#idk what gender the reader is any of em would look hot as FUCK in that

[sagendipity]

black shirt. i just wanna see outfits

the law of attraction: de minimis

outfits

quackity:

gn!reader:

[fitzonomy]

How do you approach worldbuilding?

Okay, full disclosure here but I’m still working on feeling comfortablewith my abilities in “world-building” (I put the phrase in quotes for a reasonI’ll explain in a moment). When I started writing fanfiction, I did so becauseI wanted to write but didn’t reallyfeel like I had the skills to develop something from scratch. But I had a fewcharacters and I was really into playing Skyrim at the time. So, I thought, “MaybeI’ll just start out writing a journal for Rook in Skyrim.” Rook was a characterI thought I had a good-enough handle on (spoiler alert: I didn’t and, boy, do Isometimes STILL pay for it) and I thought sticking with the Dragonborn DLCwould be a really easy story to chart a beginning, a middle, and an end for acharacter I didn’t have to build from the ground up or build an entire world ora story. A diary for a character seemed like a good start.

Rook of Skyrimquickly became not a journal (althoughin the first couple of chapters, you can still see where it started out assuch). There are probably still some of the very first drafts on a Skyrim forumsomewhere (that I just never bothered deleting because who cares). Whilewriting in this older style though, all ofthe characters started yelling at me (“I don’t sound like that!” or “I see how it is—I’m just a cardboard cut-out to put hereas a convenient thing to mention. Fuck you too.”).  So, while I’ve feel I’ve gotten better atdialogue and the like, world-building is still something I keep floaters onfor. That’s not to say I’ve not tried my hand at world-building (Cognitiva Uprising had eleven chaptersbefore I sort of put it aside. I don’t think it’s hosted anywhere currently,but it was something that I have a beginning, middle, and end for. There arestrong characters. The world was just a bit weaker than I wanted it). Fanfiction is basically the way in which I practice small-scale world-buildinguntil I can get a handle on it. With something like The Elder Scrolls (althoughat one time I also wrote for Dragon Age so I think that would work well inaddition to Fallout), big events exist and some details but thegames don’t often give you mechanisms for why the world is the way it is a goodamount of the time. It’s easy to build a world and populate it but it’llbe super flat if you’re looking to build a narrative that has some richness toit. For a story like Thistle Do Nicely,I don’t have to build a world—or atleast worry about the mechanisms behind why it is the way it is. It’s set inthe reality we have first-hand experience with. I don’t have to explain howcollege works in Thistle Do Nicely. IHAVE to do work in Relentless toexplain the academic systems of knowledge on a number of levels: an individualstudent’s progress, dynamics of an individual institution, how a particularinstitution interacts with local government/state government, and how otherinstitutions view one another (to be fair, I also use Raven’s Song to do some of this work). We do not have firsthand experiencefor the world of The Elder Scrolls. We dohave firsthand experience for what issues concern universities in ourworld.WHEW. That was really long-winded. Why did I put “world-building” in quotesabove? Because I feel that it the phrase is often used as an inefficient proxyfor “external environment.” I would classify developing characters as internalworld-building and building the environment around a character as externalworld building. I think we could then classify these even further (e.g.interpersonal relationships as being an “ecosystem,” a character’s interactionswith the physical environment as being “embodied world-building,” etc etc) butit would detract from the point. Here’s what I’ve learned from my own experiences and approaches ofworld-building. The usual YMMV and these are from my perspective und so weiter:

Don’t build worlds off of our currentworld’s assumptions. I don’t care if you are writing a modern day romance set in the United States, take allthe assumptions you have and put ‘em in a box because you’re gonna need to dosome hardcore reassessment about “the way things are.” For example, compulsoryheteronormativity isn’t just a story we hear when looking at the “usual”romantic comedy but also things like a “socially-acceptable” transgendernarrative that looks like “I am a woman in a man’s body.” It’s a narrative thatconforms to the expectations and assumptions that heteronormativity asserts. Inhomosexual relationships, it is common to hear, “So who’s the man and who’s thewoman?” Even beyond hot topic issues (such as gender and sexuality), there alsoexists assumptions about how communication works (usually “data transferbetween two people”), how social interactions work, and even how someone thinksabout the world (we don’t all interact with the world in the same way, we don’tall have the same mental dialogue with ourselves etc etc).

Become an expert at thetop-down/bottom-up analyses of your world. “Ash,” you sigh. “What the fuck does that mean?” Here’s an example:

A lot of writing advice with world-building has writersthink about what the lay of the land is. So, is the setting on an island? Alarge, land-locked continent? Near mountains? That’s fine. But I think whatthen happens is a disconnect between thinking about the land to thinking aboutsomething such as governmental policy or import/export mechanisms. When I sayto think about your world from a top-down perspective, I’m asking you to thinkabout larger phenomenon and behavior of the characters and then how we cantrace that back to smaller elements in the world. For example, if you statethat in your world the local government has always had strict policies in placethat regulate the hunting of certain wildlife, then it’s also important to knowwhy that is from smaller, foundationelements. Perhaps the particular wildlife upon which the regulations are enforcedare a species that in some seasons are superimportant for soil recovery (idk like maybe they have a jacked upmetabolism and poop a lot). THEN you might look further down and see, “Ah,well, these people would want a quicker turn around on soil recovery duringseason X because farming season Y is right after that time.” And so on. Youkeep taking this large-scale, overarching observation (strict rules on huntingduring a particular season) and then keep breaking down the whys and hows until you’ve got a good idea for why things are the way they are. (obvs I like repeating myself). But what about a bottom-up approach? Let’s take something like a friend groupfor this example. Suppose you have three characters that are really goodfriends (A, B, and C because I’m so creative). If friend A says somethinghurtful to friend B, then not only will friend B’s feelings become hurt butalso friend C will have a/some reaction(s): be angry at friend A, besympathetic to friend B, agree with friend A, not give a fuck about either A orB because it ain’t their business, etc. We’ve got individual elements A, B, andC but we can now trace this one incident like a ripple effect. A, B, and C havelives outside of their relationship so how does this effect their otherrelationships? Work? Family? Etc etc. Let’s take our Poop Factory species fromthe top-down approach to understanding the whysof a world. Think about the very first time the local government first passedthe regulation. What did they notice? Well, sometimes the crops would be stableenough to sustain people but then other years it was absolute shit. You canpretend one of the Top Poop Scientists of the Country (I’m sure you’d give thema better name) was also like, “Hey guys, I think I’m noticing that on years inwhich the crops are better, there are more Poop Factories around.” And on andon. Now, is it important to describe all of this to your readers? Absolutely not unless it is important to the story. If it’snot, then you’ve got a good working knowledge that you can explicitly describeinside and out—AND THAT will shine through in your world.

Consistent, tinydetails matter. So, you’ve gotthe world, you’re an expert in it, and you’ve got a pretty solid idea of yourcharacters. Just don’t forget to include the tiny details in the story! Treat thislike seasoning on food. Too much will ruinthe balance (garlic is the exception in the food analogy, so think of garlic inplace of “good grammar” because you can’t have enough of that).

 Culture andreligion: usually a hot topic to bring up in any world-building how-tothat can be found via google. I would add to this simply by referring to the “Don’tbuild a world off of this world’s assumptions” advice. Religions are usuallydeity-based but one should think about how deities are interpreted/ARE in a particularworld. A really good example of this is the pantheon in Bastion (rpg by Supergiant Games). Each god seems to represent theextreme ends of a particular spectrum (e.g. health and atrophy) and would grantfollowers one or the other with no rhyme or reason. In the game, this plays outin two ways. In the world, there are temples but you get the feeling thatthings aren’t quite stable (inreference to the deity impulses, not the actualworld that is literally fallingapart from under your feet). In gameplay, the main character can worshipone god at a time. If you choose to worship the god I was referencing above(health/atrophy), protag will get +5% on experience and currency earned in eachfight but all enemies become resistant to physical attacks. This is a unique mechanismby which deity creation drives the mechanisms by which religion is establishedand how culture conducts itself (if we are all subject to the god’s whims, nomatter how deep our belief and devotion, how would that come out in culture?).You might have entire towns where nowhere daresbe anything less than a devout follower of a particular god.

But I’ve done a bad thing and lumped these two ideastogether. In actuality, culture gets played out in a number of ways: food,medicine, geography, clothes, dialect, how to conduct oneself based on powerdynamics, etc. If you’ve decided to world-build on an island, I bet thatculture is going to differ a lot than if you’ve decided mountain valleys areyour thing. The difference will probablybe reflected in the geography by which characters are bound. Meals willlook different and because they look different, you might see a difference inwhat is considered polite ways to eat food or to conduct one’s self at a meal. If you’ve got specific questions about the myriad of ways culture is going tobe built into the world, hit me up. I haven’t even touched tool-use anddevelopment!Okay, I’ve written a lot so that’s it for now!