World Building

Warren Ellis has posted up a rather amusing quote by John Harrison on the nature of world building — the practice of creating a fictional world within a story.

Worldbuilding is dull. Worldbuilding literalises the urge to invent. Worldbuilding gives an unneccessary permission for acts of writing (indeed, for acts of reading). Worldbuilding numbs the reader’s ability to fulfil their part of the bargain, because it believes that it has to do everything around here if anything is going to get done.

World building is not dull and is absolutely necessary for any act of writing. It is the context within which the characterisation and the action occurs. It is the sweeping skyline shots in CSI, it is the lyrical poems in Lord of the Rings, it is the flashbacks in Lost, it is the mythology that allows any continuing narrative to move forward without repeating itself. It is the use and development of the environment as a separate and integral character within the story.

I’m under no illusions that world building can be done badly. A mediocre writer will hammer you with unnecessary facts and figures about their fictional world, they’ll take false pride in blasting you with whatever science fact or historical tit-bit they’ve dredged up from google. And as Harrison implies they use it as a clutch. But even a great writer will world build, its just that their skill makes it less obvious.