genre fiction and worldbuilding have a rough relationship
(originally posted October 21, 2022)
J.R.R. Tolkien did the world a disservice by making every single fantasy writer think that they need to chronicle every goddamn minute of their world in order for it to be legitimate. I don't give two shits about a king who lost a war 700 years ago. [Snore]! Get outta here!
-Brian David Gilbert, I read all 337 books in Skyrim so you don't have to | Unraveled
Plenty of smart people who are not me have posted plenty about Lore already around these parts and you should read what they have to say. I'm just a guy, but hey, why wasn't I consulted?
I'm extremely guilty of everything I'm complaining about, and it's not like I've produced an actual finished work yet myself. But as someone who tangentially hangs out in certain genre fiction writer spheres, gosh, people are just obsessed with their worldbuilding to the point that it's an unspoken measure of prestige or something. Like, mainstream heavy-scare-quotes "successful" fantasy (within the spheres I tend to see, so, mostly white, western spheres) are inspired by Tolkien and Martin and Sanderson, big ol' universes with intertwined installments and Lore, and I get it, right? I was into Fate for a decade; I understand the appeal, the scent that tickles the nose of a Lore Hound from three leagues away.
More pertinently, I understand the anxiety of feeling like you have to compete with that if you want to write fantasy. We live in the social media era now, and most of us are not Great War Era academic linguists or part of 19th-century American cults or what have you. It might be sour grapes talking, but I'm not sure how possible it is for a normal person to build that stuff without major backing or just being part of a media conglomerate like Star Wars or some shit. But fantasy writers especially, still sort of feel like they have to, because that's just what (again, mainstream-white-western) Fantasy is right?
So again, the end result is the vibe that "More Lore = Good" and it's almost some kind of sick arms race. There's a weird amount of, I guess, humblebragging? About how much research they did over all these minor details because they just had to know it for the history of their constructed world. I've seen posts of people talking about the thousands and thousands of words they wrote fleshing out the founding of cities, history of nations, the primordial forces that shaped the very universe. People saying they spent days researching iron deposits because they had a scene around a campfire and there was an iron pot and where did they get the iron from, the worldbuliding implications everyone.
Sometimes I ask them what the book is, the story. They often don't have an answer.
Like, I personally reckon that these are the main merits of having an original setting:
(aside: none of these are necessarily limited to original settings, historical fiction and narrative nonfiction and whatnot exist too, it's just a rant folks)
- You can more closely intertwine the story's milieu around its core themes
- You can create a sense of narrative weight around how the plot affects the setting
- You can create those "aha!" moments when stuff was secretly connected all along
The first is the most important, IMO. It's sort of the platter upon which fiction exists at all; creation myths and Just-so stories and whatnot informing cultural ethos. Why is this story being told, and what elements, real or not, are necessary for it to be told? For example, maybe you want to tell a story about how capitalism ruins lives, so you create a setting that has corporations controlling every aspect of human existence.
The second sort of naturally arises out of a desire for verisimilitude. This is the meat of "worldbuilding" as a concept, I think. You want things to make logical sense in ways that we understand from our own lived experience. In the real world, this is called "history".
Then that third one is the chocolate sundae, right? When you spot Melshii in Andor #8 and the neurons converge and you go "that's the thing from the other thing!!" and get that dopamine rush. That's what drives the "10 Things You Missed in Episode 4!" listicles, the fan wikis, the lore theory videos. This can arguably only happen when a setting hits a certain metatextual size threshold, and it's a proven way of getting people invested.
I think the part that bugs the heck outta me is seeing people sort of, approach worldbuilding in a way that feels backwards I guess? There seems to be some kind of belief that once they have the perfect world, the story will arise naturally from within; that constructed history has the same fundamental momentum as real history. They want that universe where they can write forty-seven books that are all on different planets but are secretly part of the same universe so they can blow your mind when you recognize a character from Book 3 in Book 9, but they haven't figured out what the books are actually about.
(by the way it's fine, maybe even better? if you do this stuff chiefly for your own personal amusement, hell, that's what Tolkien basically did until other people convinced him to send it to a publishing house, but presumably worldbuilders want to actually have a finished work)
We experience media we enjoy, and the more surface elements are always the things most easily imitated. We say "wow, cool robot", and make things with cool robots in them, without necessarily interrogating why the robots are in there in the first place. Swords and sorcery, neon and chrome. We see the little interconnected strings of our favorite franchise's web and we want that. And really great, amazing stuff can come from that, there's no denying it.
But finished product or work in progress, it feels sometimes like the substance has drained away, and all that's left is Lore. And I want a bit more than that.
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