Whatever the genre, sub-genre or story type, the four types of world-building are key to credible and immersive tales.
Every novel builds its own world as its setting; even in contemporary, naturalistic stories. The world of each story is carefully curated by the author to provide a precise setting. It contains no more than needed to support the story. Well, most of the time.
Jack Reacher inhabits a very specific version of America; small towns, diners, military bases, airfields. The stories use exactly those elements that embelish the story, creating mood and atmosphere as well as the physical environments the characters inhabit. The same goes for Grace’s Brighton or Rebus’ Edinburgh. None of them depict the whole country or the whole city, just the parts necessary for the story; in sufficient detail to convince the reader they actually exist.
Pride and Prejudice (yes, collect a sticker) takes place around the Regency period, yet makes no mention of the Napoleonic Wars. Nelson and Wellington get no credit. The threat of invasion never comes up in polite conversation. Lizzie Bennett’s world is strictly constrained. Only those parts of society relevant to the story are described. That’s why there are no poor people in Pride and Prejudice. Lizzie gets second-hand reports of events in London. There’s no mention of Bath, vital to Austen’s novels.
Historical fiction famously demands historical research and historical facts. Otherwise it’s not very, um, historical. The historical detail is a larger part of the attraction to readers. But I, Claudius does not depcit the entire Roman empire, or even the entire reign of Claudius himself. It presents the edited highlights selected by Graves to illustrate one period of Roman history.
Two types of people…
“There are two types of people, those who can extrapolate from incomplete information and…”
(Anon)
All of these stories feature world-building by selection. What do they need? What don’t they need? Is there enough to immerse the reader into a believable world?
The further a story gets from our ‘real’ world, the more the author has to build the fictional world. The more fantastical or speculative the story, the more the world must be crafted. Spaceships, monsters, dinosaurs, ray guns, light sabres; all of these must be imagined by the author and somehow described in the text.
As readers, we recognise sufficient detail that our brain (rightly or wrongly) fills in the rest. We imagine what’s beyond the next door or next street corner. We imagine that the author has the entire world of the story mapped out and recorded. The fantasy genre is famous for it, thanks to Grandpa Tolkein and the approach he established.
Iceberg!
Here I am with my fantasy series, trying to navigate the four types of world-building.
- The ‘iceberg method,’ where the bulk of your built world sits below the waterline out of sight of the reader.
- ‘Drip-feed irrigation,’ where you trickle out world details in small droplets: no massive info-dumps.
- ‘Less is more,’ cutting all but the essentials to keep up the pace
- ‘Infiltration,’ where you drop breadcrumbs of key facts to set-up a payoff later in the plot.
A line here, a fact there; piece by piece you can build up a detailed picture of people, places and institutions. There’s a rich backstory even though we’re on the run in a wilderness.
A couple of times, characters from different cultures discuss the religious beliefs of their respective people. It’s not subtle, but the conversations are short; just enough depth to drop hints and allow the reader to draw parallels with contemporary cultures that readers might understand. Is the Church of the Messenger like Medieval Catholicism, early Islam, or something else?
Thumbnails and Sketches
What about Eskalon, the home of the Empire? My fishes-out-of-water relate their contrasting views of the Empire and the Republic before it. My Empire is a mash up of Roman, Ottoman and Byantine. The decline and decay of the Republic enabled the rise of a dictator who became Emperor. Colonialism, facism and racism raise their heads.
The heavily armoured Vipers represent the peak of military technology and training; but I leave the reader to visualise them. Are they medieval knights? Roman legionaries? Steel Samurai. The opposing Horse Clans might be Mongol warriors, Visigoths, or Persian Immortals.
Book Two ventures into the Escarri civilisation, the Southern Cants and their people. Book Three arrives at Kamsen, the fortified city capitol. The first thing we see is the King’s bridge, a massive timber swing bridge on stone piers. It’s a technical marvel. We don’t know which king built it or when. But the routine of opening and closing is vital to infiltrating the city.
In my world magic is real, but rare. People believe in it, though they may never see it. The Church peddles miracles. The Messengers are accepted as real historical figures. They are alluded to but never discussed in detail.
Can’t tell how much iceberg is below the water. Readers assume a lot. I assume a lot.
Common Sources
Without inventing everything from scratch, I lean into historical sources. I dabble in Egyptian, Greek and Roman history; Medieval Europe, the Crusades, the Wars of the Roses, the Black Death. The conquest of North America, the colonisation of Africa and Asia run through my Empire. Civil wars – both English and American – inform the rebellion.
A snippet here, a thread there, a patchwork of the familiar and relatable sewn into something the reader can easily imagine. I have a thin veneer of knowledge to propagate the elements of story. Just enough to convince the reader there’s a vast Tolkein-esque body of academic rigour beneath the text.
And at the end, is the world credible? Does the magic school (Potter), the military academy (Fourth Wing), the caste system (Divergent) make sense? Or do they create a socking great plot hole big enough to sink an iceberg? That’s for the reader to decide.