Science Fiction Themes: World Building (Part II)
by Alissa Grosso
This article is the first in a series of articles highlighting traditional themes and concepts of science fiction. Each month we will take an in depth look at one of these themes to help you master and incorporate these important concepts in your writing.
Using Your Blueprint to Write a Story
Congratualations! You have successfully created your own world. You are now a God. Now you must write your story. Perhaps the story was an idea you have had in your head a long time, perhaps it was something you happened upon while creating the world. Either way, you will use your blueprint to help you tell the story. The blueprint is not the story, but the "facts" that form the foundation of the story. Like a good journalists you must rely on the facts to tell your tale. Naturally, in a novel you will have more room to include a lot of facts. In shorter works, you will be pressed for space. You do not want to overwhelm your readers with a lot of facts at once (this is called infodumping.) You want to spread the facts out over the entire story, providing details when they are appropriate or necessary to explain certain aspects of the world. These facts can be offered by the narrator or they can come across in dialog between the characters. The mark of a good writer is how seamlessly they weave story and information together to create a unified and enjoyable story. In a shorter work, you will probably not include all the information in your blueprint. This is all right. The blueprint provides a framework for you. Once you have created it you can tell the story and describe the world with confidence. Some writers are tempted to include all the information in their blueprint in their short story, but this can bog your story down with unnecessary details. Have your created a world so interesting and fascinating that one short story is not enough to do it justice? Have no fear, that's what sequels are for. Many writers return to a favorite world again and again, and if it truly is a wonderful world, your readers will also want to return again and again.. In fact, you can learn a lot by looking at how other writers have handled the world building theme.
Learning from the Masters
One master of world building is Jack Vance (http://www.massmedia.com/~mikeb/jvm/link.... His short stories and novels feature many strange and exotic places. Vance is especially skilled at creating elaborate social systems. The following books are recommended reading to study Vance's skills as a world builder: Big Planet, The Planet of Adventure Novels, and Ports of Call. If you would like to see how to use world building in a short story Jack Vance's "The Moon Moth" is recommended reading.
