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To be honest, I never thought about abandoned places in my worldbuilding, even though there should be at least a few of them; it just never crossed my mind. So thank you very much for the video, it was some good food for thought!
In my opinion, cities like "Houtouwan" in China has a simple story for being abandoned, the youth left for the main cities and later the elders packed up too. For us they just left out of convenience, but for someone with no context or information, the small town by the sea with walls swallowed by the greenery could tell a silent story about how no one tried to settle back and just left it abandoned at the mercy of nature.
I'm currently in the process of plotting out a series of novellas and the world surrounding them. To keep a very long story short, it's a military sci-fi about an interstellar nation going to war with a bandit/pitate conglomerate after a general orchestrated a false flag operation. The main character loses his family and his sister gets kidnapped so he joined the army to take revenge and bring her back. I know, basic as hell but I like revenge and coming of age plots, what can you do? Thing is the pirate conglomerate (The Silver Enclave) is made up of planets previously under the control of a large empire that had collapsed years prior to the events of the story. Dozens of planets were simply abandoned because the newly-emerging nations simply didn't have the time or the resources to claim them and so these planets were simply organized into what's known as "The Black Zone". Giant metropolises, abandoned archeological dig sites, overgrown battlefields, decrepit orbital stations, lost fleets drifting aimlessly in the cold void of space, their crews long gone, continents ravaged by mutated viruses. There's even a whole planet that's still in a neverending state of war because the population still belives that the civil war that brought down their nation is still going on. There's so much I want to explore in this world and it's funny because even I, as the writer, am still fascinated by my own world. A word of advice for people who want to worldbuild: Make your world intentionally vague, even for yourself. Don't go into detail about every little thing. Keep secrets from yourself. It's so much fun.
I absolutely love long-abandoned society in fiction. Especially when that dead civilization is built above more, even older ancient civilizations. Layers and layers of dozens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of years of secrets and mysteries and lore impossible to know. And I want to know all of it.
This video made me miss dystopians… I know they’re not very popular with the publishing industry right now, but… I hope I hope they get their time again sometime soon!!
You're so right! I think dystopian stories and settings scratched an itch that you kinda didn't know was there until it was gone... Thank you for watching and for your comment!
Stop leaving yourself vulnerable to data breaches. Visit my sponsor, aura.com/wrestlingwithwords, for a 14-day free trial and to see if any of your data has been exposed.
To be honest, I never thought about abandoned places in my worldbuilding, even though there should be at least a few of them; it just never crossed my mind. So thank you very much for the video, it was some good food for thought!
@@tajadaleen6245 Thank you for watching! I am so glad it was helpful!
“We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture.” That one line sometimes makes me shiver at night when trying to sleep.
I feel like abandoned places are one of those things that everyone has, but no one really notices.
@@WriterNumber3950 totally!
In my opinion, cities like "Houtouwan" in China has a simple story for being abandoned, the youth left for the main cities and later the elders packed up too.
For us they just left out of convenience, but for someone with no context or information, the small town by the sea with walls swallowed by the greenery could tell a silent story about how no one tried to settle back and just left it abandoned at the mercy of nature.
@@doyga5977 that is such a good example and so interesting. Thank you for watching and for your comment!
These are some great points on worldbuilding abandoned places! Thank you for this.
Thank you so much for watching!
"Nobody knows who they were, or what they were doing."
I'm currently in the process of plotting out a series of novellas and the world surrounding them.
To keep a very long story short, it's a military sci-fi about an interstellar nation going to war with a bandit/pitate conglomerate after a general orchestrated a false flag operation. The main character loses his family and his sister gets kidnapped so he joined the army to take revenge and bring her back. I know, basic as hell but I like revenge and coming of age plots, what can you do?
Thing is the pirate conglomerate (The Silver Enclave) is made up of planets previously under the control of a large empire that had collapsed years prior to the events of the story. Dozens of planets were simply abandoned because the newly-emerging nations simply didn't have the time or the resources to claim them and so these planets were simply organized into what's known as "The Black Zone".
Giant metropolises, abandoned archeological dig sites, overgrown battlefields, decrepit orbital stations, lost fleets drifting aimlessly in the cold void of space, their crews long gone, continents ravaged by mutated viruses. There's even a whole planet that's still in a neverending state of war because the population still belives that the civil war that brought down their nation is still going on.
There's so much I want to explore in this world and it's funny because even I, as the writer, am still fascinated by my own world.
A word of advice for people who want to worldbuild: Make your world intentionally vague, even for yourself. Don't go into detail about every little thing. Keep secrets from yourself. It's so much fun.
@@simplewrites thank you so much for sharing this! I love to read/hear about your projects :)!
@wrestlingwithwords do you have a dedicated discord server?
@ not yet. This is something that I want to create this year though!
@@wrestlingwithwords Nice. Can't wait to share stories
What a lovely surprise. 🙂 Ruins have always been one of the aspects of fantasy and sci-fi that have drawn me in. Thematic gold!
@@YouWinILose couldn’t agree more!
I absolutely love long-abandoned society in fiction. Especially when that dead civilization is built above more, even older ancient civilizations. Layers and layers of dozens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of years of secrets and mysteries and lore impossible to know. And I want to know all of it.
This video made me miss dystopians… I know they’re not very popular with the publishing industry right now, but… I hope I hope they get their time again sometime soon!!
You're so right! I think dystopian stories and settings scratched an itch that you kinda didn't know was there until it was gone... Thank you for watching and for your comment!
Working on a story where the theme is trying to find a planet/culture/language lost in a stellar event. Through the eyes of an archeolinguist.
That is awesome. I'm sure abandoned and forgotten places play a pretty big role!
Saving this for later! Great intro so far!
Thank you for watching!
I haven't watched the video yet, but I can already say that the best example for this plot type is Elden Ring.
Elden Ring is an excellent example of this.