Writing How do you write worlds?

[weakwithwords]

flucket's

1. top-down approach
2. bottom-up methodology

... LEGO and BenBen's broken tooth.

 

[GuangLanhua]

Do you flesh out the world, then placed a character in it and see their journey through said world?
Or do you have a Plot in mind and build the world around the Plot?
Perhaps you simply uses a popular world type and build off there?

( Tell me! )>ヾ(≧∀≦☆)

I think what story I want it to be and write all the plot, character, world when I write the chapter. All of my character's name, characteristics and the places are all think during the making of the chapt

 

[WhoCares]

I think it sort of depends on what I want to write. If I'm just worldbuilding for fun, I'll start with a map. No good reason for it, I just enjoy sketching them out. If it's for a short story I'll usually start from a character and a conflict but if it's a larger story or a more complicated short story I'll usually start from a conflict/moral/message or some other interesting thing I'd like to explore artistically that I then form a character for and go from there. Basically, I decide what the story is going to be about and then who it is going to be about and the various details of the world can sort of come into shape around all that.
Also, I really like the people above who suggested they build around characters. I think that approach leads to particularly insightful stories, at least from a literary perspective.

 

[TRNRLogan]

I'm slowly writing a story it'll come out in about 50 years. Having said that while I've been planning out the entire world I'll only reveal stuff when necessary. So while there is information on say an ancient civilization that is now just ruins, we won't learn much about it since that's unnecessary to the plot. The only reason I'm writing so much lore is so my world is consistent and to explain the handful of cultures we will interact with.

Speaking of i haven't touched any of that for 3 weeks. I probably should though....

 

[MajorKerina]

I'm working on a bug world society right now with fantasy elements. Going in I decided to research what the core insect species were like. I recently discovered when insects molt, they have to hold their breath for almost an hour and it apparently feels like having your lungs ripped out from the inside out.

So far as naming, I also decided to explicitly avoid given and family names that were human-like or from human things with the focal species. So far as names for species of insects, this might come back to bite me when I have lots of species interacting, but I decided that each have a name for other creatures since many tend to keep to themselves. So if the core species is nocturnal then how does that influence their interactions with the world around them? What kind of stories do they tell to each other? What are their myths? For this, I went into obscure folklore and shifted it around how I wanted to serve the narrative. It's a way that gives you a framework. You establish what the rules are and how one thing interacts with another and then just suss out the rest of the elements.

 

[Kldran]

For me, it depends a lot on what type of story I'm trying to write. Most of the time, I just copy the rough type of world I've seen elsewhere in settings similar to what I want and then make up details as I go. However, there are some story types where I have to build the world much earlier in the process due to important parts of the story depending on the world itself and the structure it's made with. For example: When I write a story with a heavy emphasis on a system of rules the player can exploit and use, I need to figure out how this system of rules works, and how it impacts the world (which makes these kinds of stories much harder for me to write).

 

[gaylolis]

Eh, what world? The characters are all floating in the void.


... I'm writing a book. I've got the page numbers done.

now it reminds me--what if there's no characters of all?

the entire thing is just a couple of words on paper :D /

 

[Goswick]

Do you flesh out the world, then placed a character in it and see their journey through said world?
Or do you have a Plot in mind and build the world around the Plot?
Perhaps you simply uses a popular world type and build off there?

( Tell me! )>ヾ(≧∀≦☆)

Also, unrelated, but I keep misreading the thread title as "How do you write words?" for some reason and keep getting really confused lol.

 

[Goswick]

now it reminds me--what if there's no characters of all?

the entire thing is just a couple of words on paper :D /

I tried writing a story with no characters once for a literature class. It did not go very well, it's very hard to write without any characters whatsoever. Not sure I could do it tbh.

 

[gaylolis]

I tried writing a story with no characters once for a literature class. It did not go very well, it's very hard to write without any characters whatsoever. Not sure I could do it tbh.

i'm referring to the case when you take stories too literally. instead of thinking of someone's journey, you just think about words being added to a paper.

and wrote something like, "You started to notice the words written in this sentence." or something.

not sure what is the story without a character. maybe describing some human-less scenery without going to deep or emotional, to be considered a character?

 

[BenJepheneT]

I tried writing a story with no characters once for a literature class. It did not go very well, it's very hard to write without any characters whatsoever. Not sure I could do it tbh.

Just cheese it by writing about the universe and some deep psychology lore or some shit. A 500 word story about the strings of fate tying to the end of the world. That'll probably get your English teacher riled up to a degree

 

[BenJepheneT]

AHAHAHA I am definitely the type of person who makes a new seed world in MineCraft and builds an entire castle painstakingly out of handcrafted ice bricks in survival mode and then when I'm done I just quit and start over in a new world seed.

That was painful to read Jesus Christ what level Maso is this

 

[AkalE]

Don't be me.
Write your story, not your world.

I've spent hours coming up with the names of cities, villages, royals, nobles, currencies, religion and terrains. But as you can see I've not published even a world.

Keep your story focused on the characters. Build whatever is required in that chapter. The character's name, looks, house. Then build off on that. That's my advice on WORLDBUILDING.

Again,


Don't be me.
Write your story, not your world.

 

[weakwithwords]

// (@Goswick): "How do you write words?"
// (@gaylolis): take stories too literally.

A Short, Short Story

Written by one of the buddies that brought Undocumented Features to this mortal coil. He died young so besides preserving his few works, they immortalized him by keeping his character alive in the fanfic series. Probably.

I remember my youngest sibling being fascinated by sim ant. Must have felt like playing god.

During my childhood, my schoolmates and I used to play with one-centimeter black ants. We avoided the red ones. The rare white ones were just too weird.

Voices of a Distant Star - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

A different spin on star-crossed lovers by being worlds apart. The worlds themselves weren't particularly defined.

 

[SourDaiDai]

I just build it based on interesting ideas I come across, then mash them together like a baby. The main reason why I don't post any stories

Mash like a baby? Dear Lord! I'm scared..(⊃д⊂) \(=> ♡ <=)/
(I keep forgetting to quote the message)

 

[SourDaiDai]

Also, unrelated, but I keep misreading the thread title as "How do you write words?" for some reason and keep getting really confused lol.

No worries! I bet'cha that I'm gonna post a trend named "How to word" because of my terrible language skills!
Freaking hell, English is my first language but I still suck!

 

[XianPiete]

My style is to write my story while introducing important elements of the world as I need them throughout the story. I have noticed a lot of authors will infodump the world as a prologue, but I think its also fairly common for people to skim if not just skip over that kind of prologue.

 

[MajorKerina]

If you want a great example of how to tell a story without any characters (sorta), take a look at Ray Bradbury's "There Will Come Soft Rains". You show the reader a story with what clues the setting gives.

 

[iamchangingthissoon]

Mash like a baby? Dear Lord! I'm scared..(⊃д⊂) \(=> ♡ <=)/
(I keep forgetting to quote the message)

it's like having two characters but midway through the story, their personalities swap for no reason. or just goo goo gaa gaa, time to throw the plot in the bin

 

[GhostlyArtz]

I actually crafted the characters, then crafted the world to match the characters, and then edited the characters some more to better fit and proceeded to bounce between the two.

It really would depend on your world. Are you creating a brand new world? Is the world relevant to the plot? How different is your world?

So for mine: It's about a second civil war over magic, which is a disease that kills people and technically originated from a religious deity. So it has big effects on my world, seeing as how most of the events are caused by the world and it has a relevant history. Now, I haven't built up somethings like what the world was like before magic came to existence because it is not relevant to the story itself and doesn't really feature.

However, crafting up how the disease works and such and such helped me with the plot because it narrowed down the possibilities of where it can go thanks to logic (such as, second civil war within a 13 year period- obviously the ending needs to be more than, one side wins and throws a band aid on top of everything).

But yeah, Characters then world, then plot was pretty much how I went about it. Fill in the blanks and then go with what seems natural for the characters and the world. How in depth you go in the world building should also depend on how relevant it will be to the story itself, such as mine has a lot of depth in certain aspects that are relevant to the plot and no depth in others. Stories in the modern world, don't really need that much depth because the reader is already familiar with it.