Preparation

Thinking back over all my years, I've written a modest amount of material (for a non-writer). Most of it I have lost with the passing of time, but the memories of it all, if not the exact words, remain. 3 times, I specifically performed a world building step prior to writing the opening sentence of the story. It is this pre-story world building to which this post refers. World building or development as you write is a separate activity, related to, yet separate from, what I will discuss. Reflection on this activity, as well as how I wrote my other material without this step has motivated me to share my opinions on the subject.

The topic of world building is intricate. I almost do not know where to start. I will try to divide this post into categories, all the better to organise my thoughts from their usual shape of mishmash. None of this is likely to apply to non-fiction.

1. Is world building necessary?

I shall answer this in a single word. Always. It doesn't matter if you're writing a 2000 word short story, to a 200,000 word novel, it is set somewhere. (There may be exceptions to this, and I would be very interested to read those if so). I know that this sort of grandiose statement provokes comments from those who disagree. They would come to me and say "If it's set here and now, in the real world, you don't need 'world building' at all, it already exists."
Perhaps this segment should have been called "The definition of world building". The 'world' is not just the physical location that your story, prose, etc is set, it also includes that which is unseen. A past and history that has shaped not just the landscape, towns and buildings, but the inhabitants of the world too. Thus, to me, world building includes character backgrounds and histories, which provide them their motivations. Have you ever tried to write a character into a story that has no history? They're just a name. Every situation they are faced with, they have no prior experience, precedence or moral development that lets them cope with any given situation. They are very 2 dimensional. This may be acceptable for cameo appearances from 'the grumpy train driver' who has a preset response to 1 situation, but any recurring characters, even supporting ones will both be difficult to write and difficult to bring to life in people's imaginations. The story written in the here and now is still likely to involve fictional characters. This alone requires the characters to have a motivation. That motivation is a product of their upbringing and personal development through various trials and tribulations in their lives. Now the hecklers shall cry: "But my story is both in the here and now, and the characters are me and my friends with real histories already." Well, if that's the case, then I take my hat off to you (it's either a trilby or a fedora depending on the day of the week) and stand corrected.
Still, my opinion is such that not only do I view the necessity of building the world from both a physical and historical viewpoint, but also the occasional need to build the world more than once. The world is very much one of perceptions for your characters. If you have a villain, do they necessarily see the 'world' the same way as the rest of your characters? It's been seen in movies, books, on the news, etc. There are people, and they're not always clinically or criminally insane, (nor evil) that do not see the same things in the same way as the majority. You would need not only the character's 'real' history, but the way they saw it. You would need the 'real' events, places and people in the world along with the specific perception of these for this sort of character.
It is this view that caused me to realise, that while it would at first appear that the bulk of world building is to set out the lands and their history, there is in fact an equally large task building the world that your characters see.
I am certain that even in the instances where I did not think to myself, �I’ll design the world first, then write,” that I performed some world building, and that it was necessary. I thought up my character and their motivation, but I also thought why they were motivated in such a way. I thought up villains, obstacles, events or places for the story or prose to include, and then I started writing. Thus world building is integral to writing fiction.
To finish with 'is world building necessary?' I will lastly say that while it is a necessity, you don't have to write it down. Which leads on to:

2. Does world building need to be complete?

Segment two will be answered with two words. Goodness no! Travis (or was it Andy) was telling us in the admin group a story of a writer who spends so much time building their world (as of this post) they still have not started their originally intended story. While there's actually nothing wrong with this (think Silmarillion), it’s also not wrong to begin writing with only partially formed worlds. Characters only have a history of a few years, worlds consist of a bar, the street outside and an alleyway, etc. If your world is small (say just be your main character's history should they be struggling to survive by themselves on a small deserted island in the Pacific...) then you could easily keep a track of it all in your head. Even if the world was very large, but your story small then again your mental track of places, people and all other world-buildy things could well be sufficient.
Long ago, I spent a very long time daydreaming up a world, its lands and cities, plus its history, along with that of my character until I eventually wrote the short story about them. My second attempt at world building was more interesting. It was for an intended novel (which never eventuated). The world building I did was designing the political system and social structure of the world, with no physical location at all. The physical world was spontaneously invented as I wrote, but which was guided somewhat by the socio-political background I had written down in detail. Of the story itself, I wrote the first 2 chapters and quite liked the way it was going. I hope to unearth my original notes one day and either finish that story, or incorporate them into a new one. This world building I did was certainly far from complete. My last planned world building I did was for my current novel. Interestingly, I cannot take credit for most of the world. I have been involved in helping create, play test and write material for a role playing game Campaign Setting with a very good friend of mine, John. The novel I am writing I hope to one day publish as a supplement to the Campaign Setting (which is game speak for ‘world’) called Visions of Aestia. Most of the creative material within the setting thus far is his. I have added a small amount of history, created groups of people and creatures, archetypical social roles, locations and cities. Some of this is generated as I play the game, some when I sit down to add to the collective work, some when I run a game for the others to play in, and the rest for my novel “Echoes of Aestia” (working title). The overriding mythos, cultural differences between the races populating the world, basic areas of the main continent, social rituals, and a wealth of other knowledge are all his. He waits with eager anticipation I’m sure to see what I can do with it all, as well as what ends up being populated and fleshed out in the campaign setting as a result. A lot of world history was already written for me, as was a lot of cultural information, as well as political structures. This time, my world building was to add to this basis. I concentrated more on the physical locales, and to a lesser extent, the immediate history of the local area and characters before I started writing. Once I finished this, I delved more into writing the histories, but not in the way I originally intended. I found myself writing an almost outline of the story. I wrote a ‘future history’ events that would occur throughout the world as my story progressed, some of which were completely unrelated to my locale, characters or plot in any way. Whether or not all these events are experienced by, or even heard of, by my characters remains to be seen. It was at this point I felt I had enough to start writing. The world, by no mean’s ‘complete’ was certainly a very long way towards being so.

3. Is world building difficult?

Continuing with the trend, I provide a three word answer. No, it’s not. As you may be able to extrapolate from the past two sections, world building is an arbitrary activity. Part of it provides you the place to start. It gives you a setting, scenery, history, etc any or all of which can then be used at will as you write. All the world building has to do, is get you started. The bigger the world gets, the more involved you can become in its creation. I’m easily able to get lost in the details of Aestia’s creation. I can take a small region that is not a part of my novel or story, and draw maps of the towns, roads, forests and swamps. I find myself thinking up who founded the towns and when. Why the roads were built where they were, if they’re safe to travel or not, what they’re paved with. I think of what kind of trees are in the forest and if it’s a haven for bandits or men in tights. I think of how often the roads are traveled, are they in good repair as a result, who’s doing the traveling, why are they traveling? Does a witch live in the swamp, what about treants, will-o-wisps or ghosts? It goes on an on, incorporates outlying farms, the towns and who runs them, population sizes, so on and so forth. I try to avoid world creation to this level of detail away from where my stories will take me, even though it is fun. Because it is fun, it is also easy.
The last sentence heralds danger, and those astute enough will already be poised to say “writing a novel is fun, but it sure isn’t easy!” I didn’t mean easy to be interpreted as pick up a pen and the world flows out of your brain, through your arm and onto your paper (or insert appropriate laptop analogy here Andy). I mean that world building is easy like writing the novel or story itself is easy. The words or material are not always there, but it is not a boring chore to think on the subject (if it is, don’t do it….).In fact, oft times world building is much more syncopated than writing any part of a story or novel, so it’s easier in that respect too. You most often have no dialog, you can describe things in brief, write about events from abstract or results orientated views, draw diagrams, etc.

4. Once you’ve finished world building and started writing, can you change the world?

That’s up to you. (Notice the 4 word answer.) My gut feeling was initially that doing so would defeat the purpose of the world building in the first place. However, on careful consideration of the matter I changed my mind. I personally would be more inclined to add missing things to the world, rather than change what I had created already.
Before changing a previously created event or place because it no longer fits your character or where they end up, I would work the following into the story instead. My characters perception was just wrong. A place is no longer like they remembered it (the event that changed the place is now added to the real world, but not to the characters original perception of it, this event may or may not be explained to the character in the story). The character remembers the details of something happening incorrectly (which by the way makes for an amazing plot twist if done well – FFVII), news of an event is actually just hearsay and rumour etc etc. Still, if you find that there’s just no way around it, it is your world after all, and you’re allowed free-reign to rewrite history, move mountains, or destroy nations.
Random IT analogy: I think that changes to the world after writing has begun fall into the category world development rather than world building. To me world building is very much the initial act of creation, revision of this world, whether providing extra functionality or performing bug fixes is definitely development work.
The other part to mention is that by ‘change’ I am specifically referring to the alteration of character or location defining content. If it’s new material that’s added to the world, this should be done with impunity as you write. You invent a village half-way between the 2 original cities, there’s actually a hidden power behind the president’s rule or your character was married briefly aren’t changes to the world, you just hadn’t written them down yet.

5. Will Dutton stop giving his opinions on world building any time soon?

It is a distinct possibility. These have been my considerations of some core components and concepts correlating to city, creature and culture creation (which not only is a great string of alliteration, but a description of world building). There’s more I have that I could write about, describing the actual process by which I write ‘world’ content which others could use as a guide to help create their own if they wish. I plan on working on that over time and will be entitled a guide, rather than an opinion (although, as all my works of non-fiction go, it will be both).

In closing:

A brief summary of what I think about world building:
1. It should always be done to some degree. Whether it’s a colossal atlas of a project, or just a brief character background to get you started, you should build a world before starting.
2. Don’t worry if you don’t finish your world to begin with. World development continues after you’ve begun writing.
3. Due to it’s detached and summarising nature, world building is fun and easy. You can be as granular as you like, or vague and general.
4. If you find your original world no longer fits the story, you always have the option of adding to or changing your original concept of your world.



NB: A future publication in the works is “Duttons guide to fluff. Fluff, of course, being extra filler, which a writer can use to say something in many more words than necessary in order to hit a target word count, without leaving the original message too far in the dust behind them.” This work was originally called “Duttons guide to reaching your word count.” But this didn’t accurately convey the content of the guide.

Hmmm... you seem to take this very seriously.

If you are interested, and I think that you are, I have a book here with some short stories and essays by John Barnes called "Apocalypses & Apostrophes". In this book, there is an essay on world building called "How To Build a Future" where Barnes discusses how to, step by step, extrapolate future trends, technology, populations etc... so that in the end, you have a believable future.

He gave an example where he wanted to write a story set about 300 years into the future, but according to his extrapolation model (using a spreadsheet where each line represents a year's tech, politics, population etc...), and realized to get the energy output for something that he wanted in the story, he'd need to set it 1500 years into the future, which was too far. So, he realized that he needed a major energy breakthrough some time between now and 300 years from now that changed the face of energy creation.

This results in a solid world with real, believable results. I read the essay every once in a while - it's really useful.

Now - I have to go and finish your post, since I didn't have the time before. :)

Travis.
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http://cottreau.blogspot.com
http://cottreaureviews.blogspot.com/

I'd be interested in reading that certainly. All my world building experience has been fantasy, and at a much lower level of technology.