World Building

Some authors skate passed world building by throwing us into a set of elements we all already know--the Tolkien or Dungeons & Dragons world.  To my mind, this is lazy.  It is stealing a world and plugging it in.

I already spoke a bit about world building when I spoke of integrity, though integrity also includes character and plot.

In order to become involved in a world in a book either as a reader or a writer, you need to think like an anthropologist.  Anthropology is a social science that studies human cultures.  An archeologist is an anthropologist that studies dead worlds, as an example.  An anthropologist would study a world, and see how the pieces sensibly put together to create a whole.  Do sexual mores fit with the religion of the culture, for instance.

A thorough world building site would be:  http://hiddenway.tripod.com/world/, though there are many others.  Basically type:  "World building" into Google and you will have a wealth of options.

I've already given you a couple of great examples of world building.  Hopkinson creates a combo sci fi/fantasy fusion of an abandoned, cordoned off Toronto and the world built within along with vodun/Yoruba culture and religion.  Beagle works within what is basically his modern day world in an urban fantasy long before anyone coined that term.  Most of the world is the same.  He just adds in a talking raven and ghosts.

The big key for a world to work seamlessly to me is when you ask the question, how much world is enough?  As much as you have lazy worlds that don't put much thought into it, some authors put way too much thought into their worlds, or rather into their stories.  These authors spend so much time on their world, it can engulf or glut their stories.  If the story doesn't involve it, I see no reason to write about all of the political machinations of a government that plays little role in the world of a shepherdess climbing a haunted mountain in the middle of nowhere.  She doesn't care and probably doesn't know.

And that's the heart of it.  As I beat this horse way past dead and into rotting, character is key.  Maybe the writer makes up the whole world, but a clean, streamlined world building all surrounds one thing:  The characters and what they encounter.  So yes, I'm back to that.  Character, character, character.  Anything that touches the character should be well fleshed out, even if in the book it comes down to one, single line that enriches our ideas of the story.  However if the characters don't need it, never come in contact with it, we don't need it either.

Look at some of your favorite books and their world building.  Usually, unless you are a world aficionado, with good books, the world building sneaks in so elegantly that you didn't really notice it until I asked you to.

Tell me about your own favorite cases of world building.

Brown Girl in the Ring by Nalo Hopkinson

Winner of the Warner Aspect First Novel Contest, her first novel, Brown Girl in the Ring, is still my favorite, and a fun example of fantasy fusion.  Set in near future Toronto, after a series of riots Canada enclosed the city and left it to rot.  No one goes out, and few go in--mainly doctors.  However, though pig parts now can be used human organ transplant, the Premier demands a human heart.  What better place to find one than in a human in Toronto?

So far we're all science fiction, right?  It's all, Escape from New York sounding, right?

But we have yet to enter Toronto.  There the people have returned to herbalism, farming, and bartering.  Plus, for Ti -Jeanne, she must deal with her own son, the mystery of her disappeared mother, who had gone insane, and her grandmother's touches for her to learn the family tradition:  not just medicine, but Yoruba tradition.  Her visions of Gods frighten her--that she will go mad as her mother did, despite her grandmother's insistence that not learning from her visions is what will drive her away.

Whoops.  Gods and magic.  Now we enter the realm of fantasy.

Which means we are now in the realm of fusion fantasy.  Hopkinson has bred together a fairly standard science fiction concept in a fresh new way with a culture we rarely see in fantasy--that of Haiti mixed with Canadian.  Hell, she's put Black people as main characters in fusion fantasy, and how often do we see that in any kind of fantasy?  The traditions and Gods that she uses are treated with a touching respect even when they have turned to use something horrible.

Which, as long as I'm talk about it, we could add horror to her mix with ghosts of slit throated children.

Rudy, the man who controls Toronto through fear and addicting people to Buff--a drug made from toads--also controls a duppie, and his own version of perverted magic.  He definitely falls into the realm of horror, but I won't give you too many hints about his activities.

Hopkinson creates the best kind of fusion:  The natural kind.  I never once feel as if she mashed together these elements in an attempt to create something original.  Rather, from her heart, she wrote a book with the elements that burned in her blood to talk about--as if the whole world set itself down before her at once (thought I doubt it did).  She is all original--from her characters to her world to her style.  Her following books follow the same eccentric, compelling creation, but to me this book has the most soul.

Look her up--we could all learn from her.

Ti-Jeanne must navigate her history and her future and learn her own power.