I love world building, unless it means that I keep finding holes I need to patch that require research to fix. At what point to you say “oh, foo” and just go with handwavium? As Sarah said last week, there comes a point where you have to stop polishing, stop researching, and write, or publish.
This bubbled up because of Andre Norton. Anne Bishop did it as well, but Norton’s first Witchworld book is where I first came across it. Norton’s setting descriptions are very spare. What I remember most is the general sense, a world sort of misty and silvery-grey, that unfolds slowly as Simon Tregarth learns more about wherever-it-is that he landed. Norton describes people in detail in her early books, but leaves a great deal of the setting to the reader – unless a character is describing it. Likewise SaDiablo Hall in the first Black Jewels books by Bishop. Specific rooms are described in some detail, or at least sketched out enough for the reader to fill in the rest, but not the entirety of the building. Later, the reader understands why there can be no complete description of SaDiablo Hall, but in the beginning? It’s sketched and the reader fills everything else in.
Norton and Bishop write character and conflict driven stories. Milieu is far less important as a plot driver. That’s not true of every book, and some stories need lots of background and world description. Dune is the prime example, but Conrad Richter’s Sea of Grass (a literary western) is another. If the place is a character, then it needs a lot of description. Preferably not all at once. Wherein lies the difficulty.
I’ve been batting this around [I am a cat, after all] as I write the next Familiar Generations story. I can see Devon County in my head, I know what Jude Tainuit’s “world” looks like. After so much time-in-world, I tend to forget that readers need a refresher. What is the woodlot beside Martha’s farm like? How long does it take Jude to get to town by daylight vs. at night (more time, since he has to stick to public rights-of-way). He goes up to the northern part of the county – what does that look like? How is it different from his corner? How do I show this, show the somewhat insular nature of the people without outright saying it?
Describing things through the character’s eyes is one way. Having him overhear things that he would normally overhear is another. “… and a dozen thumbprint cookies. Ja, I heard. No idea what she saw in him in the first place, but I’m not surprised. Those Voigts always were a little off-kilter, na ja?” Or “No, we didn’t have it too bad up our way, but I heard that the south part of the county had the really big hail. Jude, your aunt have any trouble last week?”
In contrast, two of the stories I just revised and corrected required a lot of world building and description. The setting is a character in those pieces. One I’d researched by going there and paying attention as I did other things (various bits of Scotland). The other drew on my personal knowledge of the area near the setting, plus internet and some book research. The stories include a great deal of description and background to build a world that readers will believe and “see.” (Two early readers who have been to those places said that I was spot on. I may have happy-danced in my chair a little.)
Some of my series need a lot more description because the setting is NOT the modern US. There the reader will want visual, aural, scent details in more detail, because it is new. The trick is finding a balance between writing a book that is more world-building than action, and one that causes readers to wall the book because the author will NOT describe anything, or describes things in a way that totally confuses readers and fouls up the plot. E.g. if the protagonist depends on horse-sized lizards for transport, do not leave readers thinking they are mammals until their reptilian nature becomes a major plot point. Just. Don’t. That book had other problems, but the sudden “Oh, they’re not mammals, oops” thing tossed me so far out of the book that I ended up in a different solar system.
Image Credit: Image by Andreas Lischka from Pixabay
Mad Genius Club 
9 responses to “How Much is Too Much? —Alma T. C. Boykin—”
I need a map.
I generally manage without one and have been known to handwave with non-Euclidean geography, but the latest setting needs a map.
Non-Euclidean geography sounds really interesting.
I used it in Madeleine and the Mists with the net effect that I did not trouble my pretty little head about travel times in the Misty Hills.
I have maps. They don’t generally make it into the books, but I have maps. House layouts (Vinogradov House is ridiculous!) And charts. And character and genealogy lists.
I don’t see how you could possibly avoid having all of that, and stay even slightly consistent over that many books.
One of the reasons I’m doing the description-improvement-world-building pass on books 1 & 2 of the not-yet-released series is the place-as-character aspect. I had a central building (a wizard guild hall) that I had a rough idea of (building it out as I went along, as I typically do), and then I needed this room and then that bell-wiring repair in the walls and then those quantities of rooms when part of it converts to an Academy, not to mention excuses for experimental plumbing, gigantic libraries, staircase structures, etc., etc., etc. This building is so important that a back view of it makes up the cover of book 1.
I now have floor plans for both basement levels, with their converted laundry and student laboratories, and all 4 floors and the attic, for the main building, and the servants’ wing in back, and the mews/stableyard/coal services in back, and the neglected urban front grounds with their street gates and carriage drive and ornamental fountain. All of this in a city whose architectural past and current layout is a lot more fleshed out now. And my characters use the whole damn thing, one way or another.
I do rely on the reader to supply many of his descriptive details himself, from my hints, but the place wasn’t solid enough in my own head for that to work (“does he turn left here, or is the corridor over there?”)
The cover of book 1 features a picture of the back of the whole building in its compound, from the back entrance of the servants’ wing, with rental properties outside the compound along the street. https://hollowlands.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/AFFIN-N1-Working-draft.jpg
The saying in the software world is “at some point you have to shoot the engineer and ship it” otherwise it will get tinkered with (and improved) forever, but you will never have anything to ship.
I like books/series that are internally consistent, and that requires that the author have the map and table of characters, etc. But I almost never reference them (and when I do, it’s because the author hasn’t described things well enough during the story and/or the character names are too close to each other and I end up getting confused between them)
Speaking of characters, when making up names, don’t make them all start/end with the same character and be about the same length. I don’t try to sound out the names/read them, I just recognize ‘that blob of letters is this character’ so you need to make the names distinctive enough to recognize at a glance (studies have shown that if you keep the first and last characters of a word, but scramble the letters in the middle, many people will read right through it without noticing, don’t let your character names resemble this)
I am NOT a cat, and do present day orienteering whilst hunting. We ghost through the woods, as everything is spooked after the morning shootathon at *some* camps. Not mine. We’re ghosts, flitting from fog bank to ridge and down again. We’ve seen some game, but have yet to fix them in place. When we do, it’s Bambi Burger dripping down our faces – I use some brisket to make the grind, more flavor. I gift my sister in law some wild game, and we’ll see about Waygu. No hurry, need to get it to the butcher here in the tiny burg of Bishop, TX.
I tend toward the sparse descriptions and letting the reader fill in the details. 🙂