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.

[normanrafferty.livejournal.com]

It's called The Belgariad.

[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.

[(Anonymous)]

why not build the world through the stories?

stories first! >_

[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.

[kamenkyote.livejournal.com]

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

[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.

[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.)