Worldbuilding: share your tips and tricks!

[TheRedChamber]

I tend to write a lot of one-shot stories, and, although I don't do a lot of science-fiction or fantasy, when I do, I tend to take a lazy world building approach. That is to say, I assume that creating something detailed and unique (and which needs explanation) isn't really necessary for a mucky 10k story. That said, I am usually writing in the SF/F genre because there is some erotic element that can't work in a mundane setting and that should be highlighted.

So, in the story Galaxy A-Go-Go, my main idea was 'sex with aliens should be really, really weird.' Star Trek has always treated aliens as humans with funny noses/ears. My story starts in an alien bar with three crew members who are dropping lots of (psuedo) Trekkian style lingo that will hopefully ground the reader in the setting. Then when the alien sex begins, I go to town making sure that that is unique, different and fun to read. I haven't put any effort at all into galactic politics or how the hyperdrive works.

The Princess in the Brothel ended up with a way more complicated plot, but started with the fun idea of what races I'd put in a fantasy world brothel (mermaid blowjobs, fairy massage, ogre bouncer etc) and then throwing in a 'stuck-up' character to interact with them all (Again, a 'stock fantasy princess.') Again, just leaning into a lot of established fantasy tropes but making them mucky. I ended up thinking of a couple of substantial twists for it, but rather than explain how magic works exactly, had a list of magic possibilities (amulets of protection from harm used in BDSM play, memory wiping, appendages being able to be magically grown back) and Chekoved the hell out of them so they were ready for the finale.

The Demonization of Humberstone Road was probably the story where the world building got away from me (in a good way.) It's an example of introducing one concept that then has a whole bunch of ramifications that I wasn't initially aware of when I pencilled it into my plot but then which actually had a huge knock on effect and which ended up creating a relatively unique world. So I started out with the simple idea of 'demon prostitutes' then needed to explain why demons were suddenly hanging out on street corners. That lead to the idea of a failed armaggeddon leading to both heaven and hell being cut off from Earth and demons having to settle down here.

Closing the gates to heaven and hell led to the question of what happens to human souls after death, with the answer that they turn into pissed off ghosts. But also that human souls are not being created at conception any more. So the solution is reincarnation, putting dead souls in new bodies which haven't recieved a soul from heaven. This leads to the idea that the country strictly needs to balance the birth rate with the death rate and you have state-enforced breeding (and the demons are taking over the government because of course they are) Throw in a few major distasters around the world and suddenly every female of breeding age is required to be pregnant all the time. This leads to infant formula shortage (which was in the news and on my mind at the time). How would a demon solve this problem?



Then I started to think about what the angels would have being doing all this time...

The point I think I'm making here is that a lot of the world building I did here emerged from the eroticism of the stories I wanted to tell (and I had fun going crazy with it). For Demonization it helped that I was writing it in 'letters to the newspaper' format and could throw in naturally a lot of people complaining about the political sitatuion without things feeling forced or irrelevant.

 

[gunhilltrain]

Not a writing group but an author's group. A group of writers who meet to talk about and share writing. It isn't just for professionals. However, you must be willing to share your work for others to read. Some don't allow erotic lit writers in, fucking prejudice people.

The ones I know about are degree-granting programs like this one. Being NYU, I'm sure they charge a lot. Not sure what they think of erotic writing, but they don't seem to ban it.

https://as.nyu.edu/departments/cwp.html

 

[pink_silk_glove]

However, if an author has used an IT theme among characters that doesn't come up very often - triplets, double first cousins, half siblings with a big age gap, foster siblings as just some examples - is it really necessary to comment negatively that you don't like this IT theme and would prefer to read an immediate family story? Or for a story that involves a three-way between a brother, sister and their pretty female cousin, commenting that having the cousin in the story ruined it for them and that the author should have simply written a brother-sister story? When there are so many immediate family stories for them to read on the site already, with many new ones posted each day?

There is a large chunk of the lit readership, regardless of category, who are simply looking for their own personal fantasy. If you give that to them - no matter how poorly you write it (and since people's fantasies rarely involve any conflict whatsoever, you probably will) - you will get a 5. If you do not give that to them - no matter how well you write it - you will not get a 5. So the easiest way to get a Red H is to read around in whatever category you wish, check the scores and comments and learn what the majority of the readers' fantasy is and pander to that template. Many writers do this relentlessly. Some even admit it.

I never write this way because it bores me to write someone else's story, so my scores stink. That's my problem, no one else's.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

No, they were furious, they wanted a story ending where the sister reveals to her brother his wife's infidelity, and she is exposed and disgraced as a cheating whore losing everything in the process. This would have been their payoff, not the two women getting into each other's knickers and the infidelity covered up.

See?

There is a large chunk of the lit readership, regardless of category, who are simply looking for their own personal fantasy. If you give that to them - no matter how poorly you write it (and since people's fantasies rarely involve any conflict whatsoever, you probably will) - you will get a 5. If you do not give that to them - no matter how well you write it - you will not get a 5.

 

[MillieDynamite]

That's an academic writing group, which is, I suppose, more like a study group or even a class.

The ones I know about are degree-granting programs like this one. Being NYU, I'm sure they charge a lot. Not sure what they think of erotic writing, but they don't seem to ban it.

https://as.nyu.edu/departments/cwp.html

 

[Bramblethorn]

The prequel trilogy provided a pseudo-biological reason for Force power. I thought there were two problems with this. One was, I didn't want to see what was behind the curtain. It kind of spoiled it for me. The other problem is that it makes the Jedi out to be a kind of genetic master race. They're born superior because they are born with Force power. Palpatine kind of has a point: who are these unelected folks to assign to themselves the power to say how things are going to be?

Episode VII leaned into the genetic basis for the Force by making it way too easy for Rey to get up to Jedi speed, and by suggesting that her parentage was a Force-powerful person. Then Rian Johnson threw that all out the window in Episode VIII, and JJ Abrams resurrected it in Episode IX. It was a mess, and very unsatisfactory.

Yup. I was open to the Episode VIII stuff because I'm not a fan of hereditary monarchy and "what if somebody doesn't have to be closely connected to a Skywalker to be important?" felt like a fresh idea. But they should either have followed through with it or never have put it out there.

One of the cardinal sins of improv drama is blocking: once one of your fellow actors introduces something to the story, your obligation is to run with it, not to say "psych, didn't happen". Nothing kills suspension of disbelief faster than reminding the audience that the facts of the universe are subject to change because the writers can't agree on how it should work.

The other thing I didn't like about Force power is that it was a deus ex machina--whatever it needed to be to make something magic happen in a scene. It wasn't so much a problem in the first trilogy because the first trilogy was always played somewhat tongue in cheek. When Leia floated through space, I just gave up the ship altogether.

Though one of the jarring things about Leia floating through space is that it doesn't even serve the plot noticeably. It just changes that part of the story from "Leia dies" to "Leia lives, goes mostly offstage, then dies a bit later". It's hard to see what it enables.

I guess maybe it assists Kylo's tacked-on redemption arc by making his matricide less direct? That arc sure needed all the help it could get.

 

[Bramblethorn]

The Demonization of Humberstone Road was probably the story where the world building got away from me (in a good way.) It's an example of introducing one concept that then has a whole bunch of ramifications that I wasn't initially aware of when I pencilled it into my plot but then which actually had a huge knock on effect and which ended up creating a relatively unique world. So I started out with the simple idea of 'demon prostitutes' then needed to explain why demons were suddenly hanging out on street corners. That lead to the idea of a failed armaggeddon leading to both heaven and hell being cut off from Earth and demons having to settle down here.

Was Good Omens an influence on that? Although I don't think there was anything in Humberstone Road that explicitly flagged it as happening in the GO universe, it felt like it could have fit into that setting as a natural follow-up to the events of GO (book/Season 1)*. For me that helped bypass the usual difficulty of an in medias res opening since I had an easy answer available for "how did we get here?" even if it wasn't canonical.

*Rather more so than GO Season 2 did, if I'm being snarky.

 

[mirafrida]

A general thought that comes to mind is, don't over do the explanation. You don't have to explain how everything works. Readers can fill in the blanks if hit the right points.

I agree. As a reader, my sense is that the best world-building occurs when an author has thought through a huge amount of details, carefully and logically, and then allows about 5% of those details to poke through naturally as the story unfolds

 

[TheRedChamber]

Was Good Omens an influence on that? Although I don't think there was anything in Humberstone Road that explicitly flagged it as happening in the GO universe, it felt like it could have fit into that setting as a natural follow-up to the events of GO (book/Season 1)*. For me that helped bypass the usual difficulty of an in medias res opening since I had an easy answer available for "how did we get here?" even if it wasn't canonical.

*Rather more so than GO Season 2 did, if I'm being snarky.

Interesting. Not consciously. I feel that if I started to type up the usual "No, you see my world is completely different..." indignant email, I'd run short of points fairly quickly.

I haven't seen season 2. I suppose I should. There were equal amounts of things I hated and things I liked in season 1 which is as close to a win as I get with modern adaptations...

 

[Bramblethorn]

Interesting. Not consciously. I feel that if I started to type up the usual "No, you see my world is completely different..." indignant email, I'd run short of points fairly quickly.

I haven't seen season 2. I suppose I should. There were equal amounts of things I hated and things I liked in season 1 which is as close to a win as I get with modern adaptations...

FWIW, Season 2 is not a complete story. It ends on a major cliffhanger which is presumably intended to be resolved in Season 3.

However, Season 3 nearly got cancelled after Gaiman's abuse scandal. Last I heard, it's being made, but with Gaiman removed from the production and drastically cut from the originally intended 6 x 60 minutes to a single 90-minute telemovie on a limited budget.

I very much enjoyed S1 but wasn't sold on Season 2. It has its points, in particular the Job sequence, but I wasn't thrilled with its handling of the Aziraphale/Crowley relationship. I didn't want to pass judgement on a story only half-told so I was waiting for S3 to make up my mind on it, but with the cuts to S3 it's going to need a heroic effort to win me over.