As fun as worldbuilding can be in the moment,
you are literally playing god when you do and seeing as you actually aren’t—unless I’m missing
something—there are a lot of pitfalls you can fall into. And it starts with the mindset a lot of
worldbuilders don’t put themselves into. I need you to pay complete attention and at least try to
internalise the words that are about to come out of my mouth. Every aspect of our reality as you
see it is subject to change in a fantasy world that you created. Sounds obvious right, but it’s
not just things like the climate, down to fashion, religion, common sayings, days of the week. We
can take it many steps further, days don’t have to be a concept in your world. Gender roles
can be non existent. Crustaceans could be the dominant species. The world could actually be
flat. Its a great series check it out. There is no standard for fantasy and sci-fi. Not tolkein.
Not dnd. Not the Expanse. Or whatever else you’re picturing in your mind. Allow me to introduce
the magical cube of problems, we just tackled one side. And this next side is where you curb what
I just said … hard. Yes we have a sandbox where we can literally do anything, but that definitely
doesn’t mean you HAVE to do everything. There are usually two reactions to the “every aspect of
our reality is subject to change” bit. One is that scene from inside out where all the little
sprites inside your brain are running around and everything’s on fire. And the other is, “Oh I can
build everything” and then TRYING to build every, single, aspect of your world. The latter is what
we in the biz like to call worldbuilders disease and it is as common as it is deadly, trust me.
I see this a lot in worldbuilders, I actually struggled with it a bit myself. Where they’ll
completely ignore the fact that there is an entire story that works in tandem with their world.
Whether you’re crafting a D&D campaign or writing the next Star Wars. If you’re worldbuilding
to worldbuild, knock yourself out, but if your story is heavy on the political intrigue, then an
emphasis on boarders and rulers is a natural step towards that. Might wanna focus more on magic if
your protagonist has to learn it at some point. Your “Silmarillion” doesn’t need to be nearly as
extensive if you don’t plan to publicise it like Tolkien did. And as is the nature of a problem
cube, once we solve one side, another rears it’s ugly head. You might have already noticed the
issue. So right now this is your story, and this is the world built around it. All this blank
space are things you could have built, but didn’t. And that is simultaneously the best scenario and
the worst thing you can do. You didn’t waste time on things that won’t show up but then there is a
flimsy line between what’s built and what isn’t. If the reader stands here and looks at your world
at large, which they will because they’re smart, it starts to fall apart very quickly.
This is where Ernest Hemmingway comes in, his iceberg theory loosely states—Now listen here
silly, you as the writer are supposed to know all THIS. You’re gonna get in your silly little writer
submarine and you’re gonna see the entire flipping iceberg. Now your readers are dumb as fiddlesticks
and they only see the top of the iceberg because their silly little brains can only stay on the
surface. But because your brain is shockingly not as smooth, YOU know the entire iceberg, and
you can frame it in such a way that their thick heads think they can see the entire thing. It’s
hilarious! Thanks Ernie. Thank you. What a lovely man. He’s also right by the way. But the thing
is we already established that it’s not ideal to build every detail in your world. We can’t know
the entire iceberg. So what’s the answer? Fake it. We remove the stark line and get a gradient
instead. The amount of world building you do fades with the vision of the reader. The mountain gets
foggier the further we go. They’ll get to a point were they can’t even see the mountain anymore, but
they’ll know it’s still there. But it isn’t there, all there is is blank space. All the work you
didn’t suffer doing. Diagrams and metaphors are fantastic, but how do you actually apply this?
Well lets go back to our story that’s heavy with political intrigue. Or in other words game of
thrones. The boarders, map and people in power need to be clearly defined because those are the
main pieces interacting in the story. We need to understand pretty much everything about them
for those interactions to make sense. Alright, what’s the next natural progression. So how
did those powerful people get in power? Ah history, that’s another part of our world we
need to flesh out detailed. It’s also going to dictate how those political parties interact. Oh
culture is also going to be a big part of that as well. Ironborn and the people of the north are not
going to interact the same. Throw cultures on the list! And the ball keeps rolling, but notice how
things get less and less important the farther we move away from political intrigue. We never
mentioned religion or the lower class. Even though those elements do come into play they’re
not nearly as significant. You hear the old gods, the lord of light, the drowned god, you
see the religious cult in kings landing, and judging from how extensively the rest of
Westeros has been built, you assume there’s just as much depth in the religion as well. You see the
mountain inside the fog. And there IS more depth, but Martin doesn’t have to build the religions
of all thirty something deities in his world. He probably did for fun though, his lore book is
actually what House of the Dragon is based off of. Also Martin has an incredibly huge world,
so most things are going to be somewhat built but something like The Gentlemen Bastards for
instance is an excellent example of the other end of the spectrum. If you’re a super
fan though you probably know all those thirty something deities, but you don’t
need that to understand the story of game of thrones. And would you look at that,
we’re half way there. More than half way. What? You see this side of the problem cube was
forgetting to make everything cohesive. All these aspects of your world are not independent of
each other, they need to interact to create a believable world. It so funny when I see stories
like oh this is medieval England but everyone has magic. If everyone had magic it would not look
like medieval England. People would use it in their every day lives for transport, for work,
there would probably be a class system around it, it would dictate culture. You can’t just dump
something in your world and say it doesn’t affect anything else. Think about it like orbiting
planets, the bigger the change is from real life, the more gravity it will have on every thing else.
We already mentioned magic, so lets go there. Its another significant aspect of game of thrones’
worldbuilding. How does it relate to the political intrigue? Well, dragons are part of the magic,
and they are essentially nukes. If you have one, you are all powerful, which is why Targaryens
were able to stay in power for so long. You see how it also gravitates towards the history?
This power makes the Targaryens akin to gods among the commonfolk, thus dictating an aspect
of culture. This can play very well with the next part of the cube once we solve it, which is
ignoring the rule of cool or focusing too much on realism. I imagine most world builders don’t
have a problem with this one but they avoid one crucial aspect of it. This is a bit similar to
the first side of the cube, but where that one was more focused on showing you how far you can take
worldbuilding, this one is different because you probably already have one or two really sick ideas
you want to execute. This is speculative fiction, execute your crazy insane ideas, your readers and
audience WANT to be transported to another world. Here’s a secret, that’s probably why they like the
genre so much. They WILL suspend their disbelief and give you leeway to do it. Now why I said this
can play really well with cohesiveness is that, do the cool thing you want, but don’t ignore how it
interacts with the rest of the world you’ve built. For example in a fantasy world I’m currently
working on for my novel, I just wanted to make the coolest, most outlandish creatures that I could
come up with. But then I hadn’t surrounded this concept with a world where the creatures would
naturally evolve to be these things. And that could create a disconnect in the readers mind. So
I was like how do I solve this. Why don’t I just make natural evolution not a factor? Unnatural
evolution. Magic leaks in from another dimension and warps the world in whatever way it sees fit.
Nobody is arguing the science of evolution with me if I give them that as my reason. But now there is
this problem of magic leaking in from elsewhere. Wait that’s not a problem, hell yeah, what else
does magic change, the landscape, the people? What if I’m writing sci-fi I can’t just magic
things into my world. An alien race brings in a crazy virus that only morphs animals, I still get
my cool outlandish creatures. When you constrain yourself to not just what you want, but how it
will affect other things, you start to come up with really interesting ways for them to interact.
You create chemical reactions that take you places you never expected to go and your world is usually
better for it. Now some of you might have already noticed that you can’t solve just 5 sides of a
problem cube, you’ve already used the pieces on the other sides and the only pieces that are left,
solve the last side. And that’s what happens, when you fix all these problems. It becomes nearly
impossible for you to create a stagnant world, which is another thing I see in countless worlds.
The 90s were not the same as the 2000s and both of them were completely removed from the 60s.
Things will look different a decade from now, and that’s all within one lifetime, the world is
constantly evolving. Yeah dragons are nukes and the Targaryens have been in power for centuries,
but then the Baratheons took over and then the Lannisters. It doesn’t always have to be wars and
coup d’etats. Technology can change your world. Cultural evolution. The environment. And it’s okay
if your story doesn’t focus on this, but having it happen in the background can make your world feel
so much more realistic. But there is one final part of the cube, and that is the cube as a whole.
I am milking this metaphor for everything it’s got huh? What this is right here, is trust. And I have
to be real if you’re watching this, chances are you don’t have it. Sanderson can create a world
where his readers have to climb a 100-meter brick wall on their finger nails to understand the world
… and they will. At least I know I will because I also know there’s going to be an amazing story on
the other side of that wall. Yeah, every thing I talked about is going to help you create a better
world, and Sanderson does all that too but he can ignore things like creating touchstones to our
reality or not worldbuilding as deep. He has a lot of leeway because of who he is. He can scramble
the cube a little bit and still present it to his readers as a complete world and story. And they
will accept it. Same goes for King and Martin, and any other famous author. They have already
established that trust, that rapport with their readers for years and years. So just keep in mind
that emulating everything they do might not always be the best thing for you. That being said, there
is something they do that everyone should emulate and you can find that out in this video right
here. Side note, I know this isn’t actually how you solve a cube, pro cubers do not come at me.
I legit learnt commutations just for this. K bye.
