What would you call 'Wonderland'-style worlds? And how would you build one?

[TiePig]

Hey all. I'd like to write a story in a type of fantasy world that I don't really know the proper name for, so I can't work out how to google it and find guidance. Hoping y'all will know what I'm talking about and will be able to point me in the right direction to start world building.

The world I want to make would be like what is seen in;
- Alice in Wonderland
- Un Lun Dun
- Neverwhere
- Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
- Spirited Away
- The world of Super Mario
- Labyrinth

I hope that's enough examples to get across what I mean. That sort of chaotic, high energy, nonsensical world.

 

[BAYLOR]

Also look up

The Land of Laughs by Jonathan Carrol
The Third Policeman by Flan O'Brien
The Complete Enchanter by L Sprague De Camp and Fletcher Pratt

 

[Harpo]

If it was me, and I wanted it to be sort of like those worlds you listed, I would start by gathering together all the actual bits of them you most like, like a wonderscrapbook or whatever. Then, use your wonderscrapbook to write little bits to fill in any gaps, and maybe invent whatever characters and situations come to mind. When your new little bits add up to more than the contents of the wonderscrapbook, remove the wonderscrapbook and all its contents, leaving just your own ‘network’ of bits and pieces.
And then keep inventing bits to go with those.

Just an idea.

 

[CupofJoe]

It has been years since I read any of them but the Xanth series by Piers Anthony might be interesting.

 

[Biskit]

My best guess for search terms would be surreal, absurd, nonsense (Lewis Carol also wrote 'nonsense verse' or 'nonsense poems').

As for world-building, that strikes me as a challenge. I write surreal/absurd/nonsense stories and worlds, but that's not a conscious decision so much as the way my head works. I don't plan and I don't world-build, I just let my subconscious do the crazy and turn it into a story.

If you don't have a head like mine that's two fruitcakes turnwards of deranged, then the following thoughts may help:

1. Pick a small number of details that make your world different from reality. My favourite author for that is Jasper Fforde and his Bookworld series where the basic premise is that books/stories have an existence of their own and someone with the right skills/technology can step into the world behind the books and interact with the characters outside of the story. It's very simple, but from there he's got a half-dozen books exploring the bookworld. HOWEVER, the "real" world in Fforde's books is also a twist from our reality, set in a Britain still at war in the Crimea, where cheese is illegal, Wales is a sovereign state, and the main character has a pet dodo.
2. Decide what the unbreakable rules are, because in this sort of style rules are meant to be tied in a cloven-hoof hitch, but there probably ought to be some fundamentals that can't shift. (This is a bit of guesswork on my part, but then I decided to change my story's reality by crashing a witch-piloted dragon into my MC's favourite tandoori takeaway.)
   1. Decide what you want to play with. Lewis Carol plays with physical scale, with the meaning of words, for example.
3. Unless you know what your story is, start small, build a core of your world, and work outwards from there. Perhaps write some short stories/flash fiction to explore your world and see where it's going in a few hundred words, and DON'T worry about making them consistent.
4. If you're one of nature's world-builders then there's nothing you can do about it except build the world, otherwise build as little as you can get away with because by the time you've writtent the first book your ideas/needs may have changed.
5. Is this a joke? Seriously, how serious do you want your story to be? I always think of Caroll's work as have a very dry sense of humour, whilst Fforde is more Pythonesque. Are you aiming for sharp political satire or belly-laughs? I don't know if there's anything out there in this sort of style that is straight, serious and joke-free, but there's no reason not to be the first.
6. Ask yourself: do I really want to do this? If the answer is still yes after all of the above then maybe your head is made for writing surreal, absurdist stories.

 

[msstice]

I only know four of them, but the only common thing that sticks out is that they are fantasy. In two cases there is a strong suggestion that the main parts were dreams. Other than that, they are quite different.

 

[KiraAnn]

Re: Lewis Carroll, I just go with Jefferson Airplane's apparent thoughts: "he was just tripping, man!"

 

[Swank]

I think that the underlying mechanics of these kind of worlds relies on puns or other humorous wordplay come to life. That's where the absurdity comes in and how the result is so frenetic.

So maybe start saving odd or funny phrases that could play out strangely:

"The king is dead! Long live the king!" Followed by a king that keeps keeling over and then coming back to life during normal business as the result of that exclamation. Etc.

 

[Phyrebrat]

Can’t add much to what has been said other than avoid zaniness when trying to recapture absurdist fiction. Some magical realism might help as I immediately thought of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell.

 

[The Big Peat]

Hey all. I'd like to write a story in a type of fantasy world that I don't really know the proper name for, so I can't work out how to google it and find guidance. Hoping y'all will know what I'm talking about and will be able to point me in the right direction to start world building.

The world I want to make would be like what is seen in;
- Alice in Wonderland
- Un Lun Dun
- Neverwhere
- Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
- Spirited Away
- The world of Super Mario
- Labyrinth

I hope that's enough examples to get across what I mean. That sort of chaotic, high energy, nonsensical world.

I don't think there's a name for it, or any sort of world building direction to go.

My suggestion would be

- Pick two or three elements you really want to include
- Work out how they go together
- Assuming these aren't traditional elements where you're following traditional patterns, work out what you need those elements to be able to do and not do - how they'd win and how they'd lose - for the sake of the story
- Work out why they can and can't do those things. It doesn't have to be stupidly in depth, we don't need to know why the magical oath works, but there's got to be some sort of reason that can be used for foreshadowing and to create secondary belief.

 

[ColGray]

Whimsical Fantasy? Trippy Fantasy?

In its day, I'm not sure Alice in Wonderland was "fantasy"? Looking back now, sure, yes, surrealist contemporary fantasy. I'm not sure how else to help classify that?

 

[Cthulhu.Science]

Lewis Carroll was a mathematician by trade. Apparently Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was his mocking critique of the "New Math" of the day. Here is an abstract from an article on the subject.

"Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: Carroll’s Symbolic Attack on Mathematical Symbolism

and another
An exploration of logic and mathematics in Lewis Carroll’s ‘Alice’s Adevtures in Wonderland’
Wonderland is often used as a synonym for nonsense, but is there something more complex and logical functioning beneath the surface? Lewis Carroll’s fiction novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland presents the most remarkable synergy of sense and nonsense; logic and fallacies. With Deleuze’s Logic of Sense being utilised to illuminate the key fields of logic in the novel, appropriate fields of geometry and algebra will be utilised under the scope of mathematics to elevate an establishment of logic.

A conservative mathematician, Carroll disputed the pivotal change that was being introduced in the 19th century. With preceding mathematics emphasising logical Euclidean methods, the 1800’s saw mathematical theories introduce more abstract principles which extended mathematics beyond the isolation of arithmetic and numbers. Deeming this absurd, Carroll thus utilised the nonsense fiction in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to subtly mock the contemporary mathematical climate.

 

[paranoid marvin]

I really liked the idea of Kingdom of Knowledge, with the city of Digitopolis (where people dig for numbers in their mines) and the city of Dictionopolis (where people grow words in their orchards).

 

[Fiberglass Cyborg]

TV Tropes used to call something similar "Planet Eris" (after the dwarf planet named for the Goddess of Chaos).

I'm actually working on somehing similar, though with a twist - there's an in-universe reaon for the Whacky World being so insufferably whacky, and the actual plot turns fairly serious.

 

[Biskit]

Lewis Carroll was a mathematician by trade. Apparently Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was his mocking critique of the "New Math" of the day. Here is an abstract from an article on the subject.

"Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: Carroll’s Symbolic Attack on Mathematical Symbolism

and another
An exploration of logic and mathematics in Lewis Carroll’s ‘Alice’s Adevtures in Wonderland’
Wonderland is often used as a synonym for nonsense, but is there something more complex and logical functioning beneath the surface? Lewis Carroll’s fiction novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland presents the most remarkable synergy of sense and nonsense; logic and fallacies. With Deleuze’s Logic of Sense being utilised to illuminate the key fields of logic in the novel, appropriate fields of geometry and algebra will be utilised under the scope of mathematics to elevate an establishment of logic.

A conservative mathematician, Carroll disputed the pivotal change that was being introduced in the 19th century. With preceding mathematics emphasising logical Euclidean methods, the 1800’s saw mathematical theories introduce more abstract principles which extended mathematics beyond the isolation of arithmetic and numbers. Deeming this absurd, Carroll thus utilised the nonsense fiction in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to subtly mock the contemporary mathematical climate.

For me, this flagged up another ingredient in creating these sorts of worlds - change an underlying assumption and pursue the logic of that change. In many respects, that's a classic SF what-if approach, and my train of thought jumped to one of the "new mathematics" that probably upset Carroll, non-euclidean geometry where the change of one axiom/postulate completely changes the game.

(It's also interesting that many of those strange and abstract new mathematical ideas that bothered Carroll turned out to be hugely valuable mathematical tools in the physical sciences. When we're creating unconventional worlds, it's important to remember how strange reality can be.)

 

[Swank]

For me, this flagged up another ingredient in creating these sorts of worlds - change an underlying assumption and pursue the logic of that change. In many respects, that's a classic SF what-if approach, and my train of thought jumped to one of the "new mathematics" that probably upset Carroll, non-euclidean geometry where the change of one axiom/postulate completely changes the game.

(It's also interesting that many of those strange and abstract new mathematical ideas that bothered Carroll turned out to be hugely valuable mathematical tools in the physical sciences. When we're creating unconventional worlds, it's important to remember how strange reality can be.)

Wonderland isn't about non-Euclidean geometry, even if that's what inspired Carroll.

 

[Biskit]

Wonderland isn't about non-Euclidean geometry, even if that's what inspired Carroll.

No, that was just one of my sideways thoughts triggered by the articles, and writing wonderland-style worlds.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

I hope that's enough examples to get across what I mean. That sort of chaotic, high energy, nonsensical world.

My novel Hairy London was described as Alice In Wonderland meets Monty Python. I improvised almost the whole thing, with the sketchiest of outlines. It was a liberating experience. You do need to be an assured writer to try it, though, as I didn't edit anything that emerged from my subconscious, except, occasionally, in subsequent edits by my editor. But as a modus operandi, it's great! You can get a flavour of it from the short story Xana-La.

 

[Cthulhu.Science]

For me, this flagged up another ingredient in creating these sorts of worlds - change an underlying assumption and pursue the logic of that change. In many respects, that's a classic SF what-if approach, and my train of thought jumped to one of the "new mathematics" that probably upset Carroll, non-euclidean geometry where the change of one axiom/postulate completely changes the game.

(It's also interesting that many of those strange and abstract new mathematical ideas that bothered Carroll turned out to be hugely valuable mathematical tools in the physical sciences. When we're creating unconventional worlds, it's important to remember how strange reality can be.)

In essence Alice in Wonderland is a series of mathematical mockery with Alice as the "everyman" narrator commenting on how absurd it all is.
Each scene is a specific critique of one of the new math postulates.

 

[Cthulhu.Science]

First Post!!!
How hasn't Douglas Adams been mentioned yet?
I love his process of illustrating the absurdities of everyday life by taking the base concepts to the ultimate extreme.

It's perfectly ok to tear down a person's house for a highway bypass --- But wait, you want to destroy Earth for YOUR highway bypass. I object.