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Apr 2016

So I'm curious what folks like about the worlds in comics. Often, creators have to pull this stuff together over years of work and thought - other times...not so much. What do you think makes for great world building? When do you think it's just too much?
Share your tips and tricks on building believable worlds! Bonus points for examples! smile

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    Apr '16
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    Apr '16
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Personally, I really enjoy worldbuilding that considers everything down to the finest detail to weave a very convincing and immersive setting. When you can tell the author did years of research and planning, when they made it a passionate craft of their life. It's better when the worldbuilding comes through reader observation instead of being fed chapters of exposition. Like being able to notice things in the background or through what a character mentions.

In video games, for example "The Elderscrolls" series, has tons of lore in the background that the player can peruse at their leisure. It really ties the world together and gives things context, but it isn't imperative to understanding the game. The fact that it's mostly background stuff means the audience doesn't HAVE to read through books of material to understand the story, but because the material is there anyways, it gives the world more depth.

I don't think there's such thing as "too much worldbuilding". I mean, certainly a 100 page exposition is too much, but it's not a world building problem so much as it is the writer's need for improving their storytelling methods. I do see the value of having like optional supplementary books or episodes to a comic that isn't part of the main story and goes into detail about the lore around it (another example that comes to mind is that book for the Harry Potter series which discussed folk-tales and the creatures). That way, a curious reader can spend the time to get to know your world better without it being a burden to the story.

YEP. That's pretty much my worst fear when it comes to writing on world building. I really enjoy a good bit of world building too, but I'm always trying to steer away from the 'info dump' style of telling it. If there's some serious backstory that needs to happen I try to weave it along Hansel and Gretel style, nice little bits of information that get dropped along the storyline.

I do have to say I get really bogged down when I'm reading stuff and they go all Tolkien on me. I love LoTR as much as the next nerd, but dude was long winded. His first few chapters of Fellowship were so tough to get through considering all his written family history of hobbits stuff. x.X

I agree with you. Initially, my first several drafts of my story involved chapters dedicated to why the character species existed and all that stuff. But I knew it was a problem when even I was getting bored reading what I had written lol.

Worldbuilding is my absolute favorite thing to do as an artist, and so finding a good balance of background information is a challenge I can relate to.

For me, worldbuilding is simultaneously one of the most fun and one of the most frustrating aspects of creating a work of fiction. Especially when creating a fantasy word, where you have find that balance between the outlandish elements that make that world so different form ours with those elements that still make it relatable in a way.
The way I see it, the author should conduct proper research and build the world a little bit beyond what they would find necessary to portray in their work because it helps with consistency and believability.
I've talked about Unsounded before, but I think it's a very good example of solid worldbuilding. The author has created what seems to me a very original fantasy world and a unique approach to handling magic.

i always find a comic (or any story in general) is much easier to get invested in when it has a really detailed world. one thing that really gets it for me are visuals. dont get me wrong, i could read an entire novel of backstory, but i would immediately find a diagram or a map (can we just take a second to admire those who make maps, like my god they are amazing) much more interesting, and they are easier to refer to at a later point. it would be even easier to have a setup like that here on tapastic, simply by making a side series with any extra information needed.

TLDR: yes, worldbuilding. its a great thing. i like complex worlds.

I still think the comic I've read with the Best Worldbuilding currently is Cucumber Quest3. The best way I know how to describe that comic is "it feels like playing a Mario RPG," and something CQ does extremely well is to create that feeling WITHOUT Mario's existing history and familiarity. It's building a world that feels as familiar and solid as a well-thought-out Paper Mario, from scratch, and to do that, every detail has to burst with life and also feel like it perfectly belongs in that world. Every location and character and critter has to feel uniquely a part of CQ's universe or else it wouldn't be able to capture that same charm -- it would feel more like a generic RPG parody rather than a unique and charming world that you can't wait to explore.

2

I also really like CQ as an example of great world-building because I think a lot of times people think of world-building in a very narrow way -- realism. The idea that a more realistic world is a more full world. But I think actually good world-building is when everything feels as though it belongs in that world and is consistent with that world.

I feel like high fantasy as a genre is ruined for me by all the intensive worldbuilding. I don't need to read 40 different stories, all with a mildly different take on the same creation myth with 20 different races who all have a different language and the same old prophecies and a metaphor about discrimination including elves... but then I know that a lot of people really like digging into all that 'nerdy' stuff. : D It's totally a matter of opinion on how different people like to read.

I think the simpler someone's invention is, the more I'm drawn to it, and I agree that lots of exposition is NOT the way to get anyone interested in a place and time. I like worlds that just feel like they're not trying to be a separate reality, they just are.

My favorite worlds on Tapastic are actually pretty based in our reality, but I still consider them to be different 'worlds' :

Drugs and Wires: is one of my favorite world builds (I've followed the story for years now) There's never any sort of info dump about where it takes place, no maps of cities, and no need to stress what the structure of the government is, yet everything feels completely real. There's plenty of basis in reality where you can see an advertisement in real life and think "Wow that totally belongs in the back of a D+W strip" and I like that!

In the same vein of totally a different world, but also totally just real life, I like The Sisters a lot. It's New England, but with magic, and because of my prior knowledge of New England I just don't question supernatural occurrences. A nasty spirit in someone's basement draws enough from popular local myth and regional literature and history that there doesn't need to be any long exposition about the creation of the spirit and how it came to be and exactly what ancient language it speaks... It just feels real, and that's enough.

I also think that a lot of fantasy series use world building as a crutch for just plain bad storytelling. People think that if they've invented a new language and drawn a bunch of maps their story HAS to be good because it's "developed" but that's totally not the case! You can pour all the years you want into a world, but if the premise of your story is still tired and derivative, it's just going to stay a tired and derivative story!

tl;dr: curse Tolkien! He's turned fantasy story into such nerd fodder!!

EDIT: I remembered an article about this... Someone has vocalised this a lot better than me. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/11289765/The-Hobbit-How-the-clomping-foot-of-nerdism-destroyed-Tolkiens-dream-and-the-fantasy-genre.html1

Did someone say worldbuilding?

Because I am all about worldbuilding. Like, I sometimes make up political systems and currency standards for fun.

... It's actually kind of funny, considering how much of a worldbuilding nut I am, that the worldbuilding in Grassblades is pretty... shallow? I don't know if that's the right word - I mean, I put a lot of thought into what pieces go where and stuff, but compared to some of the other worlds I've built, Grassblades is shallow as a teaspoon. It relies a lot on context-clues and visuals to convey what the world is like, and doesn't really explain much, or even go into how the world functions. It just does. It might be because it is centered very heavily on its characters and their internal goings-on; since the overall conflict is so heavily character-centric, I've only worldbuilt enough for my characters to have solid ground to stand on.

... Which can be a good thing; it certainly prevents me from going on long info-dumping tangents. If I don't have the information, I don't have the urge to share it either.

Because that's the thing. Building worlds is fun. Inventing new and interesting things is fun. Figuring out the minute details of how everything fits together is fun. But info-dumping? Info-dumping is a terrible thing to do to your readers. Less really is more when it comes to sharing your worldbuilding with your readers.

It's like... When you build a house, you level the ground and build the foundation and the framework, all the load-bearing walls and the drainage and you insulate and you make sure the roof doesn't leak - but when people come to visit you, they step inside and all they see are floors and wallpaper and kitchen counter-tops. They don't see the rest - and if you've built your house right, they shouldn't. If the insulation's peeking through, you've done a shoddy job.

A few things I feel are worth keeping in mind when worldbuilding:

The world exists beyond your characters
When I read a comic - or experience any work of fiction, really - I love getting the feeling that the world isn't just popping into existence as the characters walk by. That it exists beyond them; that there are things happening in the world that have nothing to do with the characters, but happens anyway. I love the feeling of a larger world. Books on shelves in libraries the characters visit that have no relevance to the main quest; festivals that go on around the characters by aren't directly related to them; political systems or conflicts that the characters are not at the center of, etc., etc.

It lends a sense of solidity to the story, and makes it feel more grounded. It's the worldbuilding equivalent to drawing people in the background of scenes set in a city; if all you drew were empty streets, the world would feel empty. It doesn't take much - just a hint or mention here and there that there is stuff happening in the world that doesn't immediately impact the main cast. A hint is enough for me to believe that when the characters walk out of a specific place, that place doesn't just fold like so many theatre backdrops.

'Believable' is more important than 'realistic'
You don't need every gritty detail to show, or an in-depth psychological profile on every single character that shows up; you don't need functional architecture or the exact schematics of every machine or gadget or weapon. A world with cars and electricity and television isn't better than a world where whales fly and people use candy for money - it's just more familiar.

You can have your flying-whales-and-candy world work just fine, as long as you construct it in a way that allows the reader to believe in it. Make it solid, give it a sense of purpose and a sense of place, and let the readers immerse themselves.

Castle Waiting does this beautifully. It's a world where fairytales are real - where there really is a bird laying golden eggs, where giants dwell in far-off lands, dwarves tunnel under mountains and gryphons roost in castle towers. It's got curses and water-spirits and ghosts. Heck, the main setting is the castle of Sleeping Beauty, after Sleeping Beauty's left to marry the Prince, and her castle staff just kinda get on with their lives. And it works, because none of that is allowed to just be window-dressing. It's all relevant, and it all matters.

You don't need to tell us everything
Really, you don't. Even if you spent a month figuring out the exact nature of the election process in your imaginary faux-democracy, unless your story is entirely about a political election, we really don't need to know all of it. And you definitely don't need to give us a lecture about it. Give us enough to understand what's happening and why, and leave the rest to context and nerdy extra material separate from the main story. The same way people roll their eyes at dramatic mid-fight monologues in anime, your readers will roll their eyes if you stop the progress of the plot just to give them pages of text explaining itty bitty details. It slows the pacing down!

Your characters inhabit the world; they know all this already
This ties into the previous point, but it's what I call the "As you know, Bob"-trope. It's when two characters have a conversation that basically amounts to them going

A: "Oh, here's this thing we're both intimately familiar with, let me explain it to you!"
B: "Thank you for explaining this thing I have known since childhood to me - let's make sure the people in the back heard you."
A: "It's the least I could do to move the plot forward."

... bonus points if any of them actually SAY "I know that!" out loud. People don't do that. Sure, they can discuss something they both know, but they won't be giving a detailed lecture on the precise details of it to each other; they'll believe they both know what's going on. And readers aren't stupid; give them enough context clues, and they can figure it out on their own.

Breadcrumbs are your friends
So, you've got a massively complicated concept you need to explain to your readers - something they need to know before the end of the story. Here's the kicker - you don't need to explain it all at once.

It's okay to give them the beginnings of an explanation here, and then a few more details there and there, and then bring it all together right when it becomes crucial. Scatter the information like the breadcrumbs of Hansel and Gretel - don't drop the whole bakery all at once. You've got time and space - use it. Spread things out, and you will be able to avoid the info-dumping trap.