The Truth About World Building Disease

26th November 2010

What is it?

Definition: world building disease is contracted by many writers who fall victim to the selfish pleasures derived from the development of their own world. The creation of back story far beyond the interest of any casual reader.

Symptoms:

A neglect of writing the novel in favour of writing about the world and its history.
Information dumping upon a reader.
Obsession with irrelevant facts.

Cure: Write the story!

World Building Vs Story Telling

This could be seen as a counter-productive article to post on a blog dedicated to the art of World Building. After all I am here to promote the practices of world building and to encourage you to design more, and in turn I hope this blog will become a stable part of your world building adventure.

However, I also believe in providing an honest and balanced view on what I promote and write about. I want to be part of The Third Tribe as presented by Sonia Simone of Copyblogger. That means no sleazy marketing or over exaggerated results. http://www.copyblogger.com/two-tribes/

Who will Read?

As I am only just starting out in the world of blogging myself I can only guess as to who will read my articles on here. However, I will make an educated guess that most people will be either fantasy/sci-fi writers, cartographers or Games/Dungeon Masters and RPG Players. For this reason I believe it is important that you get a balance between your world building and actually writing. As at the end of the day I know the main reason I build fantastic worlds is so I can tell even greater stories.

For Dungeon Masters this means you need to get the balance between world building and creating the campaigns for your players and then playing it with them. Cartographers, well I guess you’re kind of off the hook a little, though I bet you would love to write a few stories yourself?

If you’re not any of the people I cruelly stereotyped above then I do apologise, I love you really. Let me know who or what you are and I can add you to the list of stereotypes and then no one is left out of my pigeon holes. They are quite cosy, honest.

The Next Step

If you’re serious about World Building then I want you to click through to the Writing Excuses Podcast and listen to the podcast on World Building Disease. They explain it far better than I could and provide excellent tips on overcoming it. It’s only “15 minutes long, because you’re in a hurry and they are not that smart” – I hope they don’t mind me promoting that amazing slogan here.

http://www.writingexcuses.com/2009/06/01/writing-excuses-season-3-episode-1-world-building-history/

For those of you who don’t know: Writing Excuses is written by Brandon Sanderson (Mistborn, The Wheel of Time ), Howard Tayler (Schlock Mercenary) and Dan Wells (I am NOT a Serial Killer) and I highly recommend listening to all of their podcasts.

Image Credit

Comments

6 responses

Lex Mosgrove

12th December 2010

This definition up there is so hilariously realistic it should be included in some medical manual… wait a second… *chases plot bunny*

Er, well, about Worldbuilding Disease… this goes for research, too. Guilty as charged. You never do enough of that either, or so it seems. (Well, here’s the Writing Excuses podcast on the matter: http://tinyurl.com/5hwceq)

As for your readers, I’m currently drawing a science fiction/fantasy graphic novel. And I defy stereotyping, because that’s my secret superpower (along with getting lost in a particular tram station every single time). 😛

Reply
Nathan A Smith

14th December 2010

haha thanks Lex.

World Building Disease is definitely one of my issues when it comes to actually sitting down to writing my stories. To be hoenst that’s one of the main reasons I founded this website. This way I can do all the world building I want and not feel guilty about neglecting my story, that’s the theory anyways hehe.

Nate

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Lex Mosgrove

17th December 2010

Ah, theories… they’re dangerous and elusive beings, so watch out. 😉

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Jelena

28th June 2011

You do have a point there, Nathan. It can become an addiction if not properly controlled. 🙂 But world building is no greater sickness than web surfing in search of articles on world building and other “useful” information for writers. And who knows, maybe Internet life is more time consuming than actual world building.

I admit, I’m a world building nerd who even keeps a blog on her favorite subject. And I’m damn serious about that stuff. But it never kept me away from my actual stories. It made them truly unique. 🙂

~J

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1. Nathan Smith
  
  1st July 2011
  
  Aye Jelena, I agree, there are soo many things to distract and steal our time. I find I spend hours stroll past without anything productive being achieved. Maybe it’s just me who puts off my story writing in favour of building the world hehe.
  
  What story/world are you working on at the moment?
  
  Reply
Jelena

2nd July 2011

I’m writing my first book of a sci-fi dilogy about an alien being and the incident he is dragged into and is forced to solve in order to continue with his goal.

Since there is no connection to Earth or humans at all (so the term “alien” is quite relative), I had to create several species, cultures and technology from scratch. This is where all the science and world building comes in.

Well, smth like that.

~J

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