Great Artists Steal

As I’ve started to read the Lord of the Rings books, I’m coming to understand that Tolkien is an absolute god of worldbuilding. (We’ll talk some more about that next week.) People have criticized his books for going into far too much detail, and I can’t completely disagree – modern writers would be laughed out of the room if they presented a manuscript like that. Your typical reader needs their worldbuilding to be bundled in with a well-paced plot, and Tolkien’s balance is way off.

But the thing is, every detail that Tolkien gives is laden with personality. It opens with the history of hobbits as a race, showing first and foremost that they are a people like any other: that they have been through hard times, been through war and famine, but in this era, they are prosperous. They are content. They have silly, petty conflicts with family and neighbors, and as Tolkien describes the preparations for Bilbo’s birthday party, we feel a kinship with them.

Compelling fantasy lore is rooted in reality, because at their very core, stories are born from the human experience. For a writer, magic is a means to an end – a plot device. It allows you to access ideas and dynamics that might be difficult to achieve in a realistic setting. For instance, the One Ring lays a burden of overwhelming stress on Frodo without putting the people around him through the same trauma. That means that his friends and comrades, especially Sam, are still emotionally available, and lets Tolkien give him support and comfort that, say, a World War I soldier could not have received. (More on that next week!) It makes for an incredibly compelling narrative about making it through difficult times.

But the thing is, writers very rarely start with ‘compelling’ and end with ‘magic.’ Generally speaking, it’s the other way around. You love magic and fantasy and sci-fi, and over time, you learn to use the traits of those genres to your advantage. So let’s talk about that, about the learning.

Worldbuilding can be an overwhelming task; the potential is limitless, which makes it intimidating. Very few people start out knowing that worldbuilding is rooted in reality. They’ve only seen the finished product: the politics of Skyrim, quirky Diagon Alley, Camp Half-Blood and all of its games and practices. Where do you even begin making something like that?

Most people, and I’m not just speaking about fanfiction writers here, most people start with someone else’s work. And there’s nothing wrong with that! You’ve seen the waves of inspiration that follow every groundbreaking bestseller. How many dystopian worlds were born in the wake of the Hunger Games? How many thousands of high fantasy worlds have been built on Tolkien’s foundation? How many come from folklore, from mythology, from religious books? You start with a structure that resonates with you, and you fill it in with your own ideas.

It's with those ideas that the practice really begins.

Let’s start with a basic high fantasy setting. That means elves, orcs, dwarves, halflings, and a vaguely medieval time period. That’s your structure. What are your details? You need a unique culture each for elves, orcs, dwarves, halflings. You need a history and international relations for those cultures, plus whatever human cultures you include. You need a magic system, of course, and geography, and languages.

And if you’re like most people, you just start filling things in with ideas that sound cool. Again, that’s fine! But it’s not necessarily going to be compelling. I think that it’s a crucial part of making that system your own, and that you can’t make something compelling until you’ve done that work.

Your first million words? That’s learning how to make a world your own. You fill in the parts that interest you, and as that interest solidifies, you start to do research.

Are you fascinated by fantasy languages? Go for it! Make some shit up. Give it a role in your story, give those languages weight and cultural significance and whatever else fascinates you about languages. Eventually, as your skill matures, you can do research. You can learn about verb conjugation, levels of formality, pronouns – which are all important details for a story with a strong language focus! These details are a way to build hierarchy into your society, or respect for nature, or clear education. For example, maybe elves use animate pronouns for nature (they/them, as opposed to it/its) and orcs have a specific tense for speaking to respected opponents. That’s character.

Of course, you can do this research immediately, as soon as you know you like languages. Theoretically. In practice, I feel that this makes the writing process overwhelming and intimidating. If you’re afraid to press start, you’ll never do it. It’s okay. It’s easier to go into the research when you’ve already spent some time working with language in a story, because the understanding and questions you develop as you write will give your research context and meaning.

And that goes for all components of a made-up world. Research enriches your lore by giving attention to the details. If you want the dwarves to have magic ways of mining ore, research mining. If you want elves to be one with nature, research cultures that try to coexist with it. It's not boring if it has meaning.

So: when you're ready, do your research. Until then, do what you like. The practice you're doing now will help you apply your research later.

We’ll return to this topic at some point, because I have a lot more to say about worldbuilding, but I think this about covers the beginner stuff. Next week is my mom’s birthday, and I have a special post ready for that. See you then!