Literary World Building Rules

Jayne Castle gives three rules for building literary worlds here. I agree with her that world building is as much a part of any genre as it is for science fiction,/fantasy stories. I learned that lesson when I created my Webster County stories. For the record, I disagree with Rule #3.

Malinda Lo has an older blog post, Building a Real World, which has interesting things to say, including:

World-building is often misrepresented as drawing a bunch of maps and answering esoteric questions about a fictional fantasy village’s sheep-herding systems. But this is not what world-building is, either in fantasy or in realistic fiction.

World-building is about establishing a believable cultural structure for the story you’re telling. The world informs the way your characters lives their lives, sometimes bluntly, sometimes subconsciously. The world is the context for your characters’ actions.

By the way, Malinda Lo won the National Book Award. I added her blog to my blogroll so you can check her out.

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