Wendy Parciak (npub18zl…c5tu) I tend to favor a bare stage; unlike with Tolkien and his imitators my setting isn't a character in its own right, and I tend to only write about the setting when it's relevant to characterization or plot.
I don't know if you've read M. John Harrison (The Pastel City, Light, Climbers), but he once posted the following opinion on worldbuilding that resonates with me:
Every moment of a science fiction story must represent the triumph of writing over worldbuilding.Worldbuilding is dull. Worldbuilding literalises the urge to invent. Worldbuilding gives an unneccessary permission for acts of writing (indeed, for acts of reading). Worldbuilding numbs the reader’s ability to fulfil their part of the bargain, because it believes that it has to do everything around here if anything is going to get done.
Above all, worldbuilding is not technically neccessary. It is the great clomping foot of nerdism. It is the attempt to exhaustively survey a place that isn’t there. A good writer would never try to do that, even with a place that is there. It isn’t possible, & if it was the results wouldn’t be readable: they would constitute not a book but the biggest library ever built, a hallowed place of dedication & lifelong study. This gives us a clue to the psychological type of the worldbuilder & the worldbuilder’s victim, & makes us very afraid.
web.archive.org/web/2008041018…
Matthew Graybosch /
npub1uv…wg9gj
2023-05-31 13:41:03
in reply to nevent1q…gmcv
Author Public Key
npub1uvq49m5xe2tvk94aklc03urcdu5m3huqjygf5qujeg55cqf9k32spwg9gjPublished at
2023-05-31 13:41:03Event JSON
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