Worldbuilding: A Whole New World

This was a panel at #Nerdcon 2016. Transcribed here in 2023.

Paolo Bacigalupi (Moderator), M.T. Anderson, Katrina Ostrander, Ben Acker, Nalo Hopkinson, Daniel Jose Older

Paolo: what's the thread you pull on to make your world believable?

Daniel: My stuff takes place in Brooklyn + ghosts, so I do research by going on walks. I get excited when I feel like a world is giving up its stories very easily, certain cities (Brooklyn included) do that. Gentrification is huge where stories are being told by setting. I get excited about context and worldbuilding as conflict. We talk about it as character, but if we think about it as a conflict, and settings are never stagnant so if we see them as a conflict we can always expand and Brooklyn changes so much I have to rewrite whole chapters as sections change and then I just throw in necromancers and ghosts and dragons and run wild.

Nalo: I do a lot of things one of which is history research, I slept through that class in high school but now that I write it I find that it's really interesting so I look for stories that grasp me and how things might go differently I also look at setting, even if I m writing fantasy I look for settings that seem real and there's a Toronto lake where beach very beautiful but built on landfill and I love that contrast that’s why the beach sand exists because landfill and I like that conflict
If a kid is going to school that's his support system.

Ben Acker: I cheat. My world building comes from punchlines, my character will allude to a thing but my stories are real people real things so references outside is how I build the world around it so we haven't' seen this place yet but they allude to it and then two episodes further we'll see it and I don't research but it's great that you guys do but I write some nonsense and then I go and make it real so I builds incrementally.

Daniel compliments his style (he seems quite humble)

Katrina: the worldbuilding feels real when I can relate to it personally I do sci fi which is exploring todays issues in a what if context so when I write about megacorporations with is nbn (note: ??) they run internet and have surveillance over the entire megacity and in a world where capitalism and privacy and marginalization that we deal with and looking through a different lens really hits home these people below the grid they aren't franchised because they don't have the economic privilege of someone working for a corp. When my experience graduating from college but not being middle class because can't make enough money and different issues like not being able to make it unless you work for them but you if you do you have  prescribed live but you are scrutinized and you have to give up.

I did a poor job capturing what I'm sure was a coherent answer

M.T.: we live our lives as if theyre individual but we're embedded in history and history engages us in ways that we don't recognize at the time until we look back later so I look and say what is the relationship between these characters and the world things that they are part of.

We can be a motive force in history and that's exciting.

In writing futuristic satire is I take the stupidest thing to be as irritating and claustrophobic and then I do what ben does

Paolo: I start with a character and live through as many details of that character as I can. Being able to see and move through the spaces that character is in and empathize with those deeply enough.

They may be fantastical places but they are grounded in real people, and the more it grounds the more it ties to plot, where they're going next. As it builds the more it feels real to me. It feels fake for a while but then I acclimate and there's enough details about how it feels when they soy on you the forp (note: ????) or this food or why this is a delicacy and once I get that established I know what will happen next, I'm in their skin and I'm in the world again so I back into world through character.

Paolo: why do you choose certain kinds of worlds to live in or work in?

MT: Katrina is right. These worlds are involved in an emotional sense with what we're involved in personally. You write about a world because you're interested in its politics or culture, and that feels cold to some people but I don't write romance because I don't give a shit about nonexistent people falling in love.

---what is wrong with you? Note: assuming Nalo interjected here?

MT: There are 7 billion people who fall in love they just make more. But Nalo, I feel kinship with your work because we mesh on politics I don't care about individual questions of romance I care about the big picture: what are the ways we are encroaching on others rights and taking them for granted? That’s the human issue right now. I want to address those and that’s what I write.

I don't have it intellectually I want to confront it EMOTIONALLY.

Katrina: I work on these because my job tells me to.

Paolo: Eating is nice, yeah

Katrina: But I like to examine the themes present in the setting, in cyberpunk what does it mean to be human where you can be synthetic androids with strong AI? Exploring those questions are the rabbit hole and you can get passionate if you can find the essence or meaning that the setting is trying to convey but I have a fantasy Asia setting where honor and duty are important and samurai and bushido personal wishes vs society expectations so I get drawn into these fundamental questions about human nature that the setting is asking and exploring characters via the world and this is assigned to me but I can get passionate about it.

2016 note: <3 <3 that answer

Acker: I like playing with genres and seeing what tropes live in that world.

The feeling I'm going for is...[lost thread]

...No sense of urgency, I can do breadth so I want to touch on everything I don't believe in writer's block you didn't outline my fear as a writer is that I have 35 years of being a good writer but 42 years of stories so I can play in this world for a little bit and then hop to a new one.

Nalo: its cruel how many stories left vs how many years. Once I have an attitude I can start, and I outline a bit but I start with the characters and I don't understand why people write people talking the same, they have quirks of speaking, not just accents

Is there a sensory level that can draw me in?  I need the feel of being in the protagonist's body.

I look for unfairness, that pisses me off.

Daniel: I write urban fantasy, but its an epic war and there's so many stinking characters we needed to assign them all.

Lot of singular character stuff in urban fantasy.
But epic war has court documents and different things.

So what if we remix this and have political intrigue but in an urban fantasy.

And setting is a good way to mix that up

Emotions are important like you said, worldbuilding is important to see where we can bring in politics, worldbuilding is harmony and something something is melody and we can have layers of adding culture and politics and I like brining that in on an emotional level but we're bringing it in --emotional dynamic of a political situation.

He talks about Harlem and Brooklyn and street names and murals of drug dealers that everyone loved but no one would write an obituary for.

Paolo: What's a detail that you've discovered that made you feel like a world is real?

If this is about drought, how many characters can I build that are affected by that drought?

And that becomes the world, becomes the story.

Naolo: talks about calvin and hobbes a lot
Ben acker: peanuts everyone greets snoopy with a new nickname
And the last one is snoopy thinking "no one ever calls me sugar lips"
And I can relate to that character

Ben: so what's your comic?
Katrina: ..do I have to use a comic?
Jacqueline Carry
Alternate history
Acadia, albion, illyria (historic names for real places)

Mt anderson: talks about a series with super salty seas that scar you if they touch you they call sailors vinegaroons

And Nalo has a short story where she interrupts herself her own thoughts with negative thoughts about weight (MT is talking still) and what makes the mythology feel real is that self doubt, that constant bit, that's the magic, not the mythology which you did beautifully, but in the normality.

Daniel: ASoIaF, I care about Westeros more than the characters, it has so much history. The characters are either going to die or are assholes, and that’s why we care because it’s the world and that's why he gets away with killing so many characters and he makes a great joke and its about the story of Westeros

The resonants of major events echo in the people and in the worlds and that echoes in our own lives as well

What tools do you use to track everything?

⭐ Katrina: a story bible, you can find templates online
You can also make a wiki, which I maintain and build an encyclopedia
Searchable materials

Nalo: I use scrivener notes <3

Note: this question and the responses are the best part of this panel
Do you drop the person in or use a person who doesn't know the world?
How do we enter the world?
Do we learn as we go?

Paolo: I drop and have them learn. It slows down what a story does if you have to do the travel log.
You have to explain everything. Bad.
I like nonlinear

Daniel: it's the different between tour guide and tourist narrative
I love the fact that communities know the place they live.

Katrina: if the story is about dropping someone new in then do it else don't. it's not necessary

Mt: all literature is the process of disorientation and reorientation. Drop the reader in is better, it's right.

In every book you read, the book is teaching you how to read it, parceling out that information, whether its an alien world or a family dynamic you need that, and the writer has to guide you towards that knowledge, the writer is a teacher not trying to confuse you.

Where do you draw the line between what's really cool and what you think is reasonable (in high fantasy, future, etc.)

Nalo: Start with the really cool, have as much fun as you can, and in your rewrites you will alter things to make it realistic. Convince the reader then you're good.  I play it by ear.

Paolo: you're reading because its not here, so start with the cool and then justify it. You can spin that bullshit and then explain it and just roll with it and if you do it well no one will notice what you're left out or anything, so take big risks and push that further if the audience pushes back, fine, but you did it.