General Setting

Download: General Setting

World building is one of my favorite parts of being a fiction writer.  Getting to create entire societies, planets, and galaxies from nothing is definitely a fun job.  And I know I'm not alone here.  A lot of writers, especially Fantasy and Scifi writers, spend a lot of time and energy making sure their story universe is exactly what they want it to be.

But the strange thing is, even though this is one of my favorite parts, I firmly believe that the fruits of one's world building labors should be kept hidden from readers.  It takes restraint to keep it to yourself, but it must be done.

Developing setting produces huge amounts of notes.  My world building notes for Jim Frankenstein, Rock and Roll Space Priest total many hundreds of pages (I wish I were kidding).  But the important thing to realize is that setting development--more than any other area of plotting--is just stocking a pantry.

The more ingredients you have, the more rich and varied your menus (scenes) can be.  But a well-portioned meal (scene) depends on balance, and you can't go dumping ingredients where they serve no purpose.  Nobody likes chocolate ice cream on top of pizza.  You just get melted ice cream and soggy pizza.

Everything, everything must live and die in service to the story.  So just because you spend hours upon hours writing histories, drawing maps, and designing technologies or magic systems doesn't mean the reader wants to read all of it.  World building is for the author.  It serves no purpose beyond making your story honest and vivid.

So when you dive into this template, keep in mind that no matter how cool the ideas are, they don't belong in your story unless they have a direct, causal bearing on the plot.  But it's still worth doing all the prep work, because it's better to have the details and not need them, than need them and not have them.

This goes for real locations too.  It's good to do some research and take note of every possibly-relevant fact you encounter, but don't go shoehorning touristy details where they don't belong.

When developing general settings, there are several factors to consider:

Geography is one of the most obvious.  Where is this place in relation to other places?  What cities/neighborhoods exist there?  Are there any landmarks of note?

What about the ecosystem?  What's the terrain like?  Mountains?  Desert?  What's the weather like, generally?  What plants and animals live here?

Next, consider the Population:  How many people live here?  Are there any public figures or celebrities worth mentioning?

What is the social atmosphere like?  Strict and conservative?  Amoral and chaotic?  What is the culture like?  What art, entertainment, and social values define this place?

Think about the Politics.  What type of government controls this place?  What type of economy do they have?  How about Military and Law Enforcement?  Or social institutions like health care?

Technology is another important thing to consider, especially if you're writing scifi.  But even in a contemporary setting, transportation is an important facet of any setting.  Do people get around in cars, or on a subway system?  Or by matter-energy teleportation?

History is another area to explore.  You don't have to flesh out every nuance of a place's history--heck, that's hard enough to do with actual history.  But it's worth typing your way through the critical events that brought this place to its current shape.  For example, if you were doing a story set in modern-day Joplin, Missouri, it would be prudent to know about the 2011 tornado.

And think about this place's Exterior Relationships.  If this is a city, do they have any rivalries with neighboring cities?  You couldn't set an honest story in Lawrence, Kansas, home of KU, without knowing something about their rivalry with nearby Manhattan, Kansas, home of K-State.

If you're developing a civilization, are they self-sufficient?  Or do they depend on imports and exports?  Are they currently, or have they ever been involved in a major war with another civilization?

Lastly, the most important element of any setting, general or specific, is Sensory Details.  The more senses you include in your descriptions, the more vivid they become in your reader's mind.  One concrete image is worth a thousand paragraphs of generalities.  It's a Show and Tell issue, and it's another place where the Inverse Coco Chanel Principle comes in handy.

One thing to consider when you actually begin writing is how familiar your character(s) are with the general setting.  "Stranger in a strange land" stories can be fun to write and read, and they allow you to feed the reader a lot of exposition unobtrusively.  Harry Potter's wizarding world wouldn't have been half as vivid if we hadn't had Harry to ask all our questions for us.

Moderation is still key--readers will eventually tire of a protagonist who is always asking expository questions--but there are valid reasons for placing your protagonist in a world they don't understand.


When incorporating your setting into your story, remember that readers do not remember facts, they remember people doing things.

When it comes to showing social values and cultural details, this means you can't just have the narrator tell the reader "Bumpkinville was a conservative, religious community."  You have to prove it by showing readers a character doing something symptomatic of a conservative, religious community.  Readers are smart (because reading makes you smart).  Show us the local pastor admonishing the single mother for her wicked, promiscuous ways, and let us draw our own conclusions.

Next, we'll talk about Specific Settings.

No comments:

Post a Comment