The Importance of Worldbuilding
Originally posted at Uncreated Conscience.
I’ve been meaning to write this post for a long time, but I haven’t been able to get my head around it. (Not to mention I have been so swamped with work that I don’t have time to sleep, let alone blog.) I acknowledge that I am longwinded and prosaic on a good day and this post promised to be a monster. I apologise for the impending tl;dr, but I want to discuss something that is near and dear to my heart as a reader, writer, and now fledgling editor.
Middle Earth
If you can’t tell by the map of Middle Earth, I want to talk about worldbuilding because I have a theory about the “best” books having the best “worlds” built into them. Of course, I am coming at this with a decided fantasy bias, but bear with me here. I think a lot of readers want to get lost in a “world” as much as the story or a character’s inner thoughts and that setting as its own force in a work is sometimes overlooked or downplayed.
One of the agents at Ye Olde Literary Agency (I suppose, by now I can “out” El Jefe as Al Zuckerman and the agency as Writers House) put it best on his Publishers Marketplace page:
I love stories that introduce me to new worlds - or even better, recreate the ones I may already know.
- Dan Lazar
I think “recreate the ones I may already know” is the best way of putting it I’ve read in a long time. Worldbuilding isn’t just for science fiction and fantasy novels, but for all the other genres in between.
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