For the longest time, I've been trying to figure out the history of my world, but I've never gotten really in depth into it. I was wondering how other people handle this, and how much of your world's history should you know before starting your book (I've actually already started my first draft, and it's coming along nice enough)?
For me, it really depends on the story/world itself. Some stories require more historical context, others not so much. It also depends on what is seen as relevant to the story and its characters. For example, I have a sci-fi story where the only history that matters is how long ago the republic was created, how long ago a splinter government separated from the republic, and why/how they went about it. It's a war, so that's all that matters to most characters. As for my current fantasy story, the creation of the country was tied to the development of the people's religious beliefs, so there's a bit more detail in that. Plus, the main character ends up having to learn about the country and religion's history as part of her training, so that's a natural way to give the reader some exposition (in bits, of course).
My first advice would be: don't overdo it. Many writers make the mistake of overdoing it when it comes to worldbuilding. It's more important that your world comes alive for the reader in a true sense which is hard to happen if you bury him with information. You can either outline a general history before you start the novel and then try to fit the plot into it or create it as you go. Both are OK. In my case, I had an extensive history of the world before I started my current novel which takes place in the world that was already created.
I suggest having a rough outline of the really big events. From there, figure out what will be important to the story you're telling and give the history behind those things a bit more development. Say one character is a member of a persecuted and despised religious or ethnic group--what's the story behind that? If there's a war going on, what sort of international tensions or ambitions led up to it?
My world's history grew along with the novel, but then again so did the plot--I didn't do any planning. There's so far just enough history for the story plus a few frills. What I know is centered around the protagonist's home country, I organized the recent armed conflicts based on how I wanted them to interact with the protagonist's lifespan, etc., some historical alliances are based on how I wanted those armed conflicts to go and how I want the protagonist to feel about certain countries, other things were created based in part on how old I wanted a specific building to be and what kind of historical period I wanted it built in, and so on.
I deal only in real history when it comes to my fiction, so it's just a matter of research for me. But I often have wondered: if you build a world from scratch, how do you ensure that it stays true to itself? Have you developed a method of making sure your invented history and the physics and biology of your world all makes sense, even on a detailed level? Most people writing fantasy want to create a world that actually doesn't or couldn't exist in our 'real' world. But every fantasy element must have some limiting factor, or changes something about that world that can fall apart if not thought through. Just a crude example: a race of creatures is immortal (or live extraordinarily long lives.) So if they can't die or don't die very often ...do they reproduce? And if they reproduce and don't die ...erm, well, pretty soon the world will be overrun with them. And what do they eat? And what do they displace? This kind of thing. This needs to be thought through. Doesn't it?
I've thought through most of the physics and biology of the world. It's mostly history that I'm struggling with.
This is why my fantasy world varies not one little bit from our world's physics and biology. I'm far too lazy to do that work.
You are right. It is not easy to make the world you create internally consistent. I agree with ChickenFreak, it's too much of a work and may divert your creative energy from the plot itself. For this reason, the world I created is actually our own, but either in a fictional distant past or a future so all of the rules of our world apply.
Yes, that makes sense. The minute you start including 'magic' or immortality and other stuff like that, you've got a potential problem, because these things will impact on other things.
What are your inspirations for your story? That's a good starting point, what did you see or read about that inspired you to want to create your own world and write about it? Start from there. I usually start off with something simple that I've seen, a scene from a movie or an extract from some well-written story. That will usually be enough for me to decide "alright, I'm going to create an entire world just from this one simple scene that I've seen with my imagination." Once you've begun to think about the world, you're going to take inspiration from other movies or books you've read and keep adding elements from them into your imaginary world so it becomes diverse. What is the history of your main characters? What is the history of your villains? What is the history of your settings? Those are usually enough to get the ball rolling, the rest of the history comes when you're writing and you have moments where you go "ah, this would be pretty cool or interesting to add to the history of this character to further the plot or create conflict." In my opinion, if you want to write a novel then the less world-building you do; the more efficient your writing will be. I world-builded and still am world-building a sci-fi world where 61,000 years of history has taken place, I am writing with a high level of detail because it's not meant to be a novel but rather a fictional history book with a lot of interesting "declassified files" or "top secret documents" along with journals/diaries. I can tell you from experience that if you world-build too much, you're going to struggle to write a novel properly due to the excessive amount of details you need to consider and fit into the story since the reader doesn't know about any of that. Much better to just leave a lot of details to mystery and let the reader imagine the details instead of fitting it all in at once. So, just start off with a simple piece of inspiration and just write about the people you visualize in that imaginary world you just created, if there's history then just sprinkle it in through dialogue or through the perspective of the characters.
How much do you need to know? None at all. How much should you know? There's no set standard. Throw a few references out and make something up for them later? That's how Star Wars was written. Have a whole bunch of stuff planned out before you even write? That's Tolkien. Overall, it doesn't matter. I myself don't try to write thousands of years of history, mostly because things don't have much easily predictable impact beyond a certain period of time.
I avoid info dumps like the plague. Do the characters need to know about the history to act out the plot? If not, the reader does''t need to know either. If they do need to know or if the history would make the setting more credible, they can learn from each-other by answering questions about some unusual or thought provoking feature. I also have them telling humorous or interesting anecdotes.
My history tends to just focus on what is important to my story, I'll only bring up a war or treaty that was signed 300 years ago if it's relevant to the story. I have a book that doesn't need any history a all for the plot or characters really, so I added historical things just to make it feel like this world existed before. Extinct religions and technology. Sacrificing table for when the hills were full of cults. Old buildings and ancient trees. Things like that, But bare in mind I'm am not an experienced writer so don't have the experience yet. I've written a few short things but working on my main novel now so... Hope I helped anyway
There is a degree of discretion as to how much world-building you include in-story versus as reference material, and how much you create. But plot should definitely be relevant as most have mentioned here. What kind of story is this? What elements of the world are most relevant? And in relation to the discretion on amount of exposition, what kind of audience would you expect? E.g the Song of Ice and Fire books include a relatively large amount of exposition(but less than Tolkien) because that's the kind of thing they are and the kind of people who would read are generally at least somewhat okay with that. In the reverse way, The Matrix movie series includes a relatively small amount of actual detailed exposition, firstly because it's mysterious but also because they aren't expecting the most world-building interest audience but more of a sci-fi action audience. So there's that. The history that is most relevant if you need to know is the history most related to who your characters are. If one major protag is part of some order, club or guild of some sort you'll probably want a bit of exposition of their background, as well as exposition on their current nature where relevant to the character. If there's a major main setting, probably some exposition on it's history back at least 10 years or something on some point of it's society or another, especially if it related to foreign relations where grudges are long. You get the idea. Interest and realism are also significant as well as explanatory relevance. People like some spice, especially to constructed sci-fi and fantasy worlds where the design can be part of the initial story attraction. And they also like that world-building to make some sort of sense. So you can ensure you've got enough of those elements through certain world-building elements. One of the very clever things for good world-building is that because the story makes certain exposition more or less relevant, you can partially design your story to include certain world-building you want to. Which is especially useful for the interest and realism goals where you still want to work them into the story somehow but you've got another agenda too.
But doesn't having a history you won't use add depth to the history you DO use? I know I'm writing what appears to be a fantasy story, but in reality, it is a very science fiction setting. In this story, the science fiction beginning of this world is totally irrelevant to the plot, so I'm not using it directly, though I think it is important in how I present the fantasy world. I'm pretty sure my characters will never discover their origins. Maybe in a different book. Maybe someday, some OTHER character will discover the truth. I don't know, the world as it is has a lot of stories in it if I choose to tell them.
One hour foto mat. History is just as tricky as info, while it can add a richness to your story, you don't want to just dump it in one large clump like a text book. I find the sprinkle it around method works well, though at times in sci-fi you have somewhat large chunks of tech babble to explain, but even then try to keep them bitesize. Another good strategy I have seen that works is the use of it in dialogue, and only as it relates to the plot of the story, or other pertinence. But try to keep it simple and significant, otherwise it comes off as more like a historical/info commentary. Good Luck.
I think the important thing about world histories is if you have enough to work with, but not so much that it weighs your story down with tedious details. And that's going to be different for everyone. I mean let's face it, world building is nothing more than a plot convince. So it should be just that: convenient, even if it shouldn't feel that way to the readers. JRR Tolkien can get away with vast histories because he knew how to weave it into the plot. I, personally, don't do well with making up vast world histories because I found I go on tangents that no one cares about, and rightfully so. I just don't have that kind of talent. So for me, vast world building isn't even a good idea. So
In regards of having too much... I personally disagree. Because the way I look at it is simple. You don’t have to include all your world building in your plot or story. But. If you have all the world development there all ready to go. Then you need not worry about it as much and can freely include it, or not, within you story. I also think it f eels a lot more normal. However, if you only create that which is necessary, then you run the risk of only partially creating a convincing world and I think you run the tendency of having to explain the existence of your world a lot more. But that is just me.
Yeah you don't want to be too minimalist and monomaniacally practical that it feels narrow and boring. Interest and realism are factors and motives themselves.
My answer: A shitload of research from the real world. Assuming I want the laws of physics, biology and so on to stay the same (which I do), I am operating under the same constraints and parameters I find in the real world. Which means that basics of conflict, solution, interaction, society(ies), history, culture, art, and so on are staying the same, but I put emphasis on specific aspects that I want to put under the microscope. Yet it doesn't invalidate the other aspects. Also a metric ton of thinking and poking holes in my story, from every conceivable angle, every step of the way. Which explains why it takes me so freaking long to write, but never mind For the original question: I need to know only the bare basics until the conditions start that have direct impact on my storyline/MCs. Which doesn't equate to putting the basics into the story, or even the causative details of the conditions to the start of my story. It's enough that I know, and that these basics are consistent, so that the reader gets my confidence and believes me, even without me explaining every little detail. He needs to trusts me, but this trust only can happen if I am confident in myself, that I write the truth of my story, that it happened as I tell it. Of course I'm writing fiction, so it never happened, but... who cares?
Well, I am thinking about posting something that is written from the perspective of a scholar who lives in my world. It is a rough sketch only and really a means for me to explore the kind of questions are need to answer and to discover more nuanced aspects of the world I’ve created. What I have started to wonder is whether or not anyone would be entertained by what is essentially nothing more than an”info dump” as an actual narrative. I’ve seen novels try this approach within the plot of a more traditional story-line with a kind of mini-prologue at the beginning of each chapter. A further example of this would be something akin to Hitch Hiker’s Guide style that grew from the radio show where they paused to inform the audience about this or that nugget of information (this works really well for comedic purposes, but I’m not sure how it can work as well for serious fiction). I’ve just written around 2000 words without even thinking about length of what I’m writing and it is little more than a broad introduction to a very diverse history and landscape. I’ve not even mentioned any particular individual and have only very briefly outlined the immediate geography, some races in the, and some fleeting mention of significant historical events.
I've read books like that before. To be believable, they have to sound like a scholarly work. And once they become scholarly, they become boring as all hell. I like what Christopher Nuttall did in "The Empire Corps" series. He prefaced each chapter with a few paragraphs from a "Scholarly Work" written by a minor character in the story. He used that 'preface' to expand and explain what is going on in the chapter from a more dispassionate POV. It gave Nuttall the opportunity to talk about the profound effects the story had on the culture that was developing. (It's also a VERY good Science Fiction Series!) It also allows the Author to put in important background info, without stepping on the toes of the story itself.
Yeah, imagine once I’ve written out the history I can condense it down into more manageable pieces and perhaps use them to add a sense of depth and reality to the world that would otherwise be missed. Either way it is a fun exercise and the little bit I did today really made me feel excited by the scale of what I’ve had in my head for all these years.
Just throwing this out there. I'm a big fan of Dragonlance, and the first book solved some world building easily enough. Right from the start, we know there was a cataclysm in the past that destroyed all magic. The specific details of this isn't all that important, only that the gods left Krynn, and took magic with them. Next, we learn that the main characters are gathering again, because they went different ways several years earlier, and promised ot meet again today. It's not something they spend much time discussing, but it's enough that we get a feeling these people all have a long history together. Then there's Riverwind and Goldmoon, two new people in town. We know they are on the run, and carry a strange, magical rod. Again, not much is said about their past, but it's still enough to know they do indeed have a past worth telling. Just like that, we know there is a lot of history in the world, and with the characters. But they don't dwell on it any more than they need to. They rather expand on that in other books later. All the characters have books taking place in the past, and there's a whole trilogy taking place before and during the cataclysm that destroyed the world. The first trilogy books mention a legendary hero, but he isn't all that important in the first books. Even so, he has a book of his own, telling how he went from a simple peasant to a legendary hero. My point is, I don't think you need to develop the history of the world all that much. Even here in the real world, we have a lot of big events in the past, like two world wars, the wars in Korea and Vietnam, the American civil war, and so on. Everyone knows about them, but it's not something most people dwell on. It's just a part of our past, and not really relevant in our modern lives. I think history in ficitonal books would do well to do the same. Mention the big stuff, and maybe elaborate on the important stuff. But these characters already know about them, so they don't need to re-learn it just to teach the reader.
