Oooh, you guys are lucky I’ve managed to slap this together. I’m within hours of getting my son married and I woke up soon enough before I had to get dressed to pull this off. Thanks to those looking ahead to this.
It’s once again time for The Writing Lab, where I pass along any insights into the craft of writing I’ve picked up during the past thirty years or so.
Recently, I started a new series on an aspect of writing, specifically prewriting/planning, that is often misunderstood. The process is that of worldbuilding – specifically, the art of creating a fictional world in which your characters and story reside. As I mentioned before, this is a more detailed process than simply deciding what the setting of the story is, and it can be useful especially if you decide to set a longer story or a series of stories in the same world.
[AUTHOR’S ONGOING NOTE FOR THIS SERIES:] The advice I give here is geared mostly toward fiction writing; however, it can easily be applied to nonfiction as well. I will say worldbuilding is primarily a fiction-writing process as I describe it here.
World building is not just about creating a place, but crafting a story that exists within it, giving life to its inhabitants and breathing soul into its landscapes.
― J. Edwards Holt, The Seven Branches
“Real-Life” Settings and How They Can Be More Complicated Than You Think
A “real-life” setting seems to avoid many of the pitfalls of “fictional” settings at first glance. Your readers, for the most part, will be familiar with the place and time period, although this can be less so if you are dealing with historical fiction, especially in settings further back into history. You should be familiar with the people of the location, their customs, and all the ins and outs of the place and time.
Oh, if were only that simple.
As it turns out, when you use actual settings for your worldbuilding, you can run into some particularly tricky problems. Since these settings are real, real people (and real readers) will be familiar with them, and any sense of inauthenticity, anything that is not true to life, can be particularly tricky.
To illustrate, I’ll mention a project from my own writing experience. My first novel, The Holy Fool, was set in the “real world” (Chicago in the fall of 2008). I had to make sure my research was on point. I compiled a timeline of real-world events during the given time period so I could be familiar with what journalists in Chicago in Fall 2008 would have been concerned with.
In addition, although I was born outside Chicago and have frequently visited the city, my knowledge of the place was admittedly limited compared to native residents. So, I ended up making considerable use of some travel guide books, which gave me invaluable information about the different neighborhoods of the city and their histories. I don’t think I would have been able to pull it off without that research.
“Fictional” Settings and How They Always Tend to Reflect Reality
Again, this seems as straightforward (although more labor-intensive) than real-life locations. It’s your world. You get to decide how many people are in it, what their culture (or cultures) are, you can lay out what it looks like physically, and you can assemble the history of the place all on your own.
However, the real world has a way of edging into fantasy.
In the Lord of the Rings series, Tolkien’s World War I experiences inevitably crept into his descriptions of warfare. Middle Eastern culture, language, and customs were sources for Frank Herbert to develop his Dune series1.
And George R.R. Martin? He build Westeros and Essos from fragments of Middle Ages societies from around the world. To illustrate:
Ironborn = Vikings
Dothraki = Mongols
Yi Ti = Chinese/East Asian
Riverlands = Medieval Germany
Reach = Medieval France
The North = Scotland
Essos = Byzantine and other Mideast culture
The bridge at Volantis = London Bridge
The Wall = Hadrian’s Wall
…And so on.
So, in short, both approaches at worldbuilding have advantages and disadvantages, and they are not as separate of a process as it might seem.
…but feel free to ignore my advice if it clashes with writing techniques that work for you. Everyone writes differently.
Next Time at The Writing Lab:
We’ll get into some more basics of worldbuilding, including some of the techniques I have used and continue to use to help develop my own worlds in fiction.
See you then.
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- I do not acknowledge the Brian Herbert/Kevin J. Anderson Dune novels. Fight me. ↩︎