Worldbuilding

Characters always precede the world in my stories. At least they have so far. I’ll get an idea for the characters, some personality traits, maybe imagine how they look or something odd that stands out about them, and that’ll be where the world starts. Then I’ll think of the characters that surround them and where they’d live and work. And then the world starts to form around them.

I haven’t ever created a world and populated it with characters. That prospect actually kind of scares me. To make something so intricate, and then try and find all the little ways you can tell a story within those guidelines. Honestly, it sounds both impressive and daunting. I admire anyone who can build intricate worlds that are extremely detailed from coast to coast of each fantastical continent.

I’m always curious how much of a secondary world has been plotted out and how much is being modified as the story moves forward. For me, there’s a lot that’s a little vague and as the story warrants I’ll focus in on those areas to fill them out. So if there’s a town that’s mentioned offhand, and then eventually the characters have to go there, chances are that town will only become detailed once I realize it has become important. Hopefully, I’ll know a little bit about the region, kingdom, or area that’ll help inform the general society of the town. That’s a simple example of how the general ideas help inform the details, but the details are only filled in as the story warrants. I don’t know if it’s the best method, but it’s the one that feels like it works for me.

Detailing that town, and the surrounding towns, or everything in a kingdom without knowing whether it will ever be seen is a little horrifying. There’s a difference between knowing where town A and town B are on the map, and some general ideas about their trade or something, versus knowing the love affairs of each person and when they muck out the latrines.

For me, the world is always something that is made to serve the characters. Defining so much of it in detail without knowing who the characters are feels like it would force me to work inside constraints. I’d much rather be able to mold and alter the world as the story progresses so it serves the plot and characters as needed, instead of the characters and plot serving the world.

Do you prefer to make the world first and populate it with characters, or make the characters first and build the world around them?

Edit (February 25, 2019): This series is about the things that I've learned, or am learning, about worldbuilding. It's me trying to level up my craft, and documenting the process. These posts represent my personal approach to worldbuilding, and the way I do it might not be right for you. I'm not an authority on writing, and so everything in these posts should be taken with not only a grain of salt, but a heaping bucket of saline.

Fantastical Cities

Cities that tower over mountains, ones that float in the sky, are encased in an underwater dome, or hidden in a volcano. I really like fantastical cities. There’s something about a city with surreal or fantasy elements that is so intriguing to me. There are so many ways a magic system can be worked into the intricacies of a bustling society. How does that steampunk technology affect day to day life? How does the average person use all those alchemical ingredients? What does everyone do with those crystals that have little frozen pixies in them? 

One of my favourite genres is cyberpunk. I think one of the major aspects of most cyberpunk stories are big, sometimes overcrowded, cities. Stuff that has a neo-noire bend (like Blade Runner) are my particular favourites. It’s one of the reasons I enjoy the Shadowrun game so much (I haven’t had a chance to play the follow-ups).  It combines a lot of my favourite things into one neat package. It’s got fantasy races and neon signs in rusty cityscapes. And every part you visit feels like it has a place in the landscape even if the megacorps HQs are so pristine compared to the back alley streets. 

A city can be packed with all manner of peoples and places and still have vastly different mindsets, cultures, and settings. The most obvious being the wealthy versus, well, everyone else. There can be cultural pockets that have clustered together, or new subcultures that form from the places that those clusters overlap.  It really feels like there are so many possibilities to create stories and characters. I think that's probably why I gravitate towards big city settings.  

There's also something really satisfying about slowly populating a city. It starts off with some vague ideas, and those generalities get broken down to a series of intricate parts, until there are subsections within subsections of people all living next to one another affecting each other without even knowing it.  

Rolling green hills and lush forests can only go so far. Maybe it's because of how much I love the ideas behind neo-noire themes that I've been inadvertently applying them to my fantasy writing. And a lot of that influence probably comes from the way Shadowrun marries the two so well. I liked both before, but as separate entities, now I want to smoosh them together.  

Question to readers: What are some of your favourite genres? They can be super specific, super vague, or even just a particular piece of media that resonated with you but doesn't quite fit any genre.

Secondary World Fantasy Movies

I don’t actually know that many secondary world fantasy movies. Off the top of my head I can only think of a handful of them. At least for the good ones. I know there’s a couple of meh to bleh fantasy movies, but I can’t think of many that are really good. If they’re out there, I haven’t seen them.

There’s a format that is associated with fantasy and I think that’s one of the things holding back its potential to make awesome movies. It’s the “epic” part of what is routinely called Epic Fantasy. Armies clashing, dark lords a summoning, and evil gods a cajoling. Also, elves, orcs, dwarves, fa(e)ries and the like.

Don’t get me wrong, I love this stuff. But one of the reasons it works in something like Lord of the Rings is because there are three movies to span the entirety of an epic world breaking story. Most movies don’t get that opportunity. That’s what I think has been holding them back. It seems like there’s this notion that if you’re going to make a fantasy movie it’s got to be like Lord of the Rings or it’s a waste. 

I think that is entirely wrong. Again, not because I dislike those kinds of stories, but because those aren’t the only kind of stories we can tell in a secondary world setting. 

I want more small and intense fantasy stories. 

A smith who owes the wrong kind of guilt a debt. All of a sudden they come knocking and he has to try and find a way to pay them back before things get nasty. Maybe things get nasty anyway, and he finds himself having to cope, or on the run, or something. There could be some kind of magic, or creatures woven into the world, and we get to see how they affect day to day life at an individual level. It might not be the most original premise, but its an example of how easy it would be to make a personal story set in a secondary world that doesn’t need big world breaking wars. (Or maybe there is a couple in love who live in a steampunk society powered by a pterodactyl trapped in a floating crystal.)

Science Fiction has been doing this for years and years. Movies like Looper, Blade Runner, Alien (and countless others), are all set in intricate worlds that don’t feature huge spaceship battles or exploding planets or the fall of an evil empire.

So, why not Fantasy?  

I do adore big stories with warring armies and usurped kings. But those really are big stories. The kind that are extremely difficult to pack into a two hour or hour and a half movie. Peel away some of that grandiose fat—as juicy as it is—and make the stories more narrowed and intense, and I think we could tell an infinite number of stories within fantasy worlds. And make a whole lot more movies. 

Question to readers: What are some of your favourite fantasy movies?

(Author’s Ramble: From recent years the only movies I can think of are Lord of the Rings, Chronicles of Narnia, Harry Potter (even though its more urban fantasy), Pirates of the Caribbean (more historical(heh) fantasy) and, um… How to Train Your Dragon? Spanning the last ten or so years that’s not very many, and I really think there should be more. Conan the Barbarian comes to mind, but that’s pretty old. If we’re going back in time The Dark Crystal and Legend are up there too. But you have to dig all the way back into the 80s and beyond for those. I love ‘em, but I want more recent secondary world movies.) 

Killing Characters with a Purpose

Killing characters is one of those things that I have a hard time with. I’ve always felt that a character serves the story better by being than by dying. Of course, that depends on the circumstances. 

It always bugs me a little when a character dies and it serves nothing else than shock value, or to give the hero that extra push. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes it works great, but other times it feels unnecessary. Usually the unnecessary version involves a hero who you know is already going to do the thing and win the things at the end of the thing. So when a supporting character dies to push the MC forward, there’s that moment of “he was going to do that anyway…”

That’s where it usually loses its grip for me. When the death is meant to just be an added layer of angst onto an already steaming pile of angstiness. It’s just too much.

A death works best when it propels the story forward or causes a character to react in a way that is, in a sense, out of character. It’s making the pacifist do something extremely aggressive and we believe it because they’ve been pushed so far. Or, it’s killing that King or High Lord and as a result having a war ensue that lasts for the next three books. 

But, with each character that dies there’s a sense of opportunity being lost. An opportunity to tell more stories, to develop them, to explore their relationships with others. And one of the reasons I’ve still been averse to the killing of main characters, is that the impact always fades (especially in a series). Maybe I’m a wuss in that way, but something about a character fading away to become a footnote bugs me.

Sometimes it is necessary. I’ve definitely read books where main characters die and I can’t imagine that same story working otherwise. Maybe I just haven’t thought up one of those stories yet.