A dramatic scene which reminds me that Australian history is ancient, often sacred and secrete. There are Aboriginal myths shared at this site, but their deeper meaning is hidden from new Australians. A caution that, as writers, acknowledging indigenous stories requires sensitivity and care.
But the landscape is awe-inspiring and we can create our own myths when we write.
As expressed by John Keats: (letter to J.H. Reynolds 1818)
“Almost any man may, like the spider, spin from his own inwards his own airy citadel.”
A huge apology for being a day late posting this week’s blog. As Mary McDee says (often), “Technology, you can’t trust it.” She says this while spending the week chasing Dorper sheep (Goat-Sheep Cross), from the neighbour’s yard back into her own. They are more stupid than actual sheep, much like she thinks computers are.
Anyway, ‘twas a computer crisis at Mrs. T’s (my mum), that sent the weekend into wobble-world. That with the default of chasing ancestors down familial rabbit holes, I have done little in the way of preparing an article to post, let alone any idea what to post on the chosen topic, World Building.
Then inspiration struck. At the proverbial last-minute. Why not do a spot of World Building from one of my developing novels? Why not, indeed!
I searched around for a worthy template—one that was interesting, not too many questions (just enough for the exercise) and one that was memorable. I didn’t have to look far on the World Wide Web, to find this little beauty: GRAPES.
“G” for Geography
“R” for Religion
“A” for Achievements
“P” for Politics
“E” for Economics
“S” for social Structure
There’s even a colourful chart with two or three questions under each heading to help with the process, courtesy of Amanda Schlindwein. Thank you, Amanda, for posting this helpful model which you can see if you click on the link to her website.
So, here goes. I will use the book that I have been posting serially on Wattpad, Diamonds in the Caveas my world building muse. (I won’t be addressing every question in the GRAPE help. The post would end up being too long, otherwise.)
Geography
How does the region’s climate and placement affect the characters in your story? The village of Luthertal on Pilgrim Planet (approximately 20 light years from earth) suffers extremes of temperature and weather conditions because of orbiting two suns. After emigrating from Eastern Europe from the 19th century, where climate was more stable, they find the change confronting, confusing, hard on their stamina and they become angry. They need to vent their anger and frustration. As a primarily farming community, the droughts, fires and floods that fail their crops, and kill their livestock, cause them to seek someone to blame. Hence a perfect storm for parties of evil intent to stir up the idea of witch hunts.
Religion
What do your characters believe in?
One God and the founder of European Protestantism, Martin Luther. But they, being Wends, are synchronistic, never having relinquished the superstitions, magic and healing practices from their “heathen” ancestors. So, there’s this conundrum; a person who fails to attend church each Sunday is called a “heathen”, but it’s okay to believe that breaking a wishbone of cooked chicken and the person getting the larger portion can make a wish. Or a character must trust in God to heal them, and the church prays for them, but it’s acceptable to treat the sick with herbal remedies as according to the long tradition of apothecary. I might digress here that my two-times great grandfather came from the region of Lusatia (which is where the Wends come from). Before he became a doctor he studied, at Herrnhut, the base of the Moravian Brethren, (so we’re talking seriously Christian here), the medicinal art of apothecary. Maybe some Lutherans would’ve had a problem with that, but we’re talking about a particular community, the Wends or Sorbs. So, writing from my own family history experience, which is partially Wend, I can see this community of Luthertal being more open to magic and the supernatural. One day I might write on these supernatural experiences that my family and relatives have experienced.
Achievements
What has this civilisation created that has withstood the test of time?
As mentioned above, being an agricultural community, the Wends are robust and healthy. They have their Wendish culture of dress and traditions. They are remembered as an industrious people, but also as a deeply religious God-fearing people. In fact, they feared God so much they escaped the persecution and oppressive norms put upon their religious practices that they planned to emigrate to South Australia. Unfortunately, an evil alien called, Boris who pretended to be God’s ambassador, led them astray and transported them to the Pilgrim Planet with plans to enslave them and breed an army from them.
Politics
Who controls the society and how do they control it?
Although in Diamonds in the Cave the Wendish community are emerging from the ruthless fascist control of Boris, having been saved from his clutches by the good guys Intergalactic Space Force (IGSF), in my previous book, The Lost World of the Wends, they are still politically and structurally fragile and finding their way. They have reverted to the ways of old where the Burgermeister runs the village and decisions are made by all villagers gathering in the church. The Wend community is by this time a theocracy. However, Boris still has his influence with a couple of his agents hiding in plain sight in the village. These agents are stirring up the Wend community to seek out witches and burn them.
Economics
What is considered valuable? And how are products bought and sold?
Apart from food and the products from farming used to be self-sustaining, as was the custom back in Eastern Europe in the mid-nineteenth century, mining minerals and ore for power and energy for space travel is taking off. Mutants who have been freed from slavery under Boris have been brought in to help develop the village building houses and mining in the local mountain range of Mount Martin. The Wend villagers begin to regard the mutants with suspicion and they become targets for witch-burnings.
The currency that the Wend community use are “pfennig” (pennies) and thalers, like what they used in Saxony in the mid-nineteenth century. Products are bought and sold at market which is open every day except Sunday. Sunday is the Lord’s day, a day of rest.
Social Structure
Who are the most important people?
The Burgermeister (Herr Biar), the pastor and the doctor (Dr. Zwar), who in Diamonds in the Cave is the pastor. Prestige is shown by the assets the high-status ones have. The doctor owns a Mercedes. Herr Biar has a beautiful, large brick house and large farm.
Least important people?
The mutants, old single women (Gertrude) and women who don’t fit in the community (the female heroine, Minna). They are the prime targets for witch-burnings.
***
That’s all for my little exercise for starters. I found it helpful to clarify my ideas for the world in which my characters live in Diamonds in the Cave.
Have a go yourself using the GRAPE template or click on the links below to try one of the other templates that looked useful.
Let us know how you go? Or if you have found a template that works for you, send us a link.
It’s been one of those months busy, busy, busy. I was asked to write a blog about world building and failed miserably. That’s how it is with me and the idea and how to of world building. While in my first blog on the subject, now titled “Before World Building” I floated into dreaming and imagination, I did not realise that for most people in the world in which I live that airy fairy imagination doesn’t cut the muster. For them it’s the details and secret rules that only a Fantasy role playing gamemaster has access to. I’m not a game master.
My one foray into fantasy role playing ended badly, another epic fail, where, despite it being “free form” I had no idea how to operate in this peculiar world that the “game master” had constructed. It had rules and I was constantly breaking those rules.
The first thing about World Building is it’s about rules. Like if you have a game. You have the boundaries or field of that game. The field looks a certain way like the stage or land in which you story is set. For example, you may have goal posts if it’s a football game. The field will have green grass with markings. And so on. Then in the game the players are dressed in team colours and have roles like goal kicker and goal defence. Just like in your story, your characters dress a certain way, have roles and personalities. The game has of course rules that the players must follow, just as in you story the village or land will have laws, culture mores and religious practices they must follow.
So, you can see that it’s advisable to think about these “rules” for the world in which your character lives and into which your reader will vicariously enter. In the world the reader enters, if the world is believable, the reader suspends disbelief and immerses themselves in that world. I should mention here that Mary McDee has written a yet-to-be published children’s story “Chaos in the Kingdom” which has a land which she has mapped out, and there were specific rules of language that the characters must obey. And in my own Sci-fi books, I spent decades researching Astronomy, space travel, physics, UAPs (formerly UFO’s), alien first contact and abductions to make my story of Minna’s alien abduction by Boris believable.
This then is the premise of how to create a world. To be frank. I have no idea how I land on creating my worlds. I brainstorm. Research. Write notes. Do character profiles. The story develops and I write it. In the process, the world forms around the story. This, I’m finding works well in the world we know—our contemporary world. For the Science Fiction or Fantasy genre, since the worlds are alien to our general human world view, the writer needs to delve into greater detail to make the world cohesive, consistent and believable for the reader. Tolkien’s last uncompleted work before he died was The Silmarillion which as I understand was his notes building a fantasy world. It’s a decent sized book. As for me, I spent over thirty years planning, researching, world-building and writing my first book, Mission of the Unwilling.
Now, on that line of thought, about conveying the details of the world in your story, there is a danger for the author to become bogged down in too much information to describe their fantasy world. Have you ever read a book which spends three quarters of the story on developing the world in which the characters live? I have. Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame. I laboured through three hundred pages of the book describing every square inch of Paris, before I reached the interesting story part. I dare say, the novel served me well when we did visit Paris a second time in 2014. Victor was just following the “rules” of world building…And playwrights and movie makers of the Hunchback of Notre Dame plays and movies were eternally grateful.
Not sure if I tackled such a 300-page info-dump, I could have Victor Hugo’s success. One of the world building articles I read advised against overloading the reader with detail.
On another note, about being OCD about detail, is that it can stall the writing of the work or story. I remember one of my first attempts to draft a novel. I was 18 and had this idea for a fantasy romance. Like any obedient aspiring author, I asked my playwright uncle for advice. Build the world, he advised. Do a story map. Make a diagram or graph of the characters and their relationship with each other. So, I did. Spent all summer building the world and the storyline never happened. Those pages now languish, buried in a cupboard somewhere…covered in dust.
Yet, what is the essence of World Building? How is it done? I believe that central to the art of it is creating. Creating a world or stage in which the characters physically live, move about and interact with. Creating a past from which the characters come and what has made them who they are. Creating rules, norms, boundaries, habits, means of communication, and attitudes that defines the characters as a race or type of being. Creating the mechanics of how stuff works in this world, either by peculiar or unique physics, chemistry, biologically or even dimensionally (are they two dimensional? Or six dimensional?). Creating a world view. Creating a conflict. Creating the people or beings who live in this world.
You may have noticed I have used the world “creating”. To create, I believe begins with imagination. Which is why I still think that whatever world a writer is developing, imagination is the key. The stories that resonate most with us, books like Tolkien’s classic Lord of the Rings, it’s because the world they create is unique and memorable and the reader wants to enter it and stay in there.
But, just in case I haven’t nailed it, because I’ve been general, and creatively waffly, here’s what my AI guru has to say about World Building:
World building is a crucial element in creating immersive and believable settings in a novel, especially in genres like fantasy and science fiction. Here are the main elements of world building:
Geography: This includes the physical layout of the world, such as continents, oceans, mountains, and climate. It sets the stage for the environment in which the characters live.
History: A world’s past can shape its present, so detailing historical events, wars, discoveries, and cultural shifts is important.
Culture: This encompasses the arts, customs, traditions, and social norms of the societies within the world. It also includes language, religion, and societal structures.
Politics and Government: The types of governance, political relations, and power dynamics between different groups and nations within the world.
Economy: How the world’s inhabitants sustain themselves, including trade, currency, industry, and technology.
Magic System (if applicable): If the novel includes magical elements, defining the rules, limitations, and effects of magic is essential.
Flora and Fauna: The creatures and plants that inhabit the world can add depth and wonder to the setting.
Rules and Laws: The physical and metaphysical laws that govern the world. This could include gravity, time, or even the possibility of traveling faster than light.
Conflict: The central conflicts that drive the narrative can be deeply tied to the world’s structure, such as scarce resources, ancient feuds, or clashing ideologies.
Characters: While not a direct part of world building, characters should be shaped by the world they live in, reflecting its values and complexities.
Effective world building creates a rich backdrop that supports the story and characters, making the novel’s universe as compelling as the plot itself. Remember, consistency is key in making your world believable and engaging for the readers.
For further reading to demystify the world building process, here are four links to posts which tackle the topic. They have done a much better job than I ever will on the topic.
Indie Scriptorium -- Self Publishing Collective 