As I’ve said in a previous post, I’m pretty new to the whole fantasy genre so I’m groping around with some concepts; one of them is world building. Having never previously written it [fantasy] before, it’s a foreign concept to me. I’ve always worked with pre-established places so all I had to do was some research and then insert my characters there. That’s much like my urban fantasy, my Coney Island piece, that’s set, well, in Coney Island. The world is there; I’m just tossing the crazies in. With pure fantasy, you are god.
Also, with entering fantasy I’ve experienced people’s ignorance regarding the genre, stating that anyone can write fantasy because you can just make everything up as you go along. Sure, anyone can make anything up but these people don’t consider making a story linear, plausible, relatable or good. They just think ‘oh I can do that.’ Yeah, try it, buddy. I hope you have no intention of getting your work published shooting fantasy from the hip.
I’ve learned that yes, you can make up anything you damn well please, right down to the soil your characters are standing on but that’s just the shell of the story. What makes it real is the details, the characters, the plot. Right now, I’m hung up on those dastardly details.
I had a rather stark realization last week that what I was writing for Diamond Crier, and what I already had written, wasn’t part of the main story but world building itself. I’ve created these god-like creatures that live in the mountains, I’ve created rulers, I’m creating the kingdom, I’m giving them light. Shit, I wrote four pages of information about Raydin’s version of a teddy bear, a pachta (which I’ll post eventually). I had no intention of it rambling on like that. I only wanted to make a few notes but before I knew it, they came in three colors with very finite meaning for each color, not to mention elitist meanings.
On top of a pachta, I’ve also created yet another kingdom that the inhabitants of Raydin had been banished from. In the very first story that I wrote in the world, it was just Raydin and landscape. Nothing else. Now I have a second kingdom ruled by a rather bastard and brainwashing god that created a divide between the two kingdoms in order to shut them up because their constant warring was giving him a headache. Where this came from, I have no idea but it’s still coming.
All of this is fantastic except for the fact that I just don’t know where to stop with the details and start with the story. How much do I want to build up, how deep to I want Raydin’s roots to go before I plant another seed? When do I stop creating substitutes and instead just say ‘oak tree’ or ‘camel’? While I know all world building and no character building is certainly a bad thing (makes for a heavy story that’s unrelatable), not enough world building can result in a flat story. There’s a happy medium somewhere; I just have to find it.
But thanks to my OCD-ness, I can get sucked into fleshing out the tiniest details quite easily and nearly forget that I have a real story to write. On the other side, I get branch-off stories from the details. Yes, I have my main Diamond Crier story and I have the details that’s making it thicker, making it more realistic but amongst those details, I have branches, other places where I can take the story, still within the world, once the initial Diamond Crier is written. I guess I should stop complaining, although I’m really not, since I have pages of ideas just waiting to get written, all centered around the world of Raydin but Diamond Crier really needs to be my focus. That will be the first book to emerge from this kingdom but let me tell you, temptation is a hard thing to resist when you have a dozen pieces of it all vying for your attention.
The trick to world-building of any kind isn’t so much the world itself but how much of it to tell to the reader and in what detail. You as the writer need to know just about everything about your characters and their world. But the reader should only be given information on a need-to-know basis.
If you’re still having fun with your world-building, keep at it. Just don’t forget that this is YOUR knowledge base. What you share with the reader will be only a small subset.
Thanks, Bunny. That’s really good advice. I mean, what kind of writer would I be if I couldn’t tell you the colors of a pachta yet I’m the one that created them? I feel it just makes for better, more indepth and realistic writing. The more details the world has, the more real it becomes.
Thank God… And here I thought I was the only one being dragged of course by an overactive imagination. I’m trying to write my first novel–a fantasy novel–and I’m getting bogged down in my world building; I’ve got detailed maps, pictures of characters and weapons, detailed descriptions of different peoples ways of governing…the list goes on and on.
I wish you well on your endeavor because I’m learning, first-hand, what a daunting task world building can be.
I feel your pain Ross. Just think of it this way – the more you world build, the more realistic your story will read! Just don’t forget to write the story itself!
The more intimate you know your world and its history – the more personal the questions you can answer about it, the more organic your scenes will become. Because your story will be told in a living, thriving world rather than a series of scenes. By just sticking to the main plot, I’m sure you’ve noticed how beautiful little details have this funny habit of popping up everywhere without you ever having to explain them.
I suppose the delicate balance to strike here is when world building starts hurting your novel’s progress.
Cirellio, I know what you mean about adding depth without actually putting it in the writing. It’s in the nuances of the story that should anyone ask me about them, I actually have a valid answer for it. It’s just a matter of me sticking to the story at hand instead of veering off to build more background! There’s no point in having a fleshy world without a story to tell in it.