CYOW: On Originality, The Soup, and Building a World Around A Story
and also: a future tale of revenge
Yesterday was the first session of Choose Your Own World, a pair of worldbuilding seminars where we build a world together via a series of polls (and then I write a story set in that world).
If you were able to come, thank you so much for being there! I know I went, uh, a half-hour longer than I said I would— I think I underestimated how long it was going to take me to make polls and also to decide what should be in those polls. I have some ideas for how to streamline it next time so it’s a more easily digestible length. That said, I had a really great time with all of you and almost didn’t want it to end.
I did section it off on my twitch page here, so if you want to just watch the “lesson” part of it, which is a little more meaty, that is only twenty minutes long. And I’ll put our ultimate world-building conclusions— which we’ll build off of next time!— at the end of this little summary.
Here are some highlights, if you want to know what went on but aren’t the video-watching kind—
WORLDBUILDING BEGINS WITH ONE DECISION
Worldbuilding can be intimidating! But it starts with one decision, and then another, and another, and another, until you have something you can work with. In this exercise, we chose a story “type” (loosely taken from Ronald B. Tobias’s 20 Master Plots) and our first decision was just about genre. Is this story going to be on future earth? In space? In a vampire coven? A school for magic? That choice, regardless of what it is, sparks questions about character and story, that then spark questions about world. That’s because…
IT’S ALL A BIG SOUP
People often ask me if I start with character or plot, which I’ve never known how to answer. Instead, I describe my world-building method as a “soup” of plot, character, and world. Why build a world this way, you ask? Because you want your story to lead your reader through the most interesting parts of your world. Extraneous lore can be very cool, but the best worlds are functional— you don’t want to weigh your story down too much with information that doesn’t impact either character or plot. So I use story and character to guide my worldbuilding, to keep things tighter, to make sure I’m making interesting choices for the story in front of me, and to build something that matters to the characters.
A CAVEAT ABOUT ORIGINALITY
Beginner writers— and experienced writers, let’s be real— worry a lot about originality. I don’t think they should. UNoriginality can be a useful tool. Think of your story like a backpack. It has a finite amount of space, and every single thing you put in it— every character, plot point, and world-building detail— takes up space in that backpack. If your goal is to focus on vivid, interesting characters, you can save space in your backpack by using a tried-and-true structure for your plot. If your goal is to develop a really fascinating plot, you can save space in your backpack by letting your world be a little familiar. Most of my favorite stories are actually simple— Children of Men (the movie, anyway) is just a pursuit plot at its core; John Wick is standard revenge fare. It’s their execution— characters, certain world-building choices, style— that makes them work, that makes them resonate.
SELECTION OF DETAIL
I didn’t call this idea by this name during the seminar, but “selection of detail” is something I always used to focus on in literary analysis (when I was writing papers in college, I mean)— it’s basically a term that describes which details the author chose to include in their work. Selection of detail affects the reading experience by communicating what’s important to the reader. The more time you, the writer, spend on a particular thing, the more important it’s going to appear to the reader. So spend your time on what’s important and interesting and exciting to you. And try to spend less time on the things that you are not excited by.
the outcome!
When offered a choice of “pursuit” plot, “revenge” plot, or “assassination” plot, seminar attendees chose “revenge”! They also chose…
a futuristic earth with a terrible government (aka dystopia)
which we combined with the other top choice: a creature overworld, aka a world in which creatures were in charge instead of living in secret.
and we decided that “creature” in this world meant genetically modified human beings.
One attendee noted that we had worked our way right back to Divergent. To which I say: lol, in a sense yes, but we’re definitely going to build something different from Divergent. In the next session, we’ll work on our “systems”. A “system” in this context is just a description of who holds power and how they hold it— a government, a religion, a school, a company, those are all systems, and worlds are made up of systems. We definitely have a government to build, but there are plenty of other systems to consider— so join me on July 11th at 7PM central time if you want to learn about how to construct them and help me with all those decisions!
<3,
V