Standing Worldbuilding Post

[guardiansverse]

This is a post to talk general worldbuilding, either by posting questions/musings about your own world, by presenting questions/prompts for other authors to comment on, or for general discussion of worldbuilding as an exercise.

1. Discussion below in thread format. Anonymous comments welcome.
2. If you are talking about something currently being posted to FFA, please clearly mark for any possible spoilers!
3. Please don't post plot or character questions here: take it to the Plotting and Brainstorming Post. Similarly we have a Concrit Post for writing you want constructive comments on.
4. Keep in mind authors' preferences as expressed in our introduction post.
5. FFA by-rules apply: don't be an asshole.

Comments

[sigridharem]

A general question: when reading, do you prefer a world that's established clearly very early on in the story or to find out through dialogue and details gradually how the world works?

[sombregods]

I guess it depends on execution! But I think I tend to prefer finding hints and drawing my own conclusions over being told everything outright. Prologues that info-dump are pretty boring 90% of the time.

Then again, there are some genres where giving a lot of info right off the bat feels more natural (I'm thinking, say, Emma Wodehouse's introduction; but even then you slowly discover more as the story progresses). And sometimes an author establishes some sort of meaningful world order early on, and then subverts it or breaks it later in the story — or makes it slowly more and more obvious that this initial understanding of the universe is hiding something darker or more insiduous. So that's fun.

[sigridharem]

Yeah, I think infodumps can be overwhelming and unless particularly interesting aren't likely to grab most readers. But on the other hand, if a world is especially unusual it can be confusing to jump in too abruptly. And I do like it when a writer establishes say, a fact in one character's point of view and they goes on to challenge this fact in the narrative.

[guardiansverse]

I'm very fond of worlds that turn out to be different from what the PoV characters believe, but I feel like you have to be extra careful with those because there is a degree, as with all twists, where it can feel like the author going gotcha? And you don't want your reader to feel like they've been made a fool of. It's a fine art!

[anona]

Generally the latter, but I don’t mind the former if it’s done in a non-awkward way. An explanation in the style of a Star Wars opening crawl would be awkward, whereas a character thinking about important aspects of their world as they sit on the spaceship taking them to their new home (or whatever) is less so.

[sigridharem]

Definitely! I also think you can go too far in the other direction, where if you don't establish certain facts early enough adding them in late in the game might be jarring to the reader who'd come to expect something else.

[summerstars]

The latter is more fun, but, I feel, if the setting/set-up is different from what I, as a reader, would expect, or something new, I'd probably like enough worldbuilding early on, if it can be done smoothly, that it gives me a good idea of what the setting even is and how it works.

It doesn't need to be everything, or even most of it, but too little will also leave me confused and frustrated instead of eagerly waiting to see what else will be uncovered (when it comes to worldbuilding, anyway).

[sigridharem]

Oh yes, I've definitely bounced off books where I just felt like I was missing vital information in the first couple chapters. I think I slightly prefer information overload to that, because at least I can skim through an infodump and come back to it later if necessary.

(I say this but honestly my worldbuilding process can best be described as 'establish characters, figure out what world they're in eventually')

[summerstars]

Yeah, definitely, that'd be my preference too, even if it's clunky.

haha, I have a tendency to go ham with worldbuilding - I have one original world where it's basically all worldbuilding and I think it'd be awkward to actually write anything in it, so... the wordlbuilding alone is the point for me there.

For the catpeople thing, I do have some stuff figured out, but far less than I usually do, honestly! And then I was stuck like... how much do I shove in early, people don't think/talk about random facts just at the drop of a hat... So you're left with introducing worldbuilding in a dribble, as a writer, and hope it's enough for the reader.

[guardiansverse]

As a reader, I want to say finding out gradually would feel smoother and more natural... but as a writer, I can't help but always worry about what my readers do or don't get or even what they need to get. Like... I think you should strive to consider what about the world your readers need to know to understand the plot, and what can come in later? But that can be really hard to judge. I've found that the biggest challenge going from fic to origfic honestly.

[summerstars]

This is always my worry as well. (It was even a concern when I just had to introduce Juri first because saying "catpeople" gives a general idea, sure, but I also added my own twist and then Juri isn't even a full one!) I think you can still have some of the same... boost? you get when writing fanfic if you choose to use a well-structured AU idea for your origfic - like, A/B/O. It's got rules, and if, at least, you're posting on AO3, your readers are going to know them.

But when you're just working with "fantasy" or "sci-fi" or whatever and have to build from the ground up, where fanfic lends its characters and as much of the world scaffolding as the writer wants, that definitely makes things harder writing origfic.

[myid_letmeshowittoyou]

I prefer to find out gradually, but I prefer an infodump to being left wondering what's going on. It's a balance, I guess.

[guardiansverse]

Perhaps you kind souls will help me out here, I am making the no doubt terrible mistake of trying to outline the Hyemi political system. Apologies if this gets a bit long as I muse.

So Hyem is a parliamentary monarchy with the Kaiser as the head of state, made up of twenty-some provinces that used to be independent kingdoms but have been unified for some 400 years. Pre-revolution, parliament was made up of three "tiers" of sorts (idk what I'll call them in-world, I guess something German): hereditary seats of the high nobility; representatives of the small landholders of each province elected by their peers; and representatives of the urban middle class, elected by property-owning men of the cities. The tiers had different rights in terms of veto power, being able to propose bills, etc.

The revolution led to two critical changes: one, equalizing conditions for all three tiers in this now Upper House of parliament; and two, creating a Lower House, to which all men over 26 could elect and be elected. Broadly, I want the Lower House to have a lot of internal power, but restricted power in terms of external and diplomatic action; while the Upper House has greater power but less ability to initiate. The Kaiser I think can veto motions by either House, but has to abide by motions supported by both? I'm trying to sort out what his role in this system is. The one thing I need him to be able to do is to have the absolute final say about going to war.

The reason I'm wrangling all of this is that what I'm writing now is, among other things, the story of how Festus Detrich initiated his first war as Land's Own (charming fellow isn't he!) And I'm trying to figure out the landscape in which he's navigating, and who he has to get to agree to what, and where he stands with Emen Stattenholme who at the moment is chairing the Upper House. I want the system to be plausible, challenging, but not so complicated that the reader can't easily follow the political moves. And this, uh, may be my first time designing fictional politics! So I would appreciate any thoughts, or even pointed questions to help me narrow down what I do or don't need to actually think about when I do my designing.

Thanks!

Keeping track of worldbuilding

[(Anonymous)]

I'm curious what tools you use to keep track of your worldbuilding! One big document/notebook of notes? Separate documents/notebooks per topic (religion, politics, food, etc)? A private wiki?

Re: Keeping track of worldbuilding

[guardiansverse]

I keep most of it in my head, alas! Because it's constantly evolving by bits and pieces really, and I'm (luckily? sadly?) not the type to forget any kind of useless fictional information. So it stays there and gets added on layer by layer. But most of the worldbuilding I do hasn't actually been revelant to the stories yet (I have a lot of. Um. Geo-ethno-cultural. Stuff.) so it's okay if I don't keep it entirely straight. I dunno if I'd recommend this method for someone who puts in a lot more worldbuilding than I do.

Re: Keeping track of worldbuilding

[anona]

One big - well, medium-sized - document plus whatever’s in my head. I’m particular about ages and family trees making sense. The rest, I’m less clear on or make up as I write. The origfic discussion threads on meme have been great for making me put more worldbuilding elements in writing.