World as Oyster

by Cindy Layton

World building in fiction is a uniquely creative experience. Tackling my first speculative novel, I’ve dreamed of a near-future filled with the best technology my mind can conjure and a society shaped by the forces of history rooted in what’s happening today. Yet readers must recognize that my futuristic characters and their flaws exist much as humans do today, and, as they have in the past, because, past, present or future, there are common threads among humans that don’t change, at least in fiction. Besides, world building isn’t just for science fiction. World building happens in every story.

Characters – their needs and emotions, what thrills them, what tears them apart, their fears, their ability to love, it all remains the same whether they’re navigating the Cosmos or living hand to mouth in the pre-civil war South, or navigating the subway in the North End.

The trick is to use the environment that’s created to serve the story. Yes, speculative fiction is about highlighting the events or innovations of the future world (i.e., advances in technology, destructive consequences of war, political upheaval) that contrast with the world of today, and identifying the impact of those changes on society, but the best new worlds tie those changes to showcase a resulting human emotion – one that readers will readily identify. In the futuristic Feed (M.T. Anderson), the author opens the scene with teenagers travelling to the moon, much as they would take a trip to the shopping mall, interspersing the experience with slang and sarcasm and quickly immersing the reader in both the recognizable culture of a future teen-age world and the impact of technology on their lives – a “feed” that is hard wired into their brains to circuit a mix of marketing and data directly to the brain.

Readers will identify part of the teen-age angst as the result of adolescent hormones and another part a result of the interference of the technology on the brain. Anderson quickly incorporates all three objects: the advances in technology, how society was changed, and the emotional effect of these changes, within a few pages of writing.

World Building is closely related to setting and many of the same edicts apply. Take a look at Kimberley McNamara’s True Places for the short course on the impact of setting within a story.

Elizabeth Solar examines a writer’s struggles with achieving and maintaining credibility with their reader in You’re So Unbelievable, with points for addressing the human aspect.

Finally, Medium contributor Sam Hollon, provides a rabbit-hole’s worth of resources related to world building for aspiring creators here.

I know what I’m doing this summer.