World building spices real physical and social facts with the author’s imagination to create a civilization, a political structure, a culture and zeitgeist as backdrop and influence to story. Writers define world-building as the process of constructing an imaginary world, usually associated with a fictional universe, and sometimes called a constructed world, conworld or sub-creation. Popularized at science fiction workshops during the 1970s, the term describes the development of an imaginary setting that is coherent and possesses a history, geography, and ecology that is rich, unique and resonates with the story’s premise.
Some important things to consider when creating a world other than Earth include:
- Planetary & physical features: things like climate, seasons, geography, ecosystems, and natural resources
- Peoples and customs: such as food and eating how people greet and act, language, ethics, values, religion and beliefs
- Social organization: like governments, politics, legal system, foreign relations, war and weaponry, science & technology
- Commerce, trade, public and daily life: like business and industry, transportation, communication, technological advancement, fashion, dress, manners, diet, education
- Fantastical Laws & Science: such as the kinds of magic or prevalent science and technology and their relationship to the various cultures and peoples and story being told
Science vs. Art In World-Build
If a novel is a historical fantasy set on Earth, science is not a critical part of world building; if a novel is set on some probable planet in the Andromeda Galaxy, then science becomes an integral part of world building. But, in both cases the writer needs to do his or her research; in the case of the historical fantasy, world building will be based on accurate historical information, even if an alternate history is being written.
Part of the reason people read historical epics is to learn more about that particular civilization and time period. The reader trusts that the writer will give him or her the facts on the world, while taking liberties on the remaining story elements. Similarly, a science fiction reader opens the first book in Larry Niven’s Ringworld series with the expectation of learning about a made-up world based on accurate principals of science.
World-Builder’s Disease?
“Fantasy writers have a penchant for working up histories of imaginary empires that can run for hundreds of pages, full of maps and chronologies and genealogical trees a yard long,” says Ansen Dibell, author of The Elements of Writing Fiction: Plot, Writer's Digest Books, 1988, "Similarly, science fiction writers can fall in love with their hardware and want to show it off," he adds and describes this as a kind of narrarive cancer, a "World-Builder's disease".Most writers who world-build keep extensive files of background information on their worlds. In some cases, these can be published as companions to the main book series (e.g., J.K. Rowling’s books on quiddich or magical creatures, which most certainly came from her extensive background notes). Dibell’s point is that this information doesn’t belong in the main book, where it can interfere with the process of storytelling. It becomes “info dump”, which is often very static, lacks drama, and proves ultimately boring.
 |
