{"id":19930,"date":"2013-04-15T06:30:35","date_gmt":"2013-04-14T18:30:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=19930"},"modified":"2013-04-02T20:41:50","modified_gmt":"2013-04-02T07:41:50","slug":"celebrating-the-gathering-of-the-lost-building-fantastic-worlds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2013\/04\/15\/celebrating-the-gathering-of-the-lost-building-fantastic-worlds\/","title":{"rendered":"Celebrating \u201cThe Gathering Of The Lost\u201d: Building Fantastic Worlds"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

UK\/AUS\/NZ<\/p><\/div>\n

With the mass market edition of The Gathering Of The Lost<\/em> recently published in the UK<\/a>, I\u2019ve been re-posting a few of the features from last year\u2019s Blog Tour<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Today’s post is one of my favourites and was also the final stop on the tour, with the wonderful Kate Elliott<\/a>, author of the Crown of Stars<\/a>, Crossroads<\/a>, and now Spiritwalker<\/a> Fantasy series.<\/p>\n

Why a favourite? Because it deals with world building, of course—and world building, as much as magic, defines the Fantasy genre, as I shall argue below. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

“Building Fantastic Worlds\u2014\u201cIt\u2019s A Mystery\u201d <\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n

Over the past few weeks, at various stops on The Gathering of the Lost<\/em><\/strong> blog tour, I have discussed a number of facets of the story, including environment<\/span><\/a>, war<\/span><\/a>, romance<\/span><\/a>, friendship<\/span><\/a>, history<\/span><\/a>, adventure<\/span><\/a> and writing strong women characters<\/strong>. Yet all these aspects could equally well apply to any writing genre, from contemporary realism to crime to historical fiction. The element that really distinguishes FSF, especially when a story departs from this-world-as-we-know-it, is world building.<\/span><\/p>\n

But how do compelling and intriguing worlds come about\u2014the ones where arguably the world is as much a character as any of the personalities that appear within the story. Logic suggests there ought to be a formula, one any aspiring world builder can follow so that adding two and two will result in\u2014hey presto\u2014a fantastic world. Right?<\/span><\/p>\n

Rather than an enthusiastic and positive \u201cyes,\u201d my initial response is more cautious. There are certainly ingredients that distinguish the worlds that have really seized my imagination. For example, an extreme physical environment dominates Ursula Le Guin\u2019s Winter in \u201cThe Left Hand of Darkness,\u201d<\/em> as it does Frank Herbert\u2019s Arrakis (\u201cDune\u201d<\/em>) and Robin Hobb\u2019s Rain Wilds (The Live Ships series and now the Rain Wilds Chronicles.) But before we can go \u201cextreme physical environment: check,\u201d we have to consider worlds like Tolkien\u2019s Middle Earth. The landscapes are reasonably diverse, but not extreme, yet Middle Earth has retained its place in our collective imagination for nearly sixty years.<\/span><\/p>\n

When thinking about what makes the world stand out, I find myself coming back to Tolkien\u2019s layering of myth and history in Middle Earth, which results in a sense of continuity beyond the present adventure. I also return to the strong association of \u201cculture\u201d with each new landscape: hobbits and the Shire; the differing elven cultures of Rivendell, Lothlorien, and Mirkwood; the dwarves of Moria and ents of Fangorn, the human societies of Rohan and those of Gondor. At one level many of these groups comprise separate species, but they are also distinct cultures; the way they both shape their world, and are shaped by it, reflects those distinctions.<\/span><\/p>\n

Culture plays a vital role in defining Le Guin\u2019s Winter and Hobb\u2019s Rain Wilds, too, as does the historical and legendary continuum on Dune. So\u2014a distinctive or extreme physical setting with a layering of myth and history, and\/or culture. Perhaps some building blocks for creating fantastic worlds are<\/em> emerging here.<\/span><\/p>\n

But although the latter elements also form part of Catherynne M Valente\u2019s Palimpsest<\/em>, and to a lesser extent China Mieville\u2019s Un Lun Dun<\/em>, they pale beside the sheer imaginative creativity of both worlds: the piling of the bizarre onto the weird or downright whacky. Another building block, right\u2014only now the author has to juggle physical extremes with those of the fantastical and it would be very easy to drop any or all of the balls. Easier still if one begins to consider Lewis Carroll\u2019s Wonderland and Looking Glass worlds, which are based around playing cards and chess, or Paolo Bacigalupi\u2019s future-dystopian Thailand where it is the vision of technological and bio-engineered genetic change that defines the world and compels the reader\u2019s attention.<\/span><\/p>\n

So how do the disparate elements that may\u2014but don\u2019t necessarily all, or always\u2014comprise FSF world building get pulled together to create the worlds that absorb our attention and colonise our imaginations?<\/span><\/p>\n

My short answer, culled from the film \u201cShakespeare In Love\u201d<\/em>, is: \u201cIt\u2019s a mystery.\u201d Because the actual answer seems nebulous and probably unsatisfactory\u2014that the essential ingredient is a spark that leaps from the writer\u2019s imagination, to the writing on the page or screen, and from there to the reader. In fact there is no formula able to guarantee that the necessary spark can and will be struck.<\/span><\/p>\n

In terms of the \u201chow to\u201d employed by different authors, I suspect there are as many approaches as there are writers. Some will plan and design extensively in advance, while others allow the world, like the characters, to evolve as they write. My own world building is a mix of the instantaneous, the unexpected vision of a world or character that leaps into being, followed by the evolutionary\u2014where the world unfolds, a little like a map unrolling, as the characters encounter it.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

The Wall of Night Series map; design by Peter Fitzpatrick<\/p><\/div>\n

In terms of The Wall of Night world the first concept began long ago with a vision of a twilit, wind blasted environment garrisoned by keeps illuminated with inner light. Yet as to what lay inside the vast strongholds like the abandoned Old Keep of Winds\u2014that knowledge only came when the storytelling began and the first characters actually went there. The world building evolved through their experiences: what each character saw, heard, smelt, touched\u2014and was also touched by\u2014and tasted, as well as her or his curiosity or need to learn what they did not already know.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet surely\u2014you may argue\u2014the world already exists outside the characters\u2019 experience of it, in the author\u2019s mind for example. And to an extent it does, in my case because of that first vision of the Wall of Night. Conversely though, the southern realms of Haarth, which come to the fore in \u201cThe Gathering Of The Lost\u201d<\/em> (The Wall of Night Book Two), and the romance of the road that stretches \u201cfrom Ij to Ishnapur\u201d<\/em> evolved through the unfolding story, not via prior planning. Ursula Le Guin, in \u201cSteering the Craft<\/em>,\u201d talks of the creative process in terms of \u2018pulling ideas out of the air\u2019\u2014so perhaps the world of Haarth was there in the ether all along, waiting to be discovered. But after that initial flash of discovery, I had to begin the process of writing in order to explore its realms, cultures and frontiers.<\/span><\/p>\n

I am forced to conclude that world building does contain an element of mystery. I can check all the boxes\u2014yet still that vital spark may not be there. It occurs to me though, that I do not look on any aspect of storytelling as box checking. So perhaps that<\/em> is the vital spark: whether manifesting in an instant or evolving over time, the worlds that I pull from the air have colour, texture and depth. In the moment they appear they are real<\/em>. And although by no means assured, that sense of reality is the key to ensuring a world is also real on the page\u2014and may become real for the reader as well.”<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With the mass market edition of The Gathering Of The Lost recently published in the UK, I\u2019ve been re-posting a few of the features from last year\u2019s Blog Tour. Today’s post is one of my favourites and was also the final stop on the tour, with the wonderful Kate Elliott, author of the Crown of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-about-my-books","category-booklaunches"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19930"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19930\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19943,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19930\/revisions\/19943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}