Elf Blood

Part 2 of our impromptu writing class/musing continues today with a little delving into world-building.

The most successful properties and franchises have flourished because they have constructed plausible, engaging universes around themselves. Even for the most fantastic of stories, a well designed ‘world’ can enhance the reader’s suspension of disbelief and provide an interesting background against which the characters and plot can develop. Without it, it’s that much harder to flesh out the characters and their motivations, or to truly grasp the measure of their personality as there’s not much to compare them to. As readers, in order to relate to and care for the characters we need to know a little bit about where they come from, what they’ve experienced, what drives them.

Sure, the mysterious gunman with no past who kills for the highest bidder might make for a badass character in the short-term, ultimately we will get bored with his antics. We WANT to be dropped little hints about his past. Okay, he’s a mean killer, but where did he learn his skills? Maybe he picked them up living rough on the streets. What kind of place could provide that kind of tough education? Gangs always need gunmen, and only the toughest can survive the slums they control. Sounds like he spent a good deal of his life running with gangs, killing on command and gaining his skills through sheer tenacity. So there’s some really bad niehgbourhoods in this city, that have gotten so bad that order is maintained only through threat of violence from the local bangers. Why is this allowed to happen? Are the police lazy and complacent? Scared of the threat of the gangs? Are the politicians at city hall simply so sleazy that they would willingly tolerate such dens of iniquity in order to concentrate the ‘undesirables’ to one area of the burg? What then, is the rest of the city like? Maybe the finance and high-class residential districts are really luxurious, but restrictively expensive and enforced with the strictest measure of law.

It’s a neat little thought exercise, but it really showcases the fact that it’s useful to shape the world around your characters. Of course, this isn’t the case if your story is primarily about a city, or a nation, or a galaxy, but if you’re focused on the characters themselves it doesn’t hurt to shape the world around them and their requirements.

That’s not to say, of course, that everything should be PERFECTLY adapted for them. Stories are all about conflict, and the man vs environment conflict can easily be brought about by subverting or manipulating the character’s world. If that world was already shaped to accentuate the characters main traits (both positive and negative), then the struggle becomes a little more personal to the character and adds a nice emotional edge to the tale.

In general, the main purpose of world-building is to give a sense of consistency to the characters and the events they get involved in. This consistency is the key to believability; if your characters can use magic, if their power simply scales to meet whatever challenge the enocounter then the story becomes boring and the reader loses interest. If your characters can use magic, but they must obey certain RULES because of the laws of magical physics or a code instituted by a society, THEN things become interesting; They must find ways of working around their limitations, thus setting up more conflict. It also codifies and defines what can and can’t be done by ALL parties within the story, so readers can know what to expect and adjust their expectations accordingly.

World-building needn’t be restricted to people writing stories or drawing comics, though. Give it a go yourself! It’s a fascinating hobby, and can be an excellent creative exercise or artistic distraction. There are many ways to go about it; Developing from character just happens to be the method I prefer, and there are plenty of ways to be explored!

Go forth, my friends, and experiment!

M.