasy City or have a street map at my fingertips. But when heroine elbows her way through a throng of merchants on a street corner and curtsies at a noblewoman, I feel like I'm there. I love it when authors throw me little details to discover: "Oh, the etching on the cave wall is the same as the insignia on the villain's ring. Cool!" I love this kinda stuff. I eat it up. I love the "author as tour guide" thing.

How the author creates these illusions -- whether he fills 50 notebooks with details or just pulls them out of his tushie on the fly while writing -- I don't know, and I don't care. Except that I'd like to be able to create similar illusions in my own writing. The benefit to the tushie method is that the author has more time to start his next story. But I think this must require a rare talent. More power to such authors. The rest of us will have to rely on the 50-notebook method. I think the secret is to provide just enough detail on the page the create the illusion, but not enough to shatter it. An author's imagination does have limits, after all. The fully annotated and illustrated supplemental bestiary might be disappointingly thin -- if it contains just that one strange creature.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I would know by reading the story. I would ask myself if all this pretty description and fantastic history actually fit the story.I said I would like to believe that a talented writer could achieve an info-dump by dressing it with pretty words, but I also said I don't believe it's possible.

But in order to find out if it is possible you have to be willing to read things by authors who write that kind of story, and do so with an open mind.

The stripped-down approach can be the result of a highly artistic precision, but it can also be uninspired hackwork -- the same way that much more descriptive writing can either be a triumph of language and imagination, or tedious and self-indulgent.

As writers, we need to find which approach works best for us, and then become very, very good at whatever that is. That doesn't mean that we can't, as readers, acknowledge that other writers can be very, very good at doing something else entirely.

 

[The Pelagic Argosy]

the writer must be certain they aren't straying far from the plot, drifting off into things that really are better left unwritten. It may appeal to some, but the point of writing isn't to appeal to just a few people--even if there was no money and fame as a reward for it, you still want as many people as possible to read and enjoy your work.

Sorry, I but disagree with this. I don't think that the point of writing (well) is to appeal to as many people as possible. (Unless I'm after that money and fame you mention.) This assumes that the best stories are necessarily the most popular ones. Try to please everyone, and you will please no one. If my ideas and writings only appeal to three people, then those are the three people I should be writing for, and I should be happy to have them. Some people enjoy stories that are bloated with irrelevant filler, and they are not chopped liver. Everyone is entitled to their own tastes. The greatest horror story ever told won't appeal to me if I don't like horror. Should the horror author cut out the scary parts to appeal to me?

I think the point of writing is to craft the best story you can -- whether that is a spare, tightly-paced short story or a 20-volume epic -- whether it sells a billion copies or sits in a drawer.