TWCL

[dpat57]

Heh, I've argued back and forth on world-building with fellow Sci-Fi and Fantasy writers for years.

Some insist they need to put down solid foundations and then paint the landscape and detail its past before they can start figuring out their characters and story. Sure, why not, if you want/need to spend longer on it so you're more immersed in your world, go for it, enjoy.

I see world-building as just another aspect of planning a story, which doesn't necessarily deserve more time and effort than the story itself. I figure you can either do this in advance, or you can kick off with sketchy ideas and imagery to get you rolling, then add more detail whenever you need more detail. Which isn't really hard -- we've all had years of reading and watching Sci-Fi and Fantasy to draw upon, we're stuffed with imagery already. The hard part is trying to figure out something original (regardless of whether I go with more thoughtful world-building and/or recasting old scenery approach).

Whatever works for you is always right.
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[smbhax.com]

ttallan wrote:

But I'm not the only one here writing in a mutli-planet universe. How do the rest of you sci-fi webcomickers handle it?

Basically the way you described, although in a sense my task is simpler because my planets are largely disposable, lasting just an episode or so, and it will be rare for the story to revisit all but a few of them. So I kind of get to do a lot of constant mini-world-building, which is fun.
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[katastrophe]

vulpeslibertas wrote:

Maybe. We're not all epic story-based comics.

Fair point, I keep forgetting the gag-a-day and just-riffing guys.

dpat57 wrote:

I see world-building as just another aspect of planning a story, which doesn't necessarily deserve more time and effort than the story itself. I figure you can either do this in advance, or you can kick off with sketchy ideas and imagery to get you rolling, then add more detail whenever you need more detail. Which isn't really hard -- we've all had years of reading and watching Sci-Fi and Fantasy to draw upon, we're stuffed with imagery already. The hard part is trying to figure out something original (regardless of whether I go with more thoughtful world-building and/or recasting old scenery approach). Whatever works for you is always right.

I... sort of agree with this, especially the "whatever works for you is always right" bit. In my case it doesn't segregate so neatly; a lot of what happens in the story has to do with, well, the worldbuilding, the structure of society, and so on, to the degree that my "worldbuilding" is often what's handing me significant plot points and characterization issues. That may just be me though.

I also think it's important to recognize that your iceberg (yes, I am going to ride that metaphor until it throws me and stomps my battered body into pulp, thanks) is there no matter what. If you don't specifically build it, then it's made up of your unexamined assumptions about how the world works. In a work of science fiction or fantasy particularly this can be deadly. There's a wonderful quote which I am too lazy to source that goes: any fool could have predicted the car, but it takes a genius to predict the traffic light. It's way too easy -- especially if you're just drawing on stuff you've read/watched -- to throw in, say, flying cars that work just like regular cars, without going "hang on, traffic just became three-dimensional, that... has got to cause some problems." At best you're tossing away a chance to make your world seem strange and nifty, chances that are in my opinion one of the best things about sf. At worst, you end up doing something that makes your readers go, "wait, that makes no sense, they should have just done X," and for a significant portion of those readers, it may throw them right out of the story.

(Or, worse, your unexamined assumptions can break reality. I remember reading a fantasy story in which the female lead escapes by running out of a tent, jumping on a completely tackless horse, and galloping away for six hours, bareback, no reins, and naked. The author was apparently under the delusion that at the end of this the horse was not dead and the rider was in a condition to be ravished, but I honestly can't remember much beyond this point because my brain was too busy yelling "A HORSE IS NOT A CAR.")

I should also point out that most people who read a lot of science fiction and/or have a background in the sciences spend a lot of most science fiction movies rolling their eyes, so you may want to keep that in mind when borrowing from, say, Avatar.

I think your basic point still stands -- it doesn't much matter whether you work out all those details ahead of time or just as you trip over them, though the second method does have a greater chance of biting you in the butt (I speak from experience here). But it's very dangerous to simply let your assumptions about how a technology or a society works ride, even if it's a technology or society you made up. The chances that you will accidentally break your world are high.
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[vulpeslibertas]

katastrophe wrote:

At worst, you end up doing something that makes your readers go, "wait, that makes no sense, they should have just done X," and for a significant portion of those readers, it may throw them right out of the story.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the best reason to keep most of your iceberg underwater. There's a good chance your audience won't think as in-depth about your comic as you (if they do, then you're lucky). If they never see the contradictions, they'll never know they exist. Also from experience testing stuff: one thousand people are certainly going to find more flaws than one person will. The more steps you are ahead of the readers, the better. (Converse point - don't keep your readers so in the dark that they lose interest, either).

katastrophe wrote:

I should also point out that most people who read a lot of science fiction and/or have a background in the sciences spend a lot of most science fiction movies rolling their eyes, so you may want to keep that in mind when borrowing from, say, Avatar.

The curse of having the experiences that I do is that all seagoing drama films are now comedies.
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[smbhax.com]

Probably shouldn't drive a car naked either, though. I mean ew, unsanitary.

Also I suppose it could be awkward if you're pulled over.
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[SuitCase]

Quote:

Every moment of a science fiction story must represent the triumph of writing over worldbuilding. Worldbuilding is dull. Worldbuilding literalises the urge to invent. Worldbuilding gives an unnecessary 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. Above all, worldbuilding is not technically necessary. It is the great clomping foot of nerdism. It is the attempt to exhaustively survey a place that isn’t there. A good writer would never try to do that, even with a place that is there. It isn’t possible, & if it was the results wouldn’t be readable: they would constitute not a book but the biggest library ever built, a hallowed place of dedication & lifelong study. This gives us a clue to the psychological type of the worldbuilder & the worldbuilder’s victim, & makes us very afraid.

— http://www.warrenellis.com/?p=4136

And I couldn't agree more. If you're interested in "world building", you're likely a bad writer with terrible habits. Rein yourself in. Nobody cares about your stupid world. Write stories.
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Bittersweet Candy Bowl, a comic of love, drama and cats.
Updates 3 times a week!

[vulpeslibertas]

SuitCase wrote:

If you're interested in "world building", you're likely a bad writer with terrible habits.

I don't know if I'd go that far. Besides, I'm on hiatus. It's against my principles to do anything productive for my comic. Of course, everybody has different opinions, and every comic has different needs. That's why most of us are here: to get other people's perspectives.

I would like to present a different sort of idea.

So far, most of the conversation has been about research and how exhaustive it is. SuitCase has a good case that that might not suit everyone. One of the things I wanted to know from other webcomickers is: ok, so you've got a world. It's fleshed in in your mind to whatever extent you deem necessary. How do you introduce your world to your readers? Yeah, sure, it's got castles and spaceships and magic cupboards. But are there techniques for how to show this. We give characters their own introductions, cameos, intro panels, conversations. If you think of the world as a character, what kinds of methods do you do to introduce it to your readers?
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[Meggyc]

The way I see it, story and characters are the meat and potatoes of a comic, but little details can be the seasoning that makes it enjoyable. What I mean to say is details about the world can enhance the story. Of course such elements won't save a weak story, but it could mean the difference between reading something and just enjoying it... or reading something and really being caught up in it.

That's why I believe backgrounds are really important. I want to feel like the characters exist in a real place and that the world looks like it could be lived in. It doesn't matter what art style or how complex or simplistic one draws... I just want to see backgrounds-- no-- environments. The background is an opportunity to show what may not be an important, amazing detail for the plot, but one that really sells the world. Maybe we don't want to see the main character in an epic sci-fi comic getting the dry cleaning, but a wide shot of a busy, futuristic city street may be the perfect opportunity to show average people doing average things (for the time period), perhaps as a "calm before the storm" before something happens to shake things up. I guess that's not so much about world building as it is how to show off a world that has been built.

I suppose it is possible to fill books of information about fictional worlds (J.R.R. Tolkien did it, right?) and it's possible 95% or more of it won't be important to the plot of a story, and thus be cut. But I think it is good to have a vision of what the world you are writing about is. (Just not to the extent of writing a 500 page book about it.... for the average web-comic creator at least.)

Anyway, I guess I'm in a situation with my comic that falls outside the realm of sci-fi or high fantasy. At first glance, it seems to take place in a normal world, just with a few strange creatures thrown in. But that's not really the extent of it.

At any rate, I believe there is a certain about of world building that goes into just about any comic, at least on an abstract sense. Even journal comics have their own spin on reality. Really, it's all just a part of the story telling process.
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[smbhax.com]

Tolkien was the name that sprang to mind when I first saw the title for this thread (even though I think "world building" or worse Ellis' "worldbuilding" is an appalling phrase), and he was by no means a bad writer. He was also a fantastic storyteller and master of the language--he probably couldn't have got away with what he did otherwise. And even so, if he had just say come out with The Silmarillion--his straight out this-is-how-the-world-was-made narrative--and nothing else, he would probably not be remembered very fondly, if at all.

But he had an academic background that probably very few webcomic "world builders" have; I think maybe that helped him separate the dry backstory stuff from the real stories in a much more professional way than most can hope to achieve.

And anyway just because something works for one author doesn't mean it will work for another. Which is kind of why it's silly to argue about this topic--just do what works for you.

I can say though that if I see a comic that is pretty much just narration packed with crazy made-up names, I do not stick around.

vulpeslibertas wrote:

One of the things I wanted to know from other webcomickers is: ok, so you've got a world. It's fleshed in in your mind to whatever extent you deem necessary. How do you introduce your world to your readers? Yeah, sure, it's got castles and spaceships and magic cupboards. But are there techniques for how to show this. We give characters their own introductions, cameos, intro panels, conversations. If you think of the world as a character, what kinds of methods do you do to introduce it to your readers?

This is an interesting question!

For myself, I have single-panel comics with little or no dialogue; this pretty much means that anything I introduce has to translate in a very visual way, *maybe* with a reference in a sentence or two of dialogue. Here are some examples:



^ This is the latest world (or space station, anyway) I'm introducing--it stands out a bit since I actually gave it a name! But that was all the reader knew about it--and that the main character wanted to go there--until this reply by the booking agent at the spaceport. So now we know that this "Molsov" place is in an "unregulated system." I've never used that phrase before in the comic, but I think it gives the reader's imagination some room to start exploring, particularly since they know this area of space is dominated by planet-owning corporations.



^ This was part of a very brief flashback episode, the first time I've ever broken the linear flow of the narration. The flashback takes place entirely in this rather vaguely designed room (this is about as much as we see of it), and the only clues the reader is given are: a) the numeric designation of the main character, in the episode's subtitle--the main character up to this point has been a series of clones in the # 30's, but this episode is subtitled # "0," b) a very slightly older face on the character, and a more conservative style of dress, c) that tube you see in the background here, which could be a simplified, solitary version of cloning chambers seen in larger, more complex configurations in previous episodes.





^ This is the biggest single chunk of "world building" I think I've ever done. I was worried it would be boring, but I couldn't see a way to get around having to explain those points before the main character goes there on an undercover mission--these three panels have to supply the entire reasoning for why she opts to go undercover, and why she doesn't just shoot the target at first sight, or kill him at all until she's able to get him off the station, a process that covers the next 150 pages or so.





^ I didn't explain this location at all--the reader just knows the main character is going to meet someone who might give them an assassination job. Whether or not the visuals are enough for a reader to understand that it's a rotation space station with a microgravity central entry hub and long elevator shafts leading out to the inertia-induced gravity-having ends, I dunno! That's their problem. :P



^ Another world--all the reader knows before we arrive and get this one wide shot



is that it's an "administrative planet" and that the main character's target is hiding out there. But one reason why I don't have to build up this world very much is that it doesn't last long ;)




With my earlier main character, "world building" was easier



because he talked to himself a lot as he went along. ;)

Even so, sometimes I wanted a location to be mysterious. So I would intentionally describe it pretty vaguely




hopefully giving the reader's imagination a lot of time and space to think about what the implications might be.

When the two main characters eventually reach this destination, I gave it an unusual number of panels of introduction, because it was going to be the setting of the next episode and a half, which concluded the plot of the first ten episodes; also, it was visually striking in that it was *not* packed with stars like every other area of space seen in the previous nine episodes:






^ That was also back when I was usually managing more than one page a day, so I felt a little more freedom to be verbose. ;)

In my silent comic, it all has to be visual--going for a sort of storybook approach helps. So this is what we know about the main character's home:




This is what we know about the ocean she crosses:



This is what we know about the civilization on the other side of that ocean:



So basically I leave a *lot* to the reader to figure out or imagine; I do this because as a viewer, that's what I like. It isn't for everyone, that's for sure, so I guess it isn't the smartest approach from the point of view of getting a huge audience, but hopefully the audience I *do* get is an unusually imaginative and patient one--just like anyone who actually made it all the way through this post. =D
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[ttallan]

vulpeslibertas wrote:

How do you introduce your world to your readers?

I don't usually think about this as a technique, so this is an interesting topic to me!

I seem to have made it a habit to introduce my world slowly and in little hints here and there which will, I hope, one day add up to an intriguing whole. Some of these hints come in the form of dialogue, and some from visual background elements. I like the idea that folks can go back and re-read the story after it's done and pick up these little details, adding to their mental image of the Galaxion universe. Also, there are some things that I deliberately keep firmly behind the curtain, such as any mention of the year or any explanation for their FTL spaceship propulsion. It just works, and that's all anyone needs to know. I'm sure many readers will have in their heads a much better science-y excuse for it than I could ever provide.

I enjoy stories where a large part of the journey is discovering the secrets of the world the characters inhabit, like an unfolding mystery. Although I'm not really writing that kind of story, I appear to have taken at least a few of those techniques to heart in my webcomic world.
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[katastrophe]

Quote:

Every moment of a science fiction story must represent the triumph of writing over worldbuilding.... http://www.warrenellis.com/?p=4136

Eh. This is a quote I put right up there with Heinlein's "Never rewrite, unless to editorial demand": fantastic advice, as long as you happen to be a creative genius. When Warren Ellis does it, we get Spider Jerusalem and Freakangels: when other people do it, we get a thousand comics set in Generic-Middle-American-Schoolia and Dungeons-and-Dragonsland. If you do happen to be M. John Harrison or Warren Ellis, or if you're not quite that good but you feel the burden of worldbuilding is crippling you, sure, go for it. But the evidence suggests that for a lot of people, no worldbuilding = flat, bland worlds.

Of course you can overbuild, and god help you if you ever tell people everything you know about your world, which leads neatly into...

vulpeslibertas wrote:

One of the things I wanted to know from other webcomickers is: ok, so you've got a world. It's fleshed in in your mind to whatever extent you deem necessary. How do you introduce your world to your readers? Yeah, sure, it's got castles and spaceships and magic cupboards. But are there techniques for how to show this. We give characters their own introductions, cameos, intro panels, conversations. If you think of the world as a character, what kinds of methods do you do to introduce it to your readers?

I think that last line of yours is a brilliant start: think of your world as a character. You do not dump the entire history of a character on the reader from the get-go, complete with Tragic Past and food allergies. You save that info up until it's useful to you as a storyteller that the reader know. Ditto with worldbuilding.

As far as how... well, it depends. But some general advice:

a) Keep it real. People do not stand around talking about something they already know for the benefit of an invisible third party -- you need a legitimate exchange of information, as well as a reason for them to be exchanging it.

b) Time it right. The best time to give readers information -- especially large chunks of it -- is after they want to know. Wait for the question before you start handing out answers.

c) Keep it short. Long-winded explanations are boring and usually out of character (unless your character is a geek....)

d) Reward the reader. In the short term, have some kind of payoff -- a plot point explained, a joke, et cetera -- right there, to reward your readers for reading your world stuff (and to keep the world stuff on point and the story moving). In the long term, reference back to earlier worldbuilding. Make them feel clever for remembering and understanding how your world works. Immerse them.

e) And most of all, never give more information than you must. It's great that you know this stuff, but resist the urge to dump it on your readers. If, like me, you just can't resist (or people start begging you for it) keep it in the newsposts or separate parts of the site, so the people who love it can go looking for it and those who don't can ignore it.

One elderly example from my comic involved two of my characters from different social backgrounds discussing how they celebrate the same holiday (the previous comic, now that I look at it, isn't a half-bad example of establishing the social disparity between the two.) I am, you'll note, violating b) -- the readers don't yet know this holiday is important -- but by the end of the page, I've given them a reason to care. You'll very rarely manage to get all this stuff right at the same time; as long as you don't get them all wrong, and find ways of compensating, you'll be okay. An example from a better comic than mine: the past couple of pages of Galaxion have been largely straight worldbuilding, but we've all spent the past few months going "What? Wait, what?" and are thus in exactly the mood to devour a long explanation and, if anything, want more.
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[Casual Notice]

heh...It amuses me that so many people seem to think that world-building is a matter of sitting down before hand and plotting out every detail of a world and society.

World-building can be a simple as keeping notes while you write so the past can be referenced later and the future doesn't conflict with history (a society that arrests someone for being pantsed is not likely to hold publicly-funded orgies). Or it can be finely-detailed research that covers every possible angle. Or anything in between.

The only people who can get away with no world-building at all are those with non-episodic gag-a-day strips. Consider that even Penny Arcade has an established canon.

Also, I'd add to the list above, "If you can do it in a background or estblishing panel, do that before you start typing narrative text."
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What I lack in sincerity, I make up for in sarcasm.
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[smbhax.com]

katastrophe wrote:

e) And most of all, never give more information than you must. It's great that you know this stuff, but resist the urge to dump it on your readers.

Yeah! 'Cause then you're committed to less stuff that you can't change later on. ;)
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[ttallan]

smbhax.com wrote:

'Cause then you're committed to less stuff that you can't change later on.

Ha! Ain't that the truth. This is a problem unique to the periodical format of storytelling. If you were writing a novel or even a graphic novel for print, you could just go back and fix such worldbuilding errors in a later draft. Well, yes, you can go back and fix pages in your webcomic archive, too, but there seems to be a bit of a stigma attached to such retconning. Like it's cheating, or something.

(Or, you can just go on with it and hope no one notices the little inconsistencies!)
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[rocketpig]

katastrophe wrote:

Quote: Every moment of a science fiction story must represent the triumph of writing over worldbuilding.... http://www.warrenellis.com/?p=4136 Eh. This is a quote I put right up there with Heinlein's "Never rewrite, unless to editorial demand": fantastic advice, as long as you happen to be a creative genius. When Warren Ellis does it, we get Spider Jerusalem and Freakangels: when other people do it, we get a thousand comics set in Generic-Middle-American-Schoolia and Dungeons-and-Dragonsland. If you do happen to be M. John Harrison or Warren Ellis, or if you're not quite that good but you feel the burden of worldbuilding is crippling you, sure, go for it. But the evidence suggests that for a lot of people, no worldbuilding = flat, bland worlds. Of course you can overbuild, and god help you if you ever tell people everything you know about your world, which leads neatly into... vulpeslibertas wrote: One of the things I wanted to know from other webcomickers is: ok, so you've got a world. It's fleshed in in your mind to whatever extent you deem necessary. How do you introduce your world to your readers? Yeah, sure, it's got castles and spaceships and magic cupboards. But are there techniques for how to show this. We give characters their own introductions, cameos, intro panels, conversations. If you think of the world as a character, what kinds of methods do you do to introduce it to your readers? I think that last line of yours is a brilliant start: think of your world as a character. You do not dump the entire history of a character on the reader from the get-go, complete with Tragic Past and food allergies. You save that info up until it's useful to you as a storyteller that the reader know. Ditto with worldbuilding. As far as how... well, it depends. But some general advice: a) Keep it real. People do not stand around talking about something they already know for the benefit of an invisible third party -- you need a legitimate exchange of information, as well as a reason for them to be exchanging it. b) Time it right. The best time to give readers information -- especially large chunks of it -- is after they want to know. Wait for the question before you start handing out answers. c) Keep it short. Long-winded explanations are boring and usually out of character (unless your character is a geek....) d) Reward the reader. In the short term, have some kind of payoff -- a plot point explained, a joke, et cetera -- right there, to reward your readers for reading your world stuff (and to keep the world stuff on point and the story moving). In the long term, reference back to earlier worldbuilding. Make them feel clever for remembering and understanding how your world works. Immerse them. e) And most of all, never give more information than you must. It's great that you know this stuff, but resist the urge to dump it on your readers. If, like me, you just can't resist (or people start begging you for it) keep it in the newsposts or separate parts of the site, so the people who love it can go looking for it and those who don't can ignore it. One elderly example from my comic involved two of my characters from different social backgrounds discussing how they celebrate the same holiday (the previous comic, now that I look at it, isn't a half-bad example of establishing the social disparity between the two.) I am, you'll note, violating b) -- the readers don't yet know this holiday is important -- but by the end of the page, I've given them a reason to care. You'll very rarely manage to get all this stuff right at the same time; as long as you don't get them all wrong, and find ways of compensating, you'll be okay. An example from a better comic than mine: the past couple of pages of Galaxion have been largely straight worldbuilding, but we've all spent the past few months going "What? Wait, what?" and are thus in exactly the mood to devour a long explanation and, if anything, want more.

I'll add "tell your backstory in the comic itself instead of rambling on about it on Twitter or creating a 'primer' instead of creating actual comics pages that tell the story (here's looking at you, Dresden Codak)."

If there's too much detail in the backstory to tell your story in comics, you should be writing a novel or re-thinking what it is you're creating. Too much backstory talk without enough actual content comes across as pretentious creator masturbation, IMO.
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