I have my own opinion on this, which is also reflected in part in readers’ reactions: as much as I enjoy an interestingly “constructed” world, for me it always develops primarily out of the interplay between the characters, the story, and the larger themes of my books. The basic idea of the Space World was a world like our own, with only one fundamental difference: the existence of the Space (probably—though no one can really prove it 😉 ).
That raises the following question: if characters (meaning people and their decisions) shape the world, do they also determine its laws? Even the laws of the universe? Not in the sense of creating them, but in the sense of naming, explaining, and even proving them! Aren’t the “discovered” laws of the cosmos always limited to the spectrum of human understanding—and doesn’t that mean that it is always the character, or the characters, who ultimately define world building?
Unless, of course, an author first has the idea for a world and only then creates the characters who inhabit it—but my brain is “character-centric,” probably an old psychologist’s affliction. 😉
On top of that, I’ve always written as if the story already existed and I only had to write it down or remember it. That feeling is sometimes so strong that it almost feels like cheating, because I never have the sense that I am inventing the story or building the world. Rather, I discover it while writing, together with the characters, for my readers—and then try to capture it. And I am a hard-core plotter, don’t get me wrong here, I don’t discovery write as such.
And then it can happen that it’s exactly like in the “real world”: you discover a connection, take it as an explanation, test it, and come to the conclusion that you’ve proven your assumption… and three pages later you stumble across something that overturns it all—like Newton describing gravity, and then Einstein coming along and turning it into spacetime curvature—or like physicists being so sure that light was either a particle or a wave, and then it turned out to be both. At the same time. Depending on how you look at it.
Sometimes I hear that it must be easier to write in a world that’s almost identical to ours. But I only hear that from people who haven’t read the books. I would say the challenges of world building are simply different than in worlds that are more strongly or completely shaped by fantasy.
Because when the similarities are so great, the differences become all the more significant, the consequences weightier, and the storytelling demands greater precision. In a fantasy world, the fact that someone falls apart into their component parts or floats in midair might need to be explained—but no one demands a scientifically valid or even plausible explanation for it. In my world, they do. And because I write about a world with just one small difference, those small differences can often only be explained to a limited degree by our science and technology.
Besides, I’m not a scientist, and my technical understanding of computers, for example, consists of knowing that the problem is the one sitting in front of the screen. But science fascinates me, and I treat it every time as a personal challenge to find a scientifically plausible—or at least not easily refutable—explanation for the inexplicable.
Is that world building? I’m not sure.
Still, I did notice something interesting when I was thinking about one of Brandon Sanderson’s “laws of world building/magic,” which goes roughly like this: magic (or superpowers or something similar) has to come with a price; otherwise its effect is completely predictable, without consequence, and therefore boring and meaningless from a human perspective.
I’ve always found that understandable, even though I often experience completely “wild magic” as a kind of deus ex machina, which bothers me. But then, while writing a scene, I realized that I don’t actually want to apply this law consistently in my world. Not because I think Sanderson is wrong, but because I want to achieve something I can’t reach by strictly following that principle: a realistic world.
Because it’s clear that, even if consequences exist, they are not identical for every person in every circumstance—not even when it comes to magic. One person could grow up in an environment where such a talent or ability brings prestige and admiration, while another with the exact same gift might be promised the stake before they’re even grown. Life isn’t fair, and the price you pay for your magic isn’t a hard currency: sometimes it’s a smile, and sometimes it’s your life.
And then there are characters like Zen, who have found something that exists beyond all magic and any world building:
excerpt from Dire Contact:
"I need to know how the world I live in works. What are its rules, laws, and boundaries? What is true and what is imaginary? I need to know that, and until just now I thought I did. I need that. I'm afraid that if I don't know what's real, then ...
"How do you manage to believe that without going crazy?"
Zen was silent for a long time and Rena thought he wouldn't answer. When he finally said something again, he did it slowly, searching, but very sure.
"I think about what I know and what I don't know, that's what I always do when I don't understand something. I know I'm not crazy, and I know I'm not the only one who can hear Thorn and see the things she does. I know you can levitate people if you know how to do it with energy, for example: astronauts or people in one of those vomit comets. I have no idea how that works, but I know it works.
"So, I know that it doesn't matter whether I understand it or not, I mean, it's not true or imaginary because I understand it or not.
"I don't know a lot of things, stuff like ... the sky, when the sun rises it's so light yellow and pink, but when it sets its orange and dark red. Why is that? It's the same sky and the same sun. But it's like that every day, whether I understand it or not. Stupid example, I know, but I can't think of anything better right now, I'm not as super clever as you."
Rena stared up at the sky and imagined the sunrise and sunset. She could see the colors clearly in front of her as she felt the sand and grass under her hands. And she had no idea why the sky had those colors either, but she knew there was an explanation, only it changed absolutely nothing, whether she knew it or not, the sky didn't care.
She took a few deep breaths in and out, surprised at how easy it was all of a sudden, and then she started to laugh. A laugh from deep inside, a laugh she hadn't heard from herself in a very long time. "You're brilliant Zen! That's right, it doesn't matter whether I understand it or not! I’m going to get that tattooed.”
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