World Building

So you're writing this novel, see, and you've decided ahead of time that you're going to have some characters and some dialogue and you have all these crazy plots and scenes floating around in your head. You've chosen how much sex you want to include. Basically, you've listened to what some ranting lunatic on the Internet has said about writing a novel (or a short story or a poem or death threats or anything). Great. So where is it set?

I've talked about my experience with notes before, and how important I think it is to prepare for the work to come when you decide to start a novel. In fact, the more I do this blog and work on my own writing (not to mention the editing) the more I think that the notes will give you a much better idea of the time and effort the novel will ultimately require. Once you begin your notes, however many or few they may be for your taste and style, you'll find a plethora of information just waiting to flow out of your brain like someone blew up the Hoover Dam. Its good to get it all out, written down where you can see and evaluate it. Everything you come up with is important, in one way or another. It may take the story in an exciting new direction or it may end up in the scrap pile of insane ideas. Either way, it is worth the time.

Most important, though, at least at this stage, is not the who or the what but when and where. World building is a popular subject for fantasy and science fiction writers, but I think its important regardless of genre. A lot of suspense writers will include, either in their acknowledgements or their forewards, a bit of thanks for someone that helped them with locations or geography or history or law enforcement procedure. I say suspense writers because that's where I've seen it most from people like Linwood Barclay, who writes some fairly disturbing stories set in this world and roughly this time period. When that's the setting, modern Earth, typically you'd just call it extensive research. World building, for that setting, seems a little over the top to some people. I disagree.

The setting of any work, regardless of genre or style or planet or time, is a world all its own. It has its own rules and laws, its own physics and phenomena, its own geography. If your story is set in, say New York City in 2012 or in the Third Age of Middle Earth, there is no difference. You still need to create that world and, more crucially, stick to that creation.

I'll talk about this from a fantasy perspective because that's most of what I write, but I'll try to relate it to other things as well.

To start creating a world, you need an idea. A simple idea will do, and it doesn't matter much what that idea is about. It could be a plot point, a theme, a character, whatever. That's your starting point. It will be different with everyone. For Skyborn, I had this idea that warriors from a distant northern land would be bound in honorable service to an emperor from the south. The idea was, admittedly, lifted from an Amon Amarth song (Varyags of Miklagaard) which was in turn based on a group of viking warriors (the varyags of varangians) who served as an elite guard for some of the Byzantine Emperors. With this idea in mind, I set out building my world.

I think that the first, and possibly largest, step in world building, is the geography. Where is this going to be set, in the most general of terms. So your story might take place entirely in an apartment building on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, but first you need to know where Manhattan is in relation to the rest of the world. So I built what became the Kirnan Empire, sprawled across a massive continent, across the sea from a body of land that the southerners call Northrealm. I created mountains and seas and rivers. A bit of research went into this, because knowing how these things are formed is helpful in placing them on a world.

Then I created borders between realms. Empires, in every world I've ever seen, are built of nations conquered either by force or by diplomacy. Some writers have come up with some outlandish things, but I like to make my worlds easy to explore (at least, as easy as fantasy can be) so I take ideas from our world. Kirnan is composed of roughly seven provinces or varying sizes, races, and beliefs. I had to come up with a general attitude, to know how this empire came to be (mostly because the empire itself plays such a crucial role in the story that was, by now, starting to take form in my head). So I stole ideas from the Romans, the Byzantines, the Ottomans, the Mongols, and the British. How did the empire react to different cultures? With oppression or with acceptance? Did they assimilate these things into their own society or utterly destroy them? I enjoy diversity in my worlds, it may not be the same in yours.

Creating a nation or a province or an empire requires a great deal of work and that work can be lessened or increased depending on the level of detail you choose to pursue. Brian Ruckley's Godless World books are set in a world that is somewhat hopeless. There are different races and nations, but they all blend together in one gray, melancholy world. That is part of the charm of the series. It works. On the other hand, Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time novels are set in this enormous world that is just exploding with diverse cultures all clashing with one another. The level of detail is simply staggering, and masterfully done.

For Skyborn, indeed for most of my novels, I like to get into some fair amount of detail. I build different governments based on the people, different cultures for each province often based on geography and religion and their standing in the world. I like to set-up different militaries based on those cultures. Individuals will always exist, but it helps to have a general idea of how one province views another, because it will realistically influence how your characters interact. For instance, if your novel set in that apartment building on the Upper East Side, is a romance between a  privileged Japanese woman and an inner city kid from Harlem (somehow), you need to know how those two cultures might blend and how they might clash. If its a horror story, you need to know your characters' backgrounds to know how they'll react to the situation and each other.

Nevermind the language barrier.

Fantasy is perhaps most famous for its foreign words. Bizarre names and strange, exotic tongues. I'm not Tolkien. I'm not a linguist and I don't have any intention of writing my own language. For one thing, it requires a grasp of syntax and structure and etymology I don't have and lack the patience to pursue. I don't feel that it would add to my style of storytelling. I know enough to get by, to create names and places and occasional phrases that work with my worlds, but that's less about the language and more about the world.

For instance, I created naming conventions for the provinces in Kirnan, different for each place, and the reasons for their existence. Then again, I also bastardized some Finnish words and crammed them together to form the central protagonists name. I do this with most of them, adding little bits of Earth to my worlds. I like to keep it different, occasionally using vaguely Scandinavian ideas, or Slovakian (because my family hails from those two regions). I like Finnish because it doesn't conform to any of the other languages in its region. I use French from time to time because I have a fair grasp of the language. never overtly, of course. Those bits and pieces have to fit effectively into the world without giving away their inspiration.

Once that's all done, you can get more specific or more ethereal, depending on your story. Fantasy is known for its inclusion of magic, sometimes heavily and sometimes sparsely. A growing batch of modern fantasy writers prefer to make magic a vague and mysterious thing, to turn away from genre stereotypes. It hardly appears in work by guys like John Marco. Another camp uses magic less sparingly, but still manages to avoid stereotypes. Robert Jordan, for instance, uses a magic system all his own that is fully fleshed out with its own strengths and limitations. Most importantly, he sticks to them throughout and never uses his magic as plot hole cement. He never turns on God Mode and then goes "Its cool, guys. Magic!" Brandon Sanderson is famous for creating these insane, bizarre, totally feasible systems of magic that are fully thought out, important to the story, and help to give a deeper understanding of his worlds.

I like that style, and that's what I strive for. Not the outlandish way Sanderson does it, because he's an absolute master and I'm just not that creative, but my magic works along a set of clearly defined rules that limit its ability to wave a wand and fix everything.

Likewise, I enjoy including the divine in my fiction. I've always loved creation myths, and writing them is absolutely delightful.  Your story may have no room for gods or magic, but that's silly. Even paranormal stories set on Earth have to have rules governing their supernatural ideas or those things are worthless. For an example, look at Neil Gaiman's American Gods or David Wong's John Dies at the End. Both are incredible instances of creative world building right in this country, in this time. Both include things that aren't, strictly speaking, normal, but these otherworldly things all have rules that the author sticks to because they are critical to the story.

My gods are always different, as are the creation myths associated with them. Sometimes they become individual characters as in the Egyptian, Greek and Norse myths, and other times they remain aloof and vague. That all depends on the story. The important thing, is that they exist as a natural part of the world, and are created as part of the building process.

So now you have your gods, magic, geography, cultures, governments, militaries, religions, and races. If you're organized and take your notes the way I do, these things are all separated into neat categories for easy viewing. If your world is very large or diverse, you might also include details about the different appearances of these people, generalized unless you need to be individual with them. Or, if you want to be very involved, their different styles of hair or clothing, different fashions and symbols. Different, but very specific customs. Like I said, the sheer level of detail your story (and your style) requires will vary and the work involved (be it research or brainstorming or both) will vary based on those things. Skyborn is the most detailed world I've explored so far, but plumbing those depths has given me ideas for my other worlds that will give them more depth.

In short, world building is a crucial step in any endeavor. It should be taken seriously, before the meat of the story is written because the world and story will shape each other in turn. Take notes, compile a glossary if you need to, and stick to your world, with all its flaws and laws. It will make your work more compelling, both to you and your readers, and make your story both more believable and more fun.

Constructively Yours,
-S.R.