The Art of World Building

Every genre story builds a world your characters live in. Some genre's worlds are easier. They are placed in our time and in places people can visit and relate to. Other genre's are tougher. The characters' worlds are set in the future or the past. The characters live in alternate worlds of magick and myth or off world planets. When we think of world building we think of paranormal or scifi first. But all stories must have proper world building. You don't want mountains in Indiana. You don't want icebergs in the Gulf of Mexico. You don't want flying cars in present day New York City, or camel caravans on the Kansas Turnpike unless you have built a world where the reader excepts these things.

How do you build a rich world regardless of genre?

1) Ground your characters. Tell the reader what their feet are touching - cement, mulched path, gravel, brick, asphalt. Give the reader an idea of what the air smells like, what the place looks like. Ensure you have the five senses. You don't have to be Michener with chapters of description. But if your characters are in a national park with wind and snow, tell me more. Are there trees? What kind? Are they on top of a mountain? Are their rocks at their feet? Campers nearby? Are they on a hiking path or in a meadow?

2) Clue the reader in on what is important to the characters. Why does she have an herb packet in her pocket. Why is she giving it to a little girl? Why are her dreams important. Who is the person they are chasing? Why are they worried what the council thinks? who is the council?

3) Remember that the hero's journey begins in the ordinary world. If you push them into the call to action too soon, the reader has no sense as to how that is different. What is at stake. Why the character would go on the journey.

World building involves setting, the five senses and character motivation. Without proper world building, it doesn't matter how colorful or magical your characters are, the reader will be lost and pages will not be turned.

My favorite story is when my New York Editors didn't understand the world of a midwest city. What is common place to me had to be explained in my story so that those who don't live in that area of the country can understand.

Have you ever been told you didn't world build enough?

World Building for non scifi/fantasy writers

A few weeks ago I wrote a blog about the wonderful World Building for YA seminar given by the amazing Shelley Bates that I attended as part of my MFA residency program. Many of you have asked for more information about world building as we all sort of assumed that was a term for science fiction or fantasy writers. Let's face it there are a lot of witches, vampires, werewolves and zombies out there right now, but what if you were writing a contemporary story set in small town Kansas. Do you need world building? The answer to that is yes.
Here's why:
Many readers, lets face it most of your readers including your agent and editor, have never lived in a small town in Kansas. They have no clue what people dress like, talk like (Trust me, I've gotten more question marks from my editor on common Midwest sayings in my writing then I ever imagined.) and how their values and points of view are different than say someone from New York City. I imagine the same thing is true if you are writing a book set in Los Angeles or New York or Seattle. You have to understand that more than half your readers may have never been there and so you need to build a world around your characters that gives the reader a solid sense of time, place and rules of action and behavior.
Where do you start? In the ordinary world-what is their life like? The protag has learned to navigate their world and as a writer you should think about what this reveals about the character-what strengths and what weaknesses. Establish a social order- things are very different on a working ranch versus a highrise office job. A trip to work might entail a beat up Chevy truck or a commuter train; endless expanse of rolling plains or elbowed standing room only space on a bus.
Shelley taught us to create the world by working down, working out and working in. Ask yourself what is the dominate element in the setting? Let's say the windswept prairie to show vast expanse, the smallness of humans, the struggle between nature and man-as you write, you narrow your focus from the prairie to the protag. This is working down. Then you show the story from the character's point of view-let's say your character lives on an old ranch and works in a donut shop in a small town. She drives to work at 4 a.m. in her beat up Chevy. The road is bumpy and rugged and dark. There might be cracks in the dash from years of hot sun coming in the window. The material on the roof might sag. There could be an old empty gun rack in the back. The radio plays the stock report or weather forecast or country songs. It goes in and out as she drives through small valleys. A coyote crosses her path, she swerves and ends up in the ditch. Now she's late, maybe it's her last chance to keep her job. It's a half mile hike to the closest house and a five mile hike into town. She gets out, kicks the car in frustration, and heads out thankful that she's wearing white nurses shoes that are made for standing for long periods and walking for hours. It smells of night and dew and rain coming. Robins sing cheerfully worsening her mood because the next house over belongs to old man Simmons and he has no patience for stupid drivers and more importantly white trash Paisely women. Sue Paisely knows that her family has never been good enough, not since her great great grandpa refused to be run off when the oil and cattle barons were buying up or stealing all the land they could get their hands on.
Finally, Shelley said that your character's knowledge-such as Sue's knowledge about her family and how the town thinks of her is building the world from within. Her actions and reactions help to build and change the world she's in. Will she knock on the old man's door or walk the five miles into town?
World building is done with details great and small, but most importantly not all at once. If you add them all at once you are what we call, data dumping, or showing the reader how much research you did. World building is an art form of its own. I hope these small tips can get you started. Most importantly stick to the rules of your world. If the town sees her one way not much will change that-what will change is how the character feels about it. Remember Harry Potter didn't return to his Aunt's house a hero, but he returned with internal knowledge that there was more to life then his Aunt's small minded views.
Questions? Please let me know and I'll be happy to explain. Cheers~

Where to begin...

I have a confession to make. I can listen to workshop after workshop and read up on a subject and, even though I can spout all the proper words, and help others with revisions, sometimes I simply don't "get it" in my own work.
Here's my example: I wrote a book years ago that made me tingle. It was a pure paranormal roller coaster ride-before paranormals were hot. I wrote it on a whim and in 30 days, since I was published in sweet historical romance and had a deadline on another book. Still this story pulled and tugged and I had to get-it-out. Once I finished my deadline book, I went back and revised the paranormal and queried it. I found a NY editor who loved it as well. She kept it with promises of copy edits and taking it to her editorial board. But after two years she ultimately failed to sell it to her board. So, the book sat until I decided that there was something there and queried it out to agents. I found a NY agent who loved it and convinced me it was going to be huge. Unfortunately the paranormal tide had yet to turn and after 7 rejections said agent lost interest in both the book and me. BUT-(here's my point.) This time I had the advantage of reading publisher rejection letters. They seem to be more helpful when telling agents why they are rejecting a book. The one comment that stuck with me was "There is not enough world building." Of course, my thought was this: "Its set in Kansas, what's to world build?" I puzzled over this for years as the book sat and I wrote other stuff.
Then a year or so ago the word went out that YA Paranormal was huge. So, I returned to this book and re-read it and discovered that book 2--yes, NY agent had me write book 2--was more YA than single title adult. I spent the time to re-write book 1 with a YA bent-it was already snarky and a coming of age story so that changing it to YA was not a big problem. I then tested the waters by sending it out to various agents- most of them agreed that the YA paranormal market was saturated and this story was now nothing new. But one beloved agent said this to me: "There isn't enough world building in this story." Gah!
She hit that sore spot. What do they mean? I've researched the topic. I've gone to seminars. Its Kansas, what's to world build? (Sometimes my brain can be stubborn.)
This last residency week at Seton Hill University's MFA program, I signed up for a course in World Building YA given by Shelley Bates. (No, not paranormal but any kind of YA.) I was determined to try to figure out what was missing from the novel.
When Shelley launched into the subject of her latest Amish YA and how she built the world around her heroine. I carefully compared how she constructed her world to how I constructed mine and it hit me like a fast pitch softball. duh.
I started my story at the first turning point in a moment of trauma and breathless action-where the heroine's stepmother is murdered by a nightmarish demon hound and how she uses her "imagination" to escape only to discover that her reality has changed and her choices become terrible-save herself or save the world; believe the men who try to guide her in the outrageous new reality or believe the smooth talking devil who tells her she is merely having hallucinations and needs a doctor's help.
I was certain this was the perfect place to start with serious action and the call to adventure.
If you've ever read the Hero's Journey you probably already see what I did wrong. And in fact I had listened to yet another workshop on the Hero's Journey just the day before and had not put it together... What did I do wrong?
I did not start with the ordinary world.
It's that simple. I felt like a dunderhead. I know and have given talks on the Hero's Journey. (If you haven't heard of this, let me know I'll write a blog.) I have given talks on how the first two minutes of a movie always give the viewer the ordinary world before the first turning point so that they can relate to the protagonist and understand how important the call to adventure is and why the protagonist is forced to choose it.
In this case I skipped the ordinary world thinking that starting at this powerful point of action would suck the reader in like a vacuum. It was a vacuum alright, an empty space where the reader had nothing to compare with the problem.
Even crazier is that in book 2 I start with the ordinary world, but, of course, no one ever read that story since book 1 failed to sell.
So there it is--my example of how sometimes it can take years, a few subtle clues and tons of rehashing of writing craft before you can see why a book failed to sell. And yes, I'm going to go back and rewrite the opening of this book if for no other reason than to practice world building. Maybe someday this book will sell and someone will get to read book 2. Meanwhile, I am happy knowing that I finally figured out what I could do to make the story better. And that, after all, is what being a writer is all about. Cheers~