creating

[egypturnash]

I've seen so, so many people who build exhaustively detailed worlds and then can never write stories set in them, because the details take the place of characters.

— Carla Speed McNeil, "Finder: Dream Sequence" (endnotes)

Yeah, I've been there too. I've seen that in other people. I've fallen into it myself.

Comments

[cargoweasel.livejournal.com]

It's always been my problem too. RPGs too - build giant campaign worlds and then run totally standard adventures in them with off the rack characters.

The secret is to think about the characters first and fill in only the minimum amount of world building needed. But that's easier said than done.

[tracerj.livejournal.com]

That's actually precisely how Kristy and I tend to work. And we get lambasted for being to wholly character-focused we forget about plot. *grin*

[normanrafferty.livejournal.com]

It's called The Belgariad.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Or the Silmarillion. Or, more frequently, 'that world I keep playing with that has the elves and the horses and stuff' but I may be feeling a bit snide today.

Not that I don't have a couple of these myself.

[normanrafferty.livejournal.com]

I actually enjoy the Silmarillon more than the other books, but I'm a monomythomaniac. ^.^ Really, tho, Sil is more like the notebook that Tolkien kept so he could write Hobbit and LotR.

Have you ever thought of hiring a co-writer?

[martes.livejournal.com]

That's one thing I've never really had a problem with. The worlds tend to build themselves after the characters and plot are set up.

[bluerain.livejournal.com]

Same here. I'm actually only interested in worlds at all as someplace to let the characters run around. It's always been the characters that really interest me.

[(Anonymous)]

why not build the world through the stories?

stories first! >_

[eselgeist.livejournal.com]

this would be me, sorry.

[ursulav.livejournal.com]

Well, I think it's easier, too. You can add a detail, or a hundred. If you're bored with this side of the continent, hop to the other and explore the obscure cult of the obscure species in the Barrens. (There is ALWAYS a place called the Barrens. It is a law.)

With characters, no matter where they go, there they are.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Mmhmm. And... people are hard. People are alien. Well, to me.

[normanrafferty.livejournal.com]

Do you read much Howarth (http://matthowarth.com)?

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Nope. Never heard of him. n.n

actually, I intend on throwing him about $300 or so soon to replace the 75% complete collection of TAPB & SH that Katrina claimed. And K&C was the main reason I kept on picking up Albedo.

[tracerj.livejournal.com]

I'l gladly donate to that cause, if only to get the chance to read 'em all when I visit. I love TAPB and K&C, but I've never gotten to read any SH.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

I can afford to do it easily, it's just a matter of having the ability to send him a check for it all - I don't have a checkbook right now!

[trikotomy.livejournal.com]

Normal peoples' reactions and motivations are baffling to me, so my characters have a tendency to end up as little facets of myself. "Write what you know", I suppose…

[kamenkyote.livejournal.com]

Are you referring to a recent work? Something in progress?

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

I've seen other people with huge piles of background notes and no story to show for it, and I've got a couple ideas that've fallen into that pit as well. I just thought she summed it up really well, when I found this in her afternotes for a story about... well.. someone whose act of Imaginary Creation was a world with no characters.

[martes.livejournal.com]

In fandom there's a lot of Great Projects that never get done. The old story of: "If I had a nickel for every time someone told me this long involved project they have in mind that never got done..." Also, as a general rule, if someone tells you in excruciating detail the huge story they have in mind, they usually won't end up doing it.

I try to avoid that trap by not talking about any of my planned projects except in the broadest terms ("I'm doing a story about (blank).") I don't even write anything down until I'm ready to actually begin work on it. As a result I have about 3 or 4 projects that exist completely in my head, and only there. The good part of that is that by the time I'm ready to sit down and work on it, I've already done all the preliminary mental work and just need to do the mechanical process of writing or drawing. The bad part is I better be really careful not to forget anything.

[zeeth_kyrah]

I have a Great and Mighty project, but because I've always envisioned it as a comic and not as a novel, I haven't been able to progress with it due to my lack of art skills or willing artists.

[mister-wolf.livejournal.com]

Man, I love Finder.

Anyway, that's why I haven't written much science fiction/fantasty. I hate world building. I like characters.

I'm working on a couple of comics of this type recently, and I've been trying to work from characters outward to world. That is to say, making up the characters and trying to figure out what sort of world would bring out what is interesting in them.

It is very hard to do.

[trikotomy.livejournal.com]

It sounds as if the world-writers and the character-writers should collaborate…

[mcity.livejournal.com]

I can't do either. My only regular 'character' is me. I do have a webcomic (http://jw63.blogspot.com/), but it focuses largely on the protagonists' own home. Specifically; their living room.

[cobaltie.livejournal.com]

A quote from my favorite comic arc from one of my still favorite comic book artist/writer complexes? One that already goes a lot towards refining my ideas of what it means to /create/ something? <3 <3 <3

Yeah...I agree with that, and have been caught in that trap before, too. But I also have that problem....characters are people, and people are /hard/ to create sometimes. I think I'm getting better at that, at least when people start creating /themselves/ in my head.

(unrelated note, I need to read the footnotes for that set more than ever, now. I have them only as individual issues, while almost everything else in the series I have as trade paperbacks. I respect McNeil greatly for even putting in the footnotes...she has so much detail, as many do, but they're totally optional, like a DVD commentary. She focuses on character /first/, and then gives us the interesting things she found out in the process, in the back of the book. Neat way to do it.)