Let's talk about world building!

Hey folks! I'm working on drawing the pages for...next next next next week? I have 8 pages in various stages right now, but my brain hates focusing today, so I figured I'd write another totally unplanned, off-the-cuff writing essay. We'll see what happens! I don't plan things much, or I'd never get them done.

So let's talk world building! It's complicated! Here's the deal: I planned very little of HTBAW before I started writing. I knew if I sat down and figured out all the tiny details, I'd never go anywhere with it, and my main goal was to get something out in front of eyeballs. 

Here is what I knew about this story in Chapters 1, 2, & 3:

-I wanted there to be multiple stages of werewolf transformations, because I had the idea for the scene where Malaya bursts into the house. I liked the idea that she'd be big and intimidating, but ultimately just confused and scared.

-I knew Aubrey would exist, and that she had a vague goal given to her to get Malaya into their pack

-I needed a reason for Elias to show up in the first place

-I had vague plans to make Charlene into a bad ass down the line, but didn't know how I wanted to use her character yet

-I had a vague idea that Connie existed, and that there'd be more werewolves in Aubrey's pack, but hadn't actually planned them out

-I wanted Malaya's motivation for being scared of her werewolf side to involve hurting her brother, and I thought her scratching him would be useful down the line

-I knew the howling at the end of chapter one was connected to the wolf that bit Malaya, and that Connie had that wolf trapped for ???some reason???

Okay, cool! So how the hell did I turn that into all the ins and outs of how things work in my story currently? Well, I figured out logical theories for how things worked that would serve the story later and hopefully not shoot myself in the foot along the way. 

For example:

-Magic works by pulling energy from the earth because I needed a motivation for Connie. I needed a reason that her magic wouldn't be limitless, and why using werewolves as batteries wasn't just a straight up SOLUTION. Why weren't the werewolves working anymore? Why couldn't she just get magic some other way? Bam! The earth itself hates her, because she's been sucking it dry without permission.

-I wanted Malaya to be connected to the pack in the woods, in a way that meant Elias wasn't just as good of a target for Connie once he showed up. (Why not just grab him instead???) Therefore, she was bitten by the same wolf. 

-90% of Connie's backstory came about because I needed a reason for her to be an asshole. She needs power! But she doesn't want fame, she wants to stay hidden. Hidden from what??? Hey, what about a weird abusive relationship story line? And the last addition to that situation was actually that Aubrey and Connie were mother and daughter. That wasn't originally my plan, but once it occurred to me, that made everything a lot more emotionally interesting. And out of THAT came the idea of werewolf pregnancy and clarified how magic worked.

-Why the werewolf council? Why all the politics? One, I love politics. Two, because I needed there to be a reason that Sara couldn't just come solve everything for Elias and Malaya. If her life was mired in bureaucracy, then I had a solid reason for Malaya to have to step up her game instead of leaving everything to Sara to fix. This also threw a wrench in Elias's story so that he had actual motivations and problems.

-Most of Marin's backstory was a bi-product of the werewolf council idea. If Marin is fully capable of rescuing Elias on her own, then Malaya has no reason to try and accept her werewolf side and step up and save her brother. So I also needed Marin out of the way in a way that connected her to Sara.

 SO. What does all this mean for world building? I have no idea! Because every story is going to be different. The beauty of a story like HTBAW or something like Harry Potter is that the protagonist is joining a new world, so there's always space to stop and explain things to the audience. And since you don't want to dump everything on the audience at once, my only real goal is to make sure that the connections the story makes are logical along the way, and that the world building SERVES the story. 

That is to say, I aim to make sure that along the way, I develop a world that helps push the plot forward along with the characterization. That means roadblocks, social mores, standards, family connections, etc that help add drama to the story and add depth to the motivations of various characters. World building is basically just a set of rules and parameters that you give your story in order to keep it contained. I could throw in rules to HTBAW like "you need to wrestle a bear before you're considered an alpha werewolf", but if that rule serves no purpose to the story, why add it? I want to tell my readers, "This is how things work. This is what you can expect. This is how it should be." Because then, when I break those rules, I can do so in a way that makes the story more interesting. "You have to clear things with the council before storming into another werewolf's territory and kicking their ass" means that Elias gets in trouble and has to be disavowed. Drama! Interest! Sad werewolf man! I gave you a rule and a consequence, and justified both as much as possible, and now Elias's role going forward is fundamentally different. He's faced with decisions to make that change who he is.

What does this mean for your own writing? It'll totally depend! My personal style is that I like to rough in things, aim the story towards a few scenes I plan to have happen, and fill in my gaps as I go along. This means that I have to be very aware of the consequences of every aspect along the way. I throw in a werewolf council and that's a temporary roadblock for Sara to help them, but how can I make it a bigger one? How can Sara's role be sidelined as much as possible? I make magic internal for werewolves and external for witches, but what if a witch gets bitten? Planning as you go along means asking and answering a lot of questions as you write, and it won't always work out perfectly. Some stuff, you just have to hand wave away and hope no one makes a big deal out of it.

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If you're doing a story that's TOTALLY from scratch, like a big fantasy story set in a totally different world, you'll have to do a lot more work up front. Your protagonist probably already lives in this world, and is going to have totally different things they're used to and know already, and you have to figure out how much and when to convey information to the audience. Even then, 90% of your story is going to come from your characters. If you bog everything down in details and descriptions and history, your audience won't care after awhile. In which case, set up a solid plot with interesting, flawed people at the core of your story, and then build outward from there. Maybe one of your characters needs to rise up and take on a huge challenge, but you want them to start off with as many disadvantages as possible. This is how I might rough that out:

Protagonist's name is Frank, and he's 19. He's poor, because...the country he lives in makes upward mobility very difficult. Frank is ultimately going to be a great hero, but we need to get him to leave in search of a bigger opportunity. Maybe he's convinced by some slimy dude to come work for him in a different country for better wages, and Frank can send the money home to his family? Okay, I can pull on real world historical situations to find examples of how that might go badly. Maybe in Frank's new work situation, he leads an uprising and becomes a bold hero fighting for better lives for the underclass? Maybe he makes friends along the way, and I'd want to find ways to keep that interesting.

Right there, I have the bare bones of a story. There's a conflict, there's something that Frank wants, and there's something that acts as a catalyst to change his circumstances irrevocably. I would then want to flesh out the world building from there. What can I do to throw roadblocks at his progress? What sort of jobs would there be in other places that he can't do where he lives now? What sort of jobs would get you to be part of the upper class? The lower and middle classes? If I involve magic, who can do the magic? How would magic benefit the story? How would I want Frank to be involved with magic? How technologically advanced is this society? What about the world as a whole? How disparate are the economic, social, and technological situations in various countries? How does this society view gender, race, age, religion, etc?

When you're building from scratch, you need to take SO MANY things into consideration. You might not ever address half of it, but knowing certain things about the world you're building can help create your characters. Maybe Frank's family is very religious, but he's drawn to a different religion or no religion. You might not need to explain the religions in totality, but you can show various rituals, or how people of different religions react differently to social issues. You can create a picture from which the audience can draw conclusions, even if they're not given every minute detail. And then, you can throw additional details into your world building elements later if needed for story purposes.

Okay, not sure how much sense any of that made, but hopefully it'll have something helpful in there for you guys! I'm going to go back to drawing and also maybe start thinking very hard about dinner :P