BY ALICE FONTANESI
STAFF WRITER
Hello, I am back and I shall write about writing for the rest of the year as per usual. So don’t expect anything else from me except for the occasional review.
So, world building is fun.
But then there’s research.
I don’t know if I’m the only person who was surprised at how much you actually have to research when writing because… it’s fiction, but you may find yourself doing a lot of research for world building during the creation of your story.
Well, lucky for you, my aspiring innocent mentee, there are two potential routes you can take. Either you do not care enough about accuracy because its your universe, or you’re me and evaluate all your life choices for something that probably no one will care about (*cough cough* military ranks *cough*).
But in all seriousness, research and world building can be both easy and a huge pain.
Genre usually dictates what world building you need to do such as fantasy and stuff like that. Realistic fiction is usually the one that takes the least amount of world building because all you have to do is establish the kind of environment the character lives in (which is technically world building), but it’s probably the one that you might have to do the most research on. Unlike fantasy or any other genre, you can’t exactly butcher everything. But, can you write a universe that is basically the same as Earth, but there are a few changes for your realistic fiction?
Well, that depends.
There’s a difference between creating a secret society of wizards and the only change being that men can become pregnant.
A really annoying thing you can do while world building is to add plot devices. Things like, people can hold their breath for an hour in this universe despite how it is never talked about, and it was only used once so that an important character wouldn’t drown because plot armor is totally not the answer.
And this can extend from just nitpicks such as making an overpowered race of aliens that seem to always know what the characters are going to do without any explanation, and a stupid mistake that no one noticed for some reason is that reason why the protagonists win. It’s not as much in the actual world building than it is in the execution of that world building.
Poor execution would be never explaining the world and why certain things are that way, and if the world building is just a plot device and/or plot armor. There is also how you write your story because it is possible to add some world building that is completely unexplained.
I’m talking about Osamu goddamn Dazai from Bungou Stray Dogs, again.
Most of the characters from Bungou Stray Dogs have a special ability called a gift, but it mostly differentiates from the typical secret society of wizards as everyone kind of knows it and there is even a division of gifted in the Japanese government. Despite that, it is revealed in the manga that Dazai can control his heartbeat. It is never explained, and it kind of just happens and we know that happened, and we’re all kind of cool with it.
Dazai already has some unique writing attached to him, but his ability to control his heartbeat works when it probably shouldn’t. We already know how Dazai can defy the odds, but we don’t really know how his brain works since we have never seen anything from Dazai’s perspective. So, when we discover that Dazai can control his heartbeat we don’t point out the plot hole and kind of just accept the fact because, yep, it sounds like something Dazai could do because he is Osamu Dazai.
Yes, execution is key, but to avoid gambling you should probably already have an established world where we expect abnormal things to happen. It sets up an expectation for the reader and it doesn’t confuse them once it does happen.
An often way that people can explore their world is by throwing your protagonist into an unfamiliar place. It can range from a new school to being reincarnated as an air molecule in Lord Of The Rings. This can act as a replacement for exposition and your audience can learn about the world as your protagonist goes along. Common ways to do this is that your character is the chosen one, they discovered a new world, they need to go somewhere new, and many more reasons.
Of course, this approach isn’t always used, and you have to take your audience through the world through exposition and explanation.
However, this can be overdone, and you will just be telling and not showing. It will eventually get repetitive and your audience will most likely be bored and confused at some point. An easy way to avoid this is making your character, despite living in this unfamiliar world, not know everything about their world. It not only gives a dimension of realism, it allows us to finally do some exploring with the perspective character.
The beginning of your story is a good time to have a lot of exposition for your world as it sets an expectation and exploration can be much more open. I took this to an extreme for one of my stories where I essentially wrote an entire novel for one of the characters just to get people familiar with the world and her character. It allowed me to do a lot of exploring with the massive amount of world building I made for that story, and when I will write the next novel the unfamiliar world to the rest of the characters can be explained as a reminder.
But this unfortunately made every alternate universe I wrote have an expectation for you to know everything. The difference between the novel I wrote and the beginning of a story is that the world building was sprinkled throughout the story in the three year time span. To have a cram session to a complex world that should’ve been explored through the story would be pointless and just boring.
Research may also be required for your world building for similarities and differences between our world and your fictional world. This can be for things like government systems and cultural references. These things are usually hard to create from scratch because believe me when I say it already takes way too long to create a new language.
This doesn’t mean that you can’t basically create a new culture from scratch, I’d be a hypocrite if I said that, but if you have multiple cultures who play significant roles in your story, you probably shouldn’t.
Making your own culture from scratch requires your own holidays, customs, religion, language, clothing, and many other things, and it’s pretty tiring to do it over and over again.
She-Ra And The Princesses Of Power, the 2019 reboot, is able to create multiple unique cultures through visual storytelling without making it feel overwhelming or boring. It actually fixes some of the problems that the original She-Ra had with its character design. In the original She-Ra, most of the characters looked copy and paste versions of each other while in the new She-Ra, the characters have distinct clothing and design. This not only makes them more recognizable but actually makes the characters seem like they are from different kingdoms with their own cultures and customs.
You should also probably not go as far as totally reworking the laws of physics since this can affect how your audience perceives your story. We are comfortable with familiarness, and it’s the reason why those flying fights in superhero movies are pretty annoying. We don’t understand the physics of air, and because of that we don’t feel a sense of danger.
This is why we usually have historical and cultural references in stories since it can attract and interest people. We’re immediately attracted to things we’re familiar with, and it’s also why you probably shouldn’t rework the anatomical structure of every atom as well as the whole perception of reality. I mean, it could make a pretty interesting satire about how humans are social creatures, but that’s not what we’re talking about.
Mixing genres can also get great combinations with world building. I actually found it pretty interesting in She-Ra And The Princesses Of Power that they explore the sci-fi/fantasy genre with the First Ones and the compatibility of magic and technology. It expanded on a popular and typical genre that we don’t think about much and can be an easy jumping off point for your world building.
Anyways, if I wanted to make the complete guide to every world building trope there was, I would, but I’ve been working on this article for too long and I’m pretty sure I should just summarize this.
The amount of world building and research you do is up to you, and the execution and explanation of your world helps your story flow. There are many ways to do this, and the way you execute your story is up to you. Hopefully we won’t be lost.