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[Joe McKinney]

Hey everybody: here in a few weeks I'm going to be moderating a panel on fictional worldbuilding at ArmadilloCon, and I wanted to consult the hive mind for your thoughts.  The panel is supposed to focus on the first steps in creating a cool fictional world (think Niven's Ringworld, Tolkien's Middle Earth, Max Brooks' post-zombie apocalypse America, etc), but you guys know how these things go.  The panel will take on a mind of its own once the panelists and audience start interacting.

Anyway, I wanted to get your thoughts on the right and wrong things to do when building a fictional world.  Where have you seen it done well?  Where have you seen it screwed up royally?

And for you writers out there...how would you describe your process when it comes to designing fictional worlds?

Thanks!

[Zombie Zak]

First, steal underwear.
Second, ......
Third, big profit!

I would say, that the first step in world building is defining its maximum scope.  How far, how big, how involved an environment does one want to work within?  Niven's Ringworld and Tolkein's LOTR are excellent examples.  Jack L. Chalker's Well of Souls, is another.  Isaac Asimov's Empire, too.  These guys picked HUGE landscapes to play in and setup massive amounts basic and broad reaching variables.  But, that doesn't mean worldbuilding needs to be big.  It could be as simple as just the little town one is writing within.  The key, is to make it cohesive, and understandable.

[Warhammer]

I've done a decent amount of world-building.  Nowadays, I try to build the world and the story at the same time.  The world should serve the story and vice versa.  I find if I concentrate solely on setting, I end up with a lot of stuff that just gets in the way of building a good story.  So essentially, I ask myself a few key questions and work on them so they intersect one another.  

• What is the defining feature of the world?  This can be a unique magic system.  The Old Ones still are.  Vampires walk among us.  We all have pet Pokemon.
• What kind of story do I want to write  Do I want an epic romance?  Supernatural suspense.  Historical faerie noir.
• Who do I want to write about?[/b]  This is the most important question to me.  Heroes or ordinary people?  Pweuka or incubi?  What are their motivations?  This shapes where I'm going to develop the world and gives everything something to revolve around.
  

Once I have reasonable answers to these questions, I have the superstructure to hang more details.  I find if I flesh everything out together, I don't do more work than I need to.  Time is money.  While it would be nice to write a thorough codex, no one's going to pay us for it.  At least, not until you already have a strong following, and then, your fans have already done it on a wiki.

[Hannah Rutigliano]

The best piece of advice I can think of is to do your research in order to maintain continuity.

There's nothing truly new under the sun, so you have to base your characters and surroundings off of real examples and concepts that have their own set of rules. If your setting is in outer space, make sure that planets have gravity and that sound doesn't travel in a vacuum. If the story is based in feudal Japan, keep in mind that outsiders were not welcome at all in Japan before you make your samurai hero a blond-haired teen heartthrob... *coughonimushafourcough*

[Brave Blue Mice]

Very simply, don't underestimate your audience's intelligence. Let your characters experience your world, and your audience will figure it out. I've never enjoyed stories where the setting is just laid out before me. I like to feel it as it happens.

When it comes down to it, do I need to know that it's 105 miles to Chicago? No, Elwood's gonna tell me all about it when it's time for him to talk about his cigarettes and sunglasses.

Cheers,
BBM

[Matthew]

It starts with imagination and internal consistency.  A world has to make sense on its own terms.  Some of my favorite fictional worlds are based on the planets and moons of the solar system.  Real worlds give you some interesting parameters to begin with.  What is the length of the day?  How many moons are there?  What is the weather like?  Then you can work out logical ways life and culture would adapt to those things.

Something to watch out for is too many monsters.  Though I love his imagination, Edgar Rice Burroughs falls into this trap sometimes.  He is so eager to give his heroes critters to fight that he fails to establish how the ecosystem works.  There have to be prey beasts as well as hunters, and there needs to be something for them to eat.  Try not to have too many apex predators in the same region.  You don't need to fill in all the details, but give the reader a sense that the world works, rather than functioning simply as a setting for interesting conflicts.

Culture should have some touchstones that readers can relate to.  People, even aliens or fantasy races will have motives that we can relate to, even if we disagree with them.  Do people in this world care about honor? love? nature? military might?  What kinds of social groupings do they have?  

A big mistake (IMO) is to make your exotic cultures too much like modern people.  One of the things I disliked about Star Trek Voyager was their seeming assumption that advanced cultures would more-or-less resemble early 21st century Americans.  In one episode they decided to do a classic murder mystery, which was fine, but they lost all feeling of wonder and alienness.  It was a world where middle class monogamous married couples worked during the day and came home to their apartments in the evening, drank wine with dinner, and had pet dogs.  How disappointing in a series set on the far side of the galaxy.  They had the chance to touch on different forms of work and leisure, different family structures, exotic animals, a different model of work and leisure, or at least clothing and furniture that were more than slight variations of the middle class norm.

[Warhammer]

Another thing to address in world building is originality, especially in science fiction and fantasy settings.  The more different you make the world and it's cultures from our own, the harder it is for the reader to relate to them.  This is a huge challenge to the writer.  This is one of the reasons you usually find a human (if not in actuality, in perceptions) POV character to focus through.  If the world, thus the story, is too alien, the reader feels no emotional connection to it.  This can also apply to historical settings.  They are often couched in modern sensibilities nowadays.

[Lord Anubis]

Insert shameless plug here.   

I think creating a world is a lot like creating a character.  It has to be believable.  It has to be relatable.  It has to be consistent.  There should probably be something we like about it.

That's just me, though.

[Joe McKinney]

Oh, you guys are good.  Excellent points all.  And Lord Anubis, excellent post on the blog.

[Rob Pegler]

One thing that annoys me, mostly in fantasy movies and games, is worlds with no depth. Just a bunch of generic pointy-eared green-skinned "races" thrown together in a faux-medieval setting with funny names, with no sense of history or evolution or, for that matter, logic.

Remember Willow? It always amused me how the Nelwyns lived in a small, isolated community with little to no outside contact, yet you could hear at least four different accents in their village. Willow and his wife were English, yet their kids were American? Same deal with Sorsha and her mother. Oh, and most of the Nelwyns were white, except for the two warriors who were black and hispanic. Where the hell did they come from?

That's one reason Tolkien was so popular. He put a lot of time into figuring out how his world evolved, where all the various peoples of Middle Earth came from, and how their civilizations were built. Same deal (to a lesser extent) with RE Howard.

One of the things I disliked about Star Trek Voyager

Just one thing? 

Off-topic a bit, but one thing I've said about Star Trek in the past is that some of their stories would work really well if they weren't on bloody Star Trek. There was one story on DS9 about a Kardassian soldier who impersonated his former CO (a hated war criminal) so he could be executed in the tyrant's place and atone for his guilt at having worked in a concentration camp. It would have made a brilliant story if they'd set it in post-war Europe, but on Star Trek... well, I just didn't care.

[Matthew]

Just one of many

I loved the original Trek, and a lot of the early TNG episodes, but after Gene Roddenberry died, the franchise seemed to lose it's life and originality.

[Lord Anubis]

Off-topic a bit, but one thing I've said about Star Trek in the past is that some of their stories would work really well if they weren't on bloody Star Trek. There was one story on DS9 about a Kardassian soldier who impersonated his former CO (a hated war criminal) so he could be executed in the tyrant's place and atone for his guilt at having worked in a concentration camp. It would have made a brilliant story if they'd set it in post-war Europe, but on Star Trek... well, I just didn't care.

Just to pull the off topic back to the topic... 

It's funny you mention this. My girlfriend's never seen DS9 so we've started getting the discs through NetFlix.  We just saw this very episode a few days ago and both thought it was brilliant.  We just watched a brilliant one last night about war orphans and custody rights.

One of the best things any created world lets a writer do is comment on the real world.  The creators of South Park have said many times there are so many things they can respond to on their show that would probably get them hanged if these same comments were made on a "real world" show.  So not only do elements become relatable, but perhaps they make the reader/ viewer look at things in the real world in a different light.

I've always thought (speaking of getting hanged) that DS9 was the best of all the Star Trek shows because it shows all the rough edges of the Federation.  It was much more politics and race relations and religous debates than the "wild west" scenario that TOS, TNG, and Voyager all dealt with.  Those shows got to move in and out-- here today, gone tomorrow-- but DS9 had to deal with a constant, ongoing arc about trying to bring a formly oppressed,  almost theocratic society into the Federation.

The DS9 episode you mention wasn't so much about one man's guilt as it was bigotry and hatred.  When the epsiode begins, Kira is willing to execute Darheel simply because he's a Cardassian.  In her eyes Cardassian = guilty for crimes against Bajor = shoot him in the head (which has no bearing on today's world at all...).  As the story progresses, however, she comes to realize this guy's just a guilt-ridden file clerk who feels the same way she does.  He also thinks all Cardassians need to be punished for what they did to the people of Bajor.  Thus, his own existence proves him wrong--he's a good Cardassian arguing that he should be punished because all Cardassians are evil.  Kira comes to realize she was blinded by hatred and agrees to let him go.

...where he's promptly killed by another Bajoran, who insists Darhell deserved it.  He was a Cardassian, after all...

That, in my humble opinion, is great storytelling in a very well-constructed world.

[Matthew]

I agree that DS-9 was often very good, better than TNG in many ways (largely because of theedginess you mention).  I should have excluded it from my blanket statement.  Voyager and Enterprise, on the other hand, were excruciating (with the exception of the Enterprise episodes written by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens).

[Rob Pegler]

To be honest, every episode of Star Trek I ever saw immediately lost points just for being Star Trek. Yes, they dealt with important real-world issues - my problem was with the heavy-handed and, frankly, self-important way they did it. Having introduced (and spelled out) the Big Important Issue of the week, they then spent the rest of the episode beating you about the head with it. I like to look for the moral in the subtext, not have it shoved down my throat with a stick.

DS9 was a cut above, but still not a patch on, say, Blake's 7 or Firefly.

[Zombie Zak]

DS9 was a cut above, but still not a patch on, say, Blake's 7 or Firefly.

...or Babylon 5!

JMS wrote thousands of years of "history" and "future history" for the show so that there would be a consistency of story throughout the entire series.  It was the bee's knees, and he really put together a universe that was pretty solid.