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caseeeli · 3 years ago

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World Building

Apologies for this post being REALLY delayed. I plan to be more active over the summer, I promise.

As a part of @sugaritebiscuit's ask, let's discuss world building. Of course, this is again a very broad topic, so I'll split this post up again with questions to pose and answer.

My inbox and dms are always open for these requests. Interaction really helps so please reblog :D I try to go as in-depth as possible with what is requested of me. Hopefully this blog ends up being helpful to at least someone lol.

So, on with the discussion:

- What does world building mean?

- What should I consider when world building?

- What should I consider when constructing an entirely original world?

- How do I effectively show the world I've created?

What does world building mean?

World building is the creation of a fictional world. It is a society, often entirely constructed by the author, with its own history, traditions, structures and economies.

World building, however, can also be referring to the process of presenting this fictional society to the audience. The story and characters (and visuals, if the narrative is told through a show or a comic) should convey the workings of this world and inform the audience on the setting which the story takes place in.

We have to remember, before we consider anything else, the never-ending differentiation between fictional worlds and how - depending on circumstance and story - each writer can and should approach world building differently. Moreover, we must also recognise that world building exists in almost every genre of fiction, just in differing levels of importance and detail.

What should I consider when world building?

There are a lot of considerations, just like any decision in crafting your story. Though, as with all creative writing posts on this blog, I'd advise you to think of this as less of a tutorial and more like a vague guide. This is trying to push you to think deeply and critically about what you are writing or reading, not telling you what to do.

Something that you should consider is how much thought and focus you will need to put into your world building and setting.

There are a lot of factors that can influence how much planning and focus you will have to dedicate to world building. Here's a list that, although not all-encompassing, can hopefully cover the majority of circumstances:

A Conventional Setting:

This would be, in my words, a setting that resembles our world, preferably in the relative present. In this case, world building may not be something that would have to be highly considered, if at all.

The only outliers to this would be an abnormal setting within the wider world, an example being the school in Classroom Of The Elite. In that case, you would have to consider how you will be presenting that subsetting to the characters and the audience, and in relation to the wider setting.

An Pre-Established Setting:

Though sounding similar to the first consideration, this is entirely different. This is when the world or wider setting can be safely assumed to already be known to the reader, which applies to the majority of fanfictions and some types of sequels and spin-offs.

With fanfictions, you have a bit of a choice, which is entirely dependent on your story. Do you want to explore the world of the source material in your story deeply, or a specific part of their culture, ideology or functioning? Or do you want to focus more on the characters or plot line you've created, with the overall setting of the source material in the background of your story? Perhaps you want to change the setting entirely, to which I'll direct you to the points before and after this section. All options are absolutely fine and can be executed amazingly but, depending on the source material, the potential changes you've made and your story, consider how much you need to take world building into account.

In terms of sequels and spin-offs, this is where you may need to be careful. If you want to keep elaborating on your world, great! But make sure you aren't adding things on blindly. I see it all the time, unfortunately, where concepts, characters and powers are added to the story that makes you think, why wasn't this mentioned before? Make sure that whatever you decide to add on to your story's world, whether that be a new character, a new concept, tradition, practice, etc, that it is either hinted at beforehand or has a reasonable excuse as to why it's just popped up now rather than in a previous book or season.

It's important to remember that you don't have to pre-establish everything in your world or story, but instead ensure that every feature makes logical sense. It sounds simple and like a no-brainer, but even the best shows and books out there are teeming with things that just don't add up.

An Entirely Original Setting:

This is a setting that the writer has constructed entirely from nothing. Perhaps a few influences here and there, but no source material and is not based in our present world. This is potentially the hardest yet most intriguing type of world building, but it can be so easy to mess up! So, I think it warrants its own section.

What should I consider when constructing an entirely original world?

Nobody expects you - or anyone - to be able to answer every question about your world. What food do they eat? What's the weather like? Though attention to detail like that can be amazing and can make your readers truly feel like your world is alive and real, it's always best to lay down the basics and build from there, rather than diving into it without the right gear.

1) Is there a core concept or idea that your world revolves around?

Some of the best stories I've ever read or watched in terms of those that are set in worlds nearly nothing like ours have clearly answered this question. Is there a core concept or idea that is present in almost all features of their world and how they act? This can be anything from technology, perhaps a specific type of device, a religion, an ideology that is interconnected with their practices, society and actions.

For example, in the famous novel The Handmaid's Tale, we are presented with a setting that seems very distant from ours, which revolves entirely around the religion of Christianity and the idea of fertility and birth being the centre of their ideology. This is incredibly ingrained in the setting, the character's story, and almost everything we see in the novel, even down to the language the characters use. Having a concept that is deeply ingrained in your world, acting as the base of your world building, can create a truly wonderful and trapping reader experience when done well.

Preferably, this approach should also have a deeper reason: why do these people/this society believe this idea, and why do they value it so much? This could prompt a wider understanding of the history of the world, beyond just telling the reader upfront. Just by experiencing the world and how it functions in the present, the reader could achieve a glimpse into its past.

2) How does power work in this society?

By power, I don't just mean magic systems (though I'd LOVE to do a post on magic systems one day, if I'm requested to), I mean hierarchy, status, and how each is achieved.

Is your world a monarchy? How does this impact the world you've created, and how does it influence the story? Of course, every consideration I present should be taken with a grain of salt, as everything is dependent on your story and the perspective it is being told from. If your story is told from the perspective of a scholar or a peasant that has and will have nothing to do with the monarchy, then the monarchy wouldn't be as touched upon as if you were writing from the perspective of the princess...or the scholar trying to court her.

Overall, how a society is ruled or governed over can be more influential than you think. I mean, look at Britain. We talk about the Queen an awful lot. Make of that what you will.

How does one, in your world, earn respect? And, when I say earn, it has massive, invisible quotation marks around it. Is it by birth? If so, why? Is it by achievement or merit and, if so, what does one have to do to move up in the world? Say, you have a species or society that values education. An educated or elderly person would be the most respected. If you're in a society that values power, then it'll be the young and fit that'll have the most respect, or perhaps those born with greater magical ability.

This is important to take into account if this sounds like something that would influence your characters. How much power (politically, magically or physically) does your character have? Where do they lie in the hierarchy, if there is one? How does this influence how they are treated, their relationships with others, or how the story plays out?

Remember that, in a society where there is a hierarchy (which, let's be honest, is more often than not), what influences people's position can be absolutely anything, and usually ties into what people in the society value most.

Occupation can influence social standing. In a society that highly values entertainment, it'll be the singers and actors, the tech creators and entertainers. In a religious setting, the priests, the clergy and potentially anyone seen as being connected to a deity would be those who are high on the social ladder.

What about birth status? Are they royal, or from a well-esteemed or wealthy family? What about their race or gender, even species?

What about something more out-there? Trust me when I say that you can do anything. Eye colour, IQ, specific markings on their body, how they perform at a specific task? All of it can be used to create a hierarchy, and signify someone's social standing.

3)What about their morals, rules and laws?

I'll reiterate now that all of the considerations I state are very interconnected, and in no way are meant to stand alone.

In relation to the hierarchy, the workings of your world, what the society you've created revolves around, you may also have to think about the rules.

Are certain things legal or illegal, things that would be normal or taboo to us, and why? Say, if you've made a world where it is legal to assault someone of a certain rank, or if it's illegal to hunt or capture fairies, think about the reason why. It can be as obvious as a simple explanation of why it's morally wrong in the context of basic common sense, or as complicated as it being wrong as it personally distastes the all-powerful leader, disrespects their deity, or simply goes against their strict traditions.

Moreover, take into account social law as well as legal law. These terms which I'm using for the sake of simplicity, refer to the difference between something people are generally disgusted by or are against, and something that is legally punishable.

Something that people may find disgusting (such as, cheating on a partner or spouse) may not be illegal, but things that some people - in certain cases - might find acceptable (such as stealing necessities or having an abortion), can be illegal. This can be present in your worldbuilding and the society you create. Social norms can be powerful and may influence characters at differing levels. Laws may influence characters, too, but are much more telling of the hierarchy, government and overall system than the morality of the characters.

As with everything, always consider why. Why do they do that? Why is this the way things are? Everything you do with your story - every change you make and every character you add - has their place. No character is worth nothing in the storyline, and everything you add to your world will inevitably have an influence. Think carefully of what you include in your world and in your story, and what effects this would have on the wider picture.

How do I effectively show the world I've created?

This is a tricky question, purely because of the endless possibilities that come with writing, and how there is not and never will be one correct way to write.

When writing, I always take into consideration the advice of 'Show, Don't Tell' which I've made a post on before. Though that post details how to employ that advice on a much smaller scale, it's important to remember that little things add up.

Here's where the details come in, and here's where I tell you the best advice there is to give:

Have fun!

Build your world from the inside out. Have fun thinking about things that, though you may find pointless or too small to include, will elevate your writing to the next level. So what if it's never going to be relevant to the plot: what food they eat, how they do their hair, what kind of birds are in the area and how their houses look? Include them anyway!

It's the little things that make the world seem alive. It's the attention to detail that can captivate the reader, and make the society constructed by your own hands feel like it's right in front of them. Don't let your character stand by a cardboard cut-out, let them step into a world as rich as the mind that created it, that is decorated with every little thing that showed just how much you loved to make what you've presented to your audience.

Take as much time to write as you need. Make draft after draft, hundreds for all I care. If your writing makes you happy, it'll make thousands even happier.

Pour the love into your world as you build it because, trust me, it sure does show.

#writeblr #writing advice: reblog #creative writing #worldbuilding

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caseeeli · 3 years ago

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A brief guide to the art of writing blurbs

[Note: this is a plain text version of the guide I formatted as a PDF, which is available for viewing/download here. This version is lacking the visual aids from the original pdf. To view them, please view the linked file!]

Warning: very long post

So, you’ve done your outlining, and your writing, and your editing, and now, it’s time for the most exciting part of any writing journey: the publishing! Whether you’re making a pitch to a publishing firm, or simply uploading your work online, everyone needs to have a good summary.

A summary serves a lot of purposes, which we’ll explore later, but the most important one is to draw readers in, and make them want to read your work. It’s not always an easy task, so it’s best we figure out how best to appeal to the demographic you’re targeting.

So, let’s get into it! Happy reading, and happy blurb writing!

I - The Purpose of a Blurb

Before we establish how to write the blurb itself, it’s very important to understand the basics: what is a blurb, and what is the purpose it serves?

A blurb is a short summary of a story. The amount of detail it provides about the story is entirely up to the author, and blurbs can vary in length and form very wildly. Generally speaking, a book blurb is usually between 100-200 words. Any shorter can run the risk of not providing enough information to a reader, while any longer can pose the opposite problem.

So, what is the purpose of a blurb? As we said earlier, the main function of a blurb is to engage readers and generate interest in the story it summarizes. But how exactly do blurbs do that?

When writing a summary of any story, you need to hit a few major points to make sure that readers have a good idea of what they’re getting into. Which means that you need to answer a few questions they might have.

The most important of these questions are the following:

What is the genre of this story?

What is the basic premise of this story?

Who is the main character of this story?

What is the primary conflict of this story?

These questions (and the answers we have for each) are going to help form the basis of a strong blurb, and make sure that anyone who eyes our work is going to want to read it as soon as possible!

So, now we know all that, let’s definitively answer this question: what is the purpose of a blurb?

The purpose of a blurb is to entice the reader in by posing a set of questions…and answering only some of them.

So now we know what a blurb and the purpose of one is, and we know what questions we have to answer, let’s go into how we do that!

II - The Elements of a Blurb

II-I Establishing genre

One of the easiest and fastest ways to categorise books is by their genre. Without saying a word about the story or conflict, a genre can give a reader a good idea of what elements might be present in the book. Science fiction? They know to expect high-level technology, aliens, otherworldly planets, or a combination of all of the above. Fantasy? They can walk in waiting to see magic, mythology or fantastical creatures of all kinds. Romance? It’s in the name!

Not only is genre a very easy way to set expectations, but it’s also one of the quickest things a story can do. For published books, this can be done even without a blurb – the front cover can usually do it for you! For works published online, it can also be done via use of tagging systems or genre listings.

But we don’t want to have to rely on covers or tags to establish our genre, we should be trying our best to do it ourselves.

So Step 1: figure out what genre your story is!

This is usually something authors know right at the start of any project, before they even put the first words on the page. But for stories where genres can overlap and merge, this can sometimes be more challenging to determine.

If you don’t know what genre your book is, then you should know four of the factors that contribute to make genre: plot, setting, narrative conventions, and the style and form.

Basically everything in a novel establishes the genre! The actual plot, the setting your novel takes place in, any present narrative or genre conventions, and the style and form of the work, can all help establish what genre it belongs to.

Generally speaking, the setting is one of the weightiest factors to consider when deciding genre. A book set on a faraway planet will almost always be sci-fi, just like a book set in a post-apocalyptic world ruled by a tyrannical government will usually be dystopian.

Look at some familiar fiction and the settings they boast: Lord of the Rings spearheads fantasy as a genre, and offers the rich world of Middle Earth. Dune introduces us to the planet Arrakis. The Hunger Games told us about the horrors of Panem. Examining these settings shows off similarities and consistencies among genres.

In addition to setting, genre conventions can also give good clues about what genre we’re dealing with. Genre conventions are tropes, events or other elements which appear consistently or are considered ‘staples’ of said genre.

For example, in a detective story, a genre convention would be a red herring, where misleading clues are planted for both reader and character to be deceived by. A genre convention of a fable would be the lesson that the story is intended to teach, like the benefit of patience in The Tortoise and the Hare. Identifying and researching these conventions make it easy to tell what genre your story belongs to.

Plot is another good indicator: if your plot centres around a grisly murder, then you know you’re writing a crime/mystery novel. If you wrote about the last magic-user in the kingdom, you’re working with fantasy.

It’s important to note that genres are not mutually exclusive. You can have a story which ends up being sci-fi mystery, or western romance, or gothic comedy. What matters is identifying the major genre elements of your work, and then making sure that genre is clear in your blurb. This can be done easily by referencing the conventions you identified in your work. If you have dragons, or aliens, or a serial killer stalking the streets, mention it!

For example, Dune establishes its genre by use of genre conventions such as the story spanning multiple planets and there being the presence of highly advanced technology. The references to the setting, Arrakis, also emphasise this, as the reader has been informed that Arrakis is in fact an alien planet.

With just a few words, we know that Dune is science fiction. The genre has been established.

II-II Establishing the premise

Now that we’re aware of the genre and basic genre conventions that our work subscribes to, and know how to include them, it’s important that the blurb establishes the premise of our story.

The premise of a story is its most foundational idea. The meat and bones of your story – the absolute most basic elements that every other part of it stems from.

The basic premise of Percy Jackson would be something along the lines of, “a boy discovers he is half-Greek god, and is thrown into a world of quests, monsters and chaos.” A premise doesn’t need to be detailed; it just needs to be descriptive.

Generally, the premise is closely intertwined with the genre and the main character. The premise of a political thriller novel will be political in nature, just as the main premise of a fantasy novel might focus on some element of the fantasy world in which it is set. If the main premise of the novel surrounds the main character – i.e., they’re the grizzled detective in charge of a murder case, or the princess trying to save her land from invasion – then make sure to intertwine these elements in your blurb.

Generally speaking, the premise can be tied back to an inciting incident, the same incident that kicks off the plot of your story. This is what you need to communicate to the reader.

Does your story start with an assassination? Talk about it. A dramatic revelation between two long-term friends? Tell us what it is! Your premise is what should fundamentally draw people in. Readers don’t look for new books to read based on what the characters are like, or how good the prose is – they look for the premise, and if it excites them, they take a look.

Check out the blurb for the first Harry Potter novel. We are told in short that Harry is a wizard, which results in him being rescued and taken to Hogwarts, a school of magic. With less than 50 words, the premise which underlines the entire series has been succinctly explained. We now know the basics of Harry Potter. Your blurb should be much the same: do your best to distill the most basic essence of your plot down to it’s essentials (try to make it less than 50 words, to leave room in our 100-200 word blurb for everything else) and integrate it into the summary.

II-III Establishing the protagonist(s)

Now that we have our genre and premise down, it’s time to get into the person or people moving your story forward: the main character.

Everyone knows how important a main character is. They are the one that keep us reading a book after the plot and genre have already drawn us in. Their traits, flaws, experiences and struggles are what make us turn each page. Main characters are hugely important to the conception and production of a story itself, and similarly, they are also important to the summary you give of it.

When it comes to explaining protagonists in a summary, there are three things to consider:

Who are they?

Why do they matter?

Why should we care?

Now, you don’t need to go super in depth on all of these things – keep in mind, our word count for our blurb is still short and snappy, so we should try to fulfil these three requirements in as few words as possible. But it might help to examine what we want from each of these questions.

Who are they? This is the simplest of the three. You usually need little more than the character’s name to fulfil this element. Tell the reader who your main character is, so that when they open your story, they can get right into it!

Why do they matter? This one also isn’t too difficult! Establish what role your character has in the story. Are they going to be a plucky young hero? A grizzled war veteran? The noble knight committed to good? Why is the protagonist this character in particular?

Why should we care? This one sounds a bit blunt, but it’s the most important of all. It ties into the introduction of the story premise. What kind of journey does your character go on? Why are we following them specifically, and why should we be excited about it? This element ties in closely with why do they matter?, so if you can combine them, go for it!

It can be difficult to figure out how to gracefully and succinctly answer all three questions, but don’t worry, time and practice are your friends! Try as much as you want until you come up with a finished product that you’re happy with!

One issue that arises here, however, is a simple question that may have come to many of your minds while reading this section: what if I have multiple protagonists?

Quite simply, it depends on what kind of split you’ve established between the members of your main cast. After all, in many novels, not all protagonists are created equal.

Books with multiple protagonists can be classified one of two ways: completely equally focused, or; multiple main characters but only one protagonist.

Like I said, not all protagonists are created equal; some quite literally are not! What you have to do here is look at your work and make a decision: are all of the main characters truly given equal focus – i.e., would an outside observer not be able to classify any of them as the main main character – or is it possible to identify just one as bearing a bit more importance than the others?

Note this: having multiple points of view (POVs) does not necessarily make your protagonists equal.

For a literary example, see Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo. Throughout the duology, all six of the main cast get significant focus, POV chapters, and plenty of time on the page, but when pressed, every person who has read the books will name Kaz Brekker as the real protagonist.

Go take a look at the blurbs for the following books:

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin

As you might see in these blurbs, the ways that the protagonist is distinguished from the other main characters is interesting. The blurb for AGOT

takes a curious approach; despite having eight characters other than the single one named in the blurb that have POV chapters and major roles to play, they are only alluded to (see red highlights). This is one option you can absolutely take! Its especially effective where you may begin a story with only one POV character before branching out. But it’s important to note this is not your only option.

The blurb for SOC opts to briefly describe all six of the main cast, with due focus still placed on the actual protagonist (as seen via the emphasis provided by describing Kaz twice, rather than once like the other five). Both of these approaches work well when you have one character who has greater focus, so feel free to pick one or the other, or even combine them!

But what if all of your protagonists truly are created equal?

In that case, the basic advice for introducing characters remains solid; this time, you just have to do it multiple times. Try to provide the same rough amount of advice for all of your protagonists.

Now go take a look at the blurb for The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon, a book with three protagonists with roughly equal focus. This blurb is great because all three main characters have the same focus – we get their names, backgrounds, and the stakes which start off their stories. There is no clear ‘real’ protagonist of the three, and if your characters are all made equal, this is a good example to refer to!

Note: if you do take this method, make sure you still are framing the characters within the premise and genre conventions your story adheres to. Don’t get so caught up introducing everyone that you forget to establish what the story is actually about!

Now that you know how to introduce your characters, its important to exercise restraint: when it comes to answering those three major questions about your protagonist(s), it’s better to do the bare minimum.

We don’t need to know the details of their backstory, or what they look like, or if they might have a budding romance with a side character – it is possible to do too much in a blurb, and the longer it gets, the more it will drag to the average reader. Leave the poetic waxing about your main character for the story itself!

In short, if your reader can start to draw up a basic profile of your characters that has anything more than their name, age, and role in the story…you might want to cut things down a bit!

And now that we know how to introduce our characters, it’s time for the last element of blurb-writing to fall into place!

II-IV Establishing the main conflict

And now for the final element we need to have in a blurb: establishing the main conflict!

Much like the premise, the main conflict constitutes the bulk of what a story is all about. It drives plot momentum and gives our protagonist(s) some kind of adversarial person or force to face off against. Whether that adversary is an evil despot, a force of nature, or even the dismal state of one’s love life, it’s important to be able to communicate to the reader what conflict they’re investing in! The premise and conflict go hand in hand – usually because one leads directly into the other – so writing them so that they are in fact conjoined is fairly common!

Check out the blurb for the book Eragon by Christopher Paolini, and try to identify the premise, and the primary conflict! This blurb is a nice example because unlike in many others, there is a clear divide between the two.

So how do you cut down the depth and breadth of conflict in your novel to fit into your blurb? Quite simply, give yourself a ‘two-sentence rule’: describe your main conflict in two sentences, no more, and try to see how you can work those sentences into a blurb.

It’s wonderful if you’ve written an 800-page epic full of twists and turns, but for now, rather than agonising over the details, tell us the basics.

Who or what is causing problems for our main character(s) and why? What are the stakes? Will the whole world fall if the protagonist loses, or is the only thing at risk of being lost a $20 bet? Let us know!

Keep in mind that a conflict does not have to be between two characters: as stated earlier, the conflict is simply the main thing against which our protagonist is struggling. If you’re writing a romance, the protagonist’s struggle to accept their feelings could very well be the conflict of your story, so don’t worry about having to identify a character as the adversary!

III - Fine-Tuning a Blurb: What Else Do You Need?

So, you’ve read all of the above. You know what the elements are, and how they’re written into blurbs. At this point, it might be beneficial to write down your story’s iterations of each of those elements separately. but before you move into combining them into a single blurb, it’s important that we note a few more things first.

So, other than the content of a blurb itself, what's important for making sure they work? Well, there's three main things!

Tone

Detail

Open-endedness

Tone Tone is something that falls to the wayside in one’s mind when writing a blurb, but it’s a very important element: your blurb must maintain a consistent and story-accurate tone for its entirety. Making sudden tone changes can make a reader feel jarred, and in a very unpleasant way. If your story is comedic, make sure your blurb is light-hearted in nature.

If it’s a dark, swelling interpersonal drama, don’t drop sudden jokes or make a sudden comment about a character’s love life. Make sure that the tone of your novel is carried across, because readers will pick up on the tone through the synopsis, and seek to either continue or abandon a story based on it!

Detail A less major detail, but one that’s important nonetheless: don’t overload the reader with detail in the first line of your blurb! Ease them into it a bit more gently. Don’t mention intergalactic wars or tragic backstories right off the bat – start off with more general statements and then get more specific as the blurb goes. Most blurbs follow this formula, so take a read of your favourites to look at how it’s done!

Open-endedness As you remember back in Section I of this guide, we stated that one purpose of a blurb was to pose a set of questions to the reader, and answer only some of them.

Do not give us the entire plot. Do not tell us how it ends, or how the big twist unfolds, or that one revelation that happens halfway through. Make the readers ask, ‘what happens next?’

Making a blurb too straightforward is the death of curiosity – we’ve all seen trailers for Hollywood movies that essentially give the whole movie away. The goal is to not do that. Make sure that though you give readers enough to go off, so they know what they’re getting into, they don’t know every nuance of the story up ahead. Give a direction, not a map.

In summary...

Remember, blurb-writing does not come easily to everyone. There is no shame in practicing, and rewriting your summary over and over. Nor is there any shame in asking others to do it for you.

This guide is just a way for people to be able to identify the elements of a blurb if they choose to create their own, or just understand blurbs as a narrative form better. There are also countless helpful guides, articles and blog posts online which can help flesh out your understanding if desired, so don’t hesitate to check them out!

I hope this has helped, and once again, happy writing!

Novels I referenced here, many of which have good blurbs to check out and analyse:

A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin. Published 1996.

Dune by Frank Herbert. Published 1965.

Eragon by Christopher Paolini. Published 2002.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J.K. Rowling. Published 1997.

The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins. Published 2008-2010.

If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio. Published 2017.

The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. Published 1950.

The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien. Published 1954-1955.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians Series by Rick Riordan. Published 2005-2009.

The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon. Published 2019.