We all have a story to tell that seems to be just aching to get out.  For some of us, this need may be quenched by doing a little private journaling or public blogging, but for others of us, well, it’s gonna take a little more than that.  But putting pen to page (or fingers to keyboard) takes some preparation, particularly if your story requires some “bending” of the standardized, accepted version of what reality is.  If this percolating tale of yours happens to fall into a particular genre of fiction writing, such as sci-fi, fantasy, horror, etc., world building is essential before you ever even think about writing down your introductory paragraph. 

When a person picks up a novel and begins to read, something very important must happen in order for them to continue turning page after page: the reader must suspend their disbelief.  We have all heard this term time and again, referring to the reader’s need to believe in the characters and their situations in order for the story to stop being just words on pages and to really come to life, but when you are delving into places and eras and lifeforms that have never existed, the job of overcoming disbelief becomes ever more important.  So the task of world building must take center stage, and your job is to be as thorough in creating your fictitious setting as possible.

Location, Location, Location 

Where does your story take place?  This question should probably be answered first and foremost, because it will determine the depth of the world building you have ahead of you.  If you are in Jersey in the present day, and there just happens to be creatures of the night to be dealt with, your job here may not be so difficult.  If you are in the outter reaches of Galaxy Zambula, preparing to land on and populate a planet made entirely of chocolate pudding, then that’s a whole other ball of wax.  If your location is entirely fictitious, then you have a lot to work out: appearance, flora, fauna, the cultures…in short, everything.  Actually drawing maps so that you have a reference to work from later can be super helpful.

Laying Down the Law

For once in your life, you get to determine all of the rules of reality, and the people you create have to live by these rules.  Believability is key, though.  Just as in real life, we have limits placed on what can and cannot be, so must it be in your world.  There must be limits, and there must be consequences for wandering outside of those limits.  Not only does this help your world be believable, but it also helps the entertainment value.  What fun would a story be if any character could do anything they wanted?  Where would the conflict be?  And who would buy that?  These don’t even need to be extreme examples of limit setting either.  Example: In reality, I have a cool cell phone.  In that same reality, that cool cell phone’s battery runs down way too fast, and I pay over a hundred dollars a month for the privilege of having this cool phone that sometimes drops calls when I go up or down a hill.  In my story’s reality, the same kinds of things should hold true.  Maybe your character has some awesome lazer gun with batteries that run down all of the time too.  Just imagine the possibilities.  Keep a notebook or a digital recorder with you at all times, because once you start thinking about these kinds of details, you never know when inspiration will hit.

Damn That Gravity!!

There are some facts that cannot simply be ignored.  As gravity will always be an issue for those of us living on Earth, a story set on Earth cannot easily ignore the rules of gravity.  Bending, twisting and tweaking scientific principles is cool, but keep it plausible.  “Because I said so” is not an explanation that will hold with your readers, and again, you’re shooting for believability in a world that is unbelievable, so give your readers a reason to buy it. 

The Devil is in the Details

Be consistent - not some of the time or most of the time, but ALL of the time.  If you know anyone who is really in to sci-fi, you know how good they are at finding mistakes and inconsistencies.  For this reason, I beg of you, keep track of the details that make your world what it is.  If chapter one has a planet with two moons, and chapter five only mentions one moon, your readers will notice and you will lose face.   Keep notes, and refer to them often when you are finally down to the business of writing the story.

Many Ways to Skin a Cat

There is no direct formula for world building.  Individual stories require unique details, and how deep you will need to go will really be dictated by the story itself.  There are so many levels of world building, I thought I would give just a few examples off the top of my head to show you how truly unique each case is.

Star Wars:  Talk about going deep.  Planets, modes of transporation, life forms, languages, intergalactic governmental relations…this one had it all and is an excellent example of thorough world building. 

Harry Potter:  On its face, this one should have been easier to build: it takes place on our very own planet in our very own day and age, yet Rowling created histories going back generations, magical vocabulary, magical laws, magical creatures, herbology, moving staircases, and on and on and on - and all of it has to be able to exist under the very noses of us muggles with plausible explanation.

20th Century Ghosts (Joe Hill): One of the short stories from this anthology, whose name I forget, involves an ordinary kid making friends with a kid who is made of rubber.  He is an inflatable kid, and because of such, he had to write with crayons (because a poke from a pen or pencil could end his very life), had to write notes instead of speak (because his mouth was just painted on), and feared his best friend’s family dog (because the poor beast couldn’t tell the difference between the friend and a chew toy).  Though the story is not necessarily complex, Hill put a lot of effort into raising it’s plausibility by dreaming up things a boy and his rubber friend would do and say to each other that would make perfect sense given the circumstances.

Metamorphosis (Kafka): This is an example of much less intensive world building, but truly effective writing.  The time, setting and location are all perfectly standard, yet we have a man who has turned into a giant bug.  Kafka brings his readers into this unreality by slowly taking the bug from having human behaviors to losing all sense of his humanity entirely.  By slowly introducing the vivid insect-like behaviors over a period of time within the story, the reader can completely buy into the concept, as unreal as it is and always will be.

My Final Words of Advice

Details, plausibility, suspension of disbelief…aurgh!!  Alright, you know the big points now.  They are in your head and I’ve said what I needed to say.  Now, the number one most important thing to do when world building?

HAVE FUN!

If you aren’t having any fun, then your readers aren’t having any fun, and what fun is that?

Until next time -

GhOsTwRiTeR KiM

Vince’s Take 

If Batman: The Long Halloween and The Killing Joke had a baby it would be Dark Knight.  Having read both graphic novels I can say it definitely takes after its father; assuming that the father is The Long Halloween.  To my understanding The Killing Joke was supposed to be a major inspiration for the film.  That may be true, but it does show in the plot.

Hands down my favorite part of this movie is the heavy involvement of Harvey Dent.  Not only is Dent a joy to watch, but his involvement in The Long Halloween is heavily drawn upon for the events of the movie while not ruining the events of the thirteen issue comic book.  Good job, writers.  That’s impressive.  Upon hearing of Aaron Eckhart’s involvement I was immediately excited, and having him as a major character in the movie couldn’t have been more satisfying.  Eckhart is every bit as strong of a hero (at least partly *wink wink*) as Bale and Oldman, and is a welcome addition to the team.

Good ‘ol Batsie doesn’t disappoint.  Christian Bale brings the same intensity that we saw in Batman Begins.  I don’t have much to say about his performance because I’ve pretty much accepted that Christian Bale really is Batman.  The emotional pulls in this movie are too great to confirmedly label one character as the heart in the movie, but, in my opinion, it’s Lt. Gordon.  Tragedy and heroism exists win Gordon as a special variety distinct from Gotham’s White Knight and Dark Knight.

As for the Joker, I thought there was only a few moments where the characterization seemed watered down, but that can easily be explained away.  Ledger is chilling and hilarious as the Clown Prince of Crime.  I had my worries that the Joker was going to be too dark to be in keeping with what the Joker was supposed to be: a madman with a demented sense of humor that the audience will judge themselves a little for laughing with.  I must say, I worried for nothing.  They delivered and then some.  Particularly in the laugh, I think there’s even a slight reminiscence of Nicholson’s Joker while allowing Nolan and Ledger to make it their own.

I felt the movie had a little too much action in it.  I found myself asking, “How much can the Joker actually plan in advance?”  I assume his recourses are the same as that of the various crime bosses in town, but still his terrorist acts happen with such frequency I question the feasibility of the events within the time period given versus the Joker’s ability to create those plans and execute them as intended.  And there’s my only major complaint.  I loved this movie, guys.  Do not miss it for your own sake.

Cap’n Logan’s Take

Comic book films are far too often worrying about their audience’s attention spans. They need to knock this off. The difference between Dark Knight and most “seroius” comic book movies is about a half hour. That’s the time that makes the difference between being just an action thriller and a real mind-bender. Dark Knight takes its time– it’s two and a half hours long– and gets to be both.

I can’t think of another comic book movie that has so much story. I haven’t seen a lot of recent movies period whose plot gets nearly this complex. I don’ know anything about the novelization, but it could very easily be written between three and four hundred pages. Despite that many of these are characters we know from the first film and that there are certain things that simply must be done when dealing with the Joker and Two-Face, it’s not predictable. Spider-Man had two and a half villains (yes, I’m counting New Goblin as the half villain) and it couldn’t juggle all of its characters. Joker and Harvey Dent/Two Face are well developed, each have full and logically interconnecting stories, and Bruce Wayne/Batman, Alfred, Lucius Fox, Gordon, and Rachel are still three dimensional characters who grow, change, and matter. As Vince hinted at, this is a film not just about the Joker, as Tim Burton’s film was, and isn’t just about Batman, as Begins very appropriately was– it’s as much about Gordon as it is about anything. We care about him, we applaud for him, and we cry for him. Boy, do we cry for him.

The Dark Knight is an apt title– Nolan couldn’t make a darker film. There are points where the film is almost so depressing it’s no longer entertaining… but that’s only because we have so much invested in these characters, and that’s amazing in one film, since many of those are people we didn’t get to know last time. We don’t want Harvey to become Two-Face. We don’t want Batman to have to make the tough decisions that almost break him.

And the best part– Joker orchestrates all of it. If it weren’t for the incredible complexity of turning Harvey Dent from the most decent man in Gotham, the man who has single-handedly changed things as much as Batman, I’d say Joker didn’t get enough screen time, because he’s so interesting. He’s not interested in money or fame– he just wants to make a point: you can bring the most decent person in the world down in the most unspeakably evil way, and you can do it for very little coin. This is a Joker with actual principles. They’re twisted, but they’re principles, and though he’s a killer and a lier, he never goes against those principles. And the best thing about him is that we never know exactly how he got to be how he is because he keeps telling conflicting back stories about himself. He’s as complex as Batman, very much his opposite, and though he’s a mystery, he’s multi-layered and we can tell that if we knew what really happened to him, we’d probably feel a little sorry for him.

Problems? I’m the only person on the Internet who’s probably saying this, but I liked Katie Holmes and I missed her. Rachel looked a lot older and I kept having to remind myself it was the same character. Not a problem with the writing, but this was not the continuity to change an actress with such a pivotal role. I would have liked more original scoring– I expected themes from Begins to come up, but I had hoped at least Joker woud get his own melody. I didn’t like that the one trade-off for Batman’s new costume was that it would be more vulnerable to gun fire and knife wounds. It seemed like a plot contrivance so Joker would be more of a match for him. And I really would have liked Wayne and Dent to have already been friends before the film began, because, while the film did develop that aspect enough for us to buy it when Dent is destroyed and then corrupted, it could have been that much more bittersweet for Batman.

And the saddest thing of all is after layers upon layers of real substance, as the movie proves, even more than Iron Man, the real validity a comic book film can have (a point made by Roger Ebert), after Batman and the Joker build that real comic book rivalry, and after Joker gets the incredible line, “You and I are destined to do this forever…” we’ll never get to see him again.