Writers— let’s talk about worldbuilding.
Especially for us, creating in the sci-fi and fantasy realm, it is an essential tool to tell our spiraling narratives. However, it doesn’t matter what you write. From noir thrillers to high school rom-coms, worldbuilding is used as a storytelling device. When used right, it can greatly enhance a story, or even become a conceptual character in its own right (which I’ll talk about in a future blog). If used poorly, your writing is left static and lifeless. How can we avoid this?
We can break this down into three categories. This is highly simplified, so if you guys want another blog on this, I’ll dive deeper in future entries. For now, let’s explore these core pillars.
It Feels Lived In
The World Changes
It Changes The Characters
These points are what I believe to be the most important to worldbuilding, and they directly influence the story in positive ways. The most vital thing to a story is change. Without it, you don’t have an interesting narrative. Stagnant stories die quickly in the hearts of readers, and they’ll forget about you in favor of the unpredictable, exciting tale that keeps them speculating.
To be clear, I’m using worldbuilding closely with synonyms such as settings and worldbuilding elements like factions and natural phenomena.
- It Feels Lived In
When you look around your house, take a walk outside, or visit the store, what do you see? Chances are, your eyes notice details of wear and tear along the floorboards. There are cracks in the pavement and weeds growing out of the concrete. The store has stains from product spills that the employees haven’t bothered to clean. These are clues, proof rather, that the world you’re living in has existed for a long time, possibly older than you.
Otherwise, everything would be clean, spotless, and rather boring. To quote Jayce Tallace from Arcane, “There is beauty in imperfections.” Without those tears, cracks, and stains left from ages ago, your world has no history, no life, and therefore, no story. Readers love to see the character react to the world by looking into its past and deciphering its clues. Give them the speculation of how the town got its scars, how a monster-sized footprint ended up on the moon, or who built the ancient ruins under the sea. Create a sense a wonder.
- The World Changes
I’d argue that settings can be as much of a character as your protagonist. It can have flaws and work to change them, or get worse. A setting isn’t just the physical place, but the organizations, the policies, and the people running it. Hell, you could say it’s the animals, plants, and weather contributing to the ecosystem. Empires rise and fall. Species evolve and go extinct. It’s all a product of in the environment, whether political, societal, or— yeah, environmental.
A world that doesn’t change is just as boring as watching a character who never gets better or worse. They just stay the same. They don’t even gain any skills or lose something precious to them. That’s a fast way to lose your reader’s interest.
And look, the change doesn’t have to be drastic like a systematic collapse nationwide storms (although that would be interesting), change can be noticed in the littlest of ways. Maybe it’s the local sandwich shop lowering its prices to compete with a corporate restaurant. Perhaps the kids in the neighborhood act more rowdy and misbehave once the neighborhood grandma, who’s treated them so nicely, passes away. Things like these can hit close to home and make the world feel lived in at the same time.
- It Changes The Characters
This is possibly the most important of the three because it links directly to your protagonists. The world, no matter what it is, should influence the characters in some way. Your readers experience the world through your characters, so this thread is crucial to maintain. It’ll suck in the audience into the setting and fully suspend their disbelief.
How should the world change the characters? That’s up to you. Some of my favorite examples include superhero stories like Spider-Man or Batman, where you can see the good impact the vigilantes have on their cities. Crime rate goes down, people feel safe, and corruption is exposed. In turn, the city has changed the hero. They’ve matured and adopted new viewpoints based on their experiences with the harsh reality of heroism and crime fighting.
How about something darker? The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It has all the elements we’re looking for. It feels lived, evidenced by the hanging human flesh and deranged family. It changes slightly, but does react to the characters/victims and tries to resist change. However, it’s the final part.
Spoiler alert. Only one girl survives, and she’s traumatized out of her mind. The setting and worldbuilding, from the realization she might’ve been eaten, and the horrors that came before her, broke her.
While again, things don’t have to be this extreme, keep in mind that a little change goes a long way.
To wrap things up,
Worldbuilding isn’t just something fun for spec-fic authors to indulge in. It’s a calculated narrative tool in any story. Use it well, and your tales, no matter where or when they take place, will become unforgettable.
ABOUT
Joshua D. Martin, callsign Redplicant, is an author, editor, and lyricist who loves action-horror and retrofuturism. He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Full Sail University and was a Creative Writing Club Officer until he graduated. Joshua’s morbid work has been published in Black Sheep: Unique Tales of Terror and Wonder. He writes blogs for Tern Systems and Seven Story Publishing to feel productive, but still finds time to spawn horrific worlds from his imagination. When not ruining his characters’ lives, he enjoys weightlifting, posting fan-speculations on YouTube, and slaying eldritch hordes. If you ask him his favorite genre of music, his answer is yes.
Socials:
https://www.instagram.com/redplicant/
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