Ah ha see! that is why setting is so important, non believers I urge everyone to watch "game of thrones." It is a well done series with great characters and factional tensions...In fact its my favorite guilty pleasure show at the moment. I'm a closet nerd...if you haven't already guessed.
I'm going to actually help you out in a way that you asked instead of offering advice on something that I think is important. You need religion, logical geography, technology (I know you were already talking about weaponry), important historical figures, and culture as well.
I agree. The tv series also seems to exaggerate on a few details as well, like excessive naked boobage and how quickly the gold melts for Visery's crown. That's gotta be the softest gold in the history of man to melt that fast!
Though, to be absolutely honest, I never really got how that gold killed Viserys... Did it reach the brain, or what?
There is a fantasy world in the book series I wrote. But I didn't focus on the world, I focused on the characters. As I wrote, the world just presented itself. There was no planning, everything about it that needed to be known happened as the story unfolded.
Now assuming they could actually get the gold to melt like that... I'd say a nice big cooked brain is a pretty quick death. Well I'd hope it would be because otherwise it be rather painful. I'd just assume it was the heat from the melted gold pretty much cooking his brain. But yeah it probably couldn't go down quite like that. But it was an awesome scene though.
Well how am I supposed to make sure the history is a real thing if I don't organize it? I let it all unfold like you said but then it grew. I can no longer hold all this information in my head. It got too big.
Hi, I word build as I write the story.It seems more natural to me. So what I'll do is maybe start with a character in a local setting, and then as I advance the story, add in more world. Then when I do that I keep a second file which I chuck the world building bits into so I can reference it later for consistency. So for Dragon which I just finished, I have my character finding an alien battleship, and as he wandered through it, working out what needed to be rebuilt on it, I was setting out the basis of the technology and adding it to my world file. It works quite well for me. So as he goes through the drive systems etc, I'm designing ships, his and all future ones, with thrusters, pulse drives and hyperspace drives, so when later another ship arrives etc, I can describe accurately how its powered, armed, defended, moves etc. For me world building in advance would be dry, since the goal of my writing is to tell a story, and writing without having some world building going on would risk coming out with an inconsistent book. Cheers.
I think world building is being a little shrugged off here as unnecessary. If you want to create your own world then go for it - between your original suggestions and those already offered by other people, you should have all the subjects you need to get going with it. ( Unless you want to get ridiculously detailed about, in which case why not write about property law, or the uniforms of the mail service? ) I think there is one prominent theme of the nay-sayers here, though - however much work you put into the world, it should still be secondary to the characters and the story. If you wanted to release a companion compendium about your world then go ahead - it would probably be great fun, if world building is your thing. But keep the story focused on the story!
Unless you plan on writing a series of novels, I don't think you will need all that. It's perfectly fine to plan ahead, but will you really need to write down all there is to know about flora and fauna? And laws? And weapons? You don't need to plan every detail - readers can fill in the obvious gaps using their own imagination. Personally, I have a notebook that I use while writing. If I make an important decision in regard to laws, culture or anything of the sort, then I write it down and use it for reference later. What you really need to focus on is your plot and your characters. It's nice to have a framework, but people who’ve created a whole world before they even start writing their story sometimes end up info-dumping a lot while writing, feeling as though much of their hard work creating the "world" will be wasted unless they get to actually use it all.
What you risk with meticulous world-building is to create a static world where story and character feels inanimate, since, as it took you so long to build this great place, you'll be resistent to tearing it apart for drama. So keep in mind that no stage-play ever went into history for its wonderfully painted backdrops.
haha I won't write about property law or the mail service, even though I do have a courier service in my book and I do have disputes in rural communities about rents and tithes. However, I don't go into great detail about those. I should be descriptive about food though don't you think. I know I love reading about food. You know when a feast is right in front of the characters and there are assorted meats and cheeses and plenty of ale and red wine to wash it down. You know: The little fat man, with the bushy mustache and beady eyes, sitting there and stuffing his face with greedy little fingers.
It's not hate, dude. I think we've all been through it and remember the thrill of coming up with 5000+ years of fictional history for a fictional world, but ... when it comes to writing a story, it's mostly a huge waste of time, because no one will ever see all that work. Unless you're making the (common) mistake of stuffing it all into the story -- which is a mistake because readers don't care for it. Really, they don't, except perhaps for a select few who also derive entertainment from reading bus schedules. If it's not relevant nor interesting information that directly affects the lives of the characters, then it's neither relevant nor interesting, period. Why would readers waste time reading about fictional facts that aren't necessary, when they could have spent that time reading about factual facts? You know, read about the political history of ancient Rome, rather than the political history of Naboo.
It can be helpful to the writer to know a lot more about the world than will ever be divulged to the reader. As for in-depth world building, if you enjoy that sort of thing, go for it. But as has been pointed out in this thread, if you force all of that information into your story simply because you spent time on it and want to show it off to the reader, you're going to make your story worse for it. You may need or want to know all about your imaginary world, but the reader only needs (and generally only wants) to know those things that arise naturally out of the story itself.
I 100% agree with Cogito. I'm in the process of creating a fantasy(ish) world and I do it only through the stories. It works like a charm and puts a lot of ease on my mind. Game of thrones is too much like the real world, you know, what with the english and french. It's basically a tweaked historical real world.
To be fair, planning the world in excruciating detail before putting any characters or action in it worked well for J R R Tolkein. But he made his living as an academic, not as a writer; writing that way was slow.
I agree. Do you have to build a world, yes. Do you do it in your story, no. Most of my world building is done in my notes section. It is only used to ensure consistency. The most important part of the story is the story not the world. Get the story right and every thing else is will just be academic. Role Players love this stuff. If you are writing an RPG then it is a different story (Literally). Just be careful to make the distinction.
Your missing political laws and brand new technology.. brand new stuff the world has never seen before. New exciting things never seen in the world before.
I once created a world, Günther, which was based on the "corporations rule the world" and "post apocalyptic ragtag survivors" idea meshed together. There was a complex political system involving powerful companies and organisations, detailed geography, natural resources, and even a list of animals and plants. Then I had to work out how the rebels, the Democracy Freedom Action Group, fit in. It took me about a week. A writer friend suggested I base a story around it. I found out that I used so little information about the world itself that I could have finished what I need in a half-hour. The point is, don't waste more than an hour on world building. No one is going to care that the Sakma family are feuding with the Xarcia family, and the Watri family, allies of the Sakman, are cutting off essential food supplies to the Xarcia, forcing them to assassinate the head of the Renglath family and brutally taking it over in a prolonged and messy war in order to acquire their fertile farmland. You can just mention that the war between the Xarcia and the Sakma are affecting the Renglath farmlands, and this will make it difficult for the adventuring party to cross the farmlands, forcing them to take a river route that will leave them exposed to the evil underwater creatures of Hellfire the Lich. Notice how it focuses on the character, instead of the world.
That's not a very good generalization to make off of your own experience. It's going to depend on the story. I've read plenty of fantasy novels where the author clearly did well more than an hour of work on world building, and where it impacted the story. You do as much as you need. If that's 15 minutes, then fine. If it is 20 hours, then OK. I do believe that you need to know more about the world than will ever appear in your stories, just as you need to know more about the characters than you will put in them.
