Sign up to save your podcasts
Or
Share Episode 60 - Worldbuilding Tricks and Traps
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Or
Episode 60 - Worldbuilding Tricks and Traps
We Make Books is a podcast for writers and publishers, by writers and publishers and we want to hear from our listeners! Hit us up on our social media, linked below, and send us your questions, comments, and concerns for us to address in future episodes.
We hope you enjoy We Make Books!
Twitter: @WMBCast | @KindofKaelyn | @BittyBittyZap
Instagram: @WMBCast
Patreon.com/WMBCast
Links for this episode:
Worldbuilding for Masochists Podcast
Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master's Guide
Wonderbook by Jeff Vandermeer
Episode Transcript (by TK @_torkz)
[Upbeat Ukulele Intro Music]This is We Make Books, a podcast about writing publishing and everything in between. Rekka is a published Science Fiction and Fantasy author, and Kaelyn is a professional genre fiction editor. Together, they'll tackle the things you never knew you never knew about getting a book from concept to finished product, with explanations, examples, and a lot of laughter. Get your moleskin notebook ready. It's time for We Make Books.
Rekka: She was tuuckered out yesterday. I was tuckered out yesterday. [laughing] The trainer had us running around a field and it was the first time I had done any real, like, quick movements, certainly out in the sun on an 80 degree day, when I had forgotten water for both me and Evie, and the trainer only said “oh I have some in the car,” she only gave it to Evie, she didn’t give me any. But she’s like “jump around! Be active! Be real animated!” And I’m like ohh my goodness, do you not realize, that this is me animated.
[both laughing]
Rekka: So I was like, how about I lay down and pretend to be a dead squirrel, dogs love dead squirrels. [laughing]
Kaelyn: [laughing] Aww.
R: So we were all tired yesterday. So today, we are talking about worldbuilding.
K: We are.
R: We are. We are talking about mostly not overdoing your worldbuilding.
K: And because it’s me, we’re certainly going to be talking about some of the elements of worldbuilding as well. Worldbuilding is the process of creating, constructing, and coming up with the rules for an imaginary world, or sometimes an entire fictional universe. There’s a lot of elements that go into this - interesting fact that I found while doing some research for this: the first time “worldbuilding” was used was actually in 1820.
R: The term, or..?
K: The term “worldbuilding” was first used in 1820 in the Edinburgh Review.
R: Okay.
K: Fiction has existed in one form or another all through the course of humanity, obviously, you know, as we got into more recent centuries, literature became a little more organized? I guess? For lack of a better term.
R: So that’s the first time it appeared in print as far as we know, in English, and presumably someone would have said it aloud and said “hey that sounds pretty good.”
K: Yeah, you know what, I have to - I’ll try to dig up the article because I am curious but, the Edinburgh Review was, of course, just reviewing published stories and literature and reviews of different things. So the term really gained a lot of traction in the early 1900s when we saw a lot of science fiction and fantasy writing. A really good example, actually of thorough worldbuilding based off of existing history, would probably be Huxley’s Brave New World, and I think that was 1932, I believe.
K: Regardless of where your story is set, what time it’s set, how much you’re using and building off existing human history, or if this takes place in a galaxy far, far away, there’s certain elements you have to have in worldbuilding. One of the good places to start is geography. If it’s Earth: you’re done. No problem. [laughing] You have established that the world is Earth.
R: But do you? Do you even say [laughing] that you are writing a story on Earth, if you are on Earth?
K: You name a place that the reader would presumably have context for. If, you know, the story is set in Delhi, India then yes we’re on Earth. Tokyo, places we’ve heard of.
R: So i
View all episodes
By WMBCast.com
5
99 ratings
We Make Books is a podcast for writers and publishers, by writers and publishers and we want to hear from our listeners! Hit us up on our social media, linked below, and send us your questions, comments, and concerns for us to address in future episodes.
We hope you enjoy We Make Books!
Twitter: @WMBCast | @KindofKaelyn | @BittyBittyZap
Instagram: @WMBCast
Patreon.com/WMBCast
Links for this episode:
Worldbuilding for Masochists Podcast
Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master's Guide
Wonderbook by Jeff Vandermeer
Episode Transcript (by TK @_torkz)
[Upbeat Ukulele Intro Music]This is We Make Books, a podcast about writing publishing and everything in between. Rekka is a published Science Fiction and Fantasy author, and Kaelyn is a professional genre fiction editor. Together, they'll tackle the things you never knew you never knew about getting a book from concept to finished product, with explanations, examples, and a lot of laughter. Get your moleskin notebook ready. It's time for We Make Books.
Rekka: She was tuuckered out yesterday. I was tuckered out yesterday. [laughing] The trainer had us running around a field and it was the first time I had done any real, like, quick movements, certainly out in the sun on an 80 degree day, when I had forgotten water for both me and Evie, and the trainer only said “oh I have some in the car,” she only gave it to Evie, she didn’t give me any. But she’s like “jump around! Be active! Be real animated!” And I’m like ohh my goodness, do you not realize, that this is me animated.
[both laughing]
Rekka: So I was like, how about I lay down and pretend to be a dead squirrel, dogs love dead squirrels. [laughing]
Kaelyn: [laughing] Aww.
R: So we were all tired yesterday. So today, we are talking about worldbuilding.
K: We are.
R: We are. We are talking about mostly not overdoing your worldbuilding.
K: And because it’s me, we’re certainly going to be talking about some of the elements of worldbuilding as well. Worldbuilding is the process of creating, constructing, and coming up with the rules for an imaginary world, or sometimes an entire fictional universe. There’s a lot of elements that go into this - interesting fact that I found while doing some research for this: the first time “worldbuilding” was used was actually in 1820.
R: The term, or..?
K: The term “worldbuilding” was first used in 1820 in the Edinburgh Review.
R: Okay.
K: Fiction has existed in one form or another all through the course of humanity, obviously, you know, as we got into more recent centuries, literature became a little more organized? I guess? For lack of a better term.
R: So that’s the first time it appeared in print as far as we know, in English, and presumably someone would have said it aloud and said “hey that sounds pretty good.”
K: Yeah, you know what, I have to - I’ll try to dig up the article because I am curious but, the Edinburgh Review was, of course, just reviewing published stories and literature and reviews of different things. So the term really gained a lot of traction in the early 1900s when we saw a lot of science fiction and fantasy writing. A really good example, actually of thorough worldbuilding based off of existing history, would probably be Huxley’s Brave New World, and I think that was 1932, I believe.
K: Regardless of where your story is set, what time it’s set, how much you’re using and building off existing human history, or if this takes place in a galaxy far, far away, there’s certain elements you have to have in worldbuilding. One of the good places to start is geography. If it’s Earth: you’re done. No problem. [laughing] You have established that the world is Earth.
R: But do you? Do you even say [laughing] that you are writing a story on Earth, if you are on Earth?
K: You name a place that the reader would presumably have context for. If, you know, the story is set in Delhi, India then yes we’re on Earth. Tokyo, places we’ve heard of.
R: So i