RE: Wednesday World-building Workshop Part 3
This was surprisingly enjoyable to read. I might have to try this.
I just write a pitch, when I write a story. Then I design the characters. I illustrate a few of the them on B4 or A3, then finish on the Cintiq, often several times. The world itself, however, I make up as I go along, from the pitch, possibly making corrections in earlier chapters as necessary. Totally randomly. Although I admit it might be easier, because I'm a scientist and I write science fiction and technofantasy.
Consider the game where a person comes in, and poses a series of questions to a series of people. Each one answers yes or no; he who comes in tries to guess the word.
Does it make any difference, asked physicist John Wheeler, whether the group predetermined the word, agreed upon what it is in advance, or if each person randomly answers yes or no, but does so in a way consistent with the random answers of all the previous individuals? The results are indistinguishable; thus the appearance of determinism in our quantum mechanical, indeterministic world. The same in writing.
I try to display the tips of icebergs that suggest the masses underneath. Yet then I specifically leave many loose ends, so that the world seems living and breathing. In reality, loose ends are rarely tied up from any given character's perspective; therefore the same in a story. (Bodhisattva Toge, the old novel, made rather extreme use of that.) This gives the appearance of a very carefully built up world. Phrase repetition completes the appearance.
All the same, worldbuilding seems fun, and might be worth trying.
[And . . . one more long comment. I'll . . . make it into a post.]
Hahaha yeah, you basically have a post going on over there. Feel free to tag me in on it then! :P
Worldbuilding applies to sci-fi as much as it does to fantasy. Its all about whether or not your plot exists inside a world of substance or if everything else exists just as supports to lean on the plot.
The latter are like having the crowd and anything else besides the main characters be like rows of cardboard cutouts that are lined on the side of the action like an old PS1/2 game.
I have actually done a couple exercises and asked people to ask me questions about my world. I also have a large cast of named characters, of these there are a lot of them that are well defined. So much so that if I gave you a list of 70 characters, you pick a number then you can ask me just about anything about them. I should have an answer!
True, you have a point.
I do suggest it gets rather hard once you start having hundreds of characters. Each developing and having his own part to play. I think of Tolkien's Silmarillion, or Bodhisattva Toge's cast of thousands.
I may try doing a world building post myself.
Cintiq + Mischief = FUN POTENTIAL for this sort of thing, thanks to the infinite zoom on an infinite canvas. That's what I'm now thinking.
Yeah. World of Kedra has 400+ characters and expanding. There is still plenty holes that I created for myself that I would like to complete before I can feel satisfied.
Tolkien was definitely one of my biggest inspirations.
BTW, if you're planning on writing a story in your world, and you'd like to get artists to illustrate it, I'm organizing a group here for that. The idea is that more or less professionally illustrated posts of the light novel type might do better on this platform, on average, than individually posted illustrations or fictional texts alone. (It seems the organized do best on here.) After talking on Discord and comments, I just made a post with a single obscure tag so that artists and writers might later discuss that sort of thing in one place directly on Steemit without spoiling upcoming posts for their audiences. I'm currently talking, mostly with B&W artists; some have shown interest.
I would totally be interested in this. I have character profiles with enough detail and even some amateurish sketches to start them off.
Want to add me on Discord? WulfenZA #7488
Tried adding, but it says something is wrong. Is the number and spelling correct?
It is definitely the right spelling. Ceck for me in PAL or Writer's Block