This is a rewrite of a previous post I lost the original file for! It was about the way that a writer’s worldbuilding interrelates with their worldview, and what I think of as the basic building blocks of creating a setting. (Note: The former is not, “X is bad and if you write X you like X and are also bad.” It’s, “if you think people are by nature selfish and only out for themselves, then your worldbuilding is going to reflect that because that’s what makes sense to you,” by the way.)
So! Stories need to be more logical and internally consistent than real life. (It should be noted that “real life” is seldom as believable as fiction. I have had some strange interactions that made me doubt the other person’s perception of reality–and my own for that matter.) The internal logic helps us suspend our disbelief. This is how we can accept broomsticks (or swords!) as means of transportation, dragons, FTL starships and that Superman is faster than a speeding bullet. We don’t need much of an explanation, we just need an explanation before we can plunge into the setting of the story. You need context, and you need to know how things work within the setting of the story.
(It should be noted here I am pretty emphatic about this. This is because my early writing attempts mostly involved creating various settings, including maps, rather than stories. Lots of character and setting design, very little story, which was frustrating. And I’d get even more frustrated when certain persons would say things like, “oh, why bother doing that? Just make something up!” This was of course, very annoying, due to the fact that I was in fact making stuff up. It just took me longer to come up with the actual story.)
There are two major ways to introduce the reader to your setting/worldbuilding. (And every setting requires worldbuilding. Yes, even modern era general fiction.) The first is “infodumping.” You just drop the information onto the reader’s head. You may or may not use a character to sockpuppet the information. (In a method commonly referred to as “As You Know Bob.”) Or, you might just drop your notes into the narrative, without any character giving the presentation. The problem with infodumping is that its often boring. (Some people apparently like them. I generally don’t. It depends on the writer.) The second way to do it is sneakily or by implication. The door “deliquesces.” A character notices something that a woman of a certain race or species that’s winged doesn’t have wings. (I don’t remember where the door was from, but the wingless woman was from a Michael Moorcock story, I think.) You just sneak in little details and tells and let the reader figure out what’s what.
The fun part about “internal logic” is that it can vary wildly from author to author. The rules of story universe A do not get along with the rules of Story B. Neither A or B get along with the internal logic of story universe C. Philosophies, beliefs and ideals that work in one universe will inevitably fail in the work of a different writer. This is because writers include their own ideals, philosophies and beliefs in their work, whether or not they are intending to do so. (Again, this is not meant to be taken as “X is bad and if you write X then you are bad.” Kind of not anything like that at all!)
There is a thought exercise I like to do. It involved seeing how setting A compares and contrasts with setting B. (It should be pretty obvious that this thought exercise is largely why I like to read and write crossovers.) The thought exercise mostly came about because I was reading both conservative authors and more liberal authors and I couldn’t help but notice the differences in world view.
Example: Anne McCaffrey’s Saga of the Talents vs. Octavia Butler’s Patternist Sequence.
Talents: A series about people with psionic powers and their struggle to gain equal rights and be treated like people. Series takes place in what would be present, near future and distant future. Very clear cut good guys and bad guys. The Talented for the most part are a virtuous model minority unfairly oppressed. Anne McCaffrey’s writing tends to be more romantic and someone positive, even if her characters are sometimes disagreeable/cranky. (*cough* The Rowan. *cough*)
Patternist: A series about people with psionic powers who were literally bred/created by a mind hopping immortal named Doro. Takes place during a collapse in infrastructure/society and a mutagenic space plague because why settle for just one apocalypse when you can have at least three? Many, many shades of gray. The psionics here are also unfairly oppressed, mostly by other more powerful psionics. At the very bottom are ordinary humans, who are basically zombies due to continuous mind control. (Which the Patternists have to do because they react badly to the stray thoughts/emotions of ordinary humans. And by “react badly” I mean “possibly torture or even murder the ordinary human.”) Octavia Butler’s writing delves pretty deep into the psychology of the characters and are primarily about agency and control.
Now, mash ’em up: If you stuck a Patternist into Anne McCaffrey’s Saga of the Talents series, the Patternist would not be able to function (They don’t have their Pattern. This is a bad thing. If you’re lucky, they go catatonic. If you are not lucky, you have a serial killer). If you stuck one of Anne McCaffrey’s Talented into the Patternist books, the Talented person would probably get mindcontrolled really quickly if the clayarks (mutant cannibals) didn’t get them first.
Now this is just a pretty simple mash up for an example. If I remembered more of both series I could get more detailed. I would also try to figure how specific characters would react to the other setting. But that’s the basic idea of this kind of thought experiment. How would the internal logic of each setting affect the other? What sort of hints can we get from the worldbuilding about the author’s possible worldview? I think this kind of thought exercise helps me analyse what I’m reading, and figure out what I want to say/convey when I write.
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