|
"worldbuilding" is the mark of the trash writer
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2023 14:18
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 28, 2024 01:38 |
|
|
Worldbuilding is cool if you actually then write something worth reading
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2023 14:27
|
|
|
“I’m doing fine as a engineer” oh honey
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2023 14:30
|
|
|
Worldbuilding is fine but if you want to go down that road you have to really commit and I don’t think many trash writers realize how much commitment that will take
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2023 14:34
|
|
|
teen witch posted:“I’m doing fine as a engineer” oh honey... ...they won't even let ME do fine as an engineer!.. Is... is that the meme? Did I do it right?
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2023 14:34
|
|
|
Yeah speaking as an engineer we don't exactly tend to be the type that makes a good writer. Plenty of arrogance that would make you think you would be a good writer though.
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2023 15:12
|
|
|
Plenty of people think that world building is just “there’s vampires” or “it’s in space” and never bother to walk down the avenues that branch off from that decision.
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2023 15:29
|
|
|
like what if "there's vampires...in space"
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2023 15:31
|
|
|
That's just blindsight
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2023 15:33
|
|
|
kazil posted:like what if "there's vampires...in space" Sounds like you’re pitching a sequel to Lifeforce, please let me donate to your gofundme.
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2023 15:34
|
|
|
Roblo posted:Yeah speaking as an engineer we don't exactly tend to be the type that makes a good writer. Yeah if you're an engineer who writes we get The Martian or xkcd. But I repeat myself.
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2023 15:35
|
|
|
Roblo posted:Yeah speaking as an engineer we don't exactly tend to be the type that makes a good writer. Boy do I feel this
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2023 15:36
|
|
|
I thought as an engineer you're supposed to be saddled with imposter syndrome, am I not doing that right too??
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2023 15:51
|
|
|
Worldbuilding is the thing you take care of after you’ve come up with a cast of characters and an interesting story to tell with them. It’s the icing on the cake. Terrible fantasy and sci-fi writers just have a habit of making their cakes out of nothing but icing and then acting surprised when they aren’t hailed as the next Tolkien.
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2023 15:56
|
|
|
I often feel like the Culture series is better for its setting than its characters because I can't remember any of the characters but the setting is neat.
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2023 15:57
|
|
|
Philippe posted:Yeah if you're an engineer who writes we get The Martian or xkcd. He also wrote The Egg.
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2023 16:06
|
|
cowboy
|
You don't remember Zakalwe? But yes, the characters in The Culture mostly exist to demonstrate what interesting dilemma Banks has come up with. The real character is the Culture itself, that's why the books jump in time so much. The unimportance of individuals is a recurring plot point – they are pawns, weapons to be used, pieces to be played in a game. I think coming up with an interesting setting first is perfectly valid. That's the approach taken not just by Tolkien. Disco Elysium is a product of that approach.
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2023 16:08
|
|
|
Antigravitas posted:You don't remember Zakalwe? It's possible that is a character in one of the ones I didn't read. I started at Consider Phlebas, read The Player Of Games, then I think I got partway through Excession and gave up. Mostly I came to the conclusion that I think I would prefer some sort of light romance novel written by someone who can write interesting and likeable people, but set in the same universe. The actual plots of the books were the worst bit.
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2023 16:11
|
|
|
There is some light romance in Use of Weapons 
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2023 16:12
|
|
|
Basically I think Chuck Tingle should write a Culture novel. Or perhaps he does, perhaps all Chuck Tingle books take place in that setting. It would explain a lot.
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2023 16:13
|
|
|
Antigravitas posted:There is some light romance in Use of Weapons Lol
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2023 16:17
|
|
|
Antigravitas posted:There is some light romance in Use of Weapons There are also arts and crafts! Fun for everyone!
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2023 16:23
|
|
|
kazil posted:like what if "there's vampires...in space" How close to a star do they have to be before it starts affecting them, or does it need to be filtered through an atmosphere to be "sunlight"?
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2023 16:29
|
|
|
kdrudy posted:How close to a star do they have to be before it starts affecting them, or does it need to be filtered through an atmosphere to be "sunlight"? Um, it's always nighttime in space, that's why the vampires are more dangerous
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2023 16:31
|
|
|
Bakeneko posted:Worldbuilding is the thing you take care of after you’ve come up with a cast of characters and an interesting story to tell with them. It’s the icing on the cake. Terrible fantasy and sci-fi writers just have a habit of making their cakes out of nothing but icing and then acting surprised when they aren’t hailed as the next Tolkien. Been working my way through the Tolkien Professor back catalog and there's a comment he makes offhand in the middle of his series on Ender's Game, that a hallmark of modern fiction (particularly sci-fi/fantasy) is a much heavier emphasis on character than on story. He says he enjoys good character work as much as the next guy but his first love is always a good story; and often these days, whether it's TV or movies or a novel, what you get is more character study than compelling story that you can retell or summarize without necessarily being invested in the particular characterizations you're given. Whereas in previous time periods, your sci-fi or fantasy story would be a story first and foremost, playing with the universe and its rules in a particular way, and characters are all but an afterthought. I don't know how true that is (since among other issues I'm woefully under-read when it comes to the genres in question), or how setting (or worldbuilding) play into this—after all it's involved with story but it's hardly the same thing—but certainly it's true that LotR as one example is way less character-driven than it is story-driven or indeed setting-driven, but at the same time the setting was added incrementally as the story went on, accreting bit by bit as necessary (mostly by borrowing from his own premade library which is sure handy), but by no means planned out in advance as a detailed backdrop or lore compendium upon which to paint characters or even a particular story. He worked on the story first and let the characters and then the setting flow in turn from how it developed. Again, these are all unformed thoughts that I'm trying to grapple with in real-time so I don't know how accurate any of it is
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2023 18:44
|
|
|
Skios posted:https://twitter.com/ACTBrigitte/status/1680089192418750465 Just a reminder that Nixon's DOJ went after Donald Trump for discriminating against Black tenants, the same era of DOJ that cooperated in the assassination of Fred Hampton and tried to get MLK to commit suicide through threatening letters.
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2023 18:49
|
|
|
Data Graham posted:Been working my way through the Tolkien Professor back catalog and there's a comment he makes offhand in the middle of his series on Ender's Game, that a hallmark of modern fiction (particularly sci-fi/fantasy) is a much heavier emphasis on character than on story. He says he enjoys good character work as much as the next guy but his first love is always a good story; and often these days, whether it's TV or movies or a novel, what you get is more character study than compelling story that you can retell or summarize without necessarily being invested in the particular characterizations you're given. Whereas in previous time periods, your sci-fi or fantasy story would be a story first and foremost, playing with the universe and its rules in a particular way, and characters are all but an afterthought. Probably something that's different for everybody, but personally I'll forgive a mediocre story if it has great characters, but the greatest story possible would still suck if I didn't give a crap about the characters. The first one seems a lot more common than the second though, I can think of a bunch of weak stories with good characters, but every story with weak characters I've read has been bad as well. Closest thing I can think of is a story that was pretty mediocre by itself, but could have been made decent with interesting characters. Sadly they were barely one-dimensional.
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2023 18:57
|
|
|
kdrudy posted:How close to a star do they have to be before it starts affecting them, or does it need to be filtered through an atmosphere to be "sunlight"? The vampiric aversion to sunlight (when it exists) should be understood as a spiritual condition, not a scientific one. So the answer is 'if it's the light of a star that supports an inhabited world it will be 'sunlight' and burn, otherwise it's fine'. Same as their lack of reflections. If you're doing purely scifi vampires than you can do what you want. I'd say make it particular wavelengths that are dangerous.
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2023 19:05
|
|
|
LotR is setting-driven, and it's one of the really quite few instances where it works because the setting is both novel for its time and described by someone who has a competent and practiced grip on the language he used to construct it. Whether you like Tolkien's writing or not, it is very lush, and in a way that makes easy to be invested in that setting, and constructed as such that it sort of doles the world out to you as the characters encounter it in a naturalistic way rather than giving dry infodumps the way a lot of fantasy fiction does. It's also a world that isn't out to impress you with how cool it is. There's a kind of coziness to it that is modeled on the author's real world proclivities and fondness for countryside quietude that is represented in miniature by the hobbit society that the books start in and that those characters carry with them. Basically everyone who followed Tolkien missed the forest for the trees and expanded on the fantastical magical elements when really what Tolkien focused on was the feel of things. That's why the trilogy really adapted well to movies (though not without the hands of a competent filmmaker.) I remember seeing the movies for the first time, having just read the books a few months before Fellowship came out and being shocked at just how well the environments I saw in my head were represented on screen. A lot of writers now get so hung up on the minutiae of worldbuilding that they end up believing the world is much more interesting than it really is, but they lack the chops to invest it with feeling the way Tolkien did. (Not to say Tolkien didn't also do this, but he had the sense not to include what didn't advance the story he meant to tell.) If you like LotR, I suggest picking up the Gormenghast series, which actually predate LotR but have a similar degree of intimacy with the setting since they take place primarily in a giant dilapidated castle, although I'd say they're a lot more pessimistic than the LotR books. Pre-LotR fantasy is an interesting little spot to visit because it's free of LotR's influence.
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2023 19:08
|
|
|
UV light is what hurts vampires. Naturally, as long as they're not starving, they've got a regeneration factor going on and thus a low level of exposure is tolerable but something like full exposure to it like with daylight will rapidly destroy them. Thus, a vampire on a spaceship would be perfectly fine unless they fly really close to a star and stand in front of a window. Also spacesuits would probably be really good at protecting them There you go, now you've got everything you need to write Carmilla X: 3025 aka Space is the Sweetest Blood
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2023 19:16
|
|
|
Cloacamazing! posted:Probably something that's different for everybody, but personally I'll forgive a mediocre story if it has great characters, but the greatest story possible would still suck if I didn't give a crap about the characters. The first one seems a lot more common than the second though, I can think of a bunch of weak stories with good characters, but every story with weak characters I've read has been bad as well. Closest thing I can think of is a story that was pretty mediocre by itself, but could have been made decent with interesting characters. Sadly they were barely one-dimensional. That's why I like the Croods movies, even if the first one isn't as funny as the second in jokes per minute or whatever I respect it because Grug has a great arc with a strong emotional punch towards the end, and most of the characters have consistency between the movies outside of Thunk not having much to do and the Grandma's backstory being retconned in the second movie. Also the second movie's final act is absolutely hilarious.
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2023 19:17
|
|
|
As an accompaniment to reading Lovecraft, I read "The Fortress Unvanquishable Save For Sacnoth" by Lord Dunsany and it's almost psychadelic in how it reads, everything just drifts from scene to scene and everything is very dreamlike and unfixed. It's a fun read, reminds me a lot of Caves of Qud actually. It's very much about the place but it's written in such a way that the place being described is tenebrous and built out of impressions and feelings. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Sword_of_Welleran_and_Other_Stories/The_Fortress_Unvanquishable,_Save_for_Sacnoth If you need further encouragement, there is a dragon called "Wong Bongerok" which frankly is the ideal name for a dragon. OwlFancier has a new favorite as of 19:50 on Jul 16, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2023 19:19
|
|
|
Data Graham posted:I don't know how true that is (since among other issues I'm woefully under-read when it comes to the genres in question), or how setting (or worldbuilding) play into this—after all it's involved with story but it's hardly the same thing—but certainly it's true that LotR as one example is way less character-driven than it is story-driven or indeed setting-driven, but at the same time the setting was added incrementally as the story went on, accreting bit by bit as necessary (mostly by borrowing from his own premade library which is sure handy), but by no means planned out in advance as a detailed backdrop or lore compendium upon which to paint characters or even a particular story. He worked on the story first and let the characters and then the setting flow in turn from how it developed. Yeah, that’s a fair point. I think if you’ve got a genuinely new and well thought-out concept for a world and you have the skill to deliver exposition in an engaging way you can definitely make it work. It’s just that a lot of less skilled and experienced authors attempt this and bite off more than they can chew, because they think just rattling off a bunch of details is enough.
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2023 19:47
|
|
|
Bakeneko posted:Yeah, that’s a fair point. I think if you’ve got a genuinely new and well thought-out concept for a world and you have the skill to deliver exposition in an engaging way you can definitely make it work. It’s just that a lot of less skilled and experienced authors attempt this and bite off more than they can chew, because they think just rattling off a bunch of details is enough. Honestly the best case scenario for those authors is to get some mates together and let them be the characters, just be a TTRPG nerd Sometimes this works out into a series too, like The Expanse, which has at least one or two decent characters
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2023 19:51
|
|
|
lmao
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2023 19:55
|
|
|
Ichabod Sexbeast posted:Honestly the best case scenario for those authors is to get some mates together and let them be the characters, just be a TTRPG nerd It's usually the reverse, people take their RPs and try to spin it out into a narrative and it doesn't work for some reason
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2023 20:01
|
|
|
Vampires In Space. They like chocolate chip cookies, and have to stop an invasion. Lots of fun. https://www.amazon.com/McLendons-Sy...ps%2C150&sr=8-1
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2023 20:09
|
|
|
I've read lots of good art projects that are about worldbuilding as an excuse for illustration, or speculative biology, or horror, but the thing that makes them good isn't that they have a ton of unnessecary details, it's that they are executed with creativity and passion, and have a unifying theme or aesthetic that helps it hang together. I think even something that is specifically an exercise in making up and sharing a world is carried by things other than just raw worldbuilding, in this way. (Rust and Humus is a really beautiful one that's all about endings and beginnings.)
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2023 20:09
|
|
|
CharlestheHammer posted:Worldbuilding is fine but if you want to go down that road you have to really commit and I don’t think many trash writers realize how much commitment that will take You ain’t poo poo unless you have at least one fully developed language and alphabet.
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2023 20:09
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 28, 2024 01:38 |
|
|
Thank God engineers don't have unions
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2023 20:11
|
|
