Is worldbuilding pointless?

[JDawg2.0]

Originally Posted by iansales

But... how would you know?

I would know by reading the story. I would ask myself if all this pretty description and fantastic history actually fit the story.I said I would like to believe that a talented writer could achieve an info-dump by dressing it with pretty words, but I also said I don't believe it's possible.

Originally Posted by JDP

To say that the world should suit the writing, and the writing alone, suggests (to me) laziness on the part of the author and usually results in internal inconsistencies that I'm sure a lot of readers do not appreciate:

That really doesn't make any sense, JDP. If you include elements to the story that do not suit the story, then you are just adding filler, cheating for a higher word-count, and being dishonest to the reader. Writing is self-serving only in the aspect that it is done to satisfy your creative urges. If you over-indulge yourself with needless actions, descriptions, histories, and things of the sort, then you just aren't writing well.

Originally Posted by JDP

Had the rare-but-reknowned use of changer-sticks been thoughtfully included in the built milieu, then that makes it more consistent (instead of just another MacGuffin). I would constitute this forethought as worldbuilding. You don't have to narrate every second of the ChangerTree's growth and the biography of the Magi-Lumberjack who felled it and the Grand-High-Whittlemeister who turned a branch of said tree into a functioning changer-stick through the power of prayer and onions.

Right, but then how can you say world-building that only serves the story is lazy? Your example of the changer-stick, as you said, isn't a great one, and I appreciate that you cleared it up later. I still am a bit confused as to how you believe world-building that does not suit the story is a good thing...

[Ursa major]

I'm not entirely sure what you're getting at, JDawg2.0. Are you asking for all extraneous information to be absent from a story? If so, what is left? (And if it's next to nothing, I would hope that all of us could tell just about any story in 10000 words.) If it's not next to nothing, what is it? Where is your boundary between setting and character, on the one hand, and filler?

In my view, the problem with a too-stripped-down approach is that it assumes the reader reads only for the story. Is that really true, even of non-SFF? (And some people read books for the beauty of the prose, so the "story" might as well be absent for them.)

[The Pelagic Argosy]

Originally Posted by Teresa Edgerton

But even though this is how I do it, I still have favorite authors who put an enormous amount of world-building on the page, and because they are great artists they do keep me enthralled with "pretty prose." I can't do what they do, but I can appreciate it.

Anyone can go to a museum and admire a beautiful painting. But there are those (art students, for example) who look at them up close to see the brush strokes.

I like a Good Story as much as the next person. But I find that the more fantasy I read, and as I am trying my hand at this world-building business myself, I have more patience and appreciation for "atmospheric digressions." I love it when an author can, by dropping a few interesting details or setting a scene in a few descriptive paragraphs, give the illusion that the world we are entering extends off the pages in all directions. A skilled author can write a brief description of his hero waking in the forest to find a strange animal pawing through his knapsack, and suddenly, without providing a full bestiary, I can imagine that this world is full of strange, fascinating, and potentially dangerous creatures. I don't need to know the population of Fantasy City or have a street map at my fingertips. But when heroine elbows her way through a throng of merchants on a street corner and curtsies at a noblewoman, I feel like I'm there. I love it when authors throw me little details to discover: "Oh, the etching on the cave wall is the same as the insignia on the villain's ring. Cool!" I love this kinda stuff. I eat it up. I love the "author as tour guide" thing.

How the author creates these illusions -- whether he fills 50 notebooks with details or just pulls them out of his tushie on the fly while writing -- I don't know, and I don't care. Except that I'd like to be able to create similar illusions in my own writing. The benefit to the tushie method is that the author has more time to start his next story. But I think this must require a rare talent. More power to such authors. The rest of us will have to rely on the 50-notebook method. I think the secret is to provide just enough detail on the page the create the illusion, but not enough to shatter it. An author's imagination does have limits, after all. The fully annotated and illustrated supplemental bestiary might be disappointingly thin -- if it contains just that one strange creature.

[Teresa Edgerton]

Originally Posted by JDawg2.0

I would know by reading the story. I would ask myself if all this pretty description and fantastic history actually fit the story.I said I would like to believe that a talented writer could achieve an info-dump by dressing it with pretty words, but I also said I don't believe it's possible.

But in order to find out if it is possible you have to be willing to read things by authors who write that kind of story, and do so with an open mind.

The stripped-down approach can be the result of a highly artistic precision, but it can also be uninspired hackwork -- the same way that much more descriptive writing can either be a triumph of language and imagination, or tedious and self-indulgent.

As writers, we need to find which approach works best for us, and then become very, very good at whatever that is. That doesn't mean that we can't, as readers, acknowledge that other writers can be very, very good at doing something else entirely.

[The Pelagic Argosy]

Originally Posted by JDawg2.0

the writer must be certain they aren't straying far from the plot, drifting off into things that really are better left unwritten. It may appeal to some, but the point of writing isn't to appeal to just a few people--even if there was no money and fame as a reward for it, you still want as many people as possible to read and enjoy your work.

Sorry, I but disagree with this. I don't think that the point of writing (well) is to appeal to as many people as possible. (Unless I'm after that money and fame you mention.) This assumes that the best stories are necessarily the most popular ones. Try to please everyone, and you will please no one. If my ideas and writings only appeal to three people, then those are the three people I should be writing for, and I should be happy to have them. Some people enjoy stories that are bloated with irrelevant filler, and they are not chopped liver. Everyone is entitled to their own tastes. The greatest horror story ever told won't appeal to me if I don't like horror. Should the horror author cut out the scary parts to appeal to me?

I think the point of writing is to craft the best story you can -- whether that is a spare, tightly-paced short story or a 20-volume epic -- whether it sells a billion copies or sits in a drawer.

[Teresa Edgerton]

Admittedly, if you want to be published and make a career of writing you do have to appeal to a certain number of people; but that doesn't mean you have to appeal to "as many people as possible." That's a recipe for financial success, not for excellence. You can be excellent and successful, of course, but the one is not the measure of the other.

[JDP]

Originally Posted by JDawg2.0

That really doesn't make any sense, JDP. If you include elements to the story that do not suit the story, then you are just adding filler, cheating for a higher word-count, and being dishonest to the reader. Writing is self-serving only in the aspect that it is done to satisfy your creative urges. If you over-indulge yourself with needless actions, descriptions, histories, and things of the sort, then you just aren't writing well.

I didn't suggest that an author should include extraneous content. I said the exact opposite in the post you are referring to:

Originally Posted by JDP

...makes it more consistent (instead of just another MacGuffin). I would constitute this forethought as worldbuilding. You don't have to narrate every second of the ChangerTree's growth and the biography of the Magi-Lumberjack who felled it and the...

I never suggested that an author should include filler that's not relevant to the story, nor that they should 'include elements to the story that do not suit the story' (though I'm not entirely sure what that means, but I get the gist). The only thing I posted about about excess info is that it should not be included.

[iansales]

Originally Posted by JDawg2.0

I would know by reading the story. I would ask myself if all this pretty description and fantastic history actually fit the story.I said I would like to believe that a talented writer could achieve an info-dump by dressing it with pretty words, but I also said I don't believe it's possible.

And my point was that if they were doing it so well, you wouldn't even notice you were reading an info-dump...

[Jarshen]

Posted by the Pelargic Argosy

I love it when an author can, by dropping a few interesting details or setting a scene in a few descriptive paragraphs, give the illusion that the world we are entering extends off the pages in all directions.

I love this quote, it sums up for me the appearance of depth to the world.
Whether it is actually built by the author or imagined in that instance, depends on how the author works.
But it suggest hints, allusions and ideas beyond the current action, without actually taking the reader away from the story or the character.

How many children did Lady Macbeth have? Who cares and who knows? The author, and if it serves their story that information may be included.

World building comes second to writing, end of.

[Teresa Edgerton]

Originally Posted by Jarshen

World building comes second to writing, end of.

To me, this is like saying characterization comes second to writing, or action or dialogue come second to writing. It's all part of the writing process, and different writers emphasize (and are good at) different aspects.

Yes, good writing is what we all want as readers, what we all strive for (or should strive for) as writers. How we define that may differ. It should differ, or everything we write would have a deadly sameness.

[Daniel Hetberg]

Originally Posted by The Pelagic Argosy

I love it when an author can, by dropping a few interesting details or setting a scene in a few descriptive paragraphs, give the illusion that the world we are entering extends off the pages in all directions. [...]
How the author creates these illusions -- whether he fills 50 notebooks with details or just pulls them out of his tushie on the fly while writing -- I don't know, and I don't care.
[...]
I think the secret is to provide just enough detail on the page the create the illusion, but not enough to shatter it.

Yep, I agree completely here. One thing that's striking me as very ironic is the following: If you want to write spontaneously, without having everything in your plot meticulously pre-planned, you need to pre-plan the surroundings very meticulously. Only if you as an author have a firm grasp of the world you're writing in, can you improvise and make it believable.

Otherwise the fluff you'll add is generic at best, or confused and logically faulty at worst. A plot without fluff is not a story, it's a plot. I don't know who did it, but there are those classic lists of all possible plot situations... if you want to do anything more than reproduce one of them, you have to add fluff that's your very own, and if that fluff is supposed to make sense, you have to think about it beforehand.

Of course the appropriate amount of fluff differs depending on how plot-heavy your story is going to be, but I mean come on, we're in an SFF forum here, these genres live and die on the quality of their settings.


P.S.: I just thought about the extreme where you would leave out everything, apart from the plot in the sense of classical plot situation. For the sake of brevity, you can leave all pages in your book blank, except for the first one. The first page contains the plot elements and their relation to each other, codified by one canonic list of plot situations: "This plot is a 62b, where the next of kin is the aunt, herself involved in a 56 variant with the representative of society, who also pursues a 45, coming into conflict with the protagonist over the object of the 62."

[Jarshen]

In saying writing I meant the actual writing process, as in no matter how detailed the work on character, worlds, etc everything is up in the air until you actually start to write.

There are so many things that make us fearful of actually starting to write the story that I felt it important to reiterate what I know many people here advise, and that is just to write.

[JDawg2.0]

Wow! I love that so many people responded to my post!

OK...

Originally Posted by Ursa Major

I'm not entirely sure what you're getting at, JDawg2.0. Are you asking for all extraneous information to be absent from a story? If so, what is left? (And if it's next to nothing, I would hope that all of us could tell just about any story in 10000 words.) If it's not next to nothing, what is it? Where is your boundary between setting and character, on the one hand, and filler?

To your first question, yes, I'm say all extraneous information be absent. I'm not saying that a story should be a glorified outline, I'm just saying that it should not include things that do not pertain to the story, or its characters. There is a difference between a rich backstory, and writing that does nothing but slow the story down. Not everything needs to advance the storyline, but everything must be information that we need to make the experience more enjoyable. I don't need to know what year a kind of architecture began, I just need to know what the architecture looks like.

Originally Posted by Teresa

But in order to find out if it is possible you have to be willing to read things by authors who write that kind of story, and do so with an open mind.

I have done that. Stephen King, for example, spent his 40s and 50s writing great stories that also happened to be 300 pages too long. They were too long because he became too wordy, too loose with his narrative. It's just my opinion, but tight writing is the best writing. That isn't to say a tightly-written novel has to be less than 200 pages, but it has to be devoid of fat.

Originally Posted by Teresa

As writers, we need to find which approach works best for us, and then become very, very good at whatever that is. That doesn't mean that we can't, as readers, acknowledge that other writers can be very, very good at doing something else entirely.

That's very true, Teresa. I don't mean to sound as if I think all writers have to fit a certain mold. It is simply that I believe no writer can make an info-dump work. If they can, I haven't seen it.

Originally Posted by Pelagic

Sorry, I but disagree with this. I don't think that the point of writing (well) is to appeal to as many people as possible. (Unless I'm after that money and fame you mention.) This assumes that the best stories are necessarily the most popular ones. Try to please everyone, and you will please no one. If my ideas and writings only appeal to three people, then those are the three people I should be writing for, and I should be happy to have them.

That sounds nice, but if you only appeal to three people, you won't get published. I know the business end of writing is not as romantic as the writing itself is, but you have to have a certain market in mind when you submit your work.

I didn't mean to support the idea that the most popular fiction is the best fiction. But, we do know who the best writers are, because they are popular. Even if they weren't popular in their time, great writing gets recognized. It may not be commercial success, but it is success nonetheless.

I wouldn't say Stephen King is the best horror writer of all-time, but a lot of people believe Poe is. You know who Edgar Allan Poe is, correct? My point exactly. The best writers aren't exactly unknowns.

Originally Posted by Pelagic

Some people enjoy stories that are bloated with irrelevant filler, and they are not chopped liver.

Sorry to say, but bloated writing with irrelevant filler is bad writing.

Originally Posted by Pelagic

I think the point of writing is to craft the best story you can -- whether that is a spare, tightly-paced short story or a 20-volume epic -- whether it sells a billion copies or sits in a drawer.

I agree completely. But I think some of us are afraid to say that not everyone who writes is a good writer. You can write all the 20-volume epics you want, but that does not make you a good writer. And if you can write a tightly-paced short story, you probably are a good writer.

Originally Posted by Ian Sales

And my point was that if they were doing it so well, you wouldn't even notice you were reading an info-dump...

I disagree, but that does not mean I'm right. It's simply my belief that info-dump would be evident, no matter how pretty the writing is.

[The Pelagic Argosy]

Originally Posted by JDawg2.0

That sounds nice, but if you only appeal to three people, you won't get published. I know the business end of writing is not as romantic as the writing itself is, but you have to have a certain market in mind when you submit your work.

When you submit your work for publication, yes, you should definitely make sure it's the best work you can produce and hope that it has wide appeal, and try to convince the publishing house of that. However, we're talking about world building here. And most world-building happens in the pre-writing and drafting stages. Those 50 notebooks of dry facts I mentioned above are certainly unpublishable. (Unless you become a runaway success. Then all of the geeks will buy them at auction.)

But a writer shouldn't worry about what's salable when the story is still in the conception phase, unless you want to write a hackneyed knock-off. The freshest ideas are, by definition, untested in the marketplace. (That's the problem with the publishing business. Publishers have to worry about the bottom line and they are, therefore, risk averse. A hackneyed knockoff may have a better a chance of getting published than something fresh and revolutionary.)

Ironically, if we're talking about quality and tight pacing here, it's the bloated fantasy epics that are getting published and lining the shelves right now, much to the consternation of many fantasy readers. If a writer can promise to squeeze ten sequels out of her world-building exercise, she may have struck publishing gold.

I didn't mean to support the idea that the most popular fiction is the best fiction. But, we do know who the best writers are, because they are popular. Even if they weren't popular in their time, great writing gets recognized. It may not be commercial success, but it is success nonetheless.

I wouldn't say Stephen King is the best horror writer of all-time, but a lot of people believe Poe is. You know who Edgar Allan Poe is, correct? My point exactly. The best writers aren't exactly unknowns.

I disagree. Some of the best writing ever is probably lost to the ages. (Of course, I can't prove this, because this writing is lost.) And, when you say, "popular," I ask, popular with whom exactly? A lot of our examples of Great Literature are popular with academic elites but not necessarily with a mass audience. (In fact, these two groups often seem to be mutually exclusive. If academia gets to define good literature then most of SFF is out, as is most genre writing. Stephen King is definitely out.) We define good writing retroactively by what has passed historical and popular muster. If new writers try to force themselves to fit this mold, this is a recipe for literary stagnation.

Also, this would mean that 99% of the good writers throughout history have been white males.

Speaking of horror, I loved Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, mostly for the atmospheric filler. Poe is hardly an example of tight pacing. In fact, most good horror, IMHO, relies on atmosphere rather than plot.

[iansales]

Originally Posted by JDawg2.0

I didn't mean to support the idea that the most popular fiction is the best fiction. But, we do know who the best writers are, because they are popular.

You've contradicted yourself. You're equating "best" with popularity, and we know that's false. Success is no indicator of quality. The da Vinci Code is one of the biggest selling novels of all time, and it's appallingly written and badly structured.