Setting Your World Up, Setting Your World in Motion

Bringing Your World to Life

Astronomer Copernicus, or Conversations with God by Jan Matejko

In creating a world, the distinction between setting your world up, and, setting your world in motion is a simple, but important distinction.

Before getting into the distinction, there’s another important question that precedes the detailed considerations of worldbuilding. That question is: do you want to tell an allegorical tale or what I will call a worldbuilding tale? (There can be a spectrum of application between these two options, but we’ll keep it simple here for explanatory purposes.)

An allegorical tale uses the setting as a conveyance to impart certain lessons or perspectives. As an example, a story about a teenager from the local village who must confront a dreaded troll who lives under a bridge. This can be a story about coming of age, facing fears, overcoming obstacles, even good versus evil.

An allegorical tale accepts the setting at face value. It doesn’t bother with the questions of: is there only one troll in this world? If this troll was such a nuisance, why is a teenager having to deal with it ― why haven’t the villagers already set an ambush? Or, provincial knights summoned to dispatch the threat and impediment to commerce?

A decision between allegorical or worldbuilding storytelling isn’t a question of the best way or the right way, but it’s still a decision to make. Most fairy tales and tales told around the campfire are allegorical tales. These tales transcend time in their countless retellings.

If you prefer the worldbuilding approach to storytelling, then yes, a question like how did a random troll come to perpetually dominate a bridge needs an answer. It’s a vast world, so an answer could be ― the entire issue could be resolved by building a new bridge in a different location. Perhaps upon further consideration, trying to justify a solitary, indomitable bridge troll may stretch logic too far that it should be abandoned as a concept (not all ideas will make the cut for your world or story) or that troll needs some reinforcements!

Let’s delve deeper into exploring setting your world up and setting your world in motion. Two examples to follow will highlight the difference, but first, I also want to mention that worldbuilding tales absolutely can convey important lessons and pose questions the way an allegorical tale can. Worldbuilding tales also prioritize internal logic and cohesion in a way that an allegorical tale does not.

Setting your world up is your list of lists, all the ingredients (the fantastical as well as the mundane) that you want to include in the world: giants, elves, sea monsters, flying craft, etc. Setting your world in motion is now that you have the list of ingredients, how much of each one are you going to use? What are the steps in this recipe? ― which is to say, how do all these ingredients interact with one another?

If you change the quantity of the ingredients, or when they are introduced in the cooking process, you change the dish. With disruptive elements like elves living for a millennium, hyperintelligent dragons, time travel, I think of these as worldbuilding equivalents to super hot peppers, Pepper X or Carolina Reaper. Think about how these ingredients will interact within the overall dish or world.

The other point I want to convey here in terms of motion is the sense of time and trajectory. Does the world you are building have a past and a likely future in addition to the present? Does the world begin when the story begins? Or, is the world in motion and the reader is welcomed into it?

The visual that comes to mind is the marathon. In a certain way, there is not much distinction between all the runners at the start of the race. They’re all waiting to begin. They’re all constrained by the start line. Start this race, set the world in motion, and differences in speed, endurance, technique start to emerge. Run the same race with the same runners day after day, or month after month, and dynamics of the world are revealed.

Readers have told me that Ardalencor and the characters that inhabit this land feel real. I am grateful for this feedback as I put a lot of care and attention into creating a strong sense of place and characters rooted in the world.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this article and found the examples above to be helpful in your worldbuilding and writing process.

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Until next time. Happy holidays and happy new year!