It’s All Small Things Even Writing
There’s a question many writers have been asking themselves. And it has to do with how to build a world that people just want to live in. How do you build a world like Lord of the Rings, and Harry Potter? And I don’t have an answer for you, the authors of those worlds probably don’t even have an answer for you, because they often just did it, whatever it is. Maybe they have a few tips here and there that they noticed helped, but when it comes down to it, there’s no one way to build a world. There is, however, a very simple thing to follow when it comes to wanting to build your own world. After all, the scope of crafting such an epic universe that expands and ever grows like the Marvel Universes or the Harry Dresden novels, can be daunting, as daunting as the idea of changing the world. If you’ve wanted to build your own world with your novels, you have probably asked yourself more than once, where the flying faerie fuck do I begin?
Well, when you want to begin anything, even something as epic and grand as crafting your own universe and world, it starts with a single step; or more specifically, it starts with the small things. Really, all it is, is about the small things, because everything is small.
There is one thing we do know about world-building with novels and entire fictional series, and it has to do with slowly introducing the reader to the world. Often times the thing that kills a lot of good books and good worlds, is a massive dump of exposition at the beginning of a novel, to explain the world and everything about it. This is literally like hitting your reader over the head with a hammer and saying “Get in my damn world now!” It doesn’t work in real life, and it’s not gonna work in your fictional world either. Which is why if you want to craft a universe that can really capture people, all it takes is focusing on the small things, the details in that world… and soon you have something living and breathing and alive.
What do I mean?
The Details
The small things are really anything you can think of, just concentrated down. Like say, if you have a unique race of people, do they have a language? Can it be translated? We’ve seen fictional languages with Avatar, Lord of the Rings, and many more, and they actually lead to people getting so obsessed with it that they learn the language and even add their own words to it. The thing is, creating a language is no simple task, it’s massive and expansive, but possible, by going a few rules and words at a time, much in the same way you craft your world.
Think about a few key features of the culture and people in your world. What is their average day? If you think about these things ahead of time, you’ll see that it starts to sprinkle into your writing as you go on. Even something as simple as coming up with Expletives that the people of your world say can have a huge impact. Don’t believe me? Well, there’s actually a word for it.
In the Hollows Series, there is a pixie character named Jinx, and he has a bit of a cult following for a major reason… he has something called Jinxisms. Or more specifically, certain phrases that he exclaims in place of expletives that are often times very amusing and also relatable, as well as really being something a pixie character with knowledge of our real world would say. They include things like: Tink’s Panties, or really anything about Tinkerbell, like my favorite (even though it’s a terrible thing to actually say), Tink is a Disney Whore .
These -isms are actually highly powerful things because it not only shows that your world is alive and different from the real world we know, but gives a character depth, with just expletives! Just imagine if you put a little more attention into random details here and there, suddenly you have this massive world being created and in small pieces. Before long the reader is sucked into the world without even realizing it and best of all… they can’t figure out exactly why they love that world, just that they do. And it’s because there wasn’t just one thing, there were hundreds of little things that touched them slowly and eventually they just couldn’t pull away from it. They just had to keep reading, and had to keep knowing about the world.
The Broken Window
In fact, there is an effect this is known as now, thanks to The Tipping Point, and it’s called the Broken Window effect. The idea behind it is that if you have a broken window, it’s a small detail, a tiny thing that really doesn’t matter much. But if you have a broken window and you don’t fix it, suddenly you have a burglar come along and think no one cares about that house with the broken window, and they rob it. This keeps happening, and eventually you have even worse problems popping up. And all it would have taken was fixing that window, to suddenly clear up hundreds of other problems that you would think are big, but they aren’t. They are all small things, small things that can be changed and fixed.
Applying this broken window effect to the world building, you discover that by focusing on the smaller things, you’ll solve the bigger things pretty quickly. In fact, in many cases the big things will just drop in place themselves, because they just make perfect sense after you’ve already created all the small things in your world!
So please, consider the small things. Many people don’t, but it really can change a lot, just by focusing your scope. And your readers will end up enjoying it more.
