In this post we’ll talk about what New York Times bestselling novelist Brent Weeks has to say about world building and see if we can’t dig up a few examples from his books to help us understand his process. And to conclude, let’s try practicing his methods ourselves. A writing prompt will follow. So to begin, principle number one is this:

Principle 1: Introduce the setting early and on a need-to-know basis

The bulk of world building must be done in the first chapter and to keep readers interested it must be done very well. Brent, in a quote from his own site, had these words of wisdom to share

“You want to seed some of the world building early so it can pay off later, and you want to fill in enough of the details about the world so it doesn’t seem like your characters are wandering through a fog, disembodied, talking and fighting with each other.”

So to keep our readers from this disembodied fog, we’ve got to introduce as much as we can of the setting as quickly as possible – preferably in the first couple paragraphs of the story in my opinion.

Principle 2: Don’t use info dumps

This is really a variation of the “show, don’t tell” principle, but “info dumps” may be the fantasy writer’s worst nightmare when it comes to description, especially so when the author has written several hundred pages of backstory and setting before even putting a pen to paper. With so much material, it can become tempting to just shove as much information out upon the reader in the fastest way possible. However, this is awful and should be avoided. I have no examples of this from Brent Weeks, but let me show you an example of it in action, drawn from my own boundless, drivel spewing imagination.

“The planet of Thog was home to the Thogians, a humble desert dwelling race of humanoids who delighted in bloodshed and mayhem. On their borders lay the civilization of Tarta, a race made up of scaly lizard like creatures whose only desire was to eat flies, and bask in the sun.”

Do you see the problem? First off, this isn’t even a story. It’s an encyclopedia entry. And what’s worse, its boring. Really boring. You can communicate the same thing through action and carefully selected detail. Although this oftentimes will take up more words than the info dump, its far more enjoyable to read. Here’s my attempt:

“Leo the lizard bathed upon a rock, surrounded by waving palms. He wasn’t quite asleep yet, and he blamed this primarily upon the fly that kept buzzing around him. Opening one eyelid, the fly flew almost directly overhead. Leo caught it with a quick flick of his tongue, sighed contentedly, and began to drift off to sleep again.

Meanwhile, just over the giant sand dune which lay behind Leo’s sun bathing rock, a horde of Thogians had arrived at the outer reaches of the Tarta lizard city. Leo was first alerted to this when he woke to the the guttural howls of a frothing, frenzied bipedal creature with long thin strings of fur protruding from his head running down the sand dune towards him holding a strange, long, metallic implement. Puzzled but not alarmed, Leo didn’t know what to make of it. If it was an insect, it was the strangest one he had ever seen.”

This is much much better. It reads like a story and is a lot more entertaining. We still understand the basic idea that there’s a lizard race and a humanoid race from the desert who like to kill things. We also understand a little about the naïve psyche of these lizards because of Leo’s strange reaction to the frothing madman. And as a bonus, we also learn a little bit about the character Leo, not just his race in general. So conclusion: don’t use info dumps. Should you find yourself using them, immediately subtract two gold stars from your gold star account. And remember the overarching principle: Show, don’t tell!

Principle 3: Give the reader a basic frame of reference

The first step to good world building is cluing the reader into the culture, period or place in history that your world is basically modeled after. In other words, a frame of reference.

Here’s an example of how he “clues in” in the reader to the setting on the first page, first paragraph of his book The Way of Shadows. While you read, ask yourself, “what basic type of world immediately comes to mind while I’m reading this?” Hint: It may involve castles and knights.

“Most taverns in the city had dirt floors, but this part of the Warrens had been built over marshland…so the tavern had been raised a few inches on stilts and floored with stout bamboo poles.”

Even though there are taverns in the world around us, if the reader is at all familiar with the castles and knights setting the ‘dirt floors’ and ‘warrens’ are words that clue us into the setting without a large amount of exposition. True, the setting isn’t definite at this point, but in absence of other details that hint at an exotic location, this will be the reader’s first assumption. Lets keep going. Continuing to read beyond the selection, we soon meet a reference to “coppers”, the world’s monetary unit. For most fantasy readers, this is a dead giveaway to a castle & knights, D&D type world. Our confidence increases. In the paragraphs following this selection, we soon encounter other words like ‘assassin’ and ‘sword’, all but cementing the reader’s hypothesis that this story is taking place in a castle and knights type of world we’re all so familiar with.

Principle 4: Introduce unique additions to the world once the frame of reference is established

Contemporary readers won’t stand for a completely generic castle and knights type setting. They’ve read it a hundred times. So the next step is to introduce your own unique additions to the world, which we can see in the following selection also from the first chapter of The Way of Shadows. Once again, while reading, ask yourself what your first assumptions are about the setting and character.

“If he were braver, he would have looted the bodies in the tavern, but Azoth couldn’t believe Durzo Blint was dead. Maybe he was a demon, like the other guild rats said.”

Let’s dissect the quote a little bit. First, it shows the youth, inexperience, and naivete of our boy hero Azoth. He’s unsure of himself, not very brave, and relying on second hand information from unreliable sources. Secondly it firmly alludes to the idea that there are actually demons in this world. And then, finally, it creates a very powerful aura of danger and supernatural power around the Blint character. All of that in two sentences. Kind of impressive.

So that’s the process. To summarize, as soon as possible clue the reader onto the books socio-historical frame of reference and unique additions to that world through careful use of sparsely added details.

Practice

Okay, let’s practice these concepts in action, transforming some wretched piece of my kid brother’s writing, which although it may bear strange resemblances to some of my own attempts at writing, I assure you has no connection of the sort.

Before diving in though, lets figure out what essential worldbuilding elements we want to communicate: the basic setting (which is an essentially Star Wars-esque type universe), demons who have conquered much of the galaxy, the main character Marya who is very emotional, the love interest between her and a man named Leo, a magic system that allows special “phase agents” to instantly teleport themselves anywhere in the universe, and finally the job of the phase agents (which is to rescue civilians who live in worlds occupied by the demons). Okay, so that’s the list. Let’s see how successful my attempts are at communicating all of that.

The first attempt:

“In all of intergalactic space, the empire held sway. And then the demons came.”

Okay, this actually isn’t awful. It establishes quickly the idea that this is taking place in a futuristic “intergalactic” setting, which, with the reference to “empire”, we assume is probably somewhat similar to Star Wars or any number of space operas. And then it gives us the author’s unique twist: demons have now entered intergalactic space. But while this selection isn’t awful, it’s way too much tell rather than show, at least for my taste. Let’s “tells” like this book side fold, and fill the inside of our book with actual character driven narrative.

The second attempt:

Knife pressed firmly against his throat, hands white and shaking, Marya decided she really, really hoped she wasn’t going to have to kill Leo.

Leo cleared his throat, “What I’m trying to decide Marya, is whether or not I should be worried.” His voice rang through the lifeless corridors of the Intergalactic Citadel, sounding too loud for the unnaturally still and near endless metallic structure.

Marya barely heard his question. She felt her entire body shaking, unable to restrain the hot perspiration which had begun to cling to her skin, her hands, her neck. Almost surreally, she felt the insane urge to pull at the stiff collar of her academy issued cadet uniform. Why had it suddenly gotten so hot?

“And after I’ve decided whether or not I should be worried,” Leo hesitatingly continued, “I think I’d like to know why you’ve decided to put a knife to my throat.” He made as if to move, but Marya desperately pressed the knife even deeper into his neck, drawing a thin line of blood. He stopped.

Okay, this isn’t bad either but although it clues us into the intergalactic setting with the references to the “academy” and “intergalactic” and it tells us Marya is a very emotional character, it says nothing about demons, phase agents, or the love interest. This could be a perfectly fine opener I think, but lets see if we can do even more, pack more world building into an even smaller space.

Third attempt:

Marya and her fellow cadets looked down at the twisting maelstron of blackness in the containment chamber. Leo playfully edged her in the ribs, his blue eyes twinkling, as he whispered “Demon flesh, it doesn’t look too bad. I say we use it as a hockey puck this next leave day.”

Just looking down at it though, Marya felt a twisting sickness in her gut and she found herself unable to laugh.

Their instructor continued. “In all the intergalactic empire, this is the only known piece of demon flesh – if one can indeed call this material “flesh” – that has been recovered from the darkened zones. Although easy to enter these zones due to the capability of well trained phase agent – as you will all be one day – can travel to a darkened planetary system in mere seconds, the demons themselves are… less easily dealt with…”

He trailed off before continuing, “An entire squadron of agents save one was lost when this was obtained. Along with them were consumed the 20,000 thousand civilians they were sent to rescue.”

Okay better. Although it is fairly expository, the exposition takes place via instruction from a professor as dialogue, so its much more interesting than plain ol’ info dumps. The first clue that we’re in the generic Star Wars sci-fi universe is the mention of cadets. Later on, this suspicion is all but confirmed when the instructor references the “intergalactic empire”. The reference to “demon flesh” and the sick feeling it gives Marya, indicates pretty clearly both the demons and Marya’s emotional nature. The friendly elbowing from Leo at least hints at a love interest. The instructor discusses the “darkened zones” and it becomes fairly obvious that these are worlds under the control of the demons. The mere seconds comment from the instructor hints that the “phase agents” have some sort of teleportation ability or something akin to it. And it seems pretty clear what the purpose of the agents is: to rescue civilians in the demon controlled zones.

So not perfect, but not bad either in my estimation. I wonder if Brent would be proud…

Writing Prompt

To get you practicing on your own, the writing prompt for this post will be to find a crappy beginning from one of your past novels, or even someone else’s, and perform the same rewrite process I just barely did on my demon, phase agent story. Good luck!

I welcome comments and amendations to my ideas if any of you have some.

-Dan & Scott

Hey guys, I’m slightly ahead of schedule but want to hold the start date firm for June 3 like I originally said (Some of the more observant will notice I changed it from June 1st to the 3rd. This is so we can begin on a Monday.). That said though, I thought it would be neat though to give some of you a sneak peek at the first lecture of the class, which I’ve taken the liberty of transcribing below (and liberally edited for print readiness). Enjoy! – Scott

Writers Write – The First Lecture

Brandon: For this class, I want you to begin writing a new story… The ideal thing for you to do would probably to try to write a 30k word novella. Novellas work like a novel, they exercise lots of the same muscles, and then you can actually finish something. I released a 30k word novella last year, The Emperors Soul, which is about the length you are shooting for in this class. If you want, you can instead start a new novel intended to be longer than 30k words with the plan being that you would keep going on after the class to finish it, forcing you to keep writing… hopefully… theoretically… perhaps.

But I do want you to start something new rather than something you’ve been working on. One of the reasons for this is that there are lots of writers who want to become pros but who get stuck in the rut of working on the same concept over and over and over again. I don’t want to let you keep doing that to yourself, to keep working on that story you’ve workshopped in three different writing classes so far. It’s not about me arbitrarily wanting you to do new work for this class. Its about me wanting to help you break out of that… There are always a few who have been working on this project, it’s like this dream project they’ve had going for years and years and years, and its like, “No, lets put this aside.”

A couple of reasons for that. First I want you to be experimenting in this class with the things I’m talking about, like discovery writing and architect writing, and I don’t want you to be too emotionally tied to the story that you’re working on. If you work on something new you will begin to be more free to do this. Also, it will teach you that writers write. Writers don’t have one story that they’re going tell. Most of the time, they have a skill in writing that lets them tell a lot of different stories.

Ideas are cheap. Alright? Ideas are cheap. You may have an idea that you think is just awesome and perhaps it is. But a good writer can take terrible ideas and write a fantastic story out of them and a bad writer can take the best ideas in the world and go nowhere with them. A great example of this is Jim Butcher, very nice fellow. He writes some urban fantasy books, which are quite well written and some epic fantasies which I like even more. He was on a forum once arguing with someone about this topic and although Jim is a writer, I assume the person he was arguing with was not. Well, maybe a pretend writer but not really a writer, because this person was saying “No, no, the ones who make it are the ones who have the great ideas. These are the ones who go far.” And Jim argued “No, the people who make it are the people who have the skills of a writer which they’ve trained themselves in.” So, they got into this big argument and at the end of it Jim said, “Alright, you give me your worst ideas and I’m going to write a book about them and it’s going to be awesome.” And so the person said “Okay, I want you to write a book combining the lost Roman legion and Pokemon.” (Laughter). Yea, this is true, I got Jim to confirm it to me – a story combining the lost Roman legion and Pokemon. Based off this challenge, Jim then wrote this epic fantasy series called Codex Alera which is about the lost Roman legion using these elemental based pets that they bond with… and stuff… its pretty awesome. And the series has 6 books, which are best sellers. And I’ve read them and they’re good. So this is what happens when lost Roman legion meets Pokemon was that. Alright? Ideas are cheap. The more you train yourself to write, the more ideas you’ll have, and soon you’ll have more ideas than you can write.

I’m going to prove to you that ideas are cheap, so let’s brainstorm ideas… and come up with ideas for six different books that are going to be cool. A really good story in my opinion mixes 3 things. First, it mixes in a good setting idea. Setting is why you’re in this class rather than in another creative writing class. We in science fiction and fantasy writing have much more of a focus on setting than other genres do, since we think of setting as a living breathing character and have all sort of science fiction and fantasy element you’d expect [like magic or technology). So to summarize, I don’t start a book until first I’ve got a couple of good ideas for a setting. Alright?

Next, you usually combine that with a good idea for a character, which is really an idea for a character conflict. Alright? A good character conflict. Then you mix that with the plot idea. Plot is generally the place where you’re going to be the least original. People talk about there being only a limited number of plots, and to an extent its true. I don’t want to downplay the art in all this and whatnot but there are certain forms you use to tell a story, certain plot arcs, that have been very successful and most stories are going to fall into these. You know them: the underdog success story, or the journey, the quest, the mystery, and these sort of things. If your plot can’t be original though, you can have an idea for interesting twist on a plot.

Once I’ve got a few ideas for each for these three story elements – plot, character, and setting – that begin combining in interesting ways, that’s when I’ll begin to write a story, this is what makes me want to write a story.

So, we’re going to try brainstorming ideas for plot, character, and setting today… First, let’s go ahead and brainstorm a couple of rich, interesting, setting concepts. Places where you haven’t seen a story take place, a magic system based on something interesting, or a world element that you haven’t seen. Something that pops into your head. What would be cool? Just throw them out at me.

To be continued June 3…

China Mieville is one of the most celebrated authors of this era with countless awards and accolades racked up over the years.  The City & the City won the 2010 Arthur C. Clarke Award, 2010 Hugo Award, and 2010 World Fantasy Award, as well as being a Nebula Award nominee in the Best Novel category.  See his books here at amazon’s page about him and maybe read a few of the zillions of awesome reviews he has. He writes in a category aptly named ‘weird fiction’ and is perfectly fine with you and me saying he is a ‘fantasy author’ or a ‘fantasy and science fiction author’ rather than taking exception and demanding that his book be remanded to the ‘classics’ or ‘fiction’ categories of our local books store (see Slaughter House Five) rather than that section of shelves where demons, H.A.L.’s, satyrs, Krakens, worm holes and runaway gods reside.

In an interview with The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy, China reveals a bit about himself and his sometimes wild and exotic and sometimes insightful theories on life, fiction, science fiction and the world in general.

Dungeons and Dragons

Yes, our hero likes to throw the dice around.  I wonder if there is a list out there with the names of every science fiction and fantasy author that’s ever rolled the dice in the name of scoring a critical hit and ‘just grabbing hold of the rope as you slip over the edge of the cliff into the chasm. Wow, you were really lucky there, bro.’ in an epic game of Dungeons & Dragons.  I’d bet they are almost all on there.  And I bet a lot of us have as well.  I know I have.  If you were to visit my mom’s house (If you do, beware, she will totally ‘friend’ you on Facebook) and ask her she will bring out the folders filled with maps, legends, cities, adventures, characters (and anything else I could think of adding to my DM’d world of Dungeons & Dragons) that I created as a young man.  Apparently me and China feel the same way about half-elf magic users.

What’s been your best memory of D&D???

“Incompossibility”

Incompossibility is a tentacled skull that resides ‘magically’ on China’s body and apparently gives him super writing powers.  I’m not sure how it works, you’ll have to visit the article and find out for yourself.  Needless to say the explanation was deeper than the puddle I usually like to splash around in and that it had a further explanation in yet another article that you’ll have to read to really get it.  (If you do get it, please take a few more minutes to explain it to me.)

Marxism

Yes, China is part of a little club that espouses some sort of Marxism.  Please don’t hold up the Soviet Union as an example of why said theory would not/could not/should not work.  He’s heard it before and might just punch you in the face with some John Scalzi kind of rage if you do.  (Didn’t know Scalzi was a rager?  Read about Scalzi’s hitman tendencies here.) I don’t care what kind of government you guys put into place so long as you agree to bring back Firefly.

Fighting Bill Gates

Honestly, who hasn’t wrestled around with some version of Windows and not felt like fighting Bill Gates?  However, in this case, it isn’t China Mieville who fought Bill Gates but the website China Mieville VS (they pit China vs. all manner of victims) that fought him.  Has China heard of this site?  He has. Does he approve?  Well, the site is still up…

And China looks like a pretty tough dude.

China vs Slip and Slides?

China vs Logan Nine Fingers?

China vs Kavothe?

Let’s hope he doesn’t start anything rough with Patrick Rothfuss for not liking his dragons.  I don’t think China actually has any dragons in his books, but I’m sure, being the dedicated Dungeons & Dragons player that he is, that he’s owned a dragon here and there.

Turns out that China is just another great writer that sounds mean as hell…

-d

Hey guys, there has been a general clamor for more details on the June writing class, so I’ve gone ahead and posted them on the sign up page, but will reprint them here for your enlightenment. Look forward to seeing this happen! And fyi, if you haven’t already shared news of the class with your friends and such, now would be the ideal time so they can get in on the ground floor!

1. Every Monday, I’ll post that week’s lecture.
2. Optionally, throughout the week I’ll post a couple “creative catalysts” you can respond to that consist of a flash fiction writing prompts focusing on a principle Brandon taught. They’ll be constrained to around 250 words and are supposed to only represent 15 minutes of internal-editor-free writing to get your creative writerly muscles warmed up.
3. By each Thursday, you’ll be expected to post a 1000 word submission to the specialized forum I have set up. I almost have it done, but suffice it to say it will look somewhat similar to Quora or Stackoverflow if you’re familiar with those.
4. By Monday (in time for the next lecture), you should have critiqued at least 4 other students submissions.
5. By the end of the September (4 months), have have written 30,000 words, hopefully a complete novelette.

See you guys soon.

-Scott

Harlan Ellison can’t be bothered when he happens to have a moment of inspiration.  That means if he’s in bed, sans clothing, (I mean who doesn’t sleep naked??) he jumps up and hurries to his writing apparatus and starts banging keys.  But when you have 4 Hugo awards in the short story category, no one questions your methods.  They might snigger, laugh behind their hand or even tell an outright joke, but after throwing four pieces of epic hardware on the trophy shelf, no one questions Harlan’s method.

In an interview, Harlan explains his naked-ness along with a few other points of view he happens to like holding on to.  When asked what he’s watching on television these days he replies, ‘The test pattern.’  I laughed when I read that, because the test pattern (a color correction tool) has gone the way of Firefly.  It used to fill television screens when a station ‘went off the air’ at 2 a.m., something you’d find yourselves staring at, bleary eyed, when you finally woke up after having fallen asleep during your favorite t.v. show.

Harlan bemoans the progress of the human race and suggests, in the interview, that maybe we should hand it over to the cockroaches.  Ellison likes to say things that incense people to some kind of emotional reaction.  Perhaps, he uses that in his writing.  Maybe that’s something all of us could use in our writing.  Figuring out what traits an author possesses that directly lead to success on the battlefield, er, the writing world, is nearly impossible.  Well, except reading, though Harlan doesn’t do much of that anymore.

But then Harlan doesn’t have anything else to prove.  I mean he voiced himself on The Simpsons.  If you’re wondering if you’re an icon in the United States just flip on the old telly and see if your likeness is on The Simpsons or South Park.  I check every few weeks and, sadly, there is no sign of me.  I guess I should wait until I win a Hugo first.  But, then, I might just be waiting forever.  

Harlan apparently enjoys attention as he is known to sit down in the middle of anywhere– a bookstore, art gallery, or convention and write a story.  On the floor with a typewriter kind of ‘write a story.’  When a young boy, upon hearing the punch of the keys, asked his mother what exactly Harlan was beating on, his mother answered, “It’s a typewriter.”  “What’s that?” the boy asked, wide eyed.  Harlan, with a twinkle in his eye, said, “It’s magic! I think into it and what I want comes out!”  The boy then demanded his mother get him one.

Yes, he also talks a bit about Hemingway in the interview, that and the re-release of his first novel Web of the City, but what I’ll remember is that he lied to a child, writes in the nude and wins Hugo awards like a skee ball player wins nearly useless but still somehow awesome tickets.

Remember, this site is hosting an absolutely FREE writing class with video tutorials starring Mr. Brandon Sanderson himself.  If you’re interested sign up here.

-d