Building a World
I’ve heard several authors talk about world-building recently. If you write any type of speculative fiction, you gotta do it, and if you want readers to come back for more, you gotta pay attention.
For my current paranormal series (of which Ordinary Angels is the first), I have three types of supernatural creatures: angels, demons, and faeries. Only two of the three have showed up by the end of Book 1, but in order to make things work, I needed to establish in my own mind what each of the races could do. In other words, there have to be rules. Even supernatural creatues have to have limits, otherwise there’s no suspense as to whether your characters’ goals can be achieved. And they have to be sensible limits too.
Charlaine Harris (author of the Sookie Stackhouse novels on which HBO’s True Blood is based) made what I consider to be an error in her world-building. “V”, the street name for vampire blood, is addictive and dangerous. In the TV series they take this idea and make one of the main characters an addict. Even in the books though, V is sought after enough that “drainers” are a danger to vampires. Now, this all makes sense, right? But what about the fact that Sookie (and others) routinely drink vampire blood to heal themselves or as a part of sex (ew), and nothing happens to them. I think Sookie’s senses were heightened and her hair got glossy. Not exactly the dangerous side-effects that addicts experience, and she’s never gotten addicted, even though she drinks it by the pint, and addicts trip out if they take in so much as a few drops. On her website, Harris addresses this question, but honestly her answer sounds like “I know it doesn’t make sense. Shut up and go away.”
It seems a small thing, but it’s annoying when the rules don’t make sense.
The Harry Potter novels suffer from a similar lapse. Bear (my 15 year old son who is also a budding author) pointed out to me just yesterday that magic in the HP books doesn’t cost anything. I.e. there is no mana pool to draw upon, no “source” to channel, or personal energy that becomes drained when magic is used. Basically, you just gotta be born with wizard DNA, then you have to learn some pseudo-latin words and how to flick your wand just right. Okay, fair enough. But … what makes Dumbledor such a great wizard then? The characters talk about how great and powerful he is, but what’s so great? He knows more magic words? It’s never explained why some wizards are better than others, and once Bear and I sat down and talked about it, he made me realise that this doesn’t make a lot of sense.
For Spec Fic authors, critque partners and beta readers are essential for this reason. We know what we mean, and it makes sense in our heads, but we all have these consistency issues. Readers might forgive if a character has blue eyes on page 72 and green eyes on page 312, but if you break your own fantasy rules (such as how magic works, how a particular system of government is organised, or why angels can go invisible but faeries can’t) , or worse yet fail to create rules and lore at all, you risk annoying your readers beyond redemption.
Spec Fic readers are smart and demanding of authors. It’s impossible not to make any mistakes in a manuscript, however if you’re demanding of yourself, you’re half-way there.
Related Posts
-
Don’t Sit Down in the Middle of the Woods
Posted on Aug 21, 2010
-
Fixing Your Book
Posted on Aug 17, 2010
-
No More Excuses
Posted on Jul 31, 2010
-
Bad Writing Advice
Posted on Jul 27, 2010
Tags
Share This
Great post India!!! I never thought that way about Harry Potter. This will spark some great discussions with my hubby who thinks he is a Harry Potter encyclopedia.
[ Follow me on Twitter: michellesussman ]
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
[ Follow me on Twitter: mattdelman ]
Terrific post. Consistency and logic are SO important in world building. If I get thrown out of the world by something that contradicts the rules of the world, I generally don’t pick up another book by that author.
[ Follow me on Twitter: jemifraser ]
I worried about those types of inconsistencies in my book, too. The final big scene was a struggle, as I outlines five difference scenarios before I discovered one that made logical sense on every level.
[ Follow me on Twitter: alexjcavanaugh ]
So glad you said this – I’m often irritated by SF or fantasy inventions not being sufficiently threaded through the rest of the world. If you have time travel, for instance, you probably don’t need a fridge because you’d put your perishables in a time-cupboard! If I make up a world, I think very hard about the ramifications and rules. I’m tweeting this.
[ Follow me on Twitter: dirtywhitecandy ]
I worry about this a lot when I write – breaking the rules. Even when I’m working in the “real” world with “real” laws of phsyics and human limitations, I worry that it makes sense in my head but not on the page. Of course it makes sense to me – I know the entire life story of this person. I think Beta readers are so valuable for that. They point out not only the small things – like changing eye color, but the bigger stuff too. Excellent post.
[ Follow me on Twitter: MeganSwicegood ]
You have a 15 year old son??!?! Wow!!
Anyway – moving on swiftly…!!
It’s just I had you pegged for like 20 going by your pic! Ok, I’ll stop now and get over it and go away! LOL!
The worse thing is to the JR/Dallas effect – all plot holes are explained away when the character wakes up and all that has gone before was in a dream! Or it’s like watching films with continuity bloopers – one minute the man is wearing scarf, next scene it’s turned into a tie!
Great post, thank you!
Take care
x
Nice Post India, if one is building a franchise one has to stay dependable with one’s creations or explain anomalies. I haven’t read Harry Potter or any of Charlaine Harris’ works but even in a single edition book if you forget your “rationale and reasoning” you lose your readers belief in your story.
Ciao Bella,
Ardee-ann
[ Follow me on Twitter: ardee_sagemoon ]
A Certain Highlander brought up Terminator 3 after reading this article. The first one made so much sense, but each subsequent film had greater and greater continuity problems. Time travel is a bitch!
@Old_Kitty Hee! Photoshop is my friend. I’m 40.
[ Follow me on Twitter: IndiaDrummond ]
I like that idea of wizards running out of mana. Surely there’s potential there for a story that uses RPG/computer game type rules:
“Damn it I’m out charge, you need to cover me!”
“Wait I’ve just levelled up – ha ha say hello to Fireball Level 2″.
Consistency is key! There have been times where in the middle of something completely unrelated I will have a revaltaion that something I wrote was a physical impossibility.
I think there is an explanation for Sookie if anyone cares to hear it. She is a telepath and they often refer to her as being above and beyond the normal human realm. There is an instance where Layfayette heals himself from Eric’s blood and goes crazy with nonstop (and not to mention hilarious) dancing.
[ Follow me on Twitter: AnneNKenny ]
Yeah, Anne, they are able to gloss over the inconsistency a bit in the TV show much more than in the novels. But if you remember in the TV show, Jason uses *one drop* of “V” and ends up in the emergency room. There’s also another bigger gap in there, but I don’t want to give away Jason and Sookie’s secret to anyone who hasn’t read the books. (A Certain Highlander would kill me! He watches the shows, but hasn’t read the books, so I gotta keep any ‘insider knowledge’ to myself!)
[ Follow me on Twitter: IndiaDrummond ]
Love your observation on Harry Potter. I *knew* there was a reason I don’t like it!
*ducks*
I can buy Dumbledore being a great wizard if greatness = wisdom, i.e. it’s not just the magical talent but the knowing when to use what sort or magic… there’s a kind of moral economy in the wizard world which has a lot more to do with personal character than ability with magic, is the way I’d look at it.
But in general… yeah. And that True Blood example really makes the whole concept go clunk
Ooooh, great post! I love how you’ve highlighted the way world-building should and shouldn’t work – it’s very easy to make mistakes when creating your own world.
About Harry Potter, I agree with you that there doesn’t seem to be a cost to magic. But the reason Dumbledore is ‘powerful’ is a mixture of hard work, persistence and raw talent. It’s why Hermione, for example, is a very talented witch (she works hard and has an awful lot of raw talent) whereas Ron is a very mediocre wizard (he usually can’t be bothered to try very hard and he’s not very talented at magic naturally). At least, this is how I’ve always seen it to work, so while it’s not the best system, I think the internal logic works there.
[ Follow me on Twitter: SanguMandanna ]
Hi India! I’ve been thinking about this post of yours on and off all weekend and came to pretty much the same conclusion as Sangu. Magic seems to be inherited the way, say a talent for singing or writing may be inherited, but only those who work at it and consistently apply it in the right way at the right time (c.f. all Dumbledore’s conversations with young Voldemort wherein he tries to steer him in certain directions but Voldemort ultimately chooses other ones) will become stronger and better at it. Also, some of them may have different aptitudes *within* the talent; I thought of Tonks saying she was never any good at the householdy sorts of spells
This was a great article. I am in the process of trying to weed out the things that don’t make sense or flesh out those things that do so it makes more sense to the readers…(cause apparently readers can’t read my mind…very annoying.) I am of the mind that magic must cost something and your creatures’ powers and limitations have to make sense within the world you create. This is a hard thing. Right now, I’m in the process of trying to figure out the weaknesses of each creature. *sigh* A writer’s job is never done!