(Way With Worlds is a weekly column on the art of worldbuilding published at Seventh Sanctum, Muse Hack, and Ongoing Worlds).

A lot of people who wolrdbuild get into roleplaying games. I feel I can make this statement clearly; its true in my experience, and of course I’m not quoting any numbers so I have deniability. I’m covered here!

But seriously, it seems like people get ideas from, put ideas into, or think of ideas in forms of RPGs. I’m not just talking the freeform collective storytelling style of RPGs – I’m talking about the rules-and-dice type RPGs that we’re all familiar with.

We wonder what class a character would be in a given game.

We try and build a character we made in a given game.

We think of game rules as writing guidelines.

We get ideas looking over game rules.

And more . . . (more…)

(Way With Worlds Runs at Seventh Sanctum, Muse Hack, and Ongoing Worlds)

So we discussed the odds of things in your world, of knowing how likely things were. Now let’s talk the thing you’re writing the most, the odds you know but don’t realize you know, and the most important part of your world and he tales in it.

What’s normal.

In fact, I’m going to tell you that what your stories are about, your world everything about them, is about what’s normal. No matter how freaky your character, strange your plot, normal is what’s important.

And you need to know what’s Normal in your world.

The Importance Of Normal

Normal in your world is what is reliable and predictable. Gravity works, rain falls, and Dz’orgak the demon lord is made from the blood of the Fallen God which is why every ruby gem is his eye spying on your sins. Normal are those truths that your world rests on as sure as we rely on the sun rising.

Enormous amounts of worldbuilding and tales inside those worlds rely on a grounding of normal. Roadways that re reliable, swords made of metal, reproductive biology that ensure species go on, and so on are just normal – what you can count on so you can build a world of it, even if some may change Normal gives your world a foundation so it actually is something, and gives something for readers/gamers to understand and apprehend.

If there’s no sense of normal, then the world itself becomes meaningless. Now in a few cases this might be your point, but in general worldbuilding is about building – making something. Normal has to be assumed, a foundation must be there, or everything is meaningless.

Even if your world is weird to us, having a Normal means we can understand it, relate to it, and thus believe it and enjoy it. It just may be a rather odd normal.

Weird Needs Normal

This normalcy is important not just to provides believable world but to help people relate to what goes on it it – which often are anomalous events and characters.

Tales often deal with exceptions to the normal because stories are often about deviations from norms – I mean if there’s no deviation not much may actually happen to tell.  This deviation could be as big as a war among galaxies or as small as a quirky set of characters at a coffee shop who are weirdos. However the normal provides the grounding to tell you what the abnormal means.

Some characters specialize in the abnormal – the policeman who investigates crimes, the warrior who fights invaders, the psychologist who deals with insanity. There’s a reason we love stories with people like that – they’re interesting as something happens. They try to restore normal (or find a new one) and that’s what the story is about.

Normal lets you understand just what the abnormality you’re often writing about means.

Sort of the normal abnormal. If you don’t know normal, these anomalies become nonsensical or worse, “inappropriately normal.”

Going Away From Normal To Get Back To It

Knowing the Normal of your world is also important to understand events and thus stories that take place in it. Most people’s travails, most tales, most great wars and small quests, are either seeking a return to normal or a new normal. Normal is also a “goal” of people to get to, even if normal only exists in their head.

Now of course this normal may not be possible, or desirable, or realistic. The normal a character or a culture may seek could be a complete delusion. Which is important because there’s normal and normal if you get my drift . . . but that’s also part of the world and your tales.

The True Normal And A Character’s Normal

Knowing what’s normal in your setting helps you understand character motivations and expectations. The average, the reliable, the likely affect people, providing a ground for what happened or a contrast to their own crazy lives. Expectations of what is normal for characters – and often what they’re seeking – comes from their ideas of normal.

Characters may have an inaccurate ideal of normal. How many times in history have we seen people long to return to “normal,” when their idea of normal was a self-deceptive mix of nostalgia and ignorance? How many do we see now?

There’s normal and then there’s the normal in our heads. We need to understand what our characters expect to be normal – and what is really going on.

In fact, characters may just not understand normal or want to. If your universe is one of magic and a scientific civilization refuses to admit this, then you may know normal – but the characters don’t. That’s quite a tale to tell, yet the whole point is ignoring normalcy.

You need to know what’s normal. Your characters well may not – which of course is part of things you’d be writing on.

Their inaccurate ideas of normal may be common enough that their abnormality is rather normal.

Audiences And Normal

Your audience will almost immediately need a set of normal expectations to understand your work – often a tricky business when you’re creating a crazy world. As noted earlier, people have a natural sense of odds and likelihood – and in turn, of normalcy. They’re going to look for it right off the bat.

Audiences can usually sense if your world has some “normal” in it. We’re good at finding coherence in settings, and if your world doesn’t have rules and its own normal, people will pick up on it. They may not care, they may not need much “normal” to figure things out (magic works, wizards blow stuff up a lot might be enough), but they need something. If you don’t give that to them, the world will lack meaning to them.

It also gets a bit tricky to communicate your setting as people have to get it, while at the same time it’s rules may be a bit odd, and you don’t want to overexplain things on top of that.  That requires some careful writing of your tales, to avoid over-explaining or under-explaining the world you built.

This is ultimately where you, the world-builder, have to figure out what’s normal. Oh sure you’r not going to spell it out, but you need to know.

Knowing Normal

So how do you know your normal in your world?

I find, rather interestingly, we usually build “Normal” into our worlds by instinct. You can’t have a coherent setting without some rules and norms and so on. In fact, to try and make your setting weird enough for your goals you may have to actively make it stranger.

However, I think we’re helped in worldbuilding by being aware of normal and what’s normal. Much as when I discussed the odds, we should spend some time analyzing what is normal and expected in the world. Even if we never use it directly, it helps us build the world.

Here’s a quick guide to the Normals to look for

• The Reality Normal: What is the nature of reality. Hard science? Everything has magic in it? What does this mean for your setting (if anything). Sometimes this is boring as you say “actual physical laws, next.”
• The Setting Normal: What are the norms of your setting or settings. Drought or flood, many mountains or huge plans, and so on. This helps you build the setting, and understand how characters and cultures interact with it. If your setting has a lot of desert, the norm is “dry” and the norm also is going to be finding water.
• The Culture Normal: What is the normal for cultures characters are in, the expectations, ideas, and language. There will be both the “Norms” of the culture and the normal parts of the culture, what is expected and what is common. A culture may put great value on honesty, but may have sexism built into it that is common but rarely analyzed as it’s so regular.
• The Personal Normal: What are a characters own experiences, understandings, and so on – and how normal are they? A character may be utterly average (dare I say normal) with one outstanding trait. A characters’ experiences may differ radically from others – making them seem disconnected or perhaps making them wiser.

Note these norms are all going to play into each other. If you have a desert culture that values honesty but has the inbuilt assumption men are violent, a male character raised by water thieves as a calm master of disguise is going to really be something read. How many times will someone ask “are you sure he can keep calm pretending to be this guy?” and what plot points could you explore.

Think Normal

In doing worldbuilding, much as I note it helps to note odds and some of the math of your world, consider what’s normal. Definitely put it in your worldbuilding notes as a reminder for yourself so keep you grounded in what you do. It’ll remind you of what should happen – or remind you in what case it’s time for things to get abnormal.

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at http://www.stevensavage.com/.

(Way With Worlds Runs at Seventh Sanctum, Muse Hack, and Ongoing Worlds)

I’m not quite Han Solo. You don’t have to tell me the odds, but I’d like a good sense of them when it comes to your world.  But I do look good in leather.

When we play a game or ready a story, intuitively, we need to know the odds. If it’s unlikely someone can survive a fight with ten well armed Knights of The Singularity, when they win it makes us wonder how. If someone is ethnically and racially different than we expect in a game world, the impact of that difference is felt if we understand just what it means. Likelihood – and lack of likelihood – is something that we need to understand to get what something means.

I think this is instinctive to humans, and even more so in people with a vague sense of math and probability. We’re always evaluating, re-evaluating, projecting, and understanding. When math is part of our lives, even moreso. Either way, it’s human.

So the odds need to be part of your world. If they’re not, then you may be in for some problems.  If you can’t express the chances of things happening, then your world isn’t going to make sense.  People won’t be able to grasp what’s going on as their natural ability to evaluate can’t find anything to hold on to in order to make sense of the world.

(Even if you do know the odds, you might not use them right)

Lets talk what the odds are in your world, how to use them – and how not to overuse them. (more…)

(Way With Worlds Runs at Seventh Sanctum, Muse Hack, and Ongoing Worlds)

Having discussed character goals, abilities, plans, actions, and results, let’s talk about the stakes characters fight for.

Oh, and how we screw it up.  And maybe how they screw it up, but that’s more “story” than “author messed it up.”

What Are We Fighting For?

Characters set out with certain goals and values and are trying to achieve something – even if that’s preventing something. They are, in short, fighting for something.  It may not seem like a conflict, but if it’s not something easy to do, it’s a conflict of some kind.

We, as readers, are drawn into the goals because the world is believable, the characters well written, the gameplay compelling, etc. When the stakes are well-realized, when they are understandable, they both draw us into the world and enhance the experience.  When stakes become our stakes, the goals our goals, the risk our risk, we’re truly involved – and the world we experience is truly alive.

If you’ve ever dodged in real life while playing an FPS or gotten angry at a fictional character, you know how compelling a world and its realization in fiction or media can be. The stakes are real.

Probably this is why we love viscerally. Even the worst film or story can make us sympathize with someone (no matter how poorly written) in a situation we relate to. We get humiliation or pain. Probably his is one reason authors and worldbuilders resort to blood, violence, sex, and fear too often – they’re visceral and have that chance to draw you in.

(Well visceral until you get tired of them).

So as you may guess, the Stakes are part of your world.  They’re what gives us a tale, what makes characters believable, and what gives us a gut-punch realization of “what’s going on.”

Well, We Are Fighting For It, Right?

The things that occur in your world, the challenges and risks, are born of your setting – just like the characters who deal with them. They are part of the weather or he culture or the divine or the infernal that you’ve created. What’s going on, what’s at risk, is part of your setting.

Well, it is if you do it right.

Action-reaction, results, risks, are all part of good worldbuilding.  You need to know what happens, what goes wrong, what results occur when things are done or aren’t done.  When you know how things “work” then in turn you can understand the stakes of what’s going on, how the characters feel, the results they want. – and what draws in your reader or player.  If your world isn’t properly defined, properly connected, it becomes unbelievable, the stakes are meaningless, there’s less visceral appeal, and suspension of disbelief gives up and goes and gets a coffee.

Ever read a story where the goals seemed lame, the risks trite or poorly-created, and the sense of what people are trying to do didn’t hold up? Or you’d seen it all before and felt like someone had brought in a Risky Stakes transplant from another story? The world wasn’t well designed, the stakes had no meaning, the characters had no meaning, and you were just there watching a pile of stuff.

You get the idea.

How you build your world sets the stakes for characters. Now that may seem obvious, but I find we get trapped in designing them or not even realizing them.  We stop building the world and start just throwing stuff into it.

Overdone Stakes

(Yes, lame joke preserved from original column).

One problem in worldbuilding is that after we start writing our world, or coding it, we need to keep people’s interest, so we raise the stakes ridiculously. You’re probably especially aware of it from bad media and some games, where the villain apparently has a magical backside that holds plot devices, or suddenly the enemies are a lot tougher for no good reason.  It’s just there to ramp up difficulty to maybe hold your attention.

This “ramp up”is often a natural result of increased competency on the part of the protagonists – as noted in last column, characters growing and applying themselves towards goal is part of any tale, and thus world. But we can way, way too easily fall into jacking up the difficulty level as it were to keep things going.

This is a risk because basically you throw out the laws of your world just to keep people’s attention. Now you might be able to keep it within setting constraints, but based on many things I’ve seen . . . I wouldn’t take the risk.

Now my answer to this is “just build a good world”, but there are traps we often fall into.  So to help you out, let me note a few common ways of raising the Stakes that we can do with out:

• The End Of The World As We Know It – And I’m Annoyed – Turning things into world-threatening crises when they weren’t, aren’t, and can’t be explained may keep attention but is really obvious and worldbreaking.
• The War Of Heaven And Hell And Good Taste – Sometimes stories wander into supernatural territory and next thing you know everyday stuff or even non-everyday stuff is a theological smackdown. That’s good if that’s your intent, but trying to get metaphysical just to keep interest can be quite lame.  You can also have the stakes raise to such ridiculous levels with pasted-on-morals that it might as well be a kind of Potemkin Apocalypse.
• The Last Best Extremely Contrived Hope – Another way people jack up the odds is creating a chosen one who’s the only person that can save things. THis is pretty much the aforementioned Idiot Plot or Planet of the Morons. And it’s unbelievable, worldbreaking, and annoying because it stands out (and it’s over done).
• The Destiny March of History – Suddenly, characters discover destiny, legacy, or something else that makes their struggles More Important. Meanwhile the audience doesn’t buy it.
• The Sudden Ramp-Up – Suddenly things are tougher . . . because.  Not due to cause-and-effect.  Not due to a master plan.  Just you ramp up the stakes with some plot device to keep interest.  Yes, it’s obvious.

Don’t jack up the stakes inappropriately. Don’t rip your world apart to wedge a piece of extra excitement in. It’ll break your system. And sure, some creators get away with it, but some don’t.

Do you want to take the risk?  Are your stakes worth it?

No, they’re not.  Build a good world.  If anything, just find the most exciting parts of it to tell.

In Closing

Know the Stakes people are fighting for and what they’re trying to do. Understand the results – but let them be part of your setting. Otherwise you risk mapping tropes or easy-outs to keep interest – and people will know.

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at http://www.stevensavage.com/.

(Way With Worlds Runs at Seventh Sanctum, Muse Hack, and Ongoing Worlds)

Stories, games, and all fictions are about people, about characters, about what they do and why. They may not be like us, we may not like them, but that’s what’s going on. We’re watching people (even if not human) do stuff to get results, though we may put it in more colorful ways.

Goals, methods of reaching them, and results are, in a way, everything a story is about. In the end, you’ve got to save the prince so you can throw the one ring into the fiery pit of the starship engine to bypass the alien invaders before your ninja rival does.* No goals, no methods, no results, no story, no interest.

Therefore, your world has to include characters that have believable goals, ways of achieving them, and results.

Which is obvious.

And, as you’ve heard me say many times, and doubtlessly will again, obvious is the problem.

Let’s dive in. (more…)

In light of my earlier article on dystopias, I thought it would be appropriate to bring back an aborted setting that I worked on a long, long time ago. The premise was that there was a great conflict by a number of groups, called the Utopians, who were each genuinely trying to better everyone’s lives. But they disagreed on methods and they disagreed on ends. Even though they acknowledged that they were all trying to do a good job they couldn’t work together because each of the others sacrificed or didn’t address something which they considered to be of vital importance.

That’s what this is about, by demonstrating and giving examples.  Good Guys— or at least Decent Guys— who still can’t get along because they have such differing value systems, and the myriad ways that a utopia can take root. (more…)

(Way With Worlds runs  at MuseHack, Seventh Sanctum, and Ongoing Worlds)

My friend Serdar, in writing Flight of the Vajra (which I edited, I admit, but I enjoyed the hell out of it) is fond of noting the plot happened when he realized his setting didn’t hold together. The novel is basically about things not working, or as I like to put it ,having more questions than answers is bad, but more answers than questions is worse.

What Serdar says sounds both wise and flies in the face of a lot of the attitudes heavy Worldbuilders may take. We want things to make sense. We want it to hold together. We want it to work.

But sometimes the tale is what happens when it doesn’t work. Maybe it’s a disaster. Maybe it’s a transition. Things are always in transition anyway.

So before you look at your latest world, at your latest change, and decry how you can’t see how the kingdom survives, or the galaxy prospers, or whatever remember that you may have just found the story you were looking for. The world breaking is the story.

The problem however is that you don’t know if you’ve done bad worldbuilding or that you’ve created a good but unsustainable setting. Maybe the setting falling apart is because your exquisite sense of detail has led to an inevitable conclusion – or maybe you just did a crappy job.

So it’s time for some questions.

Question 1: Why Does It Break?

First of all you have to ask just why your setting seems destined to fall apart. I mean if things are going to break down you have to know why?

• If it is because things just don’t seem to make sense, then the fault is probably yours.
• If the falling apart occurs because of elements in the setting, it may just be an unexpected feature. If you see a race war between elves and dragons as inevitable despite a fragile peace that was hard-won you don’t have a problem – you have a game, a story, or a RPG session

Question 2: How Did We Get Here?

You look at your setting and realize it’s going to go down in flames. Is this a story to tell or is this a mistake on your part? Part of the question is asking why this is all happening.

• * Are there reasons for the setting to get to the point f degrading that make sense in the context of the world? Can you explain why the Star Empire would survive the first hundred years but not the next two? In short, can you see your setting existing, but eventually falling apart.
• * If you can’t explain how your setting would get to the point where it would then fall apart you have a problem. Essentially the setting has shoddy infrastructure anyway and falling over is your mistake, not a feature. It should never have been big enough to fall apart.

Keep Asking

Those two questions can essentially tell you if you have a story – if the breakdown makes sense and the setting is reasonable up to the point of the breakdown. With both those traits you have at tale – without, you have mistakes in your setting.

However, maybe that’s not what you want to great in a story or game or comic . . .

But I’m Not Interested In Writing It Falling Apart

Sometimes we discover we’re not writing the tale we wanted or crafting the game we intended. That’s a bit of a tough call. A few pieces of advice I can provide is:

1. Change perspectives. Maybe the giant collapse is something you can write from a different perspective then intended. Maybe your perspective is the problem, and once you’re in a character or two’s heads the setting’s problems are things you want to write.
2. Back up. Back up a few years before everything goes straight to hell, and tell your story from there – though the coming collapse may annoy you.
3. Jump forward. Jump up your timeline and see if the setting eventually evolves to the kind you want to write.
4. Re-engineer. The hardest thing to do is re-engineer your setting to remove the relevant apocalypse. That is something that’s a bit challenging and potentially can tempt you to dishonesty. I’d say go for it, but if you can’t truly do it, hen you have to conclude your setting is what it is.
5. Quit. Not recommended. Staring over is kind of coping out and you have all that hard work.

Your call on these things. Though I’m not up for quitting – after all if you ram through you may find you want to write the end of the world after all.

It’s Part Of What You Do

Finding your setting is going to fall apart is one of the challenges of worldbuilding. It can shock us and surprise us and derail us.

However it’s also one of the benefits of the craft. Unexpected findings, challenges, settings coming to life are part of the magic of worldbuilding. Though it may alter our lans, at least it’s doing so in a way that truly surprises and inspires and comes to life.

Well, assuming its because the world was well built, but you get the idea . . .

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at http://www.stevensavage.com/.

(Way With Worlds Runs Weekly at MuseHack and Seventh Sanctum)

So last time I noted how David Brin had gotten me discussing the idea of the Idiot Plot or the Planet Of Morons – the idea the hero(es) are the only things saving the world, which is also corrupt and stupid.

The thing with this plot is it degrades society – and degrades the characters and the world. It makes the heroes stupidly unbelievable, it makes the villains shallow or uninteresting, it makes the world improbable.. It’s in short dumb and inaccurate and psychologically toxic when it’s everywhere.

But I’d like to expand on this in what is hopefully my last Heroes and Villains post on worldbuilding. Yeah, I know, unlikely, but still.

Namely, if you don’t resort to the Idiot Plot and the Planet of Morons (and you won’t, right?), here’s my thoughts on how to make the story or game interesting while preserving world integrity. Because you do want to engage the reader, but you also want to have a good, believable world setting.

First, let’s get to the heart of the matter. (more…)

I like moral dichotomies and moral conflicts in settings. I even, on occasion, enjoy the epic struggle between Good and Neutral, or Candy and Chocolate. But when you have a conflict between the forces of Light and Darkness and they represent Good and Evil every time, well, I get a little exhausted by it. The next go-to option is little better. Order and Chaos? Nowadays that seems to be just as overplayed as Good and Evil. Sometimes even more— or worse, it’s supposedly about Order vs Chaos but these are just synonyms for Good and Evil. (more…)

At the risk of accidentally helping the next would-be conqueror and subsequent ruler of the world, I want to talk about dystopias today.

When I read about cultures, past and present, there are some different things that I automatically start looking for or asking myself. When I see an imbalance of power, what comes to mind is “Where are the dangerous elements to the present power structure, and how have the rulers co-opted these elements and/or played them against each other so that they won’t pose a threat?” (more…)