WORLD BUILDING 101
I’ve agreed to ‘compere’ a session entitled ‘World Building’
at the up-coming ‘Futura’ conference in Wolverhamption (15th June; I'll be joined on the panel by Kim Lakin-Smith and Janet Edwards) so I thought it would
be an idea to think of the questions I could pose to the panellists … and, of
course, my own answers to them.
So this, I guess, is Rod Rees’ ‘World Building 101’.
In writing fiction there are five elements – plot, theme,
characters, style and setting – but in Science Fiction and Fantasy SETTING looms very large indeed. SF and Fantasy tales invariably need a bespoke
world to serve as the stage on which the story plays out (actually I’m hard
pushed to think of a SF/Fantasy book that hasn’t a setting unique to itself … ‘Flowers
for Algernon’, perhaps?). The examples are legion: Orwell’s Oceania; Herbert’s
Arrakis, Prachett’s Discworld; Tolkien’s Middle Earth, my own Demi-Monde. From
this it’s obvious that World Building is a skill every SF/Fantasy writer needs
in his or her tool box.
But as I know from bitter experience World Building isn’t
easy so let’s look at the KEY
INGREDIENTS that a New World must have or as I call it, the CONSISTENCY CRAMPS.
1.
Your New
World must be suitable for purpose. Remember this is the stage your
characters will perform on and it must provide some – hopefully not all – of the
pressures, dilemmas and threats your heroes must struggle with and triumph over.
I say not all because it’s easy to lose yourself in world-building and to
forget that it is, when all said and done, just a stage … it’s not a substitute
for character interaction and dynamics. Think of your New World as another lead
character and you won’t go far wrong. Personally I also like to reference my
New Worlds with aspects of the Real World … it gives the readers an anchor
against all the creative madness you have squalling around them.
2.
Your New
World must allow the reader to suspend disbelief. To do this your New World
must be coherent and, above all, consistent. There is nothing more aggravating
for a reader to invest his time entering and exploring a New World only to find
that the writer couldn’t be arsed to remember it’s intricacies and foibles, or
WORSE has to keep playing that dreaded surprise get-out-of-jail illogic card to
get his hero out of a corner he or she has been written into. And to do this
needs PLANNING (see point #3 below).
3.
Your New
World must be planned. Okay, so there’s a school of thought that the best
way to develop a New World is just to dive right in and wing it. My view is
that this is bollocks. At the very least the writer must understand the spatial
co-ordinates of his New World – how all the elements (countries/planets/Zones
of Frightfulness whatever) fit together – and for this you need a MAP! I’m not
talking here of a supreme example of cartography, but at least a sketch of
where everything fits (a piece of advice: if you want said map to feature in
your published book don’t make it too complex – the Demi-Monde map suffers from
this and is waaaaaaaay too small). Next up are the physical aspects of your New
World (the physics/magic that applies there, the weather, geography,
environment, biology, astronomy, zoology and so on … the stuff I hate doing) which
make the New World believable. Sure these physical aspects might be fantastic
but if they’re consistent, have a coherent logic and your characters believe in
them then there’s no problem. Finally, we come to the interesting bit, the
cultural/political/religious mores of the inhabitants populating your New World
and who your characters have to interact with. I spend most time on these as
they have the greatest impact on my protagonists. All-in-all New World building
is a lot of work but if you want to suspend disbelief, the suspension starts
here.
Okay, so you’ve spent days/weeks/months/years constructing
your New World and the temptation to ram all this effort into the first chapter
of your magnum opus as one huge info-dump is almost irresistible. BUT you must
resist, you must resist the RASH OF
THE INFO-DUMP.
The old adage in fiction writing is show don’t tell (only if
you’re a genius like Orwell are you permitted to ignore this maxim). So your
aim must be to let the reader discover the New World in a natural, unforced
sort of way with information coming their way via the observations and actions
of your characters. Seduction rather than rape and all that. The solution I
came up with for the Demi-Monde was two-fold. First I pinched an idea used by
Frank Herbert in ‘Dune’ and had mini-info-dumps in the form of extracts for
manuals etc. at the beginning of each chapter and, secondly, I put all of my
hard work on display in the Demi-Monde web site.
We come now to the URGE
OF NEW LANGUAGE-ITIS which must, at all costs be controlled. Not
many of
us are philologists like Tolkien so the subject of a writer developing a new
language/vocabulary/series of terminologies to be used in their New World is
(to me, anyway) a thorny one. My experience is that publishers (and a great
many readers) HATE anything that smacks of a new language so the policy I’ve
adopted is to use new words only when they convey new meanings. Unfortunately
as the Demi-Monde was my first series I didn’t heed this warning and I thought
to spice things up by using punning words rendered camel-case style (HimPerialism,
ImPuritanism et al) and the kicking that I got from some (thankfully a minority)
of readers was profound. So be VERY careful before you introduce a new language.
And please be especially careful in naming your protagonists: if I see one more
name rendered as Hzzzhgsdhyfi or something equally silly I think I’ll hurl
chunks. Multiple ‘Zs’ do not an exotic name make.
Right, now we’re onto the CURSE OF THE CLICHÉ. There are a lot of SF/Fantasy writers out
there all busily constructing worlds, some of them very, very similar. I mean,
if I see one more story set in a faux-mediaeval world beset by wizards and
witches, or a US High School plagued by vampires, murder will be done. Come on,
kids, you can do better than that. Think outta the box!
Okay, nearly over. We now come to the CONDESCENDING ADVICE bit. If
I was asked what I had learnt from building the Demi-Monde it would be:
1.
Once you’ve built a world you must abide by the
restrictions you’ve imposed on it (nothing unsuspends disbelief faster than
inconsistency) and that means having a reference (please make notes otherwise
you’ll be continually flipping back thru your manuscript checking whether the
vampire-infested Blood Lands are to the north or south of the werewolf-dominated
Pack Lands or some such unproductive shit. And
2.
The world must be real to the characters you
have living, working, struggling inside it. You may think it’s weird as hell to
have variable gravity or time that flows at different rates during the day but
to your characters living in this New World, that’s the way it is. Don’t have
them saying ‘Gosh, that’s a surprise,’ every time you lay something odd on your
reader.
That’s it. I hope it helps! Enjoy your building.
