Congratulations on making it to the final lesson on world building! If you haven’t completed your assignment for lessons one through four, I advise that you go back and do so before commencing this lesson. Of course I cannot monitor this, but I will tell you that you will get the most out of this lesson if you have completed everything before it – you have been warned!

 

For your final lesson in world building, I would like to begin with the most important piece of information that you can be given, so listen carefully. You know all that stuff we have just talked about? The pages of questions that you have answered, the cool ideas you have come up with, the minute details of minute details that you have written down? If you want to write a good story, then you have to now realise one thing: you cannot write all of this information into your story. In fact, you probably won’t write most of it down. Yeah, sorry about that. However! Just because you aren’t writing it all down, it doesn’t mean that you won’t use it! This is where the artistry of writing begins: we’re going to weave all of our knowledge carefully into our story so that our readers can begin the story knowing nothing of the world we have created, finish the story with a rich tapestry filling their mind, and look back at what they have read without being able to pinpoint exactly where all the information has come from!

 

With that in mind, we’re going to start off talking about something known as an information dump, or info dump. Basically, this is something that we want to avoid – telling the reader in a large section of writing exactly how a history came about, what a place looks like, or the precise personality of a character. You may have heard the phrase show don’t tell. In other words, in order to paint a picture of our world we have to show the reader a canvas instead of describing the awesome painting you have in the back room. In order to follow my own advice, I have uploaded an example here from something that I have written to show you how it works. The main thing to remember is that just because it is not written down explicitly, it does not mean that it is not informing the story. Everything that you know is coming out in your writing in one way or another, and even you might not notice it! Think of your favourite stories and all the useless information that the authors know about the world that comes out, not in the story, but in interviews, conversation, add-on encyclopaedia style books released afterward, etc.

 

The next thing we need to talk about is characters. We’ve discussed how to create them and how they fit into the world, of course, but it is important to remember that a perfectly created world can fall apart if the reader doesn’t care about the characters in it. Your world is a place for a story to take place in, and not the story itself. The reader needs something to connect with on a personal level – this doesn’t need to be humans, however, or even animals. It could be the personification of a leaf or chair or pillow for all it matters, so long as there is something that directly connects the reader to the world and allows them to imagine themselves inside of it. A description of a world, no matter how interesting or detailed, will lose a readers interest eventually if there is no journey, no characterisation, or no real reason for the world to exist. It is when you give your world a voice that people will want to hear what it has to say.

 

The next-to-last thing I would like to talk about is the overall rules of writing and world building. Remember, rules are there for a reason. Each of your favourite authors is likely to follow the rules of spelling and grammar in order to be understood, the rules of story arc to ensure the reader is interested, and the show-don’t-tell rule to ensure their writing is not bland. But then again, rules are also made to be broken. We break spelling rules to convey accent, grammar rules to convey emotion, story arcs to add suspense, and show-don’t-tell to get an idea across quickly and simply. The key is knowing when you can and cannot break the rules. My rule for this is simple – ask yourself three questions: Does it break immersion? Have I done it for the right reasons? And, most importantly, does it make the story better?

 

To finish, there is a theory that I have heard of in relation to making video games that I think translates well into the creation of a story. It is something that I have reiterated once or twice in the lessons, and something that could be the breaking point of your writing career: knowing when to stop. It is said that a difficulty faced when creating a video game is the release of new technology and other new games during the process of creation. With the rate that new information comes along, it is easy to fall into the trap of just adding in one more thing . . . and then just one more . . . and then just one more. If every time you think of a cool new idea you added it into your game or story, the story will never be told. Give yourself a deadline, make it realistic, and stick to it. That cool thing you thought of that you just have to write down? Put it into your next story. Make it into something new. Learn from your mistakes, move on, make more mistakes, and just keep on writing. After all, that’s what writers do.