On worldbuilding
Oct. 22nd, 2011 07:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mari4212So I was working through Nano prep, and hanging out in the Fantasy lounge, and I hit on a new way of looking at my worldbuilding process.
See, both last year and this year, I've ended up needing to do a lot of worldbuilding to create a set of rules for how the worlds i was writing in worked. And in both cases, I worked in what seems to be the opposite of the Tolkien/random checklists mechanism.
I don't start out with the world. I start out with a scenario. Last year, it was ghosts on a college campus, this year, it was a desire to write Cinderella when she had absolutely no interest in Prince Charming. (That gorgeous noblewoman in the corner, with the purple dress, on the other hand? So on it.)
And once I've got that scenario, I work backwards. I keep asking why. Why are there ghosts on campus? Why are they suddenly waking up? Why do they just talk with this group of students? Why do the students decide to help? Why is this ghost so focused on discovering who killed him?
Or for this year's nano, why is the royal family hosting a ball like this anyway? Why aren't they looking for a marriage alliance with another country? Especially one where there's a tense border situation? Why does the random noblewoman get interested back in my Cinderella? Why do I have a black woman as cast as Cinderella, a Middle Eastern woman as my foreign princess, and a really pale girl as my random noblewoman? How do I make all of these ethnicities make cohesive sense in a semi-Medieval society. How do I cast my other characters to blend with these existing dynamics? So I want to do craft magics, why do they work? Why do women have magic so much more often than men do?
By the time I've finished answering questions like those, I start coming up with a world that makes some amount of sense.
I still couldn't tell you what Eleanora's favorite food is off the top of my head. That's a detail that I'd only figure out towards the end, if it had plot relevance.
See, both last year and this year, I've ended up needing to do a lot of worldbuilding to create a set of rules for how the worlds i was writing in worked. And in both cases, I worked in what seems to be the opposite of the Tolkien/random checklists mechanism.
I don't start out with the world. I start out with a scenario. Last year, it was ghosts on a college campus, this year, it was a desire to write Cinderella when she had absolutely no interest in Prince Charming. (That gorgeous noblewoman in the corner, with the purple dress, on the other hand? So on it.)
And once I've got that scenario, I work backwards. I keep asking why. Why are there ghosts on campus? Why are they suddenly waking up? Why do they just talk with this group of students? Why do the students decide to help? Why is this ghost so focused on discovering who killed him?
Or for this year's nano, why is the royal family hosting a ball like this anyway? Why aren't they looking for a marriage alliance with another country? Especially one where there's a tense border situation? Why does the random noblewoman get interested back in my Cinderella? Why do I have a black woman as cast as Cinderella, a Middle Eastern woman as my foreign princess, and a really pale girl as my random noblewoman? How do I make all of these ethnicities make cohesive sense in a semi-Medieval society. How do I cast my other characters to blend with these existing dynamics? So I want to do craft magics, why do they work? Why do women have magic so much more often than men do?
By the time I've finished answering questions like those, I start coming up with a world that makes some amount of sense.
I still couldn't tell you what Eleanora's favorite food is off the top of my head. That's a detail that I'd only figure out towards the end, if it had plot relevance.