Thursday, March 21, 2013

World Building

World building refers to constructing the context of the setting of your fiction... in other words, building a world for your characters to live in. It usually involves defining the geography, climate, language, religion, economy, demographic, and other major aspects of the world you are writing about.

On the left, you have the "bottom-up" approach, which means starting with small details and working your way up to big ones as needed. This is an easy way to run into inconsistencies, but it also means you don't have to spend as much time and effort on world building, because you can focus only on what is relevant to the story. On the right is the "top-down" approach, starting with the big stuff and working toward the smaller details. You might start with a map of the entire world, then define the countries and their details, then states, cities, families.

Sometimes, all it takes to do your world building is one small change to the world we know and exist within. Often, the only change required is to add an "impossible" character to the world: Captain America, Sherlock Holmes, the Watchmen, pretty much any superhero, Miss Marple... etc. The key to this type of world building is to determine how much this character's existence will affect the world at large. For most superhero stories, this means the world knows about and accepts superheroes as a reality. For more "normal" characters like detectives, the only real change is that these detectives can solve famous mysteries, giving us an answer at last. This style of world building can easily be accomplished with a bottom-up approach (because you only have to change a few details in one small place - a city or just one kid's life like Peter Parker or Steve Rogers - and identify major world changes on an as-needed basis).

Then you have larger changes to our world. Some of these, like Harry Potter, take place in the approximate present. In his case, the world building happens parallel to our world; J K Rowling created an entire world that is presumably hidden in plain sight. Another (easier) way to do this is to set your story in the future. The further in the future your story is set, the more drastic the changes you can make. V for Vendetta and Hunger Games both use this tactic to create a somewhat familiar, but simultaneously totally different, worlds.

Sometimes (more so in science fiction than in fantasy) you can use multiple worlds for your setting. Doctor Who keeps coming back to a somewhat familiar Earth (cell phones and metros and fashion, but major historical events are altered, obviously) but takes us to hundreds of other planets (and times) and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy starts off on the Earth we know and love, but since it is destroyed to allow for construction of a bypass (you've got to build bypasses, after all) Arthur goes off gallivanting around the galaxy.

And finally, you have the brilliant writers who are capable of creating a world from scratch. It almost goes without saying that J R R Tolkien was a genius at world building, to the points that (1) his setting is better than his story, and (2) most fantasy that has come after him is set in places extremely similar to Middle Earth in many respects. (Ever wonder why almost every character in high fantasy is Caucasian and speaks with an English accent? That's Tolkien's influence.) Other great world builders of fantasy include Frank Herbert, with Dune (which I've never read, but I still know of Arrakis, home of the spice) and Terry Pratchett, creator of Discworld (which, unsurprisingly, takes place on Discworld, pictured to the right of Dune, atop the great turtle A'Tuin). These were most likely accomplished with a top-down approach: create the world and its major characteristics, then define smaller pieces as you go.

Which, naturally, brings us to Game of Thrones, this week's review book. The world in which it takes place is not named, but it is full of fantastic creatures, supernatural beings, harsh climates (winter is coming), and knights and kings and horses and swords.


  1. You could write a series on world building alone. It's crazy complex but one of the best things I've ever heard about world-building is to treat it like a character. Now depending on who you are that might seem like a simple task but if you want your characters to pop off the page, it'll require a bit of work.

    1. I love that! Treat it like a character.

      I've always been more into settings and character description (reading-wise, not writing, I'm terrible at describing anything) than plot, so I really admire great world building.

    2. Agreed, I like a good plot but nothing makes a story as much as character and settings. I can get by a book with just great characters alone.