A LOOK AT WORLD BUILDING AND THE READER EXPERIENCE

 

Pixabay.com Willgard

“We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.”  
― Ernest Hemingway, The Wild Years

WORLD BUILDING: Where do I start?

I learned to read before I started kindergarten.  Stories have carried me around the world and to worlds unknown. I fell in love a million times, fought battles in history and in space.  I have ridden dragons, horses, interacted with monsters, aliens, and the paranormal.  I have gone on great quests, archeological digs, infiltrated secret societies, solved murders, and laughed my ass off. I’ve had superpowers and welded magic. That is the joy of reading.  

I love fiction. My joy in reading translates into writing my own stories and worlds.  I have a knack for world building.  I am asked all the time, how do you worldbuild?  The answer: I start with character. 

NARROW FOCUS

World Build from the inside outward. Get inside your character's head, stand in their shoes.  Let them tell you about the world they live in.  Show the world through your character's eyes, emotion, and perception, along with all their flaws, fears, and angst. 

This method of world building from the inside out narrows your focus.  It can help stop you from overbuilding or getting lost in the creation of worlds. It keeps you focused on the character arc relationship to their world.  

How all this affects the storyline determines the things I build into my worlds, and the systems I create.  I admit for me character is king in drawing me into a story, so it is a big focus in my worldbuilding. 

Do you need to think about government, magic systems, modern, medieval, futuristic, the mechanics of a functioning world, or systems in place for the way of life? 

Yes, but think about what all those things mean to your character, their perceptions, and the restrictions the world places on them.  There is more to world building than just the world, without people/character it is just an empty shell.  People are the story of a living, breathing world.

THE READER EXPERIENCE

Don’t dump all the cool details of your world on the reader.  They don’t care about that. They only care about what the character cares about. 

Let the reader experience your world with the immediacy of living it through your character’s discovery and interactions with the world.  Rule of thumb for world building details, is similar to advice about backstory. 

Dribble, dribble, dribble–sprinkle, sprinkle, sprinkle.

Only show what is necessary to move the story forward and for the reader to understand the world and current scene, no more.  

WHY?

Readers seek the experience of the world through character emotion and consciousness.  What we remember about books and movies is the way they made us feel/experience, which is why we crave another story-hit, more, more, more.   

As much as we (the author) love all the neat things about our worlds, the reader doesn’t really care, unless the character cares which makes their savoir faire engaged, immediate and immersive. 

Just like living in the real world affects us, shapes and molds us, so will the world of your character shape and affect them.   

Let’s face it, if your goal is to publish, we write for the reader as much as we write for ourselves, because you need an audience. We want readers to read and love it, so reader experience is important. 

Use your character’s emotional attachment to places, things, and feeling of home–longing, or contentment, or discontentment.  World building is an external and internal journey with the character.

World building includes using all the senses, to create atmosphere, texture, and attachment:  Sight, Smell, Touch, Hearing, Taste, and 6th sense. 

STORY EXAMPLE:

Anne of Green Gables L. M. Montgomery uses the senses and emotions in such a way that her world is a character in itself.  Read the free Project Gutenberg ebook.

Chapter 1: First paragraph:

“MRS. Rachel Lynde lived just where the Avonlea main road dipped down into a little hollow, fringed with alders and ladies’ eardrops and traversed by a brook that had its source away back in the woods of the old Cuthbert place; it was reputed to be an intricate, headlong brook in its earlier course through those woods, with dark secrets of pool and cascade; but by the time it reached Lynde’s Hollow it was a quiet, well-conducted little stream, for not even a brook could run past Mrs. Rachel Lynde’s door without due regard for decency and decorum; it probably was conscious that Mrs. Rachel was sitting at her window, keeping a sharp eye on everything that passed, from brooks and children up, and that if she noticed anything odd or out of place she would never rest until she had ferreted out the whys and wherefores thereof.”

• You will notice MRS is all capitalized.  Immediately we know she is important to the story. She relates the character to us via the world building (setting).  

• Simile and metaphor are the vehicle of setting that create visually and emotionally strong images in our minds. She uses the setting to tell the reader about the character's attitude, disposition and temperament. The further you read the more she builds on this and strengthens the scene paragraph after paragraph. 

• Montgomery particularly uses the river to describe and create a parallel impression of the road, specifically the people passing by MRS. Rachel Lynde’s home.  MRS. is a busy body cataloging details while sitting at her window.  

• Through the use of a ferret, as a comparison tool, she demonstrates the trait of persistence for MRS. following every crumb in pursuit of other people’s business.    

If you think about it, the senses are triggered in that paragraph even though sound is not mentioned exactly.  The sound of flowing water-a river, the sound of people passing by on the road, the sound of children–it's implied, I don’t know about you but I heard it.

READING TO LEARN 

Take time to go deeper when you read. Pay attention to the way writers use their worlds to convey details about character, setting, and reveal story information.  It will enhance your own writing.  

Here are links to books I’ve enjoyed with authors creatively using their world building intertwined with character to reveal story and world in a variety of styles. 

• A Darker Shade of Magic (The Collection) by V.E. Schwab

• Map of Bones by James Rollins 

• Star Wars High Republic: Light of the Jedi by Charles Soule

• Fae of Fortune by Eric Quinn Knowles

• Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Claire

Ask Yourself: How does the author use each scene to show the world through active word choices and imagery?

Showing and telling both play a part in storytelling:  How do they allow the reader to experience the world rather than telling them OR if they tell–how much do they reveal their character and world with the telling?

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Bonus: How Actors can use 50 Senses to enhance and create better characters. Just like actors can use this so can writers to make their characters and worlds pop–vivid. (Link Augmented Actor on YouTube)

I love this article. Hope you enjoy it too. How To World Build On The Page GoldenMay.com

More about Juneta here. 

Where to Begin Worldbuilding

A question I hear from a lot of writers is how to start Worldbuilding. Worldbuilding is much like character development, in that your world, or universe, is a character in your story. It involves knowing everything about your world, which is far more than what the will readers see.

So, where do you start?

You could create a map of your world, and start imagining what it's like to live in various places (and if you can't draw, check out my tutorial.) Or, you can start developing your characters and asking yourself (or them!) what they do in their world. You could even write a few scenes describing the world and develop it from there.

There are many methods to start building your world, but one of the most important things about Worldbuilding, is Economy.

Economy!?

Yeah, Economy.

Most people, when they hear the word Economy, think money: the buying and selling of resources. But Economy is much more than monetary transactions, and in understanding that, we can then learn how to apply that to Worldbuilding.

Put simply, Economy teaches us that everything has a cost, but that cost is not always money. Let me demonstrate that for you.

I want you to give me cookies. Imagine all the ways you can supply me with cookies (provided we are in the same location, and you have the means to do it). The two main ways you could get me cookies is to either buy a package of them or make them. The question then becomes: how much does it cost for either option?

As an example, let’s say a package of cookies costs $5, and buying all the ingredients to make cookies, let's say $15 (I’m sure it’s more than that). But as we established, there are more costs than just monetary ones. For instance, we have to go to the store. We have to take a car to get there. A car uses gas, which adds to our cost. We can represent that in dollar amounts. But it is not just going to the store, it's also coming back. So we can estimate a gallon of gas (really far store) for whatever your local price is.

Then there is time. If you weren't buying me cookies, you could be doing something else worthwhile (or not). Time to drive to the store, time to find the cookies, time to buy them, time to drive back home. In the case of making cookies, that too is a factor of time. Furthermore, we have to use the oven, which requires energy.

As we can see, to get me cookies is not just a cost of your hard earn money, but one of time and energy.

Now that we have expanded our understanding of cost, let us discuss how this affects Worldbuilding.

Imagine a king in a medieval castle, and he is served chicken. Could be from a farm, or a wild chicken from the nearby forest. Before he eats, he picks up some salt to put on his chicken. Where did that salt come from? How is the king able to use salt with his meal?

Kind of weird to think about: it's salt. You have salt in your cupboard; you bought it from the store. Salt is commonplace now, yet it wasn’t commonplace 1,000 years ago. While many societies had salt, it was primarily used for cooking and/or preserving something, not something to add to a meal after it was cooked. In fact, it really wasn't used as a condiment during this time, as it was very expensive. However, for this example, let's say that it is a condiment.

What ways could the castle servants have obtained salt? Perhaps the salt is mined for. Look at that, suddenly our kingdom has a salt mine. Or, maybe they live near the coast, and use the ocean to get salt, which involves workers and processing. Suddenly you know more of the geography and some of the land’s inhabitants. Perhaps it is neither of those things, and they buy it from a merchant. Where did the merchant get it from? A neighboring country? Look at that, you've expanded the world.

Salt has to come from somewhere. Knowing where it originates helps you better understand your world. Now, this may just be a background detail that doesn't make it into your story. You don't need to write: “The king picks up salt, which was purchased from a merchant who got the salt from a neighboring country that they have an established trade with.”

Just say: “The king picked up salt.”

Let's give another example. Your soldiers go into battle with their swords. Where did the swords come from? Blacksmiths made them. What metals did the blacksmiths use? Maybe this story with soldiers in a battle takes place during the ancient age, and they use bronze swords. Bronze is a combination of copper and tin. Was this society fortunate enough to have both copper and tin mines? Or did they have one metal, and trade for the other? Have neither and traded for both?

Everything comes from somewhere. Things don't exist in a vacuum. A common mistake I see from writers is having various things in their story, with no explanation of how those items got there. Such as a race of beings that live at the bottom of the ocean, and have never visited the surface, but they have apple trees in their garden. There are no apples on the bottom of the ocean, and we’ve established they've never been to the surface... so where did the apple trees come from? Perhaps they traded for the seeds from another race? Or perhaps it’s something that should be removed from the story.

Economy is the place you start when you build your world. You know what your characters will do. They’ll fight in a sword duel, or fly across the universe in a space ship. They will need to eat, and drink, and sleep. So the question becomes, not only how they do this, but how do they come to being able to do these things. When we can understand that, it reveals more about your world and makes your story more complete.

It is imperative to remember that things have a cost. If you want something to appear in your story, you need to understand where it came from and how it came into being. You need to take me to your world, and immerse me in it. I want to feel like I’m there. The more a writer knows about their fictional world, the more a reader can feel connected to the story.

Find Christopher D. Votey at his website and on Twitter.
Character Astrology Profiles releases July 23 and you can pre-order it on Amazon.