I just got back from the 2018 edition of the Pike’s Peak Writers Conference, (#PPWC2018) and had a great time. As usual. Lots of good sessions on many different aspects of writing, and had a chance to pitch my first sci-fi novel to an editor. He asked for the first 50 pages, which, by the time I write this, have already been sent. I met lots of good writer friends, and handed out business cards. Business cards are always good, whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned veteran.
But what I want to consider in this blog post is one session in particular. It was titled “Fantasy and Sci Fi World Building: Writing Like an Anthropologist.” It was given by Darby Karchut, who’s written several sci-fi novels. The premise of the talk was a factor in world building that I had given some thought to as I wrote my trilogy, but hadn’t gone into in great detail. When building a new world for your characters, you have to supply them with all the intricate facets of life that we have here on Earth. It’s not enough to create a planet and populate it with aliens. They have a life. They have a history. They had to get on that planet somehow, and there may be a substantial number of details you haven’t thought of that play a role in your character’s daily life. (Assuming they have days and nights on their planet.)
Ms. Karchut listed eight factors that should be taken into account when worldbuilding. 1. What is the government like? Representative? Repressive? Dictatorial? 2. What is the economy like? What are the main driving forces in the economy? Science? Politics? Food? Beer? 3. Is there a religion? If so, how religious are your characters? 4. What is life like on your planet, and how do your characters spend their daily life? What dominates their daily life? 5. What are the arts like? Music? Movies? 6. What are the dominate social groups? To which group does your main character belong? Do you have rich and poor people? Or is everybody at the same social level? 7. History. Delve into the history of your planet. That one factor can shape the daily life of your characters in many different ways, especially ways you may not have thought about. 8. Language. What language do your characters speak? How did that language originate and how did it come down to them? If a visitor comes to your planet, how does that outsider know how to speak their language?
I appreciated this session because it brought up so many things I hadn’t thought about, or only briefly considered, about my characters and their home planet. If you write sci-fi, I strongly recommend you take these things into consideration. A reader will be more likely to keep reading if he/she understands that you’ve delved deeply into your imagination and taken the time to build a complete world. That’s what makes science fiction good: imagination. More so that most any other genre of writing. A well-thought out world may help fill plot holes, too, because if a difficult situation arises, you will have already developed a fully-functional economy that will give you a clue as to how your characters will act and how the difficulty will play out.