Writers' Corner

[Hrollo]

(Not directly connected to the current discussion, just something I want to post in this thread)


I've recently that my way of conceiving a story is oddly analogous to my way of playing a videogame called SpaceChem.

SpaceChem is a puzzle game whre you given certain objects at an input and must assemble them into different objects before deliverying them at an output (the "objects" are actually atoms and molecules, but that's entirely incidentical, the game can be played by someone who knows no chemistry). The key aspect is this is a programmation game: to manipulate the objects, you have two little mechanical arms that run along a rail and execute the instructions they encounter — you must set the path of the rail and the instruction on it so that they form the right objects (this can include making sure the two distinct arms, which each have their own path, act in a syncroneous way).

The result is this is, unlike most puzzle games, very open: a given levels can have dozens of different, equally valid solutions — which doesn't mean it's an easy game, in fact the difficulty curve is pretty stiff.

In practice it looks like this:

Spoiler: show

A very simple level, where the two arms take the object from the input on the left, break it into two smaller objects, and deliver those on two distinct inputs on the right.



A much, much more complex levels, where the two objects on the left are reassembled into a single complex object on the right.

Anyway, here's the analogy to my method of writing.

First, in a level, you are given certain ressources (the objects you get from the inputs and the program instructions you're allowed to use) and an objective (the objects you must create): this is the theme of the story, this is what the story will roughly be about, in terms of context, kind of story, thematics, mood, etc.

Then, from this, you must first elaborate a strategy, understand which manipulations the objects have to go through, and in which order — this must be planned carefully as room and ressources are limited in each level, and collisions between objects aren't allowed: this is the plot of the story, this is the narrative of events that will actually happen in the story, and how they will be articulated toward each other, in which order they will be told.

Once this is done, then the actual design needs to be implement, the paths of the manipulating arms must be drawn, the instructions put into place, and the whole thing must be tested until it works (which sometimes may involve backtracking and completely rethink part or all the strategy): this is the characters of the story, the final actual elements that do all the work to make the story work, but which are themself guided and motivated by the story.


So that's how I conceive my stories, from the general to the particular, I guess — not that there's anything wrong with the opposite approach.

[Asterales]

Haaaaaaa ! It wasn't what I... *Blames her English* Shades ! Why have I so much shades in my language and not in English T_T

*Pat, pat*
That's why we write in our mother tongue, isn't it?
Don't worry about it so much. I sometimes really have to think what an English phrase means exactly, even if it only contains words I know.

Nonetheless, we can still talk about techniques and experiences.
It has been fun up until now, haven't it?

*looks at Rollo's post*
Well, if this isn't something to look forward to for tomorrow!
*falls into bed*
(Seriously, though, I need at least semi-coherent thought patterns for this.)

[Aierdome]

Mélusine - yeah, tell me about it... Author's one's own harshest critic and all that. As for behaviour of certain "personality types", I suppose a good way to "learn" that would be watching stuff. TV, movies, comic books, advertisements... after a while, you'll start to notice what each personality type is and how it behaves, and if you know the pattern, you can bend it. Bar that, I'd say TV Tropes. Seriously, they have a ginormous database of character archetypes, personality types, how they translate to real life, and a ton of useful advice on how they should be written. Just watch out, 'cause it's astonishingly easy to get lost and not emerge from its depths for months on end 

Rollo - interesting! For me, I mostly go the completely opposite way - I start with idea for a character, then craft a plot around it and then, hopefully, a theme emerges. I've never really written the idea around the theme, and I'd probably not even know how to do that, so it's interesting to read about.

Asterales, I do not want to barge into your away-from-computer life, but maaan, going by your posts from the last two days, you need more sleep. 

[Lazy8]

So I'd like to hear people's thoughts on worldbuilding when writing original fiction.

It's been a very long time since I've written anything completely original, so much so that most of the settings I came up with were pretty generic. Character building comes a lot more easily than it used to--I've gotten to the point where more often than not OCs will simply tell me things about themselves that I never thought out or planned--but I've gotten so used to playing in other writers' sandboxes that constructing my own sandbox is a skill that's kind of fallen out of use. And it sort of got me thinking about what goes into putting together a really unique setting like A:tLA, Ursula K. Le Guin's Hainish universe, or of course SSSS, where people look at it and remember it for being new and refreshing rather than just thinking "Oh yeah, there's another Tolkien ripoff."

Thoughts?

[mithrysc]

So I'd like to hear people's thoughts on worldbuilding when writing original fiction.

It's been a very long time since I've written anything completely original, so much so that most of the settings I came up with were pretty generic. Character building comes a lot more easily than it used to--I've gotten to the point where more often than not OCs will simply tell me things about themselves that I never thought out or planned--but I've gotten so used to playing in other writers' sandboxes that constructing my own sandbox is a skill that's kind of fallen out of use. And it sort of got me thinking about what goes into putting together a really unique setting like A:tLA, Ursula K. Le Guin's Hainish universe, or of course SSSS, where people look at it and remember it for being new and refreshing rather than just thinking "Oh yeah, there's another Tolkien ripoff."

Thoughts?

I have a lot of thoughts, but not so much structure so here goes a semi-ramble:

Spoiler: show

One of my ideals for whatever worlds I make is "fantasy that actually feels fantastic" (e.g., what Tolkien was to me as one of the first fantasy books I ever read). So unless I'm gunning for a pseudo-western-"medieval" fantasy setting, I try not to make it the default. On the other hand, I've played in several tabletop RPGs with a similar setting behind it, but because of the worldbuilding that had gone in was an interesting, breathing world. Of course, playing a character in someone else's world vs. actually making the world and everyone in it are very different things, but I guess I'm just trying to say that "new and refreshing" and "real and attention-holding" may not always come hand in hand.

I also have a hard time just inventing things on the fly, so I keep a lot of reference on things that are interesting or visually appealing to me, whether it be swords (lots of those), places, general cultures, overheard conversations, or just strange facts. I also try to write down random trains of thoughts I have, though I need to get better at doing that. As I go I borrow from a lot of these different places and stew it all together in my head.

It's kind of hard to say how I go about worldbuilding, given how bad I am at keeping notes and how undeveloped a lot of my worlds are, but they tend to start with a concept I'm currently interested by. I also like to go with general moods (palettes?) than hard and fast "how does this nation's economy work and what is their government like," which may come back to bite me later on but I'll worry about that later. My seed concepts are usually something from my reference pile or some sort of flipped trope.

Spoiler: thought trainwreck for one of my worlds • show

The name Hero > wow, Ancient Greece > I think that's Iron Age? Iron Age fantasy would be interesting > I really like Scythians > steppes, nomadic-hunter-gatherer-shepherds > weren't there shepherds in France that used stilts because of marshes? > the Scythian Steppes but everything is a very shallow ocean.

From there I work out some more of what I want the world to do or feel and also do some more research. Since I'm a very visual person mood or style boards (I either use Pinterest or just keep dumping images or documents into a folder) help a lot. Then since I am also a frustratingly practical person I also start picking things apart and figuring out how everything would work, or if everything would work that I can't just handwave by magic. This also involves a lot more research, and all the time I'm looking for interesting things to add or change.

As a side note, worldbuilding for me rarely happens without some characters already, sort of how some people were talking about building the world around the character before. So my character-building will affect my world-building, and vice-versa.

Er...I'm not sure what I was trying to accomplish by writing out all that, but TL;DR:
Research, collect, steal, combine, create, research. Nothing is really completely original, or at least most things aren't. Take the worlds you find interesting and try to pinpoint why you find them interesting, then work from there. Or take a common trope and flip it around, and see what you get when you throw in other ideas you find interesting.[/spoiler]

Only semi-related, but I'd also like to share some of the writing resources I've found helpful: Limyaael's fantasy rants (usually applicable to more things than fantasy), Brandon Sanderson's Write about Dragons lectures (mostly fantasy & sci-fi), and Writing Excuses, which is basically a treasure trove of information and also has the best tagline ever.

[princeofdoom]

From the writing board that I've been on for several years, it seems that people either worry they are writing the opposite sex wrong OR that men are easier to write than women (coming from women). The latter seems to be because men are presented as the default a lot of the time. But in the case of the having issues with the opposite sex, it seems to me that the problem is not seeing them as people first and guys or girls second.

There are going to be certain things expected of men or women in any culture, and some cultures will be stricter about enforcing those expectations. But no one perfectly fits what is expected of their sex or gender.

But definitely, if you give a guy character a trait that isn't seen as masculine and it fits him, there is no reason to change it. If it doesn't fit, it's because it doesn't fit HIM and not because it's not a guyish thing to do.

[Lazy8]

Thanks for sharing, mithrysyc. I'll be sure to mull that over.

From the writing board that I've been on for several years, it seems that people either worry they are writing the opposite sex wrong OR that men are easier to write than women (coming from women). The latter seems to be because men are presented as the default a lot of the time. But in the case of the having issues with the opposite sex, it seems to me that the problem is not seeing them as people first and guys or girls second.

There are going to be certain things expected of men or women in any culture, and some cultures will be stricter about enforcing those expectations. But no one perfectly fits what is expected of their sex or gender.

But definitely, if you give a guy character a trait that isn't seen as masculine and it fits him, there is no reason to change it. If it doesn't fit, it's because it doesn't fit HIM and not because it's not a guyish thing to do.

*nods* *nods*

This is pretty much exactly what I say when I'm advising pretty much any male writer on how to write women. Most common problem I see with male writers attempting to write female characters is thinking of them as women before thinking of them as individuals. The SSSS characters demonstrate this concept beautifully - could you picture Sigrun cleaning floors with woodland animals while waiting for a prince to come rescue her? Or Reynir thirsting to prove himself in battle? Or Sigrun and Tuuri sitting down and giggling about boys?

...okay, I think I need to go grab some brain bleach now. Be right back.

*returns after having downed a whole gallon of brain bleach to wipe those images from my head*

I'll add, though, that you shouldn't forget the characters' gender either - especially if they live in a conservative society with rigid gender roles. Typically, each sex will experience a whole slew of fears and pressures that the other one doesn't have to worry about.

[Unwary]

I got into an interesting conversation on the bus the other day.
It was about OC culture versus the writing culture before the internet. I tried to break it down as follows.

OC culture sprung up collaboratively, based on the freedom of the internet, and tend to be completely character driven. The characters often have intricate back stories, as a result of all the narrative they have participated in. When newly created their backstories often tend to be referential, whether to some common standard so that they are 'compatible' with as many other OCs that share that standard, or refering back to other events in the creator's narratives. Often there is much greater projection of the author onto the OC, and they grow organically through interaction with other authors and characters.

By contrast, traditional writing is far less character focused. The plot tends to be first to be created, though a character may serve as inspiration for a plot. The characters are designed to fit the story, and are often much more specialized than a comparable OC, as the character isn't necessarily designed to be transportable. The character will have as much back story as the author wants, including less than the minimum needed for an OC, which has to be able to stand somewhat separated from it's world. The character tend to grow, but along the lines of the story. Adapting more to the plot, than the plot to it.

To summarize, OCC is about the joy of telling A story, making something together that is more than the sum of it's particpants.
TW is about telling THE story, perfecting a narrative to the best ones abilities, with as great a control and finesse as the author can muster.

That was the definition/comparison I proposed, and I have been thinking about it a lot. For one thing, like most things, it's probably a lot less binary and more of a spectrum. For another, I haven't really done much in the OC style, so I'm speaking as outsider/observer, and would appreciate feedback.

So, thoughts and opinions? where do you fall on this spectrum?
(Personally, I think I'm about 5/8 traditonal writer, because I tend to create in this order. Worldbuilding and large scale plot, characters, and their personal story arc through the major events of the world.)

[Curry]

[sneep snop]
So, thoughts and opinions? where do you fall on this spectrum?
(Personally, I think I'm about 5/8 traditonal writer, because I tend to create in this order. Worldbuilding and large scale plot, characters, and their personal story arc through the major events of the world.)

Ooooh, man, this is so cool and a very good point! o: I've definitely seen a lot of examples crop up in the OC thread especially in the discussion about how OCs come to be. I definitely fall more on the OC side, because I tend to create characters and then the story, but in the past I was heavily plot-focused and the characters were made to fit the plot.

Funny story: I had a collaborative story that I worked on with one of my friends a looong while back and I was very frustrated because both of my friends created characters and then believed the story would come later but I couldn't accept that and I never understood how they could be so relaxed ^_^" I'm 100% sure I would annoy the hell out of past me with my current methods...

[Unwary]

I confess to having a very unstable writing style, when I was younger. So much so that I would keep abandoning stories after a month because I didn't write that way any more.
On the other hand I don't think I've changed much in how I come up with stories. The content yes, and the output have both changed. But I'm still following roughly the same pattern.
Idea, extrapolate large scale plots and events from that, find the most interesting character and place to put them and write that.

[LooNEY_DAC]

Personally, I tend to build stories around "what if"s (often ones that run counter to prevailing trends, like "What if the aliens were much stupider than us, and that's why they hate/fear us?") and go from there.

So here's another thing to consider: are you really sure your character would "never do that"? There are so very many reasons/excuses I can think of for seemingly OOC behavior, but I'll use Minna's own example of Onni from the (fairly) recent pages. When he showed up, people were saying, "Minna wouldn't have Onni act so OOC!" After page 451, they stopped saying it, because she demonstrated that it was a struggle for him to act so OOC.

Just food for discussion again.

[Unwary]

Likewise with the what-ifs.

I'd say that there are limits. It's like say a metal bar. The plot/author's hand can bend a character to any shape, but it's not going to return effectively to it's original form. If it does return, then you don't have a very well defined character.  Sure, Minna can show the struggle that Onni underwent, but if he keep shifting form our first impression with him, it's going to start being weird to compare first chapter Onni to the new Onni.2

[Róisín]

I think it's possible to have a character change really radically, but it needs to be done over a realistic span of time, and unless something really serious is involved, be consistent with how the character is first shown. As, for example, Onni might always feel fear of the silent world, but his fear for Tuuri and Lalli may overcome that. He has already taken the step of travelling outside Keuruu, and it might be that forcing himself to take this action may strengthen his character in the long run. So he is still recogniseably the same character, but it is unlikely that he would 'snap back' into exactly the same shape he was when that stressor is removed.

Or a character may be radically changed by some external event or piece of information, becoming ultimately a very different person. Perhaps they fall in love, or discover that their best friend is in fact the person who killed their family, or that the villain they are struggling against is their mother, or that every other character really is conspiring against them, or.....

If an author is going to majorly change a character, they not only need to come up with a believeable reason within the context of the story, they need to be very sure to make that reason clear to the readers. Otherwise you have bewildered readers going 'but Soandso would never ever do that!' But if the change is gradual, as it would be in life, the writer can carry the readers along on the journey of exploration of the 'new' character.

[John Candlebury]

The way that I've personally found works best for worldbuilding is: take some other author setting, find a barely elaborated upon locale/historical reference and then build the story there. Goal is that the constraints imposed on you by the existing universe should make it easier to work on the elements that your plot/characters actually need. Once you got those necessary setting details, you can start separating your "extended universe" for the originals author's.

For example if you wanted to tell the travels of some explorer in a high-fantasy world, you could take the Númenóreans and the Dark Lands, by doing that you've got a lot of decent story elements already. You've got yourself powerful sea-faring kingdom submerged in a civil-war, a low magic world, a gigantic forest covered continent shrouded in mystery and a dark power manipulating the most powerful king in the world; with two simple decisions you got all of that for you to play around. Now only got to emphasize the parts you like from the setting, replace the ones you don't like and tie your story to the result.

[Asterales]

Okay, so before I go get my thoughts all knotted up and useless, I'll answer to Lazy8's question first and then read all the fabulous replies!

(I glimpsed a recommendation of Limyaael's rants in mithrysc's post and I must say, I am a huge fan of them, too! They are great and really get you thinking!)

I think the most important thing is to take your world serious. Even if it is a comedic setting, if you don't accept the rules of the universe for real, then you cannot think of things that make it unique and you cannot experience it from your characters points of view.
Always try to think an aspect to the end, even if it seems to be a completely ridiculous one.
Personally, I don't believe a setting can be original or new - but the presentation can be! Think about stereotypes very carefully, but don't try to throw them out the window - otherwise you will get an anti-stereotype and that is just as boring.
And something I take very seriously, environmental possibilities: What kinds of plants grow in which region, what kind of animals would live there, how many of this kind of what and that kind of mineral would be needed to keep X-village supported, what do people eat and how do they protect themselves from wether during different seasons.
You can use real plants and animals as bases, and then modify them, make them more fantastic or 'unbelievable'.

And with that I am back to taking your setting seriously. You have to believe it to be as true as it is for your characters, and they cannot start doubting conventions based on our, this, worlds politics or changing traditions - they have their own.
I'll give you a few examples of thinking a thought to the end from some of my own stories:

Spoiler: show

1) Okay, so the first one is a rather humorous setting, all things considered. This particular feature came about in a sports lesson in 6th grade. This world is inhabited by fantasy animals that are ball-shaped and have fluffy, blue hair. The blue colour comes from a mineral these animals pick up from the earth while moving forward in little hops and jumps. When they hit something that doesn't contain the mineral, they lose it in a big cloud but since they need it for survival they try to reabsorb it, by jumping back into the thing that now has the mineral all over.
Imagine them hitting a human.
Funny, right? The guy will be covered in blue dust and no doubt stand there coughing and cursing.
Only for the inhabitants there it is not funny, as it is one of the most common causes for a violent and premature death, not to mention property damage and loss of livestock.  In fact, these animals are called "Blaflu" by the locals, which translates to "blue curse" and the only reason they are still around is that the one time there was an offensive against them, it turned into a suicide mission rather fast, with hundreds of civilian deaths. What's more, these animals are actually so feared, that they dictate the whole regions economics (mining and trade of minerals) and spiritual believes (they are honestly believed to be a curse send generations ago by an unsatisfied deity)

2) This one is from a friends story we did some joint brainstorming on, but since she had forgotten her own story the last time I talked to her, I feel safe in posting this one here:
She had one country that had magicians who could only make things "explode".
Young, as of yet untrained magicians are a hazard, setting things aflame, exploding walls and streets, taking someones arm out by mistake - making whole cities sneeze themselves comatose...

3) In Ferusch's story, the length of the hair is equivalent to the status of the person - what do you do with someone who goes bald? With babies? - Well, you better find a solution!

Just... don't stop halfway and call it a day when you design a world. There is always an astounding, surprising, funny, gruesome detail to be discovered when you set up the rules. So please, please, please don't break them!
And you can start form any kind of idea - even the most ridiculous sounding one!

Asterales, I do not want to barge into your away-from-computer life, but maaan, going by your posts from the last two days, you need more sleep. 

I always need sleep. Your comment made me realize, that while it's unfortunate most of you seem to start posting here, when I am supposed to have been asleep for some hours, doesn't actually stop me from going to bed! (Also, exams coming up. Oh, no! *cries*) So I'm not very active at the moment


Huh, it turned out most of the answers weren't answers to Lazy8...

I don't know where I see myself in terms of OCC/TW. Until your post, Unwary, I hadn't even thought about the fact that there might be a difference.
My stories are very character driven. Then again, the characters never exist independently of the world and I want to tell a very specific story in each case. Hm, maybe I see myself in the tradition of the Bildungsroman? So, actually my characters do change a lot? I find it unrealistic if they don't... I chase them through hell and back and they stay the same? Nawww~
But usually I start with world and characters at the same time. At a certain point both of those are fully formed and the mechanics of the setting so strict, that a plot is bound to spring up.
But I usually do have a very general idea of the themes I want to cover. In Ferusch's case that would be choice (crops up in all my stories, as it is a personal favorite, but in his it is almost the main focus); (following) other's expectations, the power of one person over others; redemption; loyalty and rejection.