Episode 28: [WRITING CRAFT] You need to attend writing conferences | World building across genres

In this episode, we share what we learned from sessions at the Mountain Words Festival in Crested Butte, CO focused on world building. While it's typically discussed heavily amongst science fiction and fantasy writers, we discovered there's a lot that can be applied to writing in other genres. The sessions featured authors Olivia Chadha and Paolo Bacigalupi.  

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Transcript

0:01

Welcome fellow writers to the Inspired Writer Collective podcast, your go to hub for all things writing. We're your hosts, Elizabeth and Stephanie. Whether you're a seasoned wordsmith or just dipping your quill into the ink well of creativity, we're absolutely thrilled to have you with us. Drawing from our experience in publishing diverse writing genres and the daily grind of showing up for yourself, we're here to be your writing companions. Expect insightful discussions, expert tips, and a dash of inspiration as we navigate the twists and turns of the writing journey together. So whether you're listening on your commute, during your writing session, or just relaxing at home, get ready for an immersive experience that celebrates the art and joy of writing. Hi,

Elizabeth: 0:49

Welcome listener. This is our part two of our, the things that we've learned through the recent Mountain Words Festival that was in Crested Butte over the Memorial Day weekend. So we had so much valuable information that we learned that we wanted to break this up into a separate episode. So this one today we're going to be talking about world building. So this is really talked about heavily in your fantasy and sci fi genres. But I found that a lot of the discussion that I was able to hear and be a part of around world building, I felt also was very relevant to even something as kind of set in a world as memoir. So we're going to kick it over to Stephanie. She attended a panel. And then I also attended a more in depth workshop. So we'll share that information with you today.

Stephanie: 1:42

Yeah, so I attended a panel with Strange New World Building in Sci Fi and Fantasy with Paolo Basigalupi and Olivia Chada. Hopefully, I didn't completely butcher those names but, so I apologize to the authors if you ever listened to this, and I did, but I will definitely put the names in the description for this episode, and so, moving forward, they are both accomplished writers in the genre for sci fi and fantasy. And they had so many interesting things to say about world building that really apply across genres. And they even brought that up towards the end of the panel about how aspects of their process and what they do can really apply to any author. So one of the interesting things is Olivia shared that when she's writing that she starts with writing her important scenes first. That when she's thinking about the world that she's creating, she goes right to her important scene. She's like, why wait for everything in between? I'm just gonna go right to, like, what is, you know, really happening in this. And then fill in the details along the way. And and they both talked about how really the structure of how they approach writing can vary from how one book to the next in terms of whether they start with building the characters first, then you know, they talked about how in their genres that, you know, the character really is the world in a lot of ways, that so much of the world is seen through the character's eyes because it is brand new, they are creating it, it's not what's familiar to us but very much, you know, in the same way with other genres that When you're creating your character, you're putting them in a setting, which they talked about as being very two dimensional. whereas with sci fi and fantasy, it becomes much more three dimensional that like, you know, the character just gets absorbed into the world they're in, but you can really connect that I think across genres, because depending upon what your focus of your novel is, the place could very much be, part, the biggest part of what you're writing about, they talked about a lot of their, you know, some people were asking, you know, like, where do you get your ideas from? And how do you about building your world? And they talked about how, know, there's sort of this, Essence of world building that comes from experience that comes from topics of interest, like in their case, you know, biotech or genetic engineering. And, you know, really, allowing their interests and their personal interests align very heavily with what they're writing. Because they talked about how when, when they're really deeply interested in a topic, that it allows them to really create the world in a substantial way where the reader feels like they're a part of it. And I loved how they talked about with their research process for building a world, that it was really like nerding out on whatever it was that, you know, that like, that they went deep into literally, you know you know, if they're writing about someplace else in the world, that eventually they traveled to where that was so they could fully experience, you know, like, what is the culture here? What is happening here? And that, you know, But they would always begin with this process of, you know, got them interested in a topic. And it would start out with just learning from local, you know, news outlets or learning about, you know, doing some book reading and basic research and, you know, what are they going to do with the idea? And then it immersed into that You know, visiting and immersing yourself and having what you've learned in the books and what you've learned in your research really come alive for you allowing you to go deeper into creating that world because of course, you know, if you are a sci fi or fantasy reader, you know, I've read a select few in my time. It's not my genre of choice, but there's certainly some interesting books. And, you know, it does. you outside of your experience in some way takes you into worlds that you might be familiar with, but then distorts it in a way or poses a question that you're wondering, like, Could this really happen? Like, could this potentially happen? And so yeah, and they just talked about the importance of making sure that if you are, you know, in a particular culture or choosing a particular place that you're really aware of representing that culture, that community its true way. Even if you're writing fiction, that people who know communities or people who know places, might turn readers off if you're not still representing in an authentic way.

Elizabeth: 7:12

Olivia went into that a lot more in my workshop. You know, she had a whole hour to dig into a bunch of different stuff. And I can go into that a little bit more, but I did want to say that she actually shared in our workshop. That she called Noah and NASA and spoke to NASA scientists in preparation for her next book, which is going to have a lot to do with the sun. And she like just literally picked their brains about like, what could happen? What would be like a plausible, you know, worst case scenario or a plausible, like, sci fi or fantasy storyline that could happen with the sun. So, I mean, it's beyond, you know, listening to podcasts or even reading books, like she really encouraged everyone to like actually go and speak to the scientists because they are going to have those ideas already, you know, at the forefront of their mind of like, if this went really bad, this is the direction it could go. And that's wonderful fodder for, you know, a sci fi storyline or. Or whatnot. That was something also that Paulo and Michelle talked about in their panel, you know, talking about borrowing fiction, borrowing from nonfiction, you know, like looking at the science magazines and see about the beetle kill and then taking that concept and extrapolating it into this like way more extreme, you know, storyline that. The author in the nonfiction can't write about or can't posit, but someone who's writing fiction can absolutely take and just run with. So that was another, you know, theme that we heard over and over again in a Olivia just made the point like don't be scared to go and talk to the scientists go to the people go to the source They were more than happy to talk to a writer about the potentials of what could be

Stephanie: 8:58

Yeah, no, I think that that's a, that's a great point. And I think sometimes as writers in our introverted worlds, we. If you are, if you identify in that way that sometimes we forget about the values of, you know, writing an email to someone or picking up the phone and asking those questions. And I think that that's a great way to really get. Some really good insight from, like Elizabeth said, someone who may already be thinking about the, what the worst case scenario could be, or if this happened, how it could go wrong or how, you know, something a character does could influence So I think that that's And I, yeah, and I just think that they also talked about, You know, there was also, again, just coming back to the whole process as a writer. I mean, Paolo said, you can do almost anything if you do it with skill. you know, he, it's kind of a way of encouraging, like, if you just, Take the time to take the steps. You're going to learn how to your book the way you want to it be. And yeah, so I think that some great things and I think just remembering the idea of. in building your world too, you want to be precise about it, but you don't want to info dump on your reader either. You have to be careful about, you know, finding that balance between what is the most relevant information and what doesn't need to be here. So Elizabeth, what else did you get from the world building that you went to? Because you went to one that was a little bit different, that had more of a panel of, A broader panel of writers.

Elizabeth: 10:48

Yeah, mine wasn't actually a panel mine was a lot led just by Olivia so it was much more in depth of her process and one of the things that she really showed through a number of books within the fantasy and sci fi genres, most of them in the YA or middle ages spheres. She shared the, like, first paragraph or two of each of those to really emphasize how little information you need to give to indicate that this world is different than the world that you're used to and to kind of clue you in to the nature of things. And it was, it was so subtle the way these little nuggets would be stated in order to pique reader interest and indicate that something was different. It reminded me of like Hansel and Gretel and like just dropping these breadcrumbs, right? So there would be a reference to like, it was Impalo's book, she read the opening paragraph and there was this reference to this, you know, scavenger God, right? And it was just like a, kind of like a blah, blah, blah. And this was for to honor the scavenger God. And so you're like, as a reader,

Stephanie: 11:50

You

Elizabeth: 11:55

it's not, he doesn't in that moment say the scavenger God was the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, like you don't have to do that there. Right. She read this portion from cinder, which is a retelling of Cinderella set in. I think she said China and Cinderella or cinder is some sort of version of parts like some. So, so, in this image. Cinder is using her prosthetic steel hand to use the screwdriver to remove this foot that when she pulls it off the, the wires are revealed and, you know, it's the wrong size and will I go get her the new foot in time?

Stephanie: 12:36

Bye

Elizabeth: 12:39

and it's beautiful the way these authors don't take the time in those moments to explain all the questions that the reader is having. They just let those be

Stephanie: 12:47

get

Elizabeth: 12:48

of the things she really emphasized with world building is to show from the jump that it is the same, but different. So she said to that readers really connect with the similarities first

Stephanie: 13:02

try

Elizabeth: 13:02

that then build on those similarities by throwing in the differences.

Stephanie: 13:07

any

Elizabeth: 13:08

another excerpt from a book and I forget what that one was called, but.

Stephanie: 13:11

my

Elizabeth: 13:11

it took place and it referenced being in Los Angeles and the ruins of the Golden Gate Bridge. So, you know, you take what we all understand about You know, L. A. Or the West Coast. And then it was some reference to the Republic. And it was like, huh, something clearly went on here. This is I see enough similarities to my modern world to understand that we're taking place at some point in the future of the U. S. And something has happened, whether this is a war or some restructuring of the power dynamics. And now the, you know, Golden Gate Bridge is in ruins. And so it's just enough details to allow the reader to relate enough to understand what they are, but then to give them some clues to those differences. And in her workshop, she said that in order to do world building, she really focuses on four things, time,

Stephanie: 14:06

just trying to

Elizabeth: 14:08

people in culture, And

Stephanie: 14:10

on. Okay.

Elizabeth: 14:11

really was impressed with the emphasis on the power. I think that's a really critical piece of world building, but something that's so often overlooked because it's not as tangible and on the surface as those other elements. And she recommended it in the beginning. Stick really close to your main character when you're you're structuring your world building and your first drafts that the reader only needs to know the parts of the world that the main character needs to know. So if your main character is an outsider coming into a new world, they will know a lot less or need to know a lot less about that new world than if you're writing from an insider's perspective, right? And some other foreign entity is coming in. This was really helpful for me in writing memoir because I recognize that as I'm talking about these places that I've moved to and that I've lived for a short period of time, that I was coming from an outsider's perspective. And this, especially she emphasized when it comes to representing culture and the potential pitfalls of misrepresenting a culture that you don't understand. She gave The illustration of a cultural iceberg, which I've seen depicted from other authors as well. But there's the external stuff that any visitor might see like when you're traveling and you might notice the clothes, the rituals, the holidays, the food, the appearance, but what you don't see are the or fully understand or the concepts of justice, the power, the depth of the religion and how that dictates the day to day life. Spirituality or the world view that that insider has on their external world and the world around them And so you have to be very mindful about what the insider knows What would an outsider see and is your main character? For me then my memoir, that's me. But you know, is your main character an insider or an outsider? What are they privy to? And so I felt felt like that was really insightful She did recommend a book if you are choosing to write about a culture that you You are not as well versed in maybe the one that's a little bit different from your own is a book called writing the other by Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward. And so she recommended that it's a very short book, but she made the point that she shared a little bit from it about unmasked characters, meaning sort of undefined characters. When you say that. A man jumped into the river, struggled to reach, you know, struggled to swim against the current and reach the other shore.

Stephanie: 16:44

Okay.

Elizabeth: 16:57

So if you don't provide those kind of details, then what is going to be assumed as the mainstream, whereas if you want to impart some diversity within your work, you need to really state what those diverse aspects are. So I thought that was an interesting sort of tangent on writing more diverse cultures and how to do that responsibly. But also the value of providing that so that there is more diversity within the representation in the literature and that sort of striking that balance between, am I really the right person to write this story? And also, we need more diverse stories represented. The other part that really struck me was this power piece. And she said it, you know, it's encompassed in who has it, who wants it, and how do you get it? Is power central to the story? Is it a background to the narrative? How will it come into play in the plot or in the main character's development? A lot of times it's represented in the action or inaction that people take, you know, maybe they don't take a certain action because of the understood power dynamics. Right? And so that's important to paint, you know, why this mother isn't standing up to the abusive husband because there's, there's actually some kind of power thing at play. And that needs to, you need to make sure you build that into, into the world so that your reader understands it. Also, you know, power plays into the conflict, the mood, you know the landscape when I particularly think of power and mood, I think back to hunger games, right? And how centralized the power was, how strong it was, and how She had to do such a strong job. I believe that was Suzanne Collins, right?

Stephanie: 18:39

Yes

Elizabeth: 18:40

and how she had to paint that into the, like, put that into the, the world building so that we, as the reader understood why there wasn't just this massive uprising, right? And we had to understand this aspect of the world in order to appreciate and comprehend. the stakes that the main character, you know, Katniss was up against. It, even for a genre that's not so often talked about world building, which is memoir.

Stephanie: 19:07

hmm.

Elizabeth: 19:08

I was particularly interested because with memoir, gosh, my world is the whole fricking world. Oh, how do I know what to choose? To share, to disclose. She talked a lot about how, especially in regards to power or history and time, what their story in a post COVID world? Are they, you know, writing it as if COVID never happened? As if the pandemic never happened? I mean, because there's big shifts and changes in how we operate. in society and, and it's up to the author to decide how are, how they're going to tackle that world. Absolutely.

Stephanie: 19:48

Yeah, no, it's very interesting. There, there's definitely a lot as can tell listener in everything that Elizabeth and I took away from these different sessions respect to world building, that it's not simply a few short notes that you take and put down you know, certainly there are genres where it's much more in depth than others, but it's also what I really took away from this was the importance of really taking time to think very specifically about the details of the world, even if it's similar to my every day or places that I visited myself that You know, the power, I think, is really in the details that you're able to include overwhelm the reader, but to give them clues into the places and spaces where your characters are operating, and You know, and putting them in there because they have relevance, because they have importance, and because they are little clues about who your character is, or, you know, why they've made a particular choice that they've made, and, you know, all of us as humans, you know, we make choices every day as to, you know, what clothes we're buying, what food we're buying, what, you know, whatever it is, you know, where, where we go in our daily life, you know, where we're working, where we're, you know, traveling. And so all of those pieces, you know, are encompassed in aspect of world building. And, you know, I think as we talked in our previous episode, you know, with Shelley Reed a little bit, and she's very much a place based writer and, you know, place is such an important component of thinking about. The world because even if you're writing sci fi fantasy, a lot of sci fi and fantasy authors are using places that we're familiar with, know Paolo talked about, you know, using Phoenix and Las Vegas and, you know, juxtaposing them with very contrasting things happening in those places. But for many of us, you know, those might be familiar places to you. And so, you know, again, going back to that whole thing of how are you representing those places, in, in your writing? And so I think that. It's, again, you know, so much can be learned listening to writers across genres. I think that, you know, it was definitely, you know, eye opening for me, because I've been very much focused in my genre and thinking about that. But, yeah. It really brought to light for me about how much I can learn from looking at what other authors are doing, even if it's different from what I'm doing, but that there's still little pieces that I can take away and use in my own writing.

Elizabeth: 22:53

And I would love to wrap up this episode by reading just the first little bit of the first chapter from Olivia Chadha's first book or first book in her series Rise of the Red Hand. Chapter one, Ashiva, South Asian province, central district, 155 NE, 2300 hours. I know three things. One, I'm a prisoner of Solace corporation. Two, I'll be sent to containment without trial. Three, according to my info run, the rate of survival in containment is 0.0001%. The green number flashes in the corner of my vision. My wrists are bound with metal cuffs ignoring the ache. I lift my hands and force prayer to my forehead. And hit the eye scan to turn off my monitor some data even I don't want to know so even in those first, you know, two paragraphs of this novel we are already Aware that there is some massive corporation that's controlling so we already have a piece of some power dynamic We are already immersed in the conflict with this rate of survival being so low You There's a futuristic aspect to this with, you know being able to see green numbers in the corner of the vision and turning off a screen, you know, that's not typical to our normal, you know, periphery and field of vision. And again, mention of the South Asian province, we can tell that this, this is a futuristic aspect of this area. So I just wanted to share that as a little bit of a way to show you, listener, so much. What I saw as, as Olivia shared various clips and excerpts from the beginning chapters of other sci fi and fantasy books about how you don't have to explain those things right out of the gate. You don't need to info dump on your reader. You don't need to give the background on how this Salas province or corporation or whatever came into power already. That can come later. But just give enough of a layer of similarity so that the reader can relate and then throw in those breadcrumbs to let us know that things are different. Maybe we're in a future time or a past time or an alternate time, parallel time and, and let the reader go from there. That's going to spark that curiosity and that's what's going to keep them engaged without getting them distracted from, you know, what you're, you're really trying to convey in your character by giving a whole bunch of backstory. So thank you for listening to this part two of our mountain words festival wrap up Please and thank you for subscribing to the channel for liking this episode and giving us a five star review Wherever you listen to our podcast it means so much to us To get that sort of feedback and to have that engagement with you We value being in this community with other writers and we hope you will share this episode with another writer that you feel could would really love to hear this information as well until next time listener

26:18

Thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of the Inspired Writer Collective podcast. We hope you found inspiration, insights, and connection to yourself as a writer. If you enjoyed this episode, please share, subscribe, and leave us a five star review. Remember, the power of storytelling lies within each of us, and by supporting one another, we can make a difference. We invite you to schedule a coffee chat with us on our website, www. inspiredwritercollective. com. Just like our style here on the podcast, our coffee chats are casual and a way to connect about your writing and discover if book coaching or joining our upcoming writing cohorts for memoir and contemporary romance writing are for you. You can also become a part of our community by connecting with us on social media. You can find us on Instagram and YouTube at Inspired Writer Collective, on TikTok at Inspired Writer LLC. Let's continue this writing journey together. You can find links in the show notes. Until next time, fellow writers, may your pens be mighty and your stories captivating. Happy writing!