#on worldbuilding

[unhappytogekiss]

[aquitainequeen]

Further bits and pieces of worldbuilding that I really liked in Furiosa (the previous post have gotten rather long)

One of the first shots of the film is trees being detroyed by a shock wave, and later as the raiders escape with Furiosa we see the edges of the Green Place eroding into the desert; a sign of what's to come. And zooming in from space, this paradise is so terribly small...

Furiosa knows how to disable a motorcycle, but still marvels at the petrol pouring over her hand.

There's a brief moment where someone is using a satellite dish as a cooking pot!

Toe Jam and his companion automatically assume that it's Furiosa's father tracking them, not her parents; certainly not her mother.

The first thing the Organic Mechanic does whenever he meets someone new is to check their fingers and teeth to see what kind of health they're in; he does this later with the Lone War Boy, without even being told to do so by Dementus.

When his followers get too rowdy, Dementus calls them off with a whistle - they are his hounds too.

Dementus orders for their best drinking water to be used to wash Furiosa; an immediate sign of how valuable he considers her to be.

I have a theory about the Organic Mechanic serving human blood sausage (the jury is out on whether he was actually drawing Furiosa's blood or whether he was bluffing in front of Immortan Joe). He doesn't yet have the resources to safely do blood transfusions, so this is a simplified way of trying to keep Dementus healthy and strong!

There are wind turbines on the top of the Citadel, but we don't see them move; a shallow echo of the turbines in the Green Place.

The power dynamics in Dementus' horde; the Mortiflyers answer to the Octoboss, who calmly tells them to comply; compare this with Dementus' posturing...

Immortan Joe is the only one during negotiations to speak directly to Furiosa, asking her questions and getting answers from her - yet we never see him speak to any of the women in his harem. When one of them gives birth to a mutated baby he turns and departs without a word, leaving Scrotus to pass sentence on her.

I've commented before on how unsettling it is that Furiosa's given a little cubby of her own with a lamp and books and a bed, and how it all looks so normal. The whole setup of the harem is unnerving. Down in the depths of the Citadel everything is scavenged and mismatched; @cinemaocd noticed that the 'bunks' that Furiosa and Jack are sleeping on later in the film are actually repurposed lounge chairs. Even later on, when the People Eater is plotting battles, he uses salvaged objects to represent the armies. But up in the harem everything is preserved, clean and kept for its original purpose, from the chairs and chalkboard to the stacks of books and the ordinary (if not necessarily comfy) beds. Like the Green Place, the harem is recognisable and normal, a series of rooms you could well imagine in our universe...but it's a manufactured paradise rather than a natural one, a false 'haven' and a real prison for so many women.

[elucubrare]

i was thinking about timelines in fantasy worldbuilding last night as i was going to bed, with the same ultimate conclusion as this post but honestly less contempt and more interest - most timelines, of wholly human kingdoms (elves and other long-lived peoples get a pass), do need to be 1000-9000 years shorter. and yet, there's something compelling about "ancient."

in our world, the first large-scale site with significant building is Göbekli Tepe, founded about 11,000 years ago and abandoned around 1500 years later. We don't have writing from it that we can interpret, and there's no conterporary culture that's directly related to it. The oldest continuously inhabited city is Girga, which has been inhabited for around 5300 years. It was founded under a different name and has been ruled by many different dynasties and peoples.

But these fantasy cities have stood for 10,000 years. You find a sword in a tomb from the ancient inhabitants of the continent, and not only is it immediately usable, it's better than anything you have. You go into a tomb from "before memory" and the iconography makes fairly immediate sense to you.

It's a failure of accuracy to our world, for sure - if I find even the best-preserved bronze age sword, it will do me no good at all. The longest ruling dynasty is the Chola dynasty, at around 1500 years. the past hundred fifty years have taken us from the discovery of Antartica to the moon landing to the internet age. Change is the only constant.

But it's romantic to talk about "time immemorial" and really mean it, isn't it? It's fun for the ten thousand year old warning to be real.

I'm as much of a nit-picker as anyone else about this kind of thing*, but so much of it depends on the kind of story you're trying to tell & the claims you're making (internally and externally) about your worldbuilding. if you're not trying to be "realistic," who cares if the timeline is impossibly distended, as long as it's interesting?

__ *a series whose premise is that as soon as anyone is on the brink of making a scientific discovery, the Dark Lord comes and gets them, because it's the best explanation for the several thousand years of complete economic, social, and scientific stagnation

[not-poignant]

Worldbuilding and Writing Fiction are two separate skills.

Someone reblogged one of my shitposts yesterday (the one about intimidating myself out of worldbuilding) expressing confusion in the tags about how anyone could be intimidated out of writing through worldbuilding too much.

This was kind of baffling to me, because I think I've seen it 50-60 times now, especially with new, ambitious writers who are starting off with deep fantasy or science fiction projects. When you talk to them, they've often sunk months or even years of worldbuilding into the project, but when you ask how far they've come on the fiction side of things, they usually have writer's block, haven't started writing the story, or say they're not ready yet. 'I'm starting soon' is a common refrain. 'I just have a little bit more left to do.'

The main reason for this - I feel - is that worldbuilding and writing are two different skills. Someone who spends 5 years worldbuilding has learned how to get really good at worldbuilding, but that doesn't mean anything about how good their writing will be. Many folks think worldbuilding will automatically make a story better, but sometimes worldbuilding can become unwieldy and stressful, especially in the case of a) entirely new worlds / secondary world fantasy, or b) complex worldbuilding. Definitely not talking about contemporary romance here, lol. (Though no shade to that, I've had a lot of fun worldbuilding for those stories too).

Going from worldbuilding to writing is launching into an entirely new space. If you find writing new stories easy, that won't be a problem for you, in fact you may not even have realised they're too different skills before now.

If you find writing new stories intimidating, sometimes having hundreds or thousands of things about your world to try and constantly remember can feel overwhelming and mess with the executive function needed to start a chapter.

In some cases, worldbuilding can make it much easier to start a story. But it really depends on what you're needing to do. If you're just writing a contemporary story where you need to research two characters and two jobs, you're generally going to be just fine.

If on the other hand, you have the equivalent of a 500 page Wiki behind-the-scenes, it can feel overwhelming very quickly.

New writers fall into this trap the most, I feel. They become accustomed to what worldbuilding feels like, and they hedge on writing the actual fiction, because they just have more experience worldbuilding and keep waiting for their confidence in worldbuilding to become 'confidence in starting the story.' It doesn't work that way. They're different skills.

They might even be better at worldbuilding than writing! But that just means - if they really want to be a writer - that writing is the skill they really need to work on the most. That can be a comfort zone issue too. It can also be a 'only about 5-10% of all this work will ever appear in the story' issue, where folks want to share the worldbuilding more than the characters or plot, and therefore are just not inspired to work on their story. It can be a 'I want this story to be as good as my worldbuilding' issue. It can be a 'I find the worldbuilding part easy' issue. There are lots of reasons people stall out in worldbuilding and then feel intimidated to write the actual story.

This can also happen with established writers who become aware that the more they know about their world, the more they don't know about their world. It can start to feel like - if you write 10 articles for yourself, you end up with 100 more to write. If you write those 100 articles, you have another 300 to write. Worldbuilding never ends. Worldbuilding can be endless, and if you're an immersive writer, you can get lost very easily in the details, or in not knowing what details are critical and what details aren't. (A hint here is that you'll figure that out really fast when you start writing).

Stalling in worldbuilding can be a lot of things, it can tell you that there's something broken in the world, something broken in the story, it can tell you more about your insecurities, it can tell you how good you are at one skill and where you might need practice in another. It's super informative!

But, generally speaking, the advice I tend to give to many new writers is to try not to let your worldbuilding period last too long. Ideally, put a timer on it and see how it feels to start writing your story once the timer has gone off (3 months, 6 months, 3 weeks, put it in your phone or in your calendar, and start the first chapter, or some random scene, once that time is up).

If, after that period of time lapses, you still aren't ready to start your story, something bigger might be going on. It's an opportunity to dig deeper into the situation. And sometimes just ask yourself if you're using the idea of a novel as an excuse to do what you love most: Worldbuilding. If that's the case, there are other jobs you can parlay a solid worldbuilding ability into. It doesn't have to lead to novels. :)

But yeah it's super super common for many writers to stall out between worldbuilding and writing, and to feel overwhelmed by their own worldbuilding.

New writers get affected by it the most based on observation and hanging around writing forums, and the advice that gets asked quite often specifically on 'when do I go from worldbuilding to writing the story,' but established writers experience it too, because as Gene Wolfe once said to Neil Gaiman: "You never learn how to write a novel, Neil. You just learn how to write the novel you are on."

[ophiespeaks]

On worldbuilding for drs:

I don’t want to claim to be an expert. However, I have taken a semester of specifically worldbuilding-oriented english writing, on top of being a literal english major. Needless to say, I think I know a *few* things on worldbuilding when it comes to fictional works. But drs are different beasts entirely.

When you’re writing, it’s easy to say “oh this is 20 miles from this” and leave it at that. But when you’re mapping/planning out new locations in a dr, for example, a post-dystopia where society is restarting at around the middle age- it’s important to be very aware of actual societal patterns and the WHY people would settle there. Understanding the fundamentals of human behavior is important for understanding worldbuilding as a whole.

Your world can look however. A remodeled United States, such as I have in my The 100 DR, won’t have the exact same lines for nations/communities. However, some nation/state lines exist for a reason. Most commonly, bodies of water. Large rivers or lakes in geography affect how people settle those areas. In the United States (which I’m using, because I have the most knowledge of the country and purely for that reason), the great lake area is incredibly fertile and has mild enough weather to be hospitable for all kinds of plants and livestock to survive year round. You can even weave this into land disputes- early english settlers to the ohio river valley fought a war with the indigenous tribes of the area for basically one reason- Beaver pelt. It was extremely valuable and actually they hunted beaver in the area to near extinction during and after the war. One people wanting certain land for purely agricultural and hunting reasons is a thing that has happened historically, and can be used as conflict points in a dr.

Language is also an interesting point. Sure, you can make up a language. That works fine. But also, knowing linguistics and incorporating aspects of cr language into your dr can make it more “realistic” and easier to learn and understand. Most languages stem from ancient languages- things like Latin and ancient Sumerian have stemmed into modern day English, Spanish, German, and even various Indian and broadly Asian languages. Using a post-dystopian US-centered example, you can take English and modify it to realistically have changed with times and cultures. Sticking with my 100 dr, there’s an existing language called Trigedasleng.

It’s derivative english. “Kom” in Trigeda is derived from “Come” in English, which ends up actually translating to something like “From” or “Of (the)” in English. “Kru” is directly derived from “Crew” on english, which means “people” in actual translation. “Heda” directly translates to “Leader” or “Commander,” but is derived from the English word “Head.” The head is in charge of the body, the Heda is in charge of the people. Trigedasleng is actually a “full” language developed by the writers of the TV show and even has an online translator. However, for my DR, I’m working on a lot more actual changes in the two languages, Trigedasleng and English. Only certain words have changed in canon, and I’m making a significant number of words actually change from their English counterparts.

Language also constitutes culture and societal differences. Does your dr society speak only one language, are multiple languages used? If they are post-dystopia, is the language entirely new, or derived? Again, in my dr, English is still used and spoken- but only specifically by Grounder warriors. Merchants, farmers, metalworkers, etc. only speak Trigedasleng. English is a language that has survived, but not thrived, during the rebuilding of society. Language can also be used to express class and status. Is knowing English a tell of formal education? Is speaking a “slang” version of a language used as a way to express lower classes or poverty? Take a look at American AAVE, used predominantly in poorer black communities. It’s English- with slight adjustments.

Take into account topography as well. If there is a mountain on one side, there may be a desert on the others. Take the Rockies for example, most of the land on the opposite side is desert because the mountains shield the brunt of the weather. If a society lives by the ocean or a big lake, the chances are that society has developed boats and use fishing techniques. If they live in snow areas, chances are they hunt rather than depending too heavily on agriculture yield. Valleys deep enough may have different weather than even just a few miles up in flatlands. Bogs, swamps, and other still water sources pose dangers to humans because of the species who live there, such as mosquitoes carrying malaria or aquatic reptiles such as alligators and crocodiles, or poisonous snakes. Therefore, it’s unlikely for a society to suddenly desire to live in the middle of the swamp, especially if they only have rudimentary technology.

Illnesses are also important to consider. For worldbuilding, it’s as much about the people and cultures as it is the physical map. Does one group have an immunity to one illnesses where another doesn’t, such as the real life application with the English bringing smallpox to the Americas? Would one group avoid another because they think they’re “sick,” whether literally or religiously? Religions are also a huge aspect of culture. We see it present even today in conflicts, and it also changes where people want to settle. Is there a “holy land” that the devout make pilgrimages to? Is there a blessed area that people believe if they can live there, they will prosper? Including the actual gods or deities in your dr is an entire other choice- but even if those religions are false or contradict other religions, people will still believe. It’s human nature to seek divine explanations when practical ones fall short.

If anyone has further questions, my asks *should* be open! I could rant about worldbuilding for hours.

Also, for reference, here are two (very rudimentary lmao) maps for my The 100 dr *some locations are changed from canon*:

[beastenraged]

*elbows deep in worldbuilding for enemy mooks that no one gives two shits about in either canon or fanon* Hm. There may be something wrong with me. 

[writing-challenges-and-prompts]

On Worldbuilding: Class, Wealth, and Power [Stormlight | Dystopias | Witcher]