Is worldbuilding pointless?

[Teresa Edgerton]

Admittedly, if you want to be published and make a career of writing you do have to appeal to a certain number of people; but that doesn't mean you have to appeal to "as many people as possible." That's a recipe for financial success, not for excellence. You can be excellent and successful, of course, but the one is not the measure of the other.

 

[JDP]

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.

I didn't suggest that an author should include extraneous content. I said the exact opposite in the post you are referring to:

...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...

I never suggested that an author should include filler that's not relevant to the story, nor that they should 'include elements to the story that do not suit the story' (though I'm not entirely sure what that means, but I get the gist). The only thing I posted about about excess info is that it should not be included.

 

[iansales]

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.

And my point was that if they were doing it so well, you wouldn't even notice you were reading an info-dump...

 

[Jarshen]

Posted by the Pelargic Argosy

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.

I love this quote, it sums up for me the appearance of depth to the world.
Whether it is actually built by the author or imagined in that instance, depends on how the author works.
But it suggest hints, allusions and ideas beyond the current action, without actually taking the reader away from the story or the character.

How many children did Lady Macbeth have? Who cares and who knows? The author, and if it serves their story that information may be included.

World building comes second to writing, end of.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

World building comes second to writing, end of.

To me, this is like saying characterization comes second to writing, or action or dialogue come second to writing. It's all part of the writing process, and different writers emphasize (and are good at) different aspects.

Yes, good writing is what we all want as readers, what we all strive for (or should strive for) as writers. How we define that may differ. It should differ, or everything we write would have a deadly sameness.

 

[Daniel Hetberg]

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. [...]
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.
[...]
I think the secret is to provide just enough detail on the page the create the illusion, but not enough to shatter it.

Yep, I agree completely here. One thing that's striking me as very ironic is the following: If you want to write spontaneously, without having everything in your plot meticulously pre-planned, you need to pre-plan the surroundings very meticulously. Only if you as an author have a firm grasp of the world you're writing in, can you improvise and make it believable.

Otherwise the fluff you'll add is generic at best, or confused and logically faulty at worst. A plot without fluff is not a story, it's a plot. I don't know who did it, but there are those classic lists of all possible plot situations... if you want to do anything more than reproduce one of them, you have to add fluff that's your very own, and if that fluff is supposed to make sense, you have to think about it beforehand.

Of course the appropriate amount of fluff differs depending on how plot-heavy your story is going to be, but I mean come on, we're in an SFF forum here, these genres live and die on the quality of their settings.


P.S.: I just thought about the extreme where you would leave out everything, apart from the plot in the sense of classical plot situation. For the sake of brevity, you can leave all pages in your book blank, except for the first one. The first page contains the plot elements and their relation to each other, codified by one canonic list of plot situations: "This plot is a 62b, where the next of kin is the aunt, herself involved in a 56 variant with the representative of society, who also pursues a 45, coming into conflict with the protagonist over the object of the 62."

 

[Jarshen]

In saying writing I meant the actual writing process, as in no matter how detailed the work on character, worlds, etc everything is up in the air until you actually start to write.

There are so many things that make us fearful of actually starting to write the story that I felt it important to reiterate what I know many people here advise, and that is just to write.

 

[JDawg2.0]

Wow! I love that so many people responded to my post!

OK...

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?

To your first question, yes, I'm say all extraneous information be absent. I'm not saying that a story should be a glorified outline, I'm just saying that it should not include things that do not pertain to the story, or its characters. There is a difference between a rich backstory, and writing that does nothing but slow the story down. Not everything needs to advance the storyline, but everything must be information that we need to make the experience more enjoyable. I don't need to know what year a kind of architecture began, I just need to know what the architecture looks like.

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.

I have done that. Stephen King, for example, spent his 40s and 50s writing great stories that also happened to be 300 pages too long. They were too long because he became too wordy, too loose with his narrative. It's just my opinion, but tight writing is the best writing. That isn't to say a tightly-written novel has to be less than 200 pages, but it has to be devoid of fat.

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.

That's very true, Teresa. I don't mean to sound as if I think all writers have to fit a certain mold. It is simply that I believe no writer can make an info-dump work. If they can, I haven't seen it.

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.

That sounds nice, but if you only appeal to three people, you won't get published. I know the business end of writing is not as romantic as the writing itself is, but you have to have a certain market in mind when you submit your work.

I didn't mean to support the idea that the most popular fiction is the best fiction. But, we do know who the best writers are, because they are popular. Even if they weren't popular in their time, great writing gets recognized. It may not be commercial success, but it is success nonetheless.

I wouldn't say Stephen King is the best horror writer of all-time, but a lot of people believe Poe is. You know who Edgar Allan Poe is, correct? My point exactly. The best writers aren't exactly unknowns.

Some people enjoy stories that are bloated with irrelevant filler, and they are not chopped liver.

Sorry to say, but bloated writing with irrelevant filler is bad writing.

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.

I agree completely. But I think some of us are afraid to say that not everyone who writes is a good writer. You can write all the 20-volume epics you want, but that does not make you a good writer. And if you can write a tightly-paced short story, you probably are a good writer.

And my point was that if they were doing it so well, you wouldn't even notice you were reading an info-dump...

I disagree, but that does not mean I'm right. It's simply my belief that info-dump would be evident, no matter how pretty the writing is.

 

[The Pelagic Argosy]

That sounds nice, but if you only appeal to three people, you won't get published. I know the business end of writing is not as romantic as the writing itself is, but you have to have a certain market in mind when you submit your work.

When you submit your work for publication, yes, you should definitely make sure it's the best work you can produce and hope that it has wide appeal, and try to convince the publishing house of that. However, we're talking about world building here. And most world-building happens in the pre-writing and drafting stages. Those 50 notebooks of dry facts I mentioned above are certainly unpublishable. (Unless you become a runaway success. Then all of the geeks will buy them at auction.)

But a writer shouldn't worry about what's salable when the story is still in the conception phase, unless you want to write a hackneyed knock-off. The freshest ideas are, by definition, untested in the marketplace. (That's the problem with the publishing business. Publishers have to worry about the bottom line and they are, therefore, risk averse. A hackneyed knockoff may have a better a chance of getting published than something fresh and revolutionary.)

Ironically, if we're talking about quality and tight pacing here, it's the bloated fantasy epics that are getting published and lining the shelves right now, much to the consternation of many fantasy readers. If a writer can promise to squeeze ten sequels out of her world-building exercise, she may have struck publishing gold.

I didn't mean to support the idea that the most popular fiction is the best fiction. But, we do know who the best writers are, because they are popular. Even if they weren't popular in their time, great writing gets recognized. It may not be commercial success, but it is success nonetheless.

I wouldn't say Stephen King is the best horror writer of all-time, but a lot of people believe Poe is. You know who Edgar Allan Poe is, correct? My point exactly. The best writers aren't exactly unknowns.

I disagree. Some of the best writing ever is probably lost to the ages. (Of course, I can't prove this, because this writing is lost.) And, when you say, "popular," I ask, popular with whom exactly? A lot of our examples of Great Literature are popular with academic elites but not necessarily with a mass audience. (In fact, these two groups often seem to be mutually exclusive. If academia gets to define good literature then most of SFF is out, as is most genre writing. Stephen King is definitely out.) We define good writing retroactively by what has passed historical and popular muster. If new writers try to force themselves to fit this mold, this is a recipe for literary stagnation.

Also, this would mean that 99% of the good writers throughout history have been white males.

Speaking of horror, I loved Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, mostly for the atmospheric filler. Poe is hardly an example of tight pacing. In fact, most good horror, IMHO, relies on atmosphere rather than plot.

 

[iansales]

I didn't mean to support the idea that the most popular fiction is the best fiction. But, we do know who the best writers are, because they are popular.

You've contradicted yourself. You're equating "best" with popularity, and we know that's false. Success is no indicator of quality. The da Vinci Code is one of the biggest selling novels of all time, and it's appallingly written and badly structured.

 

[Ursa major]

I didn't think The Da Vinci Code was the worst book I've read.

* Dodges brickbats *

Oddly enough, given what this thread is about, the thing that jarred most with me was his incorrect placing of Versailles in relation to Paris**. It seems that even where the world is pre-built, with umpteen maps available, an author can make themselves look dumb.

** Okay, I knew the rest of the book wouldn't be up to much and so I read it in that spirit, with most of my critical faculties switched off; but getting geographical information wrong: I can't abide that.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I have done that. Stephen King, for example, spent his 40s and 50s writing great stories that also happened to be 300 pages too long. They were too long because he became too wordy, too loose with his narrative.

I don't think anyone here was thinking of Stephen King when they were talking about writers who can seduce you with beautiful prose.

I'll give you an idea of what I am talking about, and ironically it was written by M. John Harrison, the very author whose negative comments on worldbuilding inspired this thread.

Under the brow of Hollin Low Moor he slowed to a walk. His feet and ankles hurt. He sat on a rock by the path to message them, and his attention was captured by the City, waiting there in its mantle of stillness and distance. Light flared through the haze: heliographing from the riverine curves of the Proton Circuit; phosphorescing from the pleasure canal at Lowth where under a setting sun banks of anemones glowed like triumphal stained glass; signaling from the tiered vivid heights of Minnet-Saba, from the inconceivable pastel towers and plazas of the Ateline Quarter. All was immaculate -- illuminated, transfigured, miniature. It attracted him not as a refuge (although he saw himself as a refugee), nor by its double familiarity, but by its long strangeness and obstinacy in the face of Time, celebrated here in the generation (or so it seemed) rather than the reflection of light. Viriconium, the Pastel City: a little cryptic, a little proud, a little mad. Its histories, as forgotten as his own, made of the air a sort of amber, an entrapment; the geometry of its avenues was a wry message from one survivor to another; and its Present, like his own, was but an implication of its past -- a dream, a prediction, a brief possibility to be endured.

To me, this is poetry, and I don't care how much of the information is essential to the plot. It creates an atmosphere, it gives me entry into a world I could never otherwise visit.

 

[iansales]

I didn't think The Da Vinci Code was the worst book I've read.

There's worse?!

;-)

 

[iansales]

Teresa - hear, hear

 

[JDawg2.0]

But a writer shouldn't worry about what's salable when the story is still in the conception phase

I never said they should. The quality (and therefore, marketability) should come into play in your final draft, though. You should be aware of your audience by then.

You've contradicted yourself. You're equating "best" with popularity, and we know that's false. Success is no indicator of quality.

Popular was the wrong word. I should have gone with "well-known". But let me help you down from your romantic cloud ride, and let's get real: success is an indicator of quality. There are those who slip through the cracks, on both ends, but if success was no indication of quality, then no quality writer would ever be successful. Success is not the sole indicator, but it is an indicator nonetheless.

To me, this is poetry, and I don't care how much of the information is essential to the plot. It creates an atmosphere, it gives me entry into a world I could never otherwise visit.

Did I miss something? I could have sworn...

Ah, yes. Here it is:

Not everything needs to advance the storyline, but everything must be information that we need to make the experience more enjoyable.

See? I already said that the writing does not need to advance the plot. My point has been that the writing cannot be filler. What you posted, and what we both agree on, is that writing to serve the atmosphere is fine (and recommended). Serve the atmosphere, the characters, the story. Do not serve the word-count.

 

[iansales]

Popular was the wrong word. I should have gone with "well-known". But let me help you down from your romantic cloud ride, and let's get real: success is an indicator of quality. There are those who slip through the cracks, on both ends, but if success was no indication of quality, then no quality writer would ever be successful. Success is not the sole indicator, but it is an indicator nonetheless.

Your logic is flawed. You're saying that because some successful works are of good quality, then quality is an indicator of success. And yet the low quality of many successful works, and the lack of success of many works of high quality, indicate otherwise. In order to be successful - a best-seller, in other words - a book has to appeal to as large an audience as possible. And, let's face it, the criteria by which we judge the quality of a work of fiction are not the same criteria which lead to across the board success.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Not everything needs to advance the storyline, but everything must be information that we need to make the experience more enjoyable.

And my point is that not everyone enjoys the same thing. One reader's idea of what adds depth and richness to a story is another reader's idea of a tediously long-winded info-dump. When someone says to take out the non-essentials, that's too vague to be useful, because not everyone will agree on what the non-essentials are.

And whether you are going to measure success by popularity, financial success, or critical recognition, by the regard a writer is held in today or in the future, there are enough readers out there that it's been proven possible for writers with very different approaches to be successful in all of these ways.

 

[JDawg2.0]

Ian,

My logic is fine. There are enough great writers who are also successful to lend credence to the idea that success is an indicator. As I said before, it is not the sole indicator, and maybe not the best indicator, but it is one nonetheless. Just because a few of the greats did not reach the peaks of financial success that they would have liked, a great number of them have.

Teresa,

I guess we're going to have to disagree on this one. I don't think anyone would call the example you posted an "info-dump". If they do, then they don't really know what they are talking about. Even if it isn't your cup of tea, you can't argue the beauty of it, or the importance it has in regards to the atmosphere of the story. And there is certainly no way that could be called an info-dump.

I see info-dump as the sign of a bad writer. Writing is akin to poetry, and to music, in the way that they all have a beat, a rhythm. Info-dump does not serve the story, the atmosphere, the characters, or anything other than the word-count. Info-dump happens because a writer is not talented enough to lend their story a beat. I'm not implying that writers who do use the info-dump aren't creative, but they certainly aren't talented.

 

[iansales]

My logic is fine. There are enough great writers who are also successful to lend credence to the idea that success is an indicator. As I said before, it is not the sole indicator, and maybe not the best indicator, but it is one nonetheless. Just because a few of the greats did not reach the peaks of financial success that they would have liked, a great number of them have.

Quality writing and success are completely unrelated. Just because some writers of quality have enjoyed success, it does not mean success is an indicator of quality. Or are you going to claim that Harold Robbins - a very successful writer - wrote high quality fiction? Or perhaps you could claim that John Kennedy Toole, author of the Pulitzer Prize winning A Confederacy of Dunces, did not write fiction of high quality because he was unsuccessful - so much so, in fact, that his novel wasn't published until 11 years after his suicide.

You cannot judge the quality of a work by its success. Entirely different criteria pertain. Number of units sold is extrinsic to the text. Quality is intrinsic.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I don't think anyone would call the example you posted an "info-dump". If they do, then they don't really know what they are talking about. Even if it isn't your cup of tea, you can't argue the beauty of it, or the importance it has in regards to the atmosphere of the story.

Oh, but people do call that sort of thing an info-dump, especially when it goes on the same way for 200 pages. And whether you and I think that they know what they are talking about or not, it makes it very hard for a large group of readers and writers to agree on what is essential.

I was on a panel a while back -- oddly enough, it was a panel that was supposed to be about language and style and eloquence -- with a writer who will remain nameless (anyway, she sells a lot more books than I do) who proudly stated as part of her introduction that she doesn't have time for beautiful language. She gave me a very evil look when it was my turn to introduce myself and I said very emphatically that I did. She then said, very condescendingly, that maybe some writers might, but no reader has time. I replied that she should tell that to all the people who buy books by Joyce Carol Oates and John Crowley.

It suffices to say that the conversation deteriorated from there.