This is an attempt to walk through the mental process I follow when writing fiction. [Goals: I’d like to better understand what my brain is doing, and put out ideas for other people who might be interested in writing fiction.]
Historically, worldbuilding (I’m talking mainly about fantasy settings here, but sci-fi as well; earthfic applies less) has been one of the planning steps that I most struggle to do alone; I’ve tended to do it via brainstorming with friends. Figuring out how magic systems and societal norms work is shiny, but apparently less shiny to me than just writing. This method has some obvious downsides; it’s harder to get a setting that feels lawful and consistent, and I can write myself into a corner; though the upside is that I don’t tend to get nerdsniped on the worldbuilding step and never end up actually writing anything. (I’ve known several aspiring authors with this problem).
There are two basic ways that I’ve approached worldbuilding for fantasy:
1) Top-down: posit some rules for a world, and simulate out the consequences; can include what magic is possible and easy/hard, but also the consequences it would have on society.
2) Bottom-up: posit some facts about that world, and try to reverse-engineer the underlying rule-set that would generate those observations.
Thanks to my tendency to do worldbuilding “as I go” while already halfway into a story, rather than figuring out all the rules of the setting in advance, (and my more recent choice to write fanfiction in a setting where the rules were very poorly explained), I’ve done more of the latter. Both feel “generative” in a sense that’s hard to describe, but has some similarities to e.g. doing murphyjitsu on an upcoming event I’m running – I’m building up a model of a scenario, asking a lot of “if X, then what?”, and trying to poke at my assumptions and edge cases. (I’m assuming there are multiple ways that fantasy authors do their worldbuilding, and some are less logistics-based.)
It feels like a really important step is adding constraints – reducing the space of what’s possible in a setting, getting it down to a set of assumptions that I can simulate and play with. My brain will generate a lot more ideas if I have fewer degrees of freedom.
One of my guiding principles is “it would be really epic if X”. Even following method #1, which I’m trying for my next original fantasy setting, any underlying ruleset still gives a lot of options, and I can run it forward and flesh out the details based on which version I think is really cool.
There can also be constraints added by the plot – if I don’t have a setting yet, but I do want a particular plot event to happen, I at least know that whatever rules I pick need to make that event plausible.
I can also grab a mishmash of ideas from other books, fiction and not, or straight-up do research for some aspects (I’m currently reading “Legal Systems Very Different From Ours” in order to brainstorm institutions for a fictional civilization.)
In terms of motivation to actually do worldbuilding, probably “getting nerdsniped” is the thing I want to happen, to make it shiny enough that I actually do it rather than jumping straight into writing ch1.
I’m more directed towards figuring things out as I go.
While directly writing what comes to mind, I think that I rarely put myself into a corner, like saying,”huh this doesn’t quite work because of this and that” but rather I do that task when reading the first-draft and then clarifying and solving inconsistencies in the second draft.
I’ve listened to an interview with J.K. Rowling (maybe one of the best world-builders of this generation) and she said that she had sort-of like an epiphany, like a dump into his consciousness of the world of Harry Potter; she wrote the ideas as it came to her mind, which is to say that I don’t think she ever stopped in the tracks to start thinking what the world was capable of (at least not until later books maybe).
(don’t write fiction, but have run and playtested a lot of RPGs, which share many of the worldbuilding elements).
Among the hard parts is figuring out how much suspension of disbelief your audience will willingly bring, on what topics. This _is_ fiction, so we’re not generally trying to truly predict a hypothetical “possible” outcome, we’re trying to highlight similarities and differences from our own. This VERY OFTEN implies assuming a similarity (where the point of departure has less effect that is likely) and then justifying it or constraining the departure so it’s less difficult to maintain that this element of society would still be recognizable.
Fiction writing ramble, #2: Worldbuilding.
This is an attempt to walk through the mental process I follow when writing fiction. [Goals: I’d like to better understand what my brain is doing, and put out ideas for other people who might be interested in writing fiction.]
Historically, worldbuilding (I’m talking mainly about fantasy settings here, but sci-fi as well; earthfic applies less) has been one of the planning steps that I most struggle to do alone; I’ve tended to do it via brainstorming with friends. Figuring out how magic systems and societal norms work is shiny, but apparently less shiny to me than just writing. This method has some obvious downsides; it’s harder to get a setting that feels lawful and consistent, and I can write myself into a corner; though the upside is that I don’t tend to get nerdsniped on the worldbuilding step and never end up actually writing anything. (I’ve known several aspiring authors with this problem).
There are two basic ways that I’ve approached worldbuilding for fantasy:
1) Top-down: posit some rules for a world, and simulate out the consequences; can include what magic is possible and easy/hard, but also the consequences it would have on society.
2) Bottom-up: posit some facts about that world, and try to reverse-engineer the underlying rule-set that would generate those observations.
Thanks to my tendency to do worldbuilding “as I go” while already halfway into a story, rather than figuring out all the rules of the setting in advance, (and my more recent choice to write fanfiction in a setting where the rules were very poorly explained), I’ve done more of the latter. Both feel “generative” in a sense that’s hard to describe, but has some similarities to e.g. doing murphyjitsu on an upcoming event I’m running – I’m building up a model of a scenario, asking a lot of “if X, then what?”, and trying to poke at my assumptions and edge cases. (I’m assuming there are multiple ways that fantasy authors do their worldbuilding, and some are less logistics-based.)
It feels like a really important step is adding constraints – reducing the space of what’s possible in a setting, getting it down to a set of assumptions that I can simulate and play with. My brain will generate a lot more ideas if I have fewer degrees of freedom.
One of my guiding principles is “it would be really epic if X”. Even following method #1, which I’m trying for my next original fantasy setting, any underlying ruleset still gives a lot of options, and I can run it forward and flesh out the details based on which version I think is really cool.
There can also be constraints added by the plot – if I don’t have a setting yet, but I do want a particular plot event to happen, I at least know that whatever rules I pick need to make that event plausible.
I can also grab a mishmash of ideas from other books, fiction and not, or straight-up do research for some aspects (I’m currently reading “Legal Systems Very Different From Ours” in order to brainstorm institutions for a fictional civilization.)
In terms of motivation to actually do worldbuilding, probably “getting nerdsniped” is the thing I want to happen, to make it shiny enough that I actually do it rather than jumping straight into writing ch1.
I’m more directed towards figuring things out as I go.
While directly writing what comes to mind, I think that I rarely put myself into a corner, like saying,”huh this doesn’t quite work because of this and that” but rather I do that task when reading the first-draft and then clarifying and solving inconsistencies in the second draft.
I’ve listened to an interview with J.K. Rowling (maybe one of the best world-builders of this generation) and she said that she had sort-of like an epiphany, like a dump into his consciousness of the world of Harry Potter; she wrote the ideas as it came to her mind, which is to say that I don’t think she ever stopped in the tracks to start thinking what the world was capable of (at least not until later books maybe).
(don’t write fiction, but have run and playtested a lot of RPGs, which share many of the worldbuilding elements).
Among the hard parts is figuring out how much suspension of disbelief your audience will willingly bring, on what topics. This _is_ fiction, so we’re not generally trying to truly predict a hypothetical “possible” outcome, we’re trying to highlight similarities and differences from our own. This VERY OFTEN implies assuming a similarity (where the point of departure has less effect that is likely) and then justifying it or constraining the departure so it’s less difficult to maintain that this element of society would still be recognizable.