What About Worldbuilding? #20 - Fake It Till You Break It

Three more months…

Three.

I’m fine.

Just Go With It

At the start of something, just go with your ideas.

It’s fine.

Just go with it until you hit a wall or find something that breaks your internal logic, and then worry about going back and trying to fix it. If you spend all your time preparing for what you’re going to write, you might not get around to writing it.

This is a broad-spectrum statement and I’m comfortable making it.

Getting Sidetracked

It’s happened to me, that’s why I’ll be talking about it. Research is a very important thing to do, but not at the expense of narrative momentum. Finish what you’re doing, then start looking things up.

It’s a bit silly, I know, but just... Yeah.

Just finish what you’re doing, make assumptions, and roll with them (within reason) until such time as you reach a natural stopping point to go back and look things up to make sure they’re not bat-crap crazy.

See, there’s a reason behind this...

Breaking Things is FUN

Yes, being factually accurate is absolutely critical, but there’s another thing to consider. If you lean too heavily on your research at first. It’ll read like something that was researched, possibly too clinical in your descriptions of… whatever.

Like, say, you were writing a medical drama for whatever reason. Your “world” is the hospital and your “culture” are the procedural things that occur within, yeah? Well, you can approach such a story from two directions. You can develop your cast first, feel out their characteristics until you’ve got a handle on them, and then try to work in the more complex medical jargon. Or, instead, you can start by researching all the medical stuff and then figuring out your characters within it.

There isn’t a wrong approach, I want to say that right now before someone gets upset. There is no WRONG approach. It’s just that I’ve found different types of characters emerge from the different approaches to constructing the story’s world.

It’s cool.

I’d just find it more fun for me if I started writing said story with only a cursory knowledge of procedures to see what emerges, then stop when I hit a breakpoint and where I was completely off the mark.

Sure, it takes longer, but I feel like I end up learning more that way.

And I’m the sort who learns more from bumping my head than being told not to bump my head.

That’s it. Let’s chat in the comments maybe?

FFC Winners

I won everything.

Sorry.

Thanks for trying though.

(jk, results next week)