World Building – The Perils of Exposition

 World Building – The Perils of Exposition

I think anyone who has tried to write a fantasy or science fiction story set in its own unique universe will understand me when I say – setting up a world is hard.

Creating it isn’t, at least not for me. I love creating new worlds – drawing maps, thinking of cultures and rules and how things work – that’s as much fun as writing itself as far as I am concerned. In fact, in many ways, it’s more fun – it’s use of the imagination without the pressure of having to word it properly. I get to play with my favourite things - history and geography and magic - all at the same time. I love world building.

But transmitting that information to poor, innocent readers – aye, there’s the rub. Because once a world is created, it’s important those reading it can get the hang of it for the story set within it to make sense. But exposition is dull. Many a writer has lost their readers with a big, fat factual overload dump early on. So how to introduce the concepts of a whole new place and culture without losing the reader along the way?

I think this very difficulty can contribute sometimes to the popularity of writing fan fiction. Speaking from experience, fan fiction is an easy in for someone who wants to play in a scifi or fantasy realm because the world and the characters in it already exist. And better, the target audience already knows the world. They know how it works, what the rules are – you don’t have to explain expelliarmus to someone reading Harry Potter fanfic or starburst to a fan of Farscape – if they didn’t already know, they wouldn’t be reading the story. The writer therefore doesn’t need to bother which much of all that – they just assume the reader knows already and get on with the story they want to tell. Fan fiction in that regard is a lot more straightforward.

But what to do when starting fresh? Well, if you’re looking for a definitive answer here – sorry, bad luck, because I don’t think there is one. Probably the most popular way to handle it is the innocent abroad – a character who either doesn’t belong in that world or has led a sheltered, cosseted life and has to have everything laid out for them. They stand in for the reader and as it is explained to them, it’s explained to everyone. Legends are also good, the telling of old stories to reveal background information and important facts – always pay attention to an ancient legend, especially about a long dead sorcerer because the odds are he’s coming your way. Magic-induced flashbacks can also be handy. Everyone has their own techniques, their own approach and all work or not in their own ways. It’s just about how the writer handles them.

So, me. Being an idiot, I decided to create a complicated, very different world in which those techniques just wouldn’t work. You can’t tell a legend to practical people who know the world’s not like that and everyone in my Realm knows how things work and their place in it. So, where did that leave me? It left me with my characters pulling the weight. Fodder’s mental ponderings on the unfairness of normal life. A bunch of characters chewing the fat in the pub while a minstrel tells tales of the other side of things. A prince who just loves to theorise and discuss absolutely everything going on around him. A princess who really doesn’t know a darned thing about anything outside her own circle. Discussions. Thoughts. Things that are part of the people and work as part of the plot.

But the important thing is – I feel exposition needs to be part of the story. It needs to be woven in. I did my best to try and weave in all the things you’ll need to know when I was writing without bringing the story to a narrative jolting halt. Only you can judge if I’ve succeeded.

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