Why Worldbuilding is Bad

[Desdichado]

Niven's a poster boy for the right

Gah! I should report your post for discussing politics.

 

[ThirdWizard]

Even if I am incorrect on that one point (and I am not sure I am; I'd have to rewatch the movie), all the others are ample demonstration that there is more going on in Star Wars than you originally supposed, right?

You can have verisimilitude without worldbuilding, though.

 

[apoptosis]

I think he was ranting about a specific form of bad writing.

While Cerebrim brings up a good point that we (myself included) have somewhat diluted his words (sort of a tirade); I still feel that his point that worldbuilding can interfere with the narrative is valid.

Though like most things it is a matter of degrees. Tolkien's world building was helpful in fleshing out Middle-Earth but I think at times he definitely was guilty of unnecessary infodump that detracted from the narrative.

 

[Mallus]

Once more into the breach...

However, many authors do create maps, either as illustrations so that readers will understand the imaginary geography...

And Harrison's suggesting that this constitutes 'going off the track'. Terry Pratchett's is quoted saying similar things about his Discworld; he won't draw a map of it because "you can't map the imagination".

I'm not suggesting that Pratchett's remarks 'prove' Harrison's, merely that Harrison is hardly alone in those sentiments.

I should note that I'm of the group that says that Tolkiens writing is very efficient indeed, and I found the mention of 'The Great Gatsby' particularly funny

Do tell.

when I teach Tolkien's LotR's, one of the devices I've employed is putting pages from the LotR side by side with 'The Great Gatsby' so that the writing styles can be compared. This is generally a revelation to anyone that actually wants to learn and doesn't have there minds pre-made up and set by LotR's reputation as difficult to read, ramblilng, or 'inefficient'. Anyone that thinks LotR is 'inefficient' simply isn't looking very closely.

That's not especially telling. You've done a comparison between the two texts as a classroom exercise and found that your students agree with you. Great.

I've read both. Heck, I adore both. I find Gatsby to be a model of compact, evocative writing (Fitzgerald can speak volumes with a single sentence, like when nails Meyer Woflsheim with the remark about his cuff links being made from 'real human molars').

LotR is not. One of its greatest strengths is that it stops being 'novel-like in places and instead becomes part encyclopedia, part atlas, part folk history, and part hobbit toast-buttering songs.

I also consider this a pretty bizarre criticism of the story considering how much story Tolkien crams into the work in the space he uses

It's not how much Tolkien crams into LotR, it's 'what'. To some readers LotR is effectively barren. They don't care about Middle Earth's history, hobbit customs, the genealogy of the Kings of Gondor and the fall of the Men of the West. To quote the immortal Morrissey 'It says nothing to me about my life."

A personal example. My lovely wife tore through In Search of Lost Time a few years back. Something a lazy reader wouldn't do. Proust's salon culture is fairly far removed from the gun-crazy City of Brotherly Love we live in, but nevertheless, she could relate to it. She's tried reading LotR several times, but couldn't get through it. The enterprise that Tolkien excels at is meaningless to her. Middle Earth is meaningless to her.

Now I wonder what Harrsion thinks of Proust? That'd me interesting...

...compared to modernist stories like Joyce's 'Ulysses' that are hailed as triumphs of the literary art.

I've heard Ulysses described as 'a novel about everything'. All of the human experience. Personally, I think it's too dense to be readable as a novel. It's more like an artifact, sort of a map of Western cultural history... frankly , I'm not too fond of it. But Joyce's stories in The Dead, particularly "The Dead", are amazing. The last paragraph of "The Dead" is worth more to me that all of LotR. It says more. To me, personally, and all...

I'm generally inclined to think that most critics of Tolkien's writing are basically peeved that the public could care less about Joyce after they invested so much emotion in praising Joyce, etc.

Which of course is silly. Critics of Baywatch weren't merely peeved that more people weren't watching PBS.

Mr. Harrison used much stronger language than that...

To make a point. Which was apparently missed by a lot of people who got their dander up because they found Harrison to be insulted books that they liked, and refused to recognize that his statement's obviously weren't intended as universal. You know, because he was just making a point. I chalk that up to partisanship.

And think about it for a minute. If we limited ourselves to making universally applicable statements about 'art' or 'writing' we'd never talk about them.

Researching Mr. Harrison though, I find he is famous for writing stories which are deliberately internally inconsistant, which deliberately break versimilitude, and which turn out to be settings about settings and stories about stories.

Does 'researching' Mr. Harrison include actually reading his books?

He writes stories in which the first assumption of the reader, namely that there is meaning to be found in the fiction, turns out to be false and that it is all revealed as merely fiction in the end.

Does 'researching' Mr. Harrison include actually reading his books?

In other words, Mr. Harrison's rant is entirely consistant with the philosophical position he's staking out in his works, and it is entirely consistant with what we know of the emotionalism of people who hold that political position that they would be frightened of the psychology of people who do not hold it.

And what position is that?

 

[Raven Crowking]

You can have verisimilitude without worldbuilding, though.

Not the way I define the terms.

I define world-building as "The creation of details that move a setting from the generic to the specific".

I don't think you can ever have verisimilitude without knowing that those "trees" are confiers, or oaks, or whatnot, or having some sense of specific culture.

 

[Mallus]

Gah! I should report your post for discussing politics.

Niven can't be a poster boy for the right. Isn't he from Southern California? During the 70's?

 

[buzz]

I don't think you can ever have verisimilitude without knowing that those "trees" are confiers, or oaks, or whatnot, or having some sense of specific culture.

Vincent Baker gives a great example on his blog about how a GM he knew was able to create amazing detail and verisimilitude, on the fly, without lots of pre-game work.

Then he told me how he'd done it. He'd taken three principles - I wish I could remember them in particular, J please step in here, but they were like "nobody thinks that they themselves are evil," "the Grand Galactic Empire is procedurally conservative," and "nobody really enjoys their job" - three principles something like those, and whenever any of his players asked him about anything in the setting, he'd simply apply those principles to create the answer.

"I duck into a broom closet." "Okay. There are a bunch of reg-77f portbrushes in there, but someone hasn't bothered to replace them yet, they're all slimy and they smell." All the details you'd need to bring the setting home, give it weight and momentum, and yet J didn't precreate the contents of a single broom closet.

This is exactly what came to mind when I first read ThirdWizard's comment. Verisimilitude is about consistency, I think. It doesn't necessitate writing a phat setting bible.

 

[LostSoul]

But when the PCs climb the rise into the valley they've never seen before, it helps if the GM has some idea what lies beyond that rise.

Wouldn't he say something like, "Whatever's important to the adventure"?

 

[Desdichado]

Niven can't be a poster boy for the right. Isn't he from Southern California? During the 70's?

Hey, Ronald Reagan was Governer from 1967 to 1975 after all.

 

[Pbartender]

Vincent Baker gives a great example on his blog about how a GM he knew was able to create amazing detail and verisimilitude, on the fly, without lots of pre-game work.

Then he told me how he'd done it. He'd taken three principles - I wish I could remember them in particular, J please step in here, but they were like "nobody thinks that they themselves are evil," "the Grand Galactic Empire is procedurally conservative," and "nobody really enjoys their job" - three principles something like those, and whenever any of his players asked him about anything in the setting, he'd simply apply those principles to create the answer.

This is exactly what came to mind when I first read ThirdWizard's comment. Verisimilitude is about consistency, I think. It doesn't necessitate writing a phat setting bible.

Ooo. I like that. It reminds me of Burning Wheel's Instincts and Beliefs, something which I've been having my D20 players use instead of character histories and personality profiles, but applied to an entire country/culture/civilization/organization. I really like that.

It actually inspires me to do a bit of filling in for my own campaign setting.