Demystifying World Building (from Fantasy to Contemporary)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 30 ก.ย. 2024
- World building. A skill every writer should hone, whether you specialize in fantasy or contemporary. How can you paint a vivid picture without info-dumping on your reader? What is the best way to describe magic that's, well...hard to describe? How much world-building should you do for a story placed in the "real world"? Authors Kate and Abbie bring the answers to these tricky questions on today's podcast.
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Connect with Kate on Instagram (@lonehawkwriter) or her blog: www.heretocrea...
Connect with Abbie on Instagram (@makeyourstorymatter) or her blog: www.abbiee.com/
A question about using current, real-life locations that may have come up for some: How much does copyright/permissions affect using the names of real-life locations? This probably wouldn't affect well-known public locations like the White House, names of towns and cities, etc. but what about smaller locations like names of businesses, using addresses of real houses, streets, etc. that are pertinent to a story? Would stuff like this be flagged and asked to be changed/taken out if sent to a publisher?
Thank you for covering this topic! I am always so intimidated by world building (for all the reasons you guys mentioned) and it's comforting and encouraging to be reminded that it's a very do-able thing and you don't have to recreate Tolkien or George R. R. Martin to do it. Excellent episode!
Another helpful thing about making the strange relatable is to give it a descriptive name. For instance, in one book I have this strange shimmering field that keeps appearing and I call it the Shimmermist. You get the full idea of what it looks like in the name alone with minimal extra description. We see this in our own world with words like airplane, bicycle, and aardvark (which is Afrikaans for Earth Pig.)
I've actually taken a radically different approach to my world building after watching a lecture by Brandon Sanderson where he talked about his road to getting published, which saw him write 13 books before he managed to get one published. I decided after that to make a bunch of book projects that would cover various aspects of the world I had built for my main series, largely because building those projects would provide me with the practice I needed to understand the process of writing a novel and structuring it in a publishing-friendly way. I found lots of ideas coming in, including radical things like a time rift appearing where I had never envisioned it before, and now I have over a dozen book and series projects that cover everything from the origin of the world's humanoid races to the nature of the magic system to various important world events. I don't expect to finish or publish all of them, possibly even any of them, but they have already provided me with a clearer and more personally interesting take on all of my worldbuilding even with little actual development of the projects, closing the distance I would normally have between me and a textbook-style record of important elements and historical accounts of the world I created. This will all serve to strengthen my main, more important, series.
I love seeing the sisterly love you have for each other! It clearly shows in your podcasts. Just wondering, who's older?
Kate is older!
@@nahalnaib8578 are you sure?
Yupp Abbie mentions in one of her videos
@@StefanyDjuba yes haha its pretty obvious tho
I love this!! I love planning the fantasy world. I totally have a map. But it was more for me, to keep things straight of where the kingdoms are located for travel purposes. It will likely go unnoticed by the reader. But it helps me to know my character is going north and now they're in a desert setting. Etc. But the reader won't get a copy of my map 😂😂.
My story starts out with one of the main characters breaking out of prison. Its in the ocean, atop a cliff, but you don't see or know that until she's about to escape and staring down at a roaring ocean she now has to decide to jump into to escape or stay a prisoner.
I think planning vs what goes into the book/how you write it is such a distinction. ❤❤ love this!!!
Love how Kate is usually using restaurants as examples in their podcast 😂 simple and precise 💛
The 10 course meal analogy is such a good visual! Easy to digest ;)
I love watching this podcast. You sisters really ROCK! NaNoWriMo being here you both help a lot!
This was an amazing simplification, thank you both for the excellent videos
As a historical fiction writer it was so cool to hear not only fantasy writers need to World build
Me, an Illinoisan
HOLLA
I love world building, it's one of my favorite things about writing. I think I realized world building wasn't just for SF genres when I was writing my first contemporary romance set in a fictional city. I got to create this entire history for this place with a mayor, a famous architect, a higher echelon of society and all the intricacies that come with creating a community. Love digging into these topics, you guys!
I was hoping you’d do something about World building! You guys are mind readers 😮
I'm currently finishing up my map for my fantasy series. I've already written book one, but I need to finalize the map so I can get my timeline in order for book two. But I generally try not to hold off on writing due to worldbuilding. If I personally need to know the information (like my timeline) then I make sure it's done. Otherwise, I'll dive into the story and update the information as I discover it myself. I figure as long as I have a fact checking list when I'm editing, a finished draft is better than a perfect world. 😄
These podcasts are so helpful and motivating! Thank you both!!
I haven't done a lot of worldbuilding. I was planning on doing it during Preptober, but then I ran out of month to do it in and figured I'd just jump into writing with what I had. Do you think I need to stop and do all the worldbuilding first, or would it be okay to add it all in later? I'm writing a Contemporary Paranormal Romance, if that makes any difference.
World building is one of the most difficult thing to tackle. If we don't show it perfectly, it would totally mean that we are just giving random information to our reader. When it comes to Fantasy, it gets really hard to do that, I can say this on my own experience! You both just make it way more easy to do!!
Real as a fantasy author, I can 100% attest to that!
I'm writing a contemporary novel and I'm doing massive world building: I'm writing profiles for every characters, main or supporting, the places (using pictures or google maps), the relationships between the characters, and so on. It's really rewarding in a way, the story is unfolding before my eyes and I'm really into it. sometimes, doing world building, I come up with a new idea and knowing exactly where to put it. I think this is the funnier part :D
I am begging you please please please watch Arcane league of legends. That is one of the best stories out there and I would love for both of you to discuss about it. it's perfect in every aspect even if you don't do dystopia it will suck you right into it, especially the ✨characters. Please. I really want to know how to write a great story like that. And nail the second act as flawlessly as they did. Know their tricks as well.
The show is in Netflix please give it a watch.
Such a good podcast! This really helped me stop feeling overwhelmed about world building, thank you ❤️☀️
So true. (I know I'm late to this, but it's still relevant to every story.)
I really love your videos. It really help me a lot.
SALAMMBO
Kate's performance of the annoyingly long-winded, tedious writer 8:23 cracks me up every time #loveit
thank you for this topic it will definitely help me build my new world and write a better novel. i wanted to mix fictional contemporary with the five elements that my protagonist will have. wish me luck. thank you so much.
I love a cosy, fluffy, warm atmosphere. If anyone has any recommendation on that kind of book, please do tell :)
Wow! Thanks, Kate and Abbie!! This really cleared a lot of superstitions I had concerning this.
Im writing a fantasy realism finally. Hope i get somewhere this one wish me luck.
Great episode! World building is probably the most challenging obstacle I face in writing. There are always details I can't decide upon, and if I can't figure out a particular aspect of worldbuilding, I feel my story concept won't make much sense.
Right now, I'm trying to imagine a society in a fantasy world where some people are wealthy, but probably in an era that doesn't have a lot of technology yet. And that's hard, since I tend to imagine that some people being wealthy is due to making profits on a technological innovation.
Plan B will be to take the story concept and put it in a more modern setting, though a lot of the fantastical atmosphere I imagine will then be lost.
Ah, look. I was panicking about world building earlier.... and here you two are!
Subscribing. You are such stars! 💙
the piled plate and course meal analogy is really good
What’s Katniss Everdeen’s misbelief? Or Harry Potter’s? What is their internal conflict? 🤔 Your recipe is a great starting point, like the four-chord song in music. But I’m starting to feel it doesn’t account for the success of some of the most popular stories of our time.
Paragons often don’t have misbeliefs, and they don’t transform themselves - they transform other characters around them. And in heist stories, such as Inception, the mission is indeed more important than the characters. Granted, this is the only genre about which I can say that, and I usually enjoy character-driven stories more. Yet, strangely enough, Inception is one of my all-time favourite movies - even though I know next to nothing about the characters (including the protagonist).
Katniss misbelief is that president snow is the cause of all evil. But it's a systematic problem, the game was still present, the mindset was still present in other people before Snow was born. She realizes that overtime.
Harry i think is that he has to fight evil alone because he wants to protect his friends.
💜