Fundamentals of Worldbuilding | Philosophy, Gardeners Vs Architects, & Worldbuilder's Disease

thank you, somewhere in the great beyond, separated from you whether simply by space-time or something else, there is a world out there and, although you have probably never walked its many paths or looked at its open skies, this world to you is as real as any other. Plus, you know what it's like to take the only seat that doesn't wobble at your favorite noodle restaurant just before the afternoon rush hour and feel the wetness of the rain soaking your jackets and chilling your skin overhead, the chatter of The ads are as incessant as ever and the spotlights compete with the bright neon, but right now you can at least almost turn them off.

You know the history of this place. You can name their ancient kings and recite their many deeds, great and terrible, to others en masse. of broken stone is nothing more than a ruin, a momentary curiosity to break the monotony of the path, but for you it is a symbol. You know the story of the men who built it. How long ago it guarded a kingdom that was very different from the one you walked through today, a forgotten era of ancient powers and forbidden traditions, you are excited in this place, it presents you with unlimited opportunities for adventure, wonder and terror, there is a galaxy of stories waiting for you to have the chance to throw off your old career and become a reward. hunter who leaves a mark along the outer edge or a freedom fighter and some backwater jungle.

There are heroes in this place. Legends whose courage and sacrifices will echo for an eternity and you can be one of them. Here you have friends of all kinds and of all characters. You have shared with them those moments of silence in the last seconds before a fall. You know how to motivate them, when to listen, when to give them space and when to push them further than any of you ever thought possible and when it comes back, when you drink on your own. Success or failure, we are always together, you will recount your favorite moments, brag about brave deeds and toast both the living and those who remain only in their memories.

Glorious wars and senseless slaughter have bathed this place in blood and bones and when the dust settles. It is difficult to know whether the cause of the victors was more just than that of the defeated. When you study the great campaigns of this place you can't help but marvel at the tactics, the strategy, the bravery of the men and women who put their feet on the ground. live against enemies that reality itself rejected as obscene and you wonder what would have been if a single outcome had been a little different this place has dangerous secrets and you seek them your mind travels the dark paths that others fear and you read the words that most deny , you see the patterns and the coincidences, not a swirling mass of chaos but a great game whose Fallen King might still prevail, you will hear the theories and rumors of returning sons and former adversaries and you will accept that the study of the Abyss is letting out the abyss of you and that, no matter what, the Galaxy is a big place and you won't be missed, but above all you have a sense of longing, a desire to escape from whatever life you live today and find another in this place you want. . to find out what qualities I am recognizing in you what role you are destined to fulfill do you want this world to test you to push you to your limits and reveal who you really are and you would still be satisfied with any life you can find if you are selected to sit in the big chair or just hanging out at the bar, as long as you are here, in this place, in this world, you will be content to simply exist, you will feel all these things and much more, and the more time you spend.

Think about it, the more you get involved in this place, the more you realize that it sucks and that you probably came up with something much better or maybe you phrased it differently, but one way or another you've thought about creating a world of your own, something as immersive and detailed as those that have fascinated you, but how exactly do you go about building the world? What questions, factors and ideas need to be considered and what the world-building process looks like once it is in motion. This new series we call The World Building Path The Templin Institute is going to discuss these questions, offer our opinions and begin building our own worlds that could serve as a case study.

In each episode we will address some aspect of world building, big or small. , from developing the history, culture, society and government of a vast ancient empire, to discovering what drinks might be served at a Backwater Tavern somewhere. The world building is huge, covering a huge variety of themes and ideas, and when it comes to this series. We are concerned that nothing is beyond our reach and to accompany each episode and serve as a case study, we will publish on a secondary channel some complementary videos that talk about our world and the story we have created for it at this time, although we are We're still getting started and we don't even know what kind of world we're building, so before we can start creating whatever we're creating in this first episode of world building, I think it's important that I explain.

My general

philosophy

when it comes to this aspect of creative writing, I'm going to approach it from a certain perspective and that will shape how the series will look. After that, we'll also briefly review the role of

worldbuilding

compared to setting and narrative and discuss some of the most popular methods writers use. Finally, I want to explore all the reasons why someone might choose to worldbuild and how the warnings of

worldbuilding

disease

that inevitably come up when discussing this topic may not always be appropriate for doing any of that, even though it is necessary. emphasize again from the beginning that this series will not always be unbiased or neutral.

I have some strong opinions and ideas about how worldbuilding should and shouldn't be done, but I don't want it to interfere with anything else. I think worldbuilding is a deeply creative exercise and I think the process will be different for everyone because of that. . I don't think there's a wrong way to approach it. Writing is hard and creative writing can be. a long and demoralizing struggle, so if you find some method to move forward, if you are building your world using method X when everyone else is using method and who cares, whatever makes sense to you is the right way to do so, the way to build the world.

Therefore, it is not intended to be a definitive guide, there is no shortage of people eager to tell you that what you are doing is wrong or that you have made some critical mistake among themselves, but I don't think it is possible for anyone to do so. create an objective and comprehensive standard operating procedure that everyone can succeed with, so this is not a series on how to build a world, this is a series on how I build a world, I build worlds, whatever sounds best, I can provide my thoughts, give advice and show them. my own process and I can be inflexible about this, but it would be crazy to believe that the things I consider most important and the process I use will be the best approach in every project that involves world building.

Instead, my hope is that if you follow me and see how I get started, tackle certain challenges, and integrate various elements, you can get a sense of my method and use it to inform yours. If we're closely aligned in how we approach world-building, you might be able to make a direct reference. This series on your own work, if we're not completely aligned and you don't agree with me on everything, then I think this series could be even more helpful. Presenting what to you might seem like the wrong way of doing things can lead to a greater understanding of why your own method is right for you.

In any case, when you're watching this series, incorporate what you find useful into your own method and get rid of it. of the rest and don't trust this series and I say put it together with other guides or sources of inspiration that you found and create your own way of building the world now with everything said, this series is also a kind of reaction to something I hear over and over again every time the world building is talked about, something I don't really agree with because it doesn't reflect my own experiences at all, but before we can get into everything we need to first give a Step back and take a better look at the basic components of world-building and story.

Before we do, let's ask ourselves what a story is, oh my god in heaven, just as everyone approaches this concept a little differently, it also seems like everyone defines it a little differently, but my personal interpretation vaguely resembles something like this if we think of the narrative as a pyramid. World building forms the basis of this. It is the foundation of the universe, whether it is a single region, the continent, an entire planet, a star system, an entire galaxy or however far that reality extends, in addition to this geography, whatever form it may take, this Foundation also encompasses the history of the world, its cultures, religions.

Nations and factions and everything in between, right down to how fuzzy the fur of some alien caterpillar is, the foundations of the world-building pyramid provide the context and broader framework for our next two levels, just above the construction of the world. world, there is the setting and this is the specific part or parts of your world in which the story takes place within the broader definition of setting is an environment where something is located the place in which something happens author Roberts McKee describes the scenario kind of needs a distinct period duration and location conflict and the only reason I know this is because Tail Foundry has covered this topic extensively.

If you want to delve deeper into the relationship between story setting and world building, I would recommend checking them out. I mean, they use different metaphors there, but that's it. Same principles, but going back to my pyramid, right at the top we have our narrative, whatever plot or story weaves through the setting, which itself is part of the larger world, if the building of our world It consists of an entire galaxy, far, far away, our setting could be the planet Hoth under attack by the Galactic Empire and our narrative would be Luke Skywalker trying to cover the evacuation of the Rebel Alliance, but we cannot forget that no metaphor is really perfect, the lines between these levels are not always obvious or at least not always obvious to me, but I like the pyramid analogy because I think it illustrates how little of the world or even its surroundings will be present in the narrative. real.

How much of the Galaxy did we really see over the course of The Empire Strikes Back? maybe not as much as you think and I also like the pyramid metaphor because I think it's an easy way to show how different people build a world, although to do this we need to turn it around, as I said, no metaphor is. perfect, some people like to take a bird's eye view of world building, they look at the big picture. When they develop their world and only once they have fully realized it, they begin to tell a story within it, there is a race of people called The Elves and this is their mythology and their history and their language and their culture these are the dwarves and the men and the Hobbits and here are the same exhaustive details for all of them and only now that I have discovered this whole world can I finally tell my story about one of those Hobbits throwing a ring into a volcano on the opposite side of things , we have those who start from the ground level, so to speak, writing their story and figuring out the setting and world-building.

As it emerges, there is a group of children from a noble family who simply found a litter of direwolves alone in the snow. Well, now we have to find out which noble family the Starks are and which kingdom they rule over Winterfell and the North, and that kingdom is actually one of the 17 kingdoms subordinate to the Royal House of Baratheon. and King's Landing, who usurp the Targaryens and so it continues as the story progresses. George R.R Martin describes the authors who follow these two methods as

architects

and

gardeners

. Architects build the world first, while

gardeners

plant seeds and help them grow throughout the narrative. but I think these are really just two examples at each end of a spectrum and probably not representative of how most people actually do road construction.

Is anyone really 100 gardener or 100 architect? Between these two approaches, we have all the other variations starting from the middle and working outward in both directions or perhaps oscillate between one approach and the other depending on how you feel and what makes sense for you and your approach could change day to day. a day again as far as I'm concerned if you know what you're trying. To achieve this, there are no wrong answers to how to get there and I've wanted to emphasize that last point pretty consistently because I think the world-building discussions or at least the aspect of that discussion that happens here on YouTube has perhaps lost a little hisperspective.

As I said, worldbuilding at its core is a creative exercise and that process will look different for everyone, in my minor or major way, so when advice increasingly comes in the form of five worldbuilding mistakes that are should avoid, I think that comes from a fundamentally flawed understanding of what worldbuilding actually is. Here is an example in our own world. The rivers flow downhill, hopefully, that didn't surprise anyone. They usually start in mountains and flow into lakes or oceans. For a river to behave contrary to this is one of the most uncited examples of what is called a bug, but good worldbuilding is not just making sure that rivers always start in mountains and flow into the oceans.

Good worldbuilding is understanding how rivers work in our world and then letting that inform how they work. It works on your own even if you decide to completely discard real-world logic. A river that fits perfectly with our understanding of the natural world and a flowing river of magic. Mountains interspersed with the light of distant stars can be effective examples of world-building as long as they are crafted with intention and are consistent within of the world, but when you make these harsh statements, your river begins in a valley, this is a mistake that the I am sure most people understand this distinction, but it is useful to state it explicitly from time to time, in a creative process where there are no firm rules, it is easier to fall into the trap of combining my way with the right way and imposing it on everyone else some of my favorite examples of how the world constructs universes I think are truly exceptional are the that expand my understanding of what is possible, they are also the ones where if I had been presented with the initial outline without having any idea what the finished world would look like.

I probably would have been very critical and pointed out a lot of mistakes. Thank God they didn't listen to me, but what I see is repeated more often on YouTube when there are different approaches. to worldbuilding is also what I disagree with the most and it is always expressed in exactly the same way, beware of

worldbuilder

s

disease

Worldbuilders disease is described as the debilitating condition in which someone he is so involved in the creation of the minute. details of their world that they forget or never manage to write their story, they waste all their time researching the biology of that alien caterpillar or devising the history of a kingdom until it spans millennia, while their characters in the actual narrative remain underdeveloped if you are approaching worldbuilding with this mentality that you have to constantly be careful not to spend too much time on it.

I think it would be easy to look at my pyramid from before and interpret it intentionally or unintentionally as a hierarchy. The narrative is the most important, followed by leaving the world building as the least important element of the narrative, and if you work on it too much, you will get a disease. Author Brandon Sanderson says this explicitly: Your time is better spent learning how to create engaging and interesting characters and then learning. how to tell a really good plot with your ability to have a really great setup third. I don't know if I agree with that and yet this point of view on YouTube at least seems to dominate most of the worldbuilding videos and conversations and at times This can seem a bit hypocritical towards these same people praising the world-building of Middle-earth as the pinnacle of what's possible, but then dismissing much of the process that led to its creation, as much as J.R.R Tolkien cared to tell stories he barely knew.

He seemed afraid to spend an inordinate amount of time on details that existed outside of the main narratives. I can't imagine him being too concerned about the idea that he was spending too much time working on world-building versus story, but you know, most of the time. the builders disease world mentality is correct, not many of us can be like Tolkien and spend a couple of decades coming up with stories and languages ​​and then turn them into one of the best fantasy series ever written and to be fair to Mr. Sanderson, I suppose. In that clip, he was addressing a writing class probably full of aspiring novelists for whom that advice was completely appropriate if their goal is to finish a novel or a screenplay or whatever so they can meet some kind of deadline.

Yes,

worldbuilder

disease can be fatal, however. I think it may be an equally fatal mistake to conclude that worldbuilding should always be a secondary or tertiary consideration. Great worldbuilding can elevate even a mediocre story, while mediocre worldbuilding can bring down even a great narrative. I like to think there's a delicate balance between sit-down narratives and world-building - maybe instead of a pyramid, who should think in terms of a donut? three equal sections that support and influence each other Donuts, is there anything they can't do, but perhaps the worst thing in the world? Builders Disease Mentality. What it does do is reinforce the idea that world-building only has a singular purpose, but this caveat comes from an implicit bias: it holds that if you are building a world it is because you are writing a narrative and every moment dedicated to world-building arrives in the moment.

At the expense of that narrative, warnings about world-builders' disease often fail to acknowledge or make only passing reference to the idea that there are a multitude of other reasons why people might want to engage in this creative exercise, in any of which The Narrative could be secondary. Tabletop role-playing games are perhaps the most popular example in recent decades. Dungeons and Dragons Pathfinder Call of Cthulhu and many other systems have broken out of nerd culture and into the mainstream creating a whole new world. generation of Game Masters Dungeon Masters I don't know what the correct term is, the people who hide behind the divider and roll the dice, these people will no doubt become intimately familiar with the exercise of world building, whether guiding players to through established scenarios or creating your own In our own Homebrew campaigns, a compelling narrative is still important, but it's usually the result of a collaborative process.

Many Dungeon Masters may have very limited control over the story and actions of the player characters and we have also seen the rise of the Cinematic Universe. is now based on this concept in which interconnected stories in a cohesive world extend beyond traditional narrative means, in some cases world-building is now carried out by a dedicated team with individual directors and writers now sharing the responsibility of the general world and its continuity as a concept of these. Shared universes are becoming increasingly popular. It doesn't seem crazy to suggest that some people might enjoy the world-building of a franchise.

First and foremost, talk to Warhammer 40,000 fans and I think most would tell you that they enjoy the universe more. than any individual story within it and I think you'll find people who feel the same way about Star Wars, Harry Potter, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, etc., and let's not discount world-building projects that have no written narrative at all . artists place their work within a shared universe by letting their audience imagine the context behind everything in these examples and other advice like the one Brandon Sanderson gives intended for a class full of novelists may not always be entirely relevant and then there's The Poor misguided souls like me, I can't write a worthwhile story.

I've never been too interested in the hero's journey, Dan Harmon's story circle, or any method people use to craft their narratives, maybe one day that will change, but for now. It's not for me, but I love world building. I think it can be a hugely rewarding and creative exercise in which you can take your favorite elements of popular culture, combine them with real-world history and your own life experiences, and gain a better appreciation in the process. and understanding of all the intricate details that shape both our world and the alternate ones, and that also turns out to be a fun way to kill time and if one day, whatever I can think of, forms the basis of a narrative interesting told by me. or someone else, great, but that's not my main reason, that's not why I'm doing this.

In my case, what good are warnings about the world builders' disease? I'm basically Typhoid Mary, but there's one final grave view I think people make when they talk about the world. build, and that's without recognizing that worldbuilding encompasses an enormous number of topics intertwined across fields of study, very few of which are traditionally associated with the art of writing, while being an expert writer is certainly necessary to convey the world you have created with the art of Worldbuilding goes far beyond mere storytelling to create a hyperrealistic and immersive universe, you may need to delve deeper into the study of anthropology, history, geography, sociology, even scientific fields such as physics, biology and astronomy, and although some brilliant people can incorporate everything effortlessly. these things in your narrative, being a great writer doesn't automatically make you a great world builder, and as things like tabletop Homebrew scenarios and shared universes become more popular and grow in complexity, couldn't the disease of worldbuilders to go from being something to being avoidable at all costs? and becoming a desirable quality in a dungeon master or a writing companion or whatever and that brings us back to what I hope to achieve with the way of worldbuilding.

I can't tell you how to write your story or the most effective ways. Incorporating world building into this, that's not really my area, but as someone whose Consciousness has been forced to investigate alternate worlds for all eternity, I think I've gotten pretty good at articulating why certain ones can resonate with us so strongly. strength and others can feel it. Soft and dispassionate. I don't claim to be a narrative expert, but I think I know world-building, and I find the most interesting way to explain what makes it good or bad is to try to create a world of your own and describe it. every part of that process along the way, so that's my position on this whole exercise and that's going to be my focus with this series if you're new to worldbuilding, just getting started can sometimes be the hardest part, my My hope is that following this series might help you get over that initial hurdle, and if you're already an expert world builder with your own methods, I think it might be equally helpful to see how someone else tackles the same problems in the next video in this series.

We will cover genres, there are some particularly associated with deep world building and each brings with it its own expectations and baggage. People also love to argue about high fantasy versus low fantasy subgenres. Hard sci-fi versus soft sci-fi, and I have my own opinions, so that's all going to be episode two, so until then, good luck and good world-building.