Video Transcript (computer generated - may contain errors)

Sara Gentry: Hello, writers! I have got Andrew Wall with me here. Hello, Andrew!

Andrew Wall: Hello!

Sara Gentry: And I am so excited to talk to Andrew because we're gonna dig into some world building stuff which is not at all my area of expertise. But it is a hundred percent Andrew's area of expertise. So this is gonna be a great conversation. But for our writers who don't know, Andrew, let me just give you a little bit more info here. Andrew is a book coach and world building consultant at Craft Better Books, the company he runs with his business partner and spouse Katie, which I'm sure could be a whole different conversation about how that all works. But as a coach who specializes in world building. He enjoys working with people of all genres, because, yes, all stories and genres need world building, to ensure that their story worlds feel truly alive and immersive. He is formally trained in philosophy, theology, history, anthropology, and education. All subjects that are extremely helpful when coming to support writers in their world building endeavors, and when he is not working on stories and worlds, he enjoys playing TTRPGs with his friends, exploring virtual worlds in video games, playing board games with his spouse, and wrapping himself in a warm blanket on a rainy day to read, and being the monster villain that his kids attack as they pretend to be heroes of various sorts. Sounds like we have a lot of similar things happening in our household, as your household.

Andrew Wall: I believe it.

Sara Gentry: Alright. So let's dive into this world building. But because I don't want to leave anybody behind. We might have newer writers and more experienced writers here with us, maybe could you just give us, like, what do we mean when we say world building?

Andrew Wall: So people mean a lot of different things when they say world building. If the second you start researching world building in Google, you'll very quickly come to realize this. I define world building in a very specific way, and I'm going to get to that in a second. I just want to talk a bit about how a lot of people sometimes think world building is just developing a setting for the book. In other words, to use a crude theater analogy developing the props and set pieces. That's not what world building is. I have a huge huge preoccupation of shooting down that approach to world building. Because, if your world building runs as only as deep as your scenes, your world is not going to – the story world's not going to feel alive. It's not gonna feel lived in. It's not gonna feel 3 dimensional. It's going to feel like cardboard set pieces. So this is why world building is so important. You want to create that immersive experience for your readers where they get in, and it feels real and logical and interconnected, and a lot bigger than what they are seeing. That's a big part of it. Okay, so what's my actual definition of world building? I define. World building is the process of generating the various pieces of your world and defining the relationships between them in a logical and systematic way that creates the experience of a living, breathing world, overflowing with story potential. If the only story that your world can tell is the story that you are choosing to write, you've done your world building incorrectly.

Sara Gentry: I love that.

Andrew Wall: Too small.

Sara Gentry: Actually a very fantastic, what do you want to call a filter like, yeah, that's really well said, Yeah.

Andrew Wall: I mean, obviously, the story that you have chosen to write is what you are, the story you are interested in telling, and there's nothing wrong with that. But you could say like, well, I could also tell this story over here or this story over here, or this story over here. And you could. There should be a lot of we're creating a sandbox. You want to have a lot of room to play in your world. Okay? So you can tell, a world is small. I'm going to give a fantasy example. You can tell a world is small when a book ends, and it's like satisfying arc, and then the next book starts and the conflict feels out of left field. It doesn't feel connected. It doesn't feel organic. It feels kind of like whoop a whip. But why? … You can understand the cause and effect relationships between everything. And it's like, okay. So these events in this book happen this way. It should set up what's happening in the next book. It shouldn't be a non sequitur but anyway, as I said, I can jabber about this nonstop for probably about 3 h. So I'm gonna pause for a moment, so you can redirect.

Sara Gentry: Well, I love that. You've pointed out that it's important, like, I think, that we tend to think of world building specifically in the speculative fiction genres, because those stories take place in worlds that are not our own. But, as you have mentioned, world building really does matter for every genre. So do you find that to be a common problem, perhaps with writers who are not writing, you know. Fantasy sci-fi like that. They haven't maybe haven't done enough?

Andrew Wall: Yes, so you're right. Fantasy, speculative fiction in general, so fantasy. Sci-fi., anything with spec fic elements is what people think of when they think of world building. Because you have to come up, you have to figure out the pieces of the world. And you have to develop all of them.

Sara Gentry: Yes.

Andrew Wall: With more realistic fiction. Like romance or contemporary fiction, or women's fiction, the world building is less obvious, the worlding that needs to be done. I'll give an example of a holiday romance. This will take place in, you know, big city person going home to the small town. And it's so easy because it's such a familiar trope to kind of phone it in, yeah, on actually developing the town but you need to know the layout of the town so you don't contradict yourself when you're describing where they're going. You need to know what memories different places in the town are going to trigger for your character, and why those places are significant and maybe complicated, contradictory emotions that they feel in reaction to them when they walk into their family, to their childhood home. Is it the same as when they grew up? Is it different? These are going to cause different emotional reactions. Where's the picture of our family that's been hanging on this wall forever? Why is it in the closet now? But again, so world building ends up zooming way farther into the details. This isn't to say that fantasy world builders shouldn't do some of this world building but it is to say that in realistic fiction it becomes way more important because the emotions of your character and of real people tied to things and places and people. And you have to be able to understand all of that – I'm going to say something controversial – before you start writing. Because if you try to define those things as you write. You're going to have to go back and rewrite your book because you're going to end up doing things that either contradict things you did earlier, or should have been mentioned earlier. If you just like, make up like a thing that they found on the shelf. Well, if that's gonna have a lot of significance to them. And they've hypothetically been in that same room earlier in the book. You're gonna have to mention it earlier, even if you don't go into the same level of depth and interaction with it. So you know these kinds of things. There's a lot of layering that happens when it comes to the details with world building for non-specific stuff. Sure, you don't have to develop political systems or the economics or the cultures, because that's all kind of there. You're stepping into a pre-lived world, in a lot of ways. But you have to pay more attention to your character's world, if that makes any sense.

Sara Gentry: It does make a lot of sense. And you know I'm so I'm someone who comes from academia, spent many years in academia. And lately, my biggest pet peeve is these romance stories that are taking place in academia, and I'm like, that is not it at all.

Andrew Wall: Is that what? It's like? Yeah, yeah. Where are the board meetings? We need board board meetings. Yeah, yeah.

Sara Gentry: Oh, my goodness, okay, so we've established that all stories should spend some time with world building but perhaps some might require a little more world building than others.  So it's like a spectrum, probably for every aspect of writing. And I mean, what do you see as being like the bare minimum, the minimum viable product of a believable world here?

Andrew Wall: I both love and hate this question. One, because I love it because I get a chance to answer it. And I hate it because it is the question that I get asked most often. So what's the what's the least amount of this that I need to do? 

Sara Gentry: Well, I've told you world building is not my thing, so I need to know the minimum amount of work I can do, Andrew!

Andrew Wall: Yeah, no, I I totally understand. And I'll go out on a limb. World building's actually not what, is not in a like the thing for most people that I work with. That's not to say that there aren't some that really enjoy and get really into it. But there are some that it feels like more of a slog. It's just harder. It's not something that comes naturally. And I just want to say, that's okay. It doesn't have to be your wheelhouse. It's okay. If your wheelhouse is at the line level, that's fine, there's nothing wrong with that. But to circle back around to your question, though the bare minimum that you have to do? I think you just have to ask yourself, “Does this feel lived in? Does it feel complex? Does it feel like it's bigger than what is on the page?” And different people will draw the line in different places. Like, I think this is, gonna I think this is enough, and they may discover as they write as they're writing. Huh! That wasn't enough. But if you're ever writing, and I'm going to speak especially to fancy people here, if you're ever writing your book, and you're not sure what's going to happen next, that's a world building problem.

Sara Gentry: Hmm.

Andrew Wall: That means you didn't do enough. It should be the cause and effect in your relationships in your world, you should know what's gonna happen. X happens, Y is probably going to be the result. It shouldn't require you to reinvent the wheel to write the next scene. That means that you didn't do enough world building. So I always push people, make it as complete as possible. And this is the trap, right? More detail is never a bad thing. And he says to I'm sure some of you out there who have your giant folders full of folders full of folders, full of documents. That is your world building Bible in a Google drive somewhere or something like that. You know, I get. I get it. I'm like you. It's a fractal process. It goes on forever. Do what you need to do. A good rule of thumb is at the very least, you want any anywhere, in any place that your story is going to touch anything, any person, any anything, develop it as much as possible.

Sara Gentry: Yeah. Okay, so let's look at the flip side of this, though, which you've kind of alluded to with the big binders and the Bibles, and all of these things, because we totally know that writers will go overboard. It's almost like an avoidance, like if I just keep doing this, then I don't have to actually start writing. The story is also difficult, and sometimes it can be like a procrastination that looks like working, but is actually really just maybe procrastination. So like, when do you push writers out the door and be like, you know, like you've done enough here. Now, you need to actually put it into practice.

Andrew Wall: I'm always hesitant to push people out of there without a good understanding of them and what it is they want and what it is they're trying to do so I don't think that I'm going to be able to give a nice, easy, for example, spent 50 plus years doing his world building before really actually writing anything. So you know, there's something to be said with that. Some people are going to be on that end of the spectrum. Some people aren't, however. I think some of the reasons why writers get hung up with world building is a kind of a procrastination, because writing feels almost like a bigger commitment. It's real. And this is like, this is the part where, if it's bad, it matters, right?

Sara Gentry: We're going to see it. People will read what I'm writing.

Andrew Wall: Yeah, exactly. And I don't know if you've read Name of the Wind, by Patrick Roth. What great great book! Great series not done yet. We're angry about it. But go read it, if you haven't read it. It's some of the best world building. He was interviewed on world building and asked, “How much is - what's a good rule of thumb - of how much of your world building should end up in your book?” And he's like, I think a good rule of thumb is 10% for me, it's about 3%. So you know, again world building. You should do a lot of world building. That's what's gonna make your world feel alive. You're gonna know that it's a pro you're having. You have a problem with world building, though, and by problem I mean, like an addiction, difficulty moving past it, if you're feeling anxious about defining the story you are going to tell in that world, that's when you know you might have an avoidance problem. If you have all the folders, all the all this detail and everything, but you're you're uncertain what you want to commit to, that's a possible sign that maybe you should work with a book coach to help you define that better on the. On the other hand, you're gonna have folks that know what they want, the story that they want to tell, but it means so much to them to get it right that they're avoiding starting that perfectionism bit. And for those writers I just want to say your 1st draft is going to be bad.

Sara Gentry: I know, but it's still so hard.

Andrew Wall: I know.

Sara Gentry: I know what you're saying, but I don't know if I truly believe what you're saying, right?

Andrew Wall: Yeah, I think the little dirty secret for a lot of beginning writers especially don't know is that the magic of writing happens in revision. You gotta just get that. Just get the 1st draft out. It can be real dirty, real rough. Even if you're just writing narrative summary. And you know that you're going to have to go and attack in and and put in a lot more dialogue like, just get it out because it's in revision that you really start shaping it into what you want. But we're going off track.

Sara Gentry: No, but that's still an interesting question, because I would assume that with revision like anything, you know, when you go through revision. It's like you develop the character more. You would, I assume, go through more world building, potentially, because maybe now you've figured out places where you didn't know as much as you thought you needed, or you need to weave it in more, or take some of it out.

Andrew Wall: Right well, and that's possible for sure. I do want to say that of the people that I have done world building audits, who have already written a manuscript of various draft stages, almost all of them have ended up having to rewrite their stories from scratch after revising world building. Because world building is one of those. It's foundational. It's the foundation you're building on. And so any big changes that you make down here are going to have massive ripple effects in the rest of your story. So you need to be, I mean. And again, that's even true in realistic fiction. If you're gonna change the setting of an important memory that's gonna have really big implications for some scenes later on, you know, in your in your story that may or may not be happening in that location, and whether it's invoking the same feelings that are or not, I mean, like that stuff matters and changing that has huge ramifications. Yeah, so you just need to be careful.

Sara Gentry: Totally see that.

Andrew Wall: Find a hole, go, fill the hole. But yeah, don't be careful.

Sara Gentry: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I mean, you mentioned earlier the example of like the big city to the small town. And I've lived in both Southern Florida and Michigan, very different places, and I can honestly tell you that Miami is very different from Detroit. So if my big city person was going to move from one location to the other. I can totally see where that would impact a lot.

Andrew Wall: Yeah, I mean, just like the cultures that are present, like, what kind of food can you find if you walk out of your apartment building? That's really important in a big city scenario. I mean, like, and it matters. It's gonna communicate a lot about the place that you're in, about the kind of neighborhood in the city that you're in. That's the kind of building of cities is almost like micro world building, because you have all these different neighborhoods that have their own kind of cultures, and vibes and levels of development and decay, and all of that socioeconomics, I mean, like all of that plays such a huge role. In our actual world, we do ourselves a disservice to pretend that it doesn't in our stories.

Sara Gentry: Yeah. Well, writers, we have only scratched the surface here, but hopefully, we have convinced the writers here that world building is important, regardless of what genre we are writing in. And Andrew is an expert in this, I am not. And so if you are looking for help with world building, Andrew is your guy here. How can people connect with you?

Andrew Wall: I'd say the best way to connect with me. Just go to go to our website, craftbetterbooks.com and if you think you need world building support, schedule, a free consultation.

Sara Gentry: And you also have a bunch of like world building resources and things as well, do you not, on your website?

Andrew Wall: Yeah. So we have a couple of freebies as well as I have a course that I am in the process of redoing.

Sara Gentry: Oh, there we go!

Andrew Wall: It's currently one month, one month world building. It's geared almost exclusively towards fantasy. Sci-fi spec. I am in the process of redoing it to where it's going to be World building made simple. It's gonna be the replacement course and be a little more in depth and such like that.

Sara Gentry: Cool, very cool. Writers, we’ll have links to all of that stuff so that you can find it easily in the show notes. But, Andrew, thank you so much for your time and this conversation, because it's always great to learn from people who know lots more things about things I know nothing about.

Andrew Wall: It was my pleasure. Thanks for having me, Sara.

Sara Gentry: Writers. Thank you so much for joining us, and we'll see you next time. Bye.