Worldbuilding

[AdmiralPiet]

I had a number of smaller discussions regarding this with @Claire and we realised that the subject could use its own thread. To me proper worldbuilding is an essential part of most stories. Others seem to be able to look past things that are able to ruin a story for me. (In fact I get the feeling that in modern times the movie authors seem to play it more loose the higher they go on the pay scale).

I will try to structure this post somewhat and not just ramble on.

Worldbuilding can be a spectrum. In a more narrow sense it is the creating of a fantasy or Sci-Fi world from the ground up. Like what Authors like Tolkien did. Establishing technology, magic systems, rules how they work, what society is like…
In a wider sense it can be reduced to “world setting”. The closer the story is to our contemporary world the less you have to establish because everyone knows how everything works. But you still need to set for example the social hierarchy of the involved persons.

And I think there are a number of stages:
1. Building the world itself and build it coherent
2. Have your story happen in this world
3. Have the story feed back into the world and change it

The actual building

This can quickly get out of hand. If you consider how many different cultures, religions, political systems, not to mention professions and academic fields there are on this world and most people can never “max out” their chosen field in terms of knowledge it is impossible to really describe a made up world to the last degree.

For a medieval fantasy world you would have to establish:
- How society(s) function (basic question for example: men and women equal before the law?)
- Are there fantasy races like elves?
- How are societies organised? Kingdoms? Democracies?
- Technology level?
- Magic systems?
- Everyday life

Describing all that in detail is hard. Even authors who want to do all that will not be able to. So you have to go with basics, be vague where it is not needed for your story to work. But once you go more detailed it is advisable to keep in mind what was established before.

In my story “Spoils of war” I mentioned that the Ara’ki have been declared “servitus absolute” with no limiting statutes. With that I have established that the society of the new Roman Empire knows such statutes. Still open what exactly that means, but if I write more stories from this world and establish that a slave for example is exempt from sexual servitude I can not simply circumvent that later. There has to be a consequence for the master that rapes her. Maybe the slave is taken away from him. Maybe it is considered rape as if he had done it to a free woman. Or maybe with a reduced punishment.

In the movie “Runaway Train” two escaped convicts and a female railroad worker that fell asleep on the job find themselves on a four-loco train, with a dead engineer. They can not reach the lead locomotive to shut it down, as the second one is streamlined with no walkway and a jammed door. Two are shut down by disconnecting the cables between them. But later in the movie the first loco is uncoupled from the rest. The could have stayed on the last one and just opened the coupler after disconnecting the cable and it would stop on its own.

Sometimes you can wiggle your way out of this with a good dose of Star Trek technobabble to explain your fuckup away.

It is also advisable to spend some thought on how the world came to be and how your systems interact.

If you go with: Its just like medieval Europe, but with magic.
What magic? How many users of magic are there in general? Is it possible to defend against magic with magic? Wizards and Warlocks that can rain fire on a besieged city will drastically change the dynamic of that siege.

As mentioned this also applies to contemporary stories to a degree.
In @Claire 's Late Satisfaction the parents of the protagonist Eleanor are very different kinds of people. In real life sometimes things happen that you could not write in a story because it would seem too corny or improbable. And especially relationships that holds true.
Eleanors mother is strict, no nonsense, arrogant and domineering, her father on the other hand is described as a very warm, caring and humble man. So, while entirely possible to a reader of the story it could come across as “I needed these two types of characters”. But she spent some sentences on explaining how these two came to be.

And then there is a thing where authors don’t know how certain (real life) things work. Or they “forget” how things work in order to have the scene they want.

Opposed landings of troops are not something that would happen in medieval times as a society like that does not have the means to fortify a coastline without the suppressing power of machine-guns. If the opposing army does indeed await you on the shoreline: Just sail some more? If you have landed and the opposing force stands 30 meters higher on elevated ground with a steep slope: Why would they come down to meet you in battle an the sand?
Why would folks wear armor if it has no effect on swords?

Two very egregious examples are “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” and “The Last Jedi”
Hermione has overdone it on her classes in third year. There is a lot to unpack: Why would a girl of fourteen years been given a time-machine to be able to attend all her classes? Why not limit the number of classes she can take? Hogwarts has rules for less critical things. Why not optimise scheduling first? But: Why would two different classes even be held at the same time. Even students that only chose a limited number of classes would have the same problem if they chose two that overlap. And some even overlap with mandatory classes. No matter how you turn this, it will never work.

In “The Last Jedi” the First Order chases the Resistance. Coincidentally both fleets travel at the exact same speed so the chased stay just out of weapons range. Suddenly fuel is a concern, as it has ever been before. Handful of TIE-Fighters devastate the Resistance Fleet, but are called back because they are too far out to be covered by the main guns. How would the guns even do that? Since when mourn the bad guys for the TIE-Pilots? They have thousands of them, it would be over in minutes if not seconds. And even if all this would hold up: Why not have some of the heavily armed star destroyers jump ahead and come from the other side? And people get god knows how many dollars for writing slop like that.

Put the story into it

This might be the hardest part. Because you don’t want your story hampered by the constrictions of the world building, but you also don’t want to contradict it. What even would be the point of going through all that work on the worldbuilding and then just not stick with it?

This is the part I can write the least about as some of my earlier examples are already addressing this in a way.
Story and worldbuilding overlap and interact. Both are needed.

Feed back into the world

David Weber and the Honor Harrington Series of books. They have their weaknesses (like switching from a high stakes space battle into a history lesson on the development of the impeller drive missile and its effect on warfare) but two good examples.

It is established that there is no fatser than light communication. From star-system to star-system courier boats are needed, intra-system you have radio waves. So when the Manticoran Navy announced they have a FTL-Com System I was annoyed because I expected some Star Trek like Technobabble but it was rather simple actually: Artificial gravity exists, grav-sensors exists. At first the system was mostly a satellite that sounded an alarm by giving off grav-pulses. Over the course of the series it was more and more defined.
Technically not really an example of the story feeding back into its world, more the world feeding back.

But the next one is:
Starships fight each other mainly by using missiles. The defences against these are designed on what can be expected to come in. A battlecruiser would have its missile defence systems sized roughly to handle what could be expected from another battlecruiser (roughly, different nations and doctrines, and different tech levels)
In battle sooner or later battle damage would make the ships less effective by loosing missile launchers or defensive weapons. The ones who get the first hits in has an advantage.
In one of the early books they introduced missile-pods. Single use containers that can launch 10 missiles each. Ships would tow them and increase the size of the first salvo, oversaturating the enemy defence and get a big advantage.
Later a repurposed merchant vessel was sent to hunt pirates. As the Manticorans had a surplus of missile pods and the freighter had huge cargo holds the ship was given a big supply of them. “HMMS Wayfarer” could throw them over board given enough time and launch huge salvoes no one expected. As a reader I thought: “If a freighter can do THIS, what will a true warship be capable of? They need to get to it ASAP”
Some books later the concept was build into a new class of super-dreadnoughts. And it changed how space warfare was conducted in the books that followed.

Ended up being way more rambly than intended.
What are your thoughts on worldbuilding? Can you look past it to a degree (as I have to do for Warhammer)? Or do you not care at all?

[Vela Nanashi]

I can only speak for what I do in my own stories, and that is I don't spend a lot of dedicated time to building the world, it exists in my mind, I know how things work, my characters know how things work, but most of the time will not explain that to reader, as why would they think about that at all, if say magic is as much part of them as their hands are, so I try to not spend all that time explaining things. Also I suppose I can lean upon some of the sources of inspiration that I have, but I also depart rather a lot from those. Also I tend to write from inside character's, first person present tense, so that makes my stories more zoomed in, rather than some sort of god who sees many people at once and stuff that none of them sees, or seeing into multiple characters from third person. It is both a limit to what I can write, but also gives me what I personally crave the most, a vessel to possess/ride and explore the world from. Most of my world building happen as part of me exploring the story from a character's point of view as I also have the world running in my brain as well, there are things that are going on that is not seen by the point of view character. Though I suppose one thing that I do different is also that while I write I get surprised very often about what happens next, I do not plan or outline, I may have some sparks/seeds/ideas of events I hope to nudge the story through, but sometimes that ends up not possible, but I stay with the story anyway and just let it be what it wanted to be.

I am sure that those who do plan and outline have an easier time shaping the story to be exactly what they expected and wanted, and may build worlds in a different way than I do

[AdmiralPiet]

but most of the time will not explain that to reader, as why would they think about that at all, if say magic is as much part of them as their hands are, so I try to not spend all that time explaining things.

That is a good point. There is no need to explain everything outright all the time. Sometimes, especially in a long and complex story , you have to.

But sometimes you can let a character explain it to someone else instead.
But that goes only so far, because why would a character explain something everyone in their world knows already?
That is why some knowledge from history is lost or obscure. People wrote down and referenced things, but never explained the exact meaning/details, as it would have been obvious to a reader at the time.

But you can also just do things to a degree.
In one of your stories you mentioned a bow vanishing into an inventory. As someone familiar with Scifi and Fantasy I can wrap my head around the fact that the typical video game inventory is real in this world. Maybe a magic crystal that stores items. A problem could then arise once the reader asks himself: Why don't they store [story relevant item] in the inventory? Are there limits? What is the limit? Could I store a ship in there? A living thing?

The more complex the story, the more such questions come up, and then the author needs to have a coherent answer that fits in with the rest.

I am sure that those who do plan and outline have an easier time shaping the story to be exactly what they expected and wanted, and may build worlds in a different way than I do

Not neccessarily.
I had an idea for a story lately.
I then sunk a lot of time (relatively) in searching for Venetian and Genuese fashion around 1570, galleys and galeasses, and how to row them. The story is not yet written.

I have a lot of background lore for my Warhammer fanfiction in my head, but struggle with actually putting out a story in that world.

Having a laid out plan, and then realising it won't work quite right because you forgot something throws a wrench into the whole thing...

[Vela Nanashi]

The magical storage I use varies in quality and capability, but the best kind is usually a ring of holding, anything that is not attached to something huge can be put into the ring if touched by the ring wielder. Living conscious things can try to resist being put away, magical artifacts or things held by a person can also resist, resitance is a battle of wills/power wielder of ring and power of ring vs target will and power, once stored the good quality ring of holding is timeless inside, you can put away a lit torch, or a hot cup of coffee, and they will be like they were when you pull them out. My settings are rather high magic I suppose. But there are also in the same worlds people with no magic or who choose not to use magic, or even can't use magic but can't be affected/hurt by magic either, and often there is technology too, but not everyone has access to all the tech. Except magic and tech in places such as my version of Agartha that only really shares two things with the Agartha of our world, being underground and the name and maybe being high tech but rarely do I set a story on earth

As for bothering to explain things, I don't think I bother very often, I trust readers to infer what is possible from what they get to see or at least I try to write that way readers can always ask me in a comment if they want me to babble at them about stuff like I did here.

[Vela Nanashi]

Oh and good quality ring of holding has no internal volume limit, but lesser of holding things do

[Shocker]

Oh there is quite a bit to unpack from both of your contributions. I fall into the school of thinking, that good world building absolutely enhances a story , but as authors we need to great care not to fall into the trap of expository info dumping.

I further believe that it is perfectly acceptable of throwing a reader into a situation, that baffles their capability of fully understand, as long as the author is keeping the basic situation straight. As an example, I started two stories with characters finding themselves in front of a judge. That is a situation everyone can immediately decode. Sone societal standard has been broken and is currently addressed. One does not need to know if the character is indeed guilty or what laws were broken, to read the situation. At the same time that setup allows, to introduce the world and society through procedural steps of such a trial.

Every time I did plan a big story, I list myself too much in the details of world building, and ended ultimately in not writing the story at all. My longest story “an English vacation”, offers very little actual world building, yet what I did put in there forms a very solid foundation for any other story I want to tell featuring the T&A. But for that to work I need to make sure I don’t contradict the things I have established, if somebody behaves out of character, I better scrap that and give the arc to a new character.

In general I believe to get off pretty easily, as my stories are very short, and need very little word building.

[VictimEyes]

The world we create for our characters, in part, makes them who they are and in part, influences their actions. We should NEVER undervalue the act of world building or underappreciate those who do it well.

[MisterZ]

Every time I did plan a big story, I list myself too much in the details of world building, and ended ultimately in not writing the story at all.

Done that to myself more than once. With real-world stuff you get distracted doing research or, worse yet, realize the premise in your head wouldn't work in the real world. Then you do a secondary world, and you have to work out how the fantastic bits you need for the story make sense, and how they interact with the other bits of the world. Fine for a novel, but when you're, say, writing a short story on a contest deadline...

[AdmiralPiet]

Oh there is quite a bit to unpack from both of your contributions. I fall into the school of thinking, that good world building absolutely enhances a story , but as authors we need to great care not to fall into the trap of expository info dumping.

Yes, it is much better to explain the world through the things that happen in it.
If the characters can explain something naturally by their dialogue that would be peak, but oftentimes the author has to tell it.
But one should try to weave that info into whats happening instead of dumping it onto you in one big block of text. If possible of course.

I further believe that it is perfectly acceptable of throwing a reader into a situation, that baffles their capability of fully understand, as long as the author is keeping the basic situation straight.

As an example, I started two stories with characters finding themselves in front of a judge. That is a situation everyone can immediately decode. Sone societal standard has been broken and is currently addressed. One does not need to know if the character is indeed guilty or what laws were broken, to read the situation. At the same time that setup allows, to introduce the world and society through procedural steps of such a trial.

Absolutely.
The problem with that approach is not that it is inherently bad or wrong.

The problem is that some authors throw the reader in cold, and themselves too.
If they have not spent any time thinking about the wider world beforehand, most likely they wont do that later.
In a short story that is no problem as you say further down in your post, but the longer it goes on the harder it will be to fit new things in or keep it consistent if it is made up on the fly. That is the challenge you run into with your T&A.

Corporal Hill of the Terran Marine Corps cursed under his breath as the signal was lost. He was sure Sergeant Deveraux was dead, and now he had no contact with Lieutenant Sato. This so called "orderly retreat" had quickly devolved into mindless flight. Enemy couldn't be far behind now. The gorge he was in was pretty narrow. For a moment he considered using the power cell of his HKW PG5 plasma rifle as a makeshift bomb to try and block the way. A quick glance at the charge indicator made him forget that. At only 6% the bang wouldn't be that impressive, and he would not waste his one good remaining cell on it

There is not much info in this text, but it builds the world already.
Terran Marine Corps = There is a Earth/Terran Government implied, or at least one that considers itself that
Hill, Deveraux, Sato = Could also indicate a world government
Plasma rifle = Sci-Fi setting
Power cells as bombs = establishes that that is possible, but dependend on charge level.
HKW PG5 = unneccessary fluff but in this case a hint that this takes place in our world but the future as it could stand for "Heckler, Koch & Walther Plasmagewehr 5"

For a one of short its alright. But for future battle scenes set in this world I would need to keep in mind that the bomb from power cell is possible.
If I don't use it where it would make sense I need to establish a reason for that. Maybe it is unreliable and only used as a last ditch effort like Corporal Hill is in? Or is it a quirk only the HKW PG5 has, and other manufacturers don't put in?
If the marines run out of ammo they can not use that trick because: No ammo = no charge = no boom.

The world we create for our characters, in part, makes them who they are and in part, influences their actions. We should NEVER undervalue the act of world building or underappreciate those who do it well.

Done that to myself more than once. With real-world stuff you get distracted doing research or, worse yet, realize the premise in your head wouldn't work in the real world. Then you do a secondary world, and you have to work out how the fantastic bits you need for the story make sense, and how they interact with the other bits of the world. Fine for a novel, but when you're, say, writing a short story on a contest deadline...

Been there.
Sometimes I just want to verify something small, and suddenly 45min have passed on a Wikipedia-Dive and you second guess yourself.
It definitely is a challenge...

[Shocker]

@AdmiralPiet

The problem is that some authors throw the reader in cold, and themselves too.
If they have not spent any time thinking about the wider world beforehand, most likely they wont do that later.
In a short story that is no problem as you say further down in your post, but the longer it goes on the harder it will be to fit new things in or keep it consistent if it is made up on the fly. That is the challenge you run into with your T&A.

I'm only picking out this segment, as I find myself in agreement with your other replies. An author should never try to use the discovery style of writing for their world. Sure there are great pantsers out there, but even the great ones like George R. R. Martin, can write themselves in corners. I truly believe the man has no clue on how to finish a song of ice and fire, and this was already massively apparent with a Dance of Dragons. As an author, I need to know my setting, the general rules that I intend to apply.

I'm not sure I see the problem you allude to with the T&A. I hope that I have written each story, in such a fashion that it can stand on its own without the necessity for further reading. The characters may make appearances in other stories, but all the information needed about them is present in the story. Outside of that I treat the appearances of T&A as Easter eggs. If you enjoyed previous stories, you might like the nod, if you didn't get it no harm for the story currently being read.