Activity

SO. Da info-dump stuff. Or ‘How to Portray Worldbuilding’. Someone brought up the concept of plotting in a somewhat ignorant character. That’s a very handy tool, but what I really like about it is what it says about the nature of communication.

Imagine you’re standing in front of a roomful of bored, depressed high-school students who are slouching at their desks with their hair in their eyes and their mechanical thumbs hovering itchily over poorly concealed phones.

You’re their history professor. But what you know and they don’t is that an evil giant has taken up his abode in the school parking lot, and has stated that he intends to quiz every student who leaves on the contents of their classes, and if they can’t answer, well…

But how are you gonna get them to believe a story like that?

Ooh… a story. This gives you an idea. Swallowing down the grapefruit-sized lump in your throat, you toss the textbook on Napoleon to your desk, loosen your tie, and take a deep breath.

A few bored eyes glance lazily up from their flickering screens, reflections of pizza and videogames clouding their dazed irises.

“Once upon a time,” you begin, “the tyrant who changed the world was a little boy without friends, who lived in the very darkest corners of a gloomy university and buried himself in the companionship of military history books…”

 

I’ve often fallen prey to the trap of assuming my reader is a dunce and that everything must be spelled out to the letter or they won’t get it.

There is truth to this. The trap of it isn’t that it’s false, but that we assume the fix is battering the reader over the head again and again and again until it FINALLY sticks. This gives rise to the infamous info-dump. Something that we know the reader will have to muscle through without enjoying, but that we don’t really see a way around. We just hope they have a little patience.

The problem here is that although we are expressing ourselves, we are not communicating. Communication is a two-way word. It means that two or more people are engaged in sharing a meaningful back and forth where both parties benefit.

So my suggestion is this. Instead of fighting the reader’s natural inclinations, why not use them? Instead of viewing them as an adversary, think of them as part of the puzzle. You have the power to express, but only together do you have the power to communicate. (Grand prize for ‘cliché inspirational lines’ goes to Kate tonight…) You have to gently prepare them to engage instead of dragging them in with emergency brakes squealing. You must charm them, pique their curiosity; create expectation and don’t let it down. Even with facts, you must tell a story. You serve them, not instruct them. Delight them. Give them art.

Okay, now that I’m done with the philosophy part, how exactly do we do this? Let’s go back to our ignorant character. What does an ignorant character do for the story? Well, if you’re developing him as a person as well as a convenient tool, he gives emotional context to what would otherwise be a lot of boring facts. Humans are wired to respond to emotions. Remember that. Even with worldbuilding (perhaps especially with worldbuilding) emotional context is everything. Your culture is amazingly detailed? Pff. Nobody cares. Such and such a dead king introduced such and such a stupid ritual? Booooorrrinnnnggggg.

Tell me what this means to the people I love. The world shrinks from a vast and boring generality to an intensely personal question that I’m emotionally triggered to understand. I will invest energy here that I never would have before. I have been charmed, wooed, and piqued, and I’m ready to return the effort, because a character who has my heart stands to gain or lose.

So on that note, if we’re giving ourselves an ignorant character, why not throw in a few different ones for the same purpose? What about a know-it-all? What about a liar? What about a religious fanatic? History-buff? Fake history-buff? Sheesh, why don’t we just give ourselves a whole cast of these convenient worldbuilders?

Orrrr… maybe we already have them. You’d be surprised how much worldbuilding you can develop through the implications of who your characters already are, where they come from, what they want, and what will keep them from getting it.

Character #1: ‘You should go to bed.”

Character #2: ‘Naaaahhh… I’m good.”

C#1: “Arasmus says ‘early to bed, early to rise…”

C#3: “No no, that’s Shinarin.”

C#1: “…uuhhhhh, no. Shinarin was such an amateur. Please. Anyone as obsessed as he was with worms can’t have anything but mush between his ears.”

C#4: “Worms? I’ve been studying about worms. Did you know they—”

C#1,2, and 3: “NO. NOT THE WORMS. NOT THE CRAZY MILANTIAN WORM OBSESSION. YOU PEOPLE AND YOUR NATURAL SCIENCE. YOU DON’T EVEN HAVE A PROPER GOVERNMENT.”

C#4: *blinks* “It’s called a republic. And that was unnecessarily rude. At least we take time to develop our heads instead of going and getting them knocked off on the battlefield like some people I know…”

C#1: *mutters* “Only because you live on that stupid island and don’t have an ounce of land worth fighting over.”

C#2: “What he said.”

C#3: *snores*

In short, information must be pertinent, emotionally charged, and artistically expressed. Carefully apply the rule ‘less is more’. Never state where you can imply, and never imply where you can show. After all, it would also be cool if we threw those four characters up there in a forest somewhere and made them run for their lives, but the Milantian who’s been studying worms can’t help stopping and collecting specimens, incurring the wrath of the rest… until one of them is mortally wounded and it turns out the worms secrete an antibody that kills infections.

The answer to worldbuilding isn’t necessarily to add sparkle and glitter to what you have, but to delve into it and discover the sparkle and glitter already hiding under the surface. Perpetually ask yourself why. Why is he like this? Why is this so? Why do they do this? Why did this happen? What unseen factors contributed to this? What is there in the history of this place that could make this richer?

*flops in an exhausted heap*

*rereads post*

I think I got it… now I just need pizza.

@daeus-lamb @corissa @eden-anderson @everyone else I’m too tired to remember