The Anatomy of Prose by Sacha Black

Author:Sacha Black [Black, Sacha]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sacha Black

7.3 Worldbuilding Description

Worldbuilding is a huge topic, but I wanted to cover a short section here on the description used to worldbuild. Worldbuilding according to Wikipedia is:

“…the process of constructing an imaginary world, sometimes associated with a whole fictional universe… Developing an imaginary setting with coherent qualities such as a history, geography, and ecology is a key task for many science fiction or fantasy writers.” 1

The hero lens is key to worldbuilding effectively without smearing information dumps all over your reader’s eyeballs or using expository paragraphs.

Yes, you do need to describe how a world looks and sounds and feels. But better than describing those basic things is describing how those worldbuilding elements affect and impact your protagonist.

What’s better? Telling your reader the protagonist is in an abandoned building or describing the effect the empty atmosphere has on them? I don’t need to answer that, do I?

Describing the impact on your character simultaneously deepens your characterization and builds your world. Ask yourself how your protagonist experiences your world. How do the government’s rules mess with her? How do the scratchy fabrics she’s forced to wear make her feel? And on it goes. It’s also important to describe these worldbuilding elements as and when a character interacts with them—not before.

I mean, what’s the point of describing a market square unless your protagonist is in the square walking through it and engaging with stall sellers? It’s irrelevant until she’s there or the element is engaging with the story and characters somehow.

How Much Detail Is Enough?

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.