Tag: craft

There are a lot of ways to build a world.  We tend to think of worldbuilding as something for science fiction or fantasy.  I don’t think of it that way.  Mysteries are often tied to a particular place, like Tony Hillerman’s Navajo Tribal Police mysteries[1] or the Bridgerton series by Julia Quinn, set in the world of English aristocracy of the 18^th century. 

Tana French’s Dublin Murder Squad series is a lovely example of creating a very specific world in a very specific time, the waning days of Dublin’s economic boom and bust—and as good worlds do, it grounds her series in an authenticity that convinces the reader that this world is real and makes the stakes of the story feel real.

Science Fiction and Fantasy

There is a lot of advice on the web for worldbuilding.  Hugo Award winner N.K. Jemisin has a masterclass on worldbuilding and (https://www.masterclass.com/classes/n-k-jemisin-teaches-fantasy-and-science-fiction-writing/chapters/elements-of-worldbuilding ) Brandon Sanderson has a technique for building magic systems that you can find in his lecture series on YoutTube.

I will state up front, I don’t like Rendezvous With Rama.  I tried it several times and just not my thing.  It’s a book that has really meant a lot to a lot of people, so I assume that it’s like licorice, which my husband loves and which I hate.  It’s not a case that Rendezvous With Rama is not good writing, it’s a matter of preference. 

Thinking about worldbuilding in the way mystery and romance writers think about it can be a different and sometimes useful way to worldbuild.  I’ve created four prompts that can help bootstrap both setting and worldbuilding.  Also, they give me an excuse to research and I love research.  So much easier than writing.

[1] Linda Rodriguez, indigenous American writer, discusses Tony Hillerman and issues of appropriation in a post http://lindarodriguezwrites.blogspot.com/2012/04/literary-mystery-noveliststony.html She feels that Hillerman was respectful but points out that not all indigenous writers and readers agree.

What is a world?

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When you build a world, you should think about language, customs, and culture.  Think of a story set in a horse racing track. 

The horse racing track has its own language—in English, there are words we use at a track that we don’t use much of any place else.  Horse races are described in miles but also furlongs.  There are stakes and claim races, win, place, and show. 

There are different kinds of people at a race track.  There are the people who come to watch the races; some of them sit in the stands.  Rich people and companies have boxes where food and alcohol are served.  Serious gamblers may stand at the edge of the track instead of being in the stands.  Then there are the horse people—trainers, grooms, exercise boys, veterinarians.  And there’s another group that works at the track—they take the money, work in the office, or serve food.

There are customs—the ‘call to the post’ where a trumpet fanfare is played, the winner’s circles.  For the Kentucky Derby, women wear fancy hats and people drink mint juleps.  The winning horse gets a blanket of roses (which the horse probably either ignores or wants to eat.)

There are uniforms—the ‘silks’ that the jockeys wear. 

It’s a complex world and if your story is, say, a mystery involving a horse racing track, knowing this is the world of your story.

What is the goal of worldbuilding?

Your world is not interesting in and of itself.  Your world is interesting because it

• Creates an emotion
• Supports the story or interaction

Some people want to build a consistent world from the very beginning.  I’ve always thought of Tolkien as this kind of writer, but Tolkien turns out to have been more of a pantser than I ever realized.  There’s a letter to his son (http://hedgepickle.blogspot.com/2013/02/trotter-description-of-development-of.html) where he describes writing a scene where there’s a character sitting in the corner in an inn who he calls Trotter.  Tolkien had no idea who the character was—eventually it would turn out to be Aragorn, who you would think was pretty essential to both world and plot.

I build my worlds the way theatre sets are built—that is, you can see a door at the edge of the set and the yellow flowered wallpaper that suggests a hallway, but if you go backstage, there’s no hallway.  I want everything the reader sees to feel lived in, as if it has history.  But I want to evolve my worldbuilding, as Tolkien did, to fit my story, so I don’t try to plan everything out at once.

When I’m thinking about worldbuilding, I’m rarely thinking about geography or even buildings.  I don’t really world build systematically.  I like things to feel messy because my everyday life is messy.  When I first saw Star Wars, I had never seen a science fiction movie where things were dirty, and it just made everything more real. 

When I’m teaching worldbuilding, I suggest that the writers think about:

• Language
• Classes
• Culture
• Dress and architecture (Styles)

By language I mean jargon or language.  (Junot Diaz has very interesting things to say about using English and Spanish in his works. https://www.nytimes.com/1996/12/08/nyregion/outsider-with-a-voice.html )  But everybody uses jargon.  If your world is a university, there is tons of language; GPA, required courses or GDEs, Fraternity, Sorority, tenure.  At my university, D Clearance is a big issue (it’s a hoop some students have to jump through to get into certain classes.)

There are social classes in university, too.  Students sort into lower classmen, upper classmen, graduate students, PhD candidates, scholarship kids, frat and sorority kids.  People have opinions about Business Majors versus Theater Majors.  Then there are professors; tenured, part time, TA’s.  There are administrators who work in admissions, or residence life (more jargon there) and the working-class folk (in the US, often BIPOC in a mostly white landscape) who keep the place running; landscapers, cashiers, housekeeping.  Each of them experiences the university in a different way.

There are a lot of weird cultural rituals; ‘rushing’ for fraternities and sororities, homecoming, commencement, school colors.

Dress and architecture come in, too.  A lot of universities in the US strive to echo the architecture of Oxford or Cambridge—brick or stone buildings, ivy, walks through grassy lawns. 

When you are thinking of where your story is set, if you have trouble with setting, maybe jot down a few notes about these four categories and see if they help you build out your world.

Writing Exercise: 

• Make a list of half a dozen ‘worlds’—like the race track, or Junot Diaz’s Dominican-American working class New York high school kids, or of the world of the high school marching band.  Think of places you either know, or are interested in. 
• Create two characters who are in that world and want different things.  If your world is, say, the homicide division of a police department, maybe both your characters are detectives, or maybe one is a detective and one is a witness.
• Write a scene—1,000 to 2,000 wds—set in your world.