5 Ways To Improve Worldbuilding In Speculative Fiction

5 Ways to Improve Worldbuilding in Speculative Fiction

Written by: Angela Brown

When you build a new world, you’re responsible for building the very essence of any good story. In the genre of speculative fiction, which can include science fiction, fantasy, and magical realism, it may be tempting to go overboard with your writing. Doesn’t creating a new reality mean that you get to pack in as much intricate detail and description as you want? Nope – not unless you want to risk putting your readers to sleep. What about creating a fantastical land with no logic and rules? It sounds great in theory, but any contradictions can actually confuse people—or even worse, make them give up trying to make sense of your world and stop reading. Here are five suggestions that might help you improve your worldbuilding ability:

1. Be Unpredictable No one wants to read just another variation of the same old story they’ve read before. There are tons of speculative fiction tales out there, and the majority of dedicated readers have seen and read it all. What you need to give them is something fresh and something new. Hook them in, keep them engaged, and keep them guessing. Even readers who are new to the genre want to see what makes it so different from other genres, so it’s up to you to defy their expectations. ‘Defying Expectations’ states that the key element of a successful story is the need for the reader to have a sense of epiphany—where they learn something new. “At that moment, the brain will release several hormones, such as dopamine, serotonin, adrenaline, and others associated with learning,” which gives you that magical addictive rush that gets you addicted to discovering the story’s outcome. So, go ahead and create that plot twist that takes your story in a completely different direction—maybe you’ll even surprise yourself.

2. Stay Grounded Even though the word “speculative” is part of the genre, it’s always best to make sure that some elements of the story remain grounded in aspects of reality. You can always include strange and wonderful details alongside these aspects, but if they don’t flow with the plot, this may break the reader’s fragile immersion in your story. In order to build a believable yet fascinating world, you only need to look at current trends for inspiration. Maryville University claims that many online universities now offer flexible start dates, personalized support, and completely online coursework – is it such a stretch to create a dystopian world in which schools in the future had students sitting in their homes and attending lectures through virtual reality, never actually meeting anyone or experiencing anything for themselves? Also, researchers from the United Nations have estimated that by 2050, medical technologies will see over 3 million people live over the age of 100 at any given time – is immortality really that far off? To sum this up, you should build upon what’s familiar and combine it with other fantastical elements to give that special magic.

3. Be Flawed One of the biggest problems that speculative fiction writers often face is the inability to accept that their worlds and characters may be flawed. Perfection is boring. You need to ask yourself, “Is there a problem in my world that needs to be solved? How can I make my characters suffer, and more importantly, why do my readers care?” Everyone should have their personal downfalls, even your all-powerful heroes and gods. In ‘Creating a Sense of Wonder in Your Writing’ it suggested creating characters so that they are both realistic and fascinating. A common tendency is for authors to create flat stock archetypes like your typical elves and dwarves. Instead, he suggests modeling characters on interesting historical figures like Hitler or Gandhi to add a dose of multi-dimensional realism. In the end, it pays off to recognize the little quirks and faults in your worlds. Instead of working hard to iron them out, just embrace them because they help your world echo our reality.

4. Show, don’t tell When you start writing your first draft, D.N. Bryn, a speculative fiction writer, suggests diving straight in. As your main character interacts with your world, it also helps your reader learn about it. There’s always more time in later drafts to adjust and develop stronger explanations behind your ideas. Also, she suggests that you should limit the amount of exposition in your first chapter. Once your readers are already immersed in the first chapter, they’re more likely to sit through exposition in the second because they’ve already formed a bond with the story and the characters. Lastly, she emphasizes the “build” in worldbuilding. It’s important that each new piece of information is based off what you’ve already established, starting with the most basic of concepts. This prevents you from drowning the reader in a flood of information.

5. Step in, step back As Margaret Atwood mentions in a feature on Fast Company, you want to devote time to looking at how your characters may see their world, and then step back and look at the big picture. For Atwood, she likes to “wonder what people would have for breakfast…and whether or not they would say a prayer over them, and how they would pay for them, and what they would wear during that meal … Breakfast can take you quite far.” Basic acts like these allow you to indirectly allude to your world’s values, systems, and customs. Similarly, V.E. Schwab identifies “world-building and setting… as the first character”, which she develops before anything else. After these core elements and norms are planned out, she adds greater detail. It’s always important to make your reading accessible to your reader- otherwise, all your great ideas may go unread.

Worldbuilding may sound like a complicated journey, but it’s a highly rewarding process. Ultimately, your main focus should be on helping your readers understand your characters and plotlines. This means sharing your unique version of a world that they want to explore. If you’re having trouble finding some inspiration, you might want to have a look at The Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDB), which catalogs various works and upcoming releases. For more helpful writing tips and suggestions, feel free to subscribe to #WritingTips.

Angela Brown has always wanted to be a writer. She first started writing sappy poems about taking care of her cats when she was 9 years old, and then she wrote some articles for the school paper. Pretty soon, she was writing short stories and fan fiction, and by college, she’d realized it was what she wanted to do for the rest of her life. She currently works for a contact center in the day and works on her writing at night, blogging until she’s confident enough in her short stories to get them published.

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Creating the Perfect Cast Workshop

In this class, you’ll learn specifically how to

Build characters that intrigue your reader

Devise characters that we either love, or love to hate

Recognize the various roles that certain types of characters play in your novel, and then figure out how to adapt these characters to suit your novel.

Create tension by creating storylines that better exploit your character’s personality

Make sure that your cast isn’t too lean or bloated

And much more.

This workshop will be held from Thursday, Feb 27 through Saturday Feb 29, 2020 in Provo, Utah

Price per student: $449

We will start daily at 9:00 A.M. and go until 5:00 P.M.

Please bring a laptop and an idea for a novel to work on. We will be doing daily writing exercises, have daily lectures, and we will be critiquing your work and the work of other students.

There will be a maximum of 16 students in the class.

Find out more or register at https://mystorydoctor.com/live-workshops-2/

Let's talk about mynoise.net

Have you ever been listening to Rainymood and thought, “Yeah, this is good … but it would be nice if I could customize the sound more, or if there was a little more choice.

Let me introduce you to MyNoise.

MyNoise is a customizable sounscape looper with so many options, even within each soundscape. So say, for instance, you really love rain sounds when you write or study or relax. Anything. I know I’m a big fan of rain sounds. They have a page for that.

But say you like really high, pattery rain, and LOTS of low thunder. Here’s where MyNoise really stands out: you can customize that. See those sliders with all the cute colors? That is your equalizer. You can adjust the levels based on what you want to hear more and less of. Here’s how it looks when you want high, pattery rain and low, rumbly thunder:

But say rain isn’t really your jam. Say you want something a little more ambient, a little more background noise-y. Something with people. Well, they have customizable coffee house chatter that even has the levels listed for things like “kitchen,” “babble,” and “table”:

Or say you miss the ocean.

Or say you miss your cat.

Or say you miss your spaceship.

Or say you miss the dungeon where you and your team of scalawag adventurers used to explore and face off against, say, dragons. In the dungeon.

This site is seriously so helpful, and those are just a fraction of every kind of sounscape the site has to offer. The best part is that if you want to layer it with music (for instance, I’ll layer a playlist + rain + coffee shop if the scene I’m writing takes place in a coffee shop), you can adjust the master volume, meaning all of your layers stay at their respective volumes, just louder or quieter.

Enjoy!

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galaxy62

5 years ago

Query Generator!

I’ve just launched a new website called Query Generator!

Query Generator is a tool for fiction writers in the early stages of drafting or reworking their query letters. The Generator helps you identify important aspects of your story and gathers them into a standard query structure.

The main feature of the website is the Generator itself, which has a form that’s divided into five sections:

Section 1: The Protagonist

Section 2: The Plot

Section 3: Meta Data

Section 4: You!

Section 5: The Agent

The Generator looks something like this:

Every single item has both an explanation and a few examples of how you might fill out the item, which should help to guide you in filling out each section. Some of the questions are extremely simple (ex. ”Full Name”) while some might take a bit of thinking (ex. “Initial Challenges”).

Once you’re done, your query will look something like the ones on the Example Page:

The example page features the “blank” template and two examples of filled out forms. This will help you see how everything actually fits together, and should provide you with some further help before you start with your own query - or, if the Generator produces an incoherent mess - will help you see how it was everything was meant to come together in the end. You can really see here that there are very few words the Generator actually adds to your project. The longest string is six. The Generator is meant to help you find your own words as you draft your query.

Finally, there’s an Advice Page:

This page is meant to help you:

understand why the generator functions the way it does,

provides tips for further editing your query, and

helps you look toward next steps once you finish revising your query.

Why the Generator Exists

I’ve noticed, doing some query critiques here and in workshops with friends, that many first-attempts at queries are missing some fundamental story elements: protagonist ages, word counts, inciting incidents, setting, etc. No matter how well written they were, they weren’t fulfilling all of the functions required by query letters.

I have my writing the perfect query letter post, but as I was helping a friend rewrite her query, I realized that some elements were just so formulaic, that there had to be a way to just… make a query generating form.

So I decided to build, basically, a Query Ad-Libs. You fill out a form that asks for your story elements, giving you examples and explanations to help you along the way. Once it has the information, it puts everything together, and hands it back to you in a standard query layout.

It won’t be well-written, but it’ll be a starting point for you to take back to your Word Doc and hopefully use to make something amazing.

A Simple Website

This website was created by me (concept, content, & design) and my boyfriend (qualified, professional computer programmer). We didn’t have a team or testers or any outside help along the way. Just a drive to combine our skills and do something with our time besides binging Netflix (and many, many cups of Starbucks.) It’s not a professional or moneymaking endeavor, either. There are no ads or fees.

However, if you find the site useful and would like to show your appreciation, donations of cups of coffee via Ko-Fi would be greatly valued, and spent coming up with additional content, either for this site or a new one: https://ko-fi.com/letswritesomenovels.

Also, if you come across any bugs, please let us know, so we can fix them for future visitors to the Query Generator!

I hope you check it out, and - if you do - I hope you find it useful to your writing endeavors, whether you’re getting ready to query, dreaming of querying, or just having fun.

https://www.querylettergenerator.com/

xx Julia (letswritesomenovels)

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galaxy62

6 years ago

I Didn’t Mean To Make This So Long But I Wanted To Both Analyze My Own Style And Give Other People

i didn’t mean to make this so long but i wanted to both analyze my own style and give other people a look into it! I hope someone can find some use for it!

53K notes View Post

galaxy62

6 years ago

This is so cute what the hECK

By. AbsoluteDream on Deviantart

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galaxy62

6 years ago

man i sure do love shows written by aaron ehasz about a pair of siblings and a kid from another culture travelling across the world to stop a war together

a show in which one sibling has powers, and learns / hopes to learn from the kid from another culture, who has distinctive tattoos

K: I told you, he’s the real thing Gran-Gran! I finally found a bender to teach me! […] At night, you can teach me whatever moves you learn from Master Pakku!

A: Hey, you did the water whip! K: I couldn’t have done it without your help.

R: You do know what the six primal sources are, right? C: If I say yes, are you going to make me name them?

C: Am I supposed to feel flattered by this? R: You said Claudia called you a fool when you interrupted her lightning spell, but I’ll bet she was actually trying to say fulminus. It’s the draconic word for lightning!

And who in the first episode are immediately ship teased by the magical sibling’s brother