‘Storytelling has become the art of world building’: Avatar and the rise of the paracosm

[BAYLOR]

Avatar had a plot?

The movies stunning visuals stunned as and ate it .

 

[Vince W]

Frankly, I didn’t find Avatar’s visuals all that stunning. To me they were completely artificial and cartoonish. I put them on the same level as Rocket Robin Hood.

 

[BAYLOR]

Frankly, I didn’t find Avatar’s visuals all that stunning. To me they were completely artificial and cartoonish. I put them on the same level as Rocket Robin Hood.

Yes, an incredible bad tv series and yet sheer awfulness and silliness makes it fun to watch . this even recycled villains and footage from the 1960's Spiderman series .

 

[Vince W]

Yes, an incredible bad tv series and yet sheer awfulness and silliness makes it fun to watch . this even recycled villains and footage from the 1960's Spiderman series .

I will not hear a bed word about RRH. It is an indelible part of my childhood.

 

[sule]

I will not hear a bed word about RRH. It is an indelible part of my childhood.

Sounds like you won't be taking it lying down...

 

[BAYLOR]

I will not hear a bed word about RRH. It is an indelible part of my childhood.

Sorry .

 

[Karn's Return]

Proper worldbuilding is about more than just the visuals. You need a history, you need substance, you need life and civilizations that make sense within the confines. And it's never really finished, to be honest...I'm still working on my first one, technically, and it's been probably twenty years.

 

[Swank]

Proper worldbuilding is about more than just the visuals. You need a history, you need substance, you need life and civilizations that make sense within the confines. And it's never really finished, to be honest...I'm still working on my first one, technically, and it's been probably twenty years.

Well, worldbuilding for worldbuilding's sake.

I would argue "proper worldbuilding" is when you provide a consistent enough background for the story that it appears to take place in a complete world, rather than the world actually being complete.

 

[Karn's Return]

Perhaps to a point, but that kind of goes out the window when you want to have a chronology.

 

[The Big Peat]

Joss Whedon’s shows tend to have pretty crappy worldbuilding and then build entire story arcs on half-baked concepts. A great significance is attached to something called a “soul” and whether a vampire has it or not, but no one bothers to ask what a soul actually is.

This begs the question of how you define good worldbuilding and bad worldbuilding.

If it's "does it allow the person enjoying the media to understand exactly what's going on" then, well, yeah, maybe it's bad.

If it's "does it provide the story with conceits that make it more powerful and enjoyable"... then his worldbuilding is clearly quite good.

Perhaps they are both equally valid parameters, but I know which one I prefer as an audience member.

Interesting article from The Guardian

‘Storytelling has become the art of world building’: Avatar and the rise of the paracosm

James Cameron’s sequel to his 2009 fantasy epic continues cinema’s love of imaginary worlds formed in childhood that have produced some of film’s most bankable blockbusters

www.theguardian.com

Do plot and character inevitably suffer when the main focus is on the world? Are we unrealistic if we want all three to be brilliant?

Yes and no.

Look, you can't do everything. You only have so many exposition scenes before you run out of momentum, only so many room for meaningful lines before action scenes drag.

But you can pack an absolute ton into a story if you pack it carefully, particularly if you look for items that are multi-purpose. Could you have an after-action scene in which the character reflects on the deeply cherished place they nearly lost (character and worldbuilding), before another character comes up and they compare cherished places (more character, more worldbuilding, advancing romantic subplot)? Yeah, probably. Maybe not everyone gets all of it but it can work.

I also think to a certain extent, once you get one element brilliant people start seeing brilliance in the other elements too.

It's harder but it seems doable to me. Besides, weren't most of us Fantistika writers trying to do this anyway?

 

[Swank]

Perhaps to a point, but that kind of goes out the window when you want to have a chronology.

What is the function of the chronology to the story?

 

[Vince W]

Sounds like you won't be taking it lying down...

I just saw the spelling error. Stupid tablet. I think I’ll leave it.

 

[Mon0Zer0]

Personally, I didn't watch Avatar to the end -- no walking out was involved, as it was on the TV -- but I was impressed with what I was seeing (even though it was on the TV and not a big screen), in terms of the world itself and the way it had been produced, so I might give the sequel a watch (on the TV) just in case the story is more engaging.

One of my mates was a lead project manager at the Framestore where they did the VFX for Avatar. At the time he was saying how Cameron had developed a revolutionary pipeline for CG. It's quite difficult to fully emphasise just how much it revolutionised filming with CG. (I can't remember what was different - I *think* it might be the use of live / interactive CG when filming so the cinematographers had a live view of what they were filming as they had a renderer working in real time with actors in mocap suits, but don't quote me on that as I could be confused with another movie).

It still holds up CG wise, with the best of today's work - even if we're now accustomed to it as the new normal. I remember being wowed by the jungle scenes, and un-wowed by the story.

 

[Ursa major]

I remember being wowed by the jungle scenes, and un-wowed by the story.

That's a good way of putting it.

 

[Karn's Return]

What is the function of the chronology to the story?

Establishment of events within timeline to branch off into multiple story directions. I'm looking at beyond just a single story here, though...

 

[Swank]

Establishment of events within timeline to branch off into multiple story directions. I'm looking at beyond just a single story here, though...

If you write the first story with only the necessary details, your chronology will be entirely open to fit other stories into it. Write the chronology first and you are writing yourself into a corner.

 

[Karn's Return]

Really depends on how many avenues you're willing to explore, really. And how many non-canon spinoffs you might want to do.

 

[Swank]

Really depends on how many avenues you're willing to explore, really. And how many non-canon spinoffs you might want to do.

Most new writer's are concerned with getting at least one book published.

 

[Karn's Return]

Perhaps that might be part of the problem...


Not saying to not cement something, of course. Just have avenues for such things open later on down the line.

 

[Swank]

Perhaps that might be part of the problem...


Not saying to not cement something, of course. Just have avenues for such things open later on down the line.

Pre-planning everything is just another way to close future avenues.


I'm kind of soft pedaling around this, but the issue that seems to come up pretty often is that the key to writing popular books does not lie in extensive world building, character design, detailed world maps, sub-genre classification, multi-novel plot arcs, visual descriptions or chronologies. Those appear to be mostly things that people mistake for important, but end up taking up all their time and creative energy - or hem them into a story that they don't love as much as the thing they really want to write.

Over and over, published authors make it clear that they do not put an incredible amount of thought into these issues. If there is a sequel to be written, they find the place in time that it fits. If there is a new technology necessary to drive the plot, they create it at that time and fit it into the world of the previous book. No popular author seems to ever advise any new writer to do a lot of pre-planning beyond plot and theme for the book they are writing.

By all means, be thoughtful in your approach. But the key to writing a good book is to spend your time writing and editing prose.