Comments on: DysFUNctional: World-Building from Orwell to Apocalypse

By: Top Picks Thursday! For Writers & Readers 09-06-2015 | The Author Chronicles

Thu, 06 Sep 2018 22:49:45 +0000

[…] Creating a world from scratch is hard—but it can also be a great deal of fun. Cait Reynolds walks us through dysFUNctional world building. […]

By: Kristen Lamb

Kristen Lamb — Thu, 30 Aug 2018 15:20:40 +0000

In reply to Chris. Both of you are correct. One of the weaknesses of speculative is the writer can fixate on the world instead of the story the world was built to SERVE. We read for human stories, not gizmos, widgets and systems. YET, if we fail to do our job world-building, our actors are playing their part on an unfinished stage.

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 30 Aug 2018 14:19:16 +0000

Quite true, Jesse, but sometimes the setting itself is part of the plot. It can be particularly so if there’s not a lot of setting. This is undoubtedly the case in the book I cited in my previous comment. Without the setting, there would be no plot. Check it out. You’ll see what I mean (It’s a short read, yet it’s attained classic status.)

By: Jesse

Jesse — Thu, 30 Aug 2018 08:39:44 +0000

I love world-building, but the danger is focusing so much on it you actually neglect writing a story.

By: DJ

DJ — Wed, 29 Aug 2018 15:26:44 +0000

I can’t stand Handmaid’s Tail. It’s the only book that, when I finished it, I threw it, forcefully, into the trash. It also made me change my reading habits, forever. I used to finish a book whether I liked it or not~hey, it only takes a day or so, right? Nope. Now, if I don’t like it after 20 or 30 pages, out it goes!

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 29 Aug 2018 13:20:12 +0000

I’ve already referred to EM Forster’s ‘The Machine Stops’ in my comment on your previous post, Kristen (http://manybooks.net/titles/forstereother07machine_stops.html), but it’s equally appropriate as an example of minimal ‘world building’.

The world in the novella (our Earth) doesn’t need much ‘building’ because it’s become reduced to the small, almost featureless, rooms in which its citizens live, and the connections to other similar rooms across the globe.

Yes, there are details of the world outside, but as it’s the deserted remains of the world we know already (and not in a bombed out ruins form) what little details are given are chillingly familiar.

In ‘The Machine Stops’, the world that’s been built is only what its inhabitants, Vashti and Kuno, experience… and thats the core of the story.