Hey everyone! Welcome back to the first post in my new series on worldbuilding! I hope that this post is easy to understand and gives a good introduction to the topic this series will be about. So, without further ado…
Worldbuilding: Why World Build?
If you ever write fantasy or science fiction novels or something else that requires sufficient world building before writing, you know that world building can be difficult and take a lot of time and brain power. It’s hard and you have to think of a lot of things that you might not even end up mentioning in your book when it’s finally written. SO WHY DO WE DO IT?
I have written mostly fantasy novels for most of my life. I started at a young age and experimented with a wide variety of genres and found that I enjoyed, and was best at, writing fantasy but can also write decent science fiction. And so, even now I generally end up writing mostly fantasy but occasionally might enjoy trying some science fiction. Because of this I spend a lot of time working on world building
Have you ever read a fantasy or sci-fi novel where you felt like things in the story didn’t make sense? Where you felt like there was something important missing from the explanations? Or reading a book and realizing that there is a massive plot hole because of something in the culture of one of the countries? This is usually because of lack of world building.
Let’s put this into a real world context. In the country that you were born and raised in you have a culture. Many aspects of this culture were simply ingrained in you at a young age Because of this, they are things to beliefs you have unconsciously. This culture effects everything you do is your normal life without you realizing it and some of those things are never mentioned
For example, where I live there is a common phrase “knock on wood” which is a superstitious phrase used when you have made a wish for something. The belief goes that if you knock your fist against something wooden after saying your wish, it will actually come true because now some sort of supernatural force has not heard it and can now not stop it from happening. If you are familiar with this superstition, seeing it written out plainly sounds strange but it’s such a normal way of life that many don’t notice they’re knocking or will automatically respond to someone making a wish by saying, “knock on wood”.
Doing world building in a story is important for a similar reason. Culture is often small tiny ingrained things that people will do, believe, or understand that might not always be obvious but that effect them. If you, the writer of this universe, don’t understand as much as you can about the culture of your world, then it is very hard to make cultural interactions appear real.
Many of the best fantasy novels are so famous and popular because the writer is so familiar with the cultures of the world that they are able to write the story in the perspectives of a character to whom the culture is normal. This gives a feeling of realism to a book sent in an entirely made up world. This is why world building is so important.
In the next several weeks I will be writing posts on world building. Each post will be on a different aspect of world building and how they are important to the story and how to use them. I hope that this series helps new writers and veteran writers alike to help with the world building in your own fictional worlds. Don’t forget to like, subscribe, become a blog page member, share, and follow me on social media at the links below. And remember,
Get Up, Get Writing, and Get Published. See you next week!
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