Worldbuilding Wednesday #1: In The Beginning
There was . . . take your pick, right? Light, fire, darkness, silence, music, laughter, sorrow, pain, joy, love, anything can be a foundation on which to build a world.
But how do we do that?
And more importantly, how do we do that in a way that supports the story we’re trying to tell?
Every Wednesday, I’m going to do my best to write a little bit about worldbuilding in writing. Applicable hopefully across genres, I want to explore that which has and hasn’t worked for me, things I’ve learned over the years, and offer prompts/questions to think on.
Worldbuilding, at its core, is any attention paid to the way the world around our protagonist operates, and how that impacts them, their life, and the lives of those around them.
Another way I define it is that if your story is a building you’re bringing together brick by brick, then worldbuilding is the scaffold that both shapes AND contains it. It should be strong enough to support your story, but it should also not be so overburdened that it begins to eclipse or even obscure the story you’re crafting.
This is a very easy void to be pulled in to when you’re first starting out, and it’s actually something I encourage! Rather too much that you can learn to trim back as opposed to operating with too little to support your story. And when you have an excess, you have options on where to pull back and determine which of that remaining scaffolding is strongest.
It’s when you start to think of a largesse of worldbuilding AS story that you begin to approach trouble. I love when a writer loves their world. I love when you can see JUST how much they’ve thought this out, what passion they’ve put into it, how deeply they care. But again, if that worldbuilding is pulling my focus from the story, what’s the purpose? Because worldbuilding is NOT a story.
Here are two examples; one is an overwhelming use of worldbuilding and the other is, I hope, more accessible.
“Koza started this nuashi the same way he did every morning. Fifty breaths of Pretending Leopard before moving into one-hundred and sixty breaths of Snow Boar’s Lament, thirty breaths of Crane Hears Teeth, and a final sixty breaths of Face The Moon, before starting all over again. The whole time, Timiko his great iguana companion, lounged across his shoulders, sleeping; Koza said he thought this was a great way to prepare for his nuashi’itoki even if his mentor and teacher, Mistress Garu said he would make a melon-faced fool of himself.”
Whew, right? Maybe some fun things in there, but let’s address the bloat:
Too many words the reader doesn’t know and has no reference for, AND it is tough to inference meaning.
Breathing seems to be a way for this culture to keep time, but feels very unwieldy and we don’t know WHY they do that.
Iguana companion = fun. Iguana companion being there for no reason = less fun.
Melon-faced fool is something we have no context for.
The poses named are fun, but there are too many and we have no context for them.
Spot the problems. Not only is everything above missing context but also, it tells us NOTHING about who Kazo is, what he’s preparing for, almost nothing. This is exactly the problem with worldbuilding bloat: maybe it’s interesting or cool, but if it isn’t ADDING to the story you’re trying to tell, then it’s just words and you need more to keep a reader with you.
Let’s try that again and attempt the following: streamline the time-keeping thing, keep one of those forms and tell us what it says about Kazo, and give us something he’s feeling a way about:
“Koza began his morning worship the same way he did everyday. He began to stretch, practicing to get his forms and his transition into each as smooth and fluid as possible. He held Snow Boar’s Lament twice as long, one hundred and twenty breaths, since Mistress Garu kept making her little comments about his inability to focus. In the corner, Timiko lounged in the rising suns, her mottled green scales delighting Kazo with their brilliance. It made him that much more excited to get out and seize the day. Only one more day until his Day of Endurance. Best to make the most of it.”
SO, let’s see what’s working here:
Very few made-up words
We know Koza has trouble focusing and has a teacher who lets him know that.
We know he has a trial coming up and while excited, seems to have other things he wants to do. And he loves Timiko and her scales.
We still get some flavor with the poses and Timiko and now we can say something like double suns which is cool.
AND we know some things about Kazo now. In the next few paragraphs, the author can cleanly set up what he’s doing, and maybe what he needs or is dreading to do before this Trial, which leads us right into, yes, the story!
And a caveat, of course; none of these are hard and fast rules. I LOVE en media res when we’re dropped in and made to be a part of the world without hand-holding or much set-up. But like anything, you need to know what you’re doing first before you can pull that off, otherwise it can be a mess.
This also, like I said, isn’t just for fantasy and science fiction. Horror has it’s worldbuilding: monsters and killers and those thin places between worlds all need structure or there can’t be any tension. Romance has it’s worldbuilding: roles and society and character needs versus character wants need to be known or there can’t be any tension. Even literary fiction needs worldbuilding. If you have a book about a poet in New York City, you’re not capturing EVERY SINGLE DETAIL about NYC for the average reader, you’re building the NYC that your poet knows, loves, and pays attention to because it shows us where their focus, and thus, tension lives.
Like I said, good worldbuilding is about supporting and lifting up your story, not weighing it down or leaving it unsupported to crumble at the first plot hole in the road.
I leave you today with this prompt:
If you were the main character in a story, what three things in your immediate morning would you focus on to help a reader know what world we’re in and what kind of story you’re telling?
Thanks as always for reading and being here, and I’ll see you soon.
Take care, be safe, and leave a light on for any out there wandering in the dark.