Ava Cuvay: What’s in a World? (Contest & Excerpt)

I’m a workshop presenter at this year’s Chicago-North RWA Spring Fling conference, being held online due to COVID-19, and I’ll be talking about one of my favorite subjects: World-Building.

Imagine reading a story about vampires, but the author never tells you if these are creepy Nosferatu types, 80s-style heavy metal teen rebels, sword-wielding daywalkers, or sparkly high schoolers from the Pacific Northwest. What would you picture? What characteristics would you assign to them? How would you expect them to interact with other characters?

What if the story didn’t do any of what you imagined? That would be pretty disappointing—frustrating even—right? *This* is why World-Building is crucial… so a reader can immerse themselves into our stories and walk beside our characters without tripping up, taking a wrong turn, or thinking with a fair amount of annoyance, “We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto.”

I say all of this because, in spite of knowing better, I initially tried to cut World-Building corners with my newest book, Tin Man. I admit, I was a little tired of having to build a world completely from scratch, like a 90k ingredient cake recipe. I wanted something more familiar—a pre-made world that I didn’t have to invent. Like a cake from a box mix.

So, I decided to write a story located here on earth, in my current hometown of Indianapolis, Indiana. Human beings in an earth city where I could say “tree” and not have to describe the color of the leaves… What could possibly go wrong??

Wellll, there’s the fact that my story is set about 150 years in the future, so the city will have changed, but how? And the fact that technology will definitely have changed, such as what phones look like. And the fact my story is about cybernetic individuals, so what do they look and act like? And how might society perceive toasters versus a fellow human with machine parts? And the basic fact that not everyone is as familiar with the city of Indianapolis as I am.

Sigh. I had forgotten the main reason why World-Building is so critical to a good story: Not every reader’s individual life experience and perception is the same as another’s.

A story set in Indianapolis might feel like home for one reader, but a trip to uncharted lands for another. Saying a character is a cyborg might incite positive emotions from one reader, but negative from another. Based on our individual experiences, even something as seemingly universal as McDonald’s or Amazon will bring forth a wide variety of responses. Authors must build our worlds to gently direct our reader’s responses and perceptions. Are cyborgs misunderstood humans living in fear of their own safety, or are they dangerous timebombs ready to murder innocent people at a snap?

I smacked my forehead for ignoring the main tenet of my own World-Building presentation: No matter if we authors build a world from scratch or with the help of a box mix, we HAVE to craft a believable world so readers can experience the story as we intend them to. And to experience it in such a manner they feel they have lived the story alongside our characters.

And that they know what color the leaves on the trees are.