Way With Worlds Book 1: Crafting Great Fictional Settings: Way With Worlds, #1

Way With Worlds

Book 1: Crafting Great Fictional Settings

(First Edition)

By Steven Savage

Way With Worlds

Book 1: Crafting Great Fictional Settings

First Edition

ISBN-10: 1533164797

ISBN-13: 978-1533164797

Copyright © 2016 by Steven Savage

All Rights Reserved. The materials in this book are provided for the personal use of the purchaser of the book. No redesign, editing, reproductions, or creations of a derivative work from these materials is permitted without the permission of Steven Savage. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, including but not limited to, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without written permission – except for the inclusion of quotations in a review or personal use.

The information in this book is offered with the understanding that it does not contain legal, financial, or other professional advice. Those interested in such advice should consult a competent, properly-certified professional.

While it is the sincere intent of this publication to provide accurate information in regard to the subject matter, the authors and all those affiliated with the publication of this book assume no responsibility for events occurring to any person or entity taking action or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication.

This book is not completely comprehensive. Some readers may wish to consult additional forms of information, some of which are provided inside this book.

This book is provided as is without warranty of any kind.

AUTHOR: Steven Savage

www.StevenSavage.com

EDITOR: Jessica Hardy

COVER ARTIST: Richelle Rueda

www.FireCatRich.com

First Edition

www.InformoTron.com

Acknowledgments

To all the readers of the original Way With Worlds columns who told me what they meant to them and made me realize it was time to rewrite them.

To all the users of Seventh Sanctum who inspired me to do this again.

To Serdar, Scott, Bonnie, Ewen, Jason, Paul, Carlos, Rob, Grant, and the rest of the gang for their support and feedback.

Thanks to my pre-readers:

* Gina Williams of squeezleprime.tumblr.com for all her notes!

* Duane Walton, who gave me a well-needed thumbs up. Her group, www.facebook.com/groups/writeonminooka/, is lucky to have her!

worth keeping, I could make it better and more accessible.

* Jackie Speel for her enthusiastic feedback!

Other Books By Steven Savage

Fan To Pro: Leveling Up Your Career Through Your Hobbies

Convention Career Connection

The Power Of Creative Paths

Activities For The Civic Geek

The Focused Fandom Series

* Focused Fandom: Cosplay, Costuming, And Careers

* Focused Fandom: Fanart, Fanartists, and Careers

The Career Series

* Epic Resume Go!

* Quest For Employment

* Resume Plus

* Skill Portability

Table of Contents

Title Page

Acknowledgments

Other Books By Steven Savage

Introduction

What You'll Get Out Of This Book

Why Worldbuild?

Basic Philosophy

Views, Lenses, And Your True Main Character

Worldbuilding, Principles, And Morals

Realism

Genres Within Genres

World Creation Essentials

Origins: In The Beginning - Once Again

Ecology And Ecologies

Intelligent Life

Culture And Civilization

Economics And Economies

Pyramids Of Power

Magic And Technology

A Look At Magic And Technology

The Differences Between Magic And Technology

The Tower Of Babble-On: Technology, Magic, And Language

Religion

Creating Religion Is Hard

Worldbuilding And Religion: General Advice

Worldbuilding With Real Religions

Creating Original Religions

Sex

Sex: The Biological Imperative

Sex: All In Your Mind

Sex: Let’s Get Social

Sex, Society, And Areas Of Interest

Gods, Spirits, Sex, Magic

Species And Races

Let's Talk About Species And Races - Kind Of

Species - Getting The Setting

Species - Adaptable It Is

Species, Race, And Culture

The Trap Of Positive Stereotypes

Characters

Where The Characters Are – And What?

Character Creation

A Deeper Examination Of Main Characters

Characters: Goals, Methods, And Results

The Stakes

Onward To Your Own Worlds

Appendices

Appendix A: Recording Your World

Appendix B: Worldbuilding And Language

Appendix C: Worldbuilding And The Benefits

About The Author

Introduction

Way With Worlds was one of those things that I just happened to do. Looking back, it's not surprising I actually wrote it. Twice. Well, three times, if you count putting the second rewrites into this book. Allow me to explain.

Creating worlds has always appealed to me.

I've loved making up worlds since I was young. I can recall drawing and writing at around age eight or nine; Star Wars and various science fiction novels inspired me to write fiction. Dungeons and Dragons in my teens further fired my creativity, as did a writer's group built around the comic series Elfquest. In college I played more D&D, along with Champions and other games, and experienced the shared setting of the Wild Cards series. I grew up at a time of amazing media that inspired to create my own fiction and games.

Over the decades, I saw how important settings were to stories. The setting, the world, provided background, drove events, and occasionally reigned in bad ideas. Worlds were the real character behind all other stories.

In my later twenties some friends and I created a shared superhero universe, telling stories about it in a self-published newsletter. We made and shared characters and places, interlinked our tales, and built a universe together. That experience put everything else I'd seen in my creative life in context. I saw how a setting came together, how it was maintained, and what it meant.

The setting, again, was the main character. We just focused on characters in the setting as that's how you knew the world. The universe we dreamed up was the foundation.

In my 30's I fell in with a variety of creative people as the internet connected geeks, nerds, fans, and creatives. I did more fiction writing, edited for other hopeful authors, and created www.SeventhSanctum.com, a personal website that eventually become a repository of random generators to inspire creative ideas. The internet age further expanded my creative interests.

Around this time fanfiction.net came into being, an early multi-fandom repository of fanfiction. To do my part to help writers, I wrote columns on worldbuilding, taking my past knowledge and putting it into something organized – that was the first Way With Worlds series.

These columns were my first attempt to codify all the things I learned about worldbuilding, the good and the bad, the things to do and the things to avoid. I won't claim it was the best thing I did, but it seemed that it helped people – and years later I still run into people that say it guided them

The first Way With Worlds ended, as all things do. My writing interests changed from fiction to non-fiction. However I kept coaching, advising, editing, and making creative tools for Seventh Sanctum – always looking for a way to help people.

Of course I kept reading and watching and gaming, experiencing fictional worlds in many forms. As I helped others, as I built random generators, I learned more and more about worldbuilding. I was always trying to understand creativity and everything it involved.

Nearly fifteen years later, I got the wild idea to rewrite Way With Worlds. Why not, I thought, incorporate everything I'd learned since then? Why not, I thought, re-evaluate my writing and improve it? Why not, I thought, make it better as it was fifteen years old . . .

I also considered making it a book, making it something a bit more permanent. You can probably guess where this is going.

Somewhere around when I started rewriting it and posting it at Seventh Sanctum, I got an email from someone mentioning how they'd printed out my old columns years ago. That struck a nerve with me – someone had printed out my ancient-in-internet-time advice for reference fifteen years ago.

That motivated me to finish the work, expand it, and definitely do a book. If someone felt my advice was worth keeping, I could make it better and more accessible.

When the columns finished, I wrapped them up in a series of books, edited them and expanded them, and made them ready for a broader audience. No longer existing as files on the internet and random musings, the books could even outlast me (a thought that certainly came up as I turned 47 the year the rewrites were done).

You're reading that result.

It's my hope this helps you be a better worldbuilder and creator – be your area stories, comics, games, or something else. The foundation of a good story is a good place for it to happen, so I'm going to show you how to build a where.

But enough abut this. You have worlds to build, settings to make, and tales to tell. So let's go, and I'll do what I can to help you get to a place that never existed, and take others there as well.

- Steven Savage

June 15th, 2016

What You'll Get Out Of This Book

So, now that you're diving into this book, flipping through it in a library, or reading a sample copy – what are you going to get out of it?

By the end of this book you'll understand:

* My basic philosophy of worldbuilding – that the world, in a way, is a main character.

* The basic principles of worldbuilding, and the role of worldbuilding in giving a reader or player a proper feel.

* The way a setting comes together, and especially what it means for intelligent life – your cast.

* The role of Magic and Technology and where they may or may not differ.

* How to create religion and the challenges you'll face.

* The difference between species and races, and understanding how sex and reproduction affects them.

* The role of characters in your world.

In this book you'll find suggestions, advice, and even the occasional exercise to help you out. Put these into practice wherever you can to help you be a better worldbuilder – or find where my advice might not fit you. Everyone's situation is unique after all!

Now that you know where we're going, let's get on that journey to a Better World – in the well-constructed sense, that is.

Why Worldbuild?

The internet age has given us more ways to create and to distribute our creative works. You can build a world for an online game, a role-playing group, or a self-published novel. If you have a world, you can breathe life into it and share it with others through many means.

But there's a question here – why focus on worldbuilding? Why treat it as something unique and separate and identifiable in our creative process?

Well, I have an answer, of course. First, though, let's have a little terminology to help you understand just why this is important.

A Definition Of Worldbuilding

Let's define worldbuilding here for the sake of discussion and possibly argument. I consider worldbuilding to be the following:

1) Creating a stable setting . . .

2) . . . where stories take place . . .

3) . . . that is consistent . . .

4) . . . and works by its own rules.

Worldbuilding creates something independent of a story (be that story in a comic, novel, game, etc.). It has its own rules, principles, and so forth. The stories take place in this setting, and in turn the story abides by these rules and doesn't violate them.

To be fair, a lot of worldbuilding falls somewhere between Its Own Rules and Whatever I Want At The Time where continuities may be altered by other factors – anywhere from a marketing decision to a need to update a tale. Worldbuilding is rarely 100% this world is totally it's own thing, it is limited by aspirations, by time, by marketing decisions, by what will sell (getting paid is an understandable motivation).

What's important is to aspire to create a world that is it's own thing, that's independent. You may not reach 100%, but the closer you get towards that ideal, the more you reap these benefits of worldbuilding.

Let's discuss what those benefits are.

The Benefits Of Worldbuilding

So what does worldbuilding give you? I'm glad you asked, even if I led you here.

An Understandable Setting. A well-designed world that has rules and locations that are stable is one people can understand. Because it makes sense, it feels real – and the stories within that setting are more interesting because of that sense of reality.

Preventing Errors. It is extremely easy to start running with an idea in a story or game or comic, and then violate previous elements of your setting. By thinking about (and recording) your world's information, you write a better tale, avoid plot holes, and make a better story. Even if you're not exactly trying to build a consistent world, a little solid worldbuilding makes your life easier.

Find Inspiration. There's something about a world design that seems to inspire a creator; the more you build your world, the more ideas you get. An obscure city mentioned in passing could be be detailed and provide an even richer setting. Answering unanswered questions can move your narrative forward or even surprise you with new story directions. Just looking over the world you've designed may let you free-associate new and inspiring ideas for your creations.

A Bulwark Against Bad Stories. When you know your world, you're less likely to engage in contrivance or doing half-baked stories. Rules you created reign in bad ideas. Parts of the setting you already made can be used or built on – as opposed to just jamming something in to keep the story going.

Avoiding Favoritism. When you take an active hand in worldbuilding, the integrity of the setting becomes a major goal. This is another barrier against bad writing; you'll be less likely to play favorites with a character or contrive particular plotlines because you're motivated to make a good world first. If, for some reason, you decide to break your rules (for example, not killing a character because exploring their backstory would be fascinating), the need to rethink continuity ensures such a change is done well and doesn't violate the rules of your world.

(You're creative, anyone would understand wanting to change a few events to get more cool things to write or draw.)

A Different Form Of Writing. Writing fiction, or a game, or so on is one thing. Writing about a setting is quite another. It can be great practice for a different form of writing, one that is more archival and focused on documentation. Worldbuilding and recording the information requires makes you think about what to write down and how to record it. It's essentially non-fiction writing about a fictional universe, further building your writing skills and creativity.

An Additional Piece Of Work. I adore books on fictional settings, dictionaries of characters, and maps of imaginary realms. If the world you build becomes famous, release the documentation of your world. It's fun, and it may inspire others. Also if you're looking to make money on your works, I don't think anyone would mind paying for a good book about your world. I've bought a few in my time!

A Contract. Worldbuilding is a kind of social contract between creator and audience. The creator, by working on a strong continuity with rules, imbues their work with meaning because they are saying there is an element a reader/player/viewer can trust. The person enjoying your work can trust the author to make a consistent, involving tale because the setting has that element of being thought through. If you've ever seen people upset with a bad bit of writing, illogical plot twist, and so forth, you know how strongly people feel about this social contract.

So How Much Of This Do I Use?

You've just started a rather large book on worldbuilding. How much of this will you actually use?

Let's turn that question around.

The book is designed to go into detail on what I consider ideal worldbuilding principles. Something to aspire to.

You probably won't use all the lessons or ideas in all your projects. Some won't matter. Some works require shortcuts. Some works are meant to be simple. You may never use everything here – you may not care.

Think of this advice as an ideal. The question is what you aspire to. We've all got different goals.

It's Time To Build

As you can see, there are quite a few benefits to worldbuilding. You can also see why I'm an advocate for the art – and it is indeed its own art. A well-built setting creates enjoyment and inspiration, as does the crafting of one. Also it's fun!

With that out of the way let's move on to some basics of