Fundamentals of Worldbuilding | Philosophy, Gardeners Vs Architects, & Worldbuilder's Disease

[Music] thank you somewhere in the great beyond separated from you by either just in space time or something else there's a world out there and though you've likely never walked its many trails or looked upon its open Skies this world to you is as real as any other you know what it's like to grab the only seat that doesn't wobble at your favorite noodle joint right before the evening rush to feel the wet of the rain getting to soak through your jackets and chill your skin overhead the chatter of advertisements are as ceaseless as ever

and the spotlights are competing with the beaming neon but in this moment at least you can almost tune them out you know the history of this place you can name its ancient Kings and recite their many Deeds both great and terrible to others a mass of broken stone is but a ruin a momentary curiosity to break up the monotony of the trail but to you it is a symbol you know the story of the men that built it how long ago it kept watch over a kingdom that was very different from the one you walked

today a forgotten time of ancient powers and forbidden lore you are exhilarated in this place it presents to you boundless opportunities for adventure wonder and Terror there is a galaxy of stories waiting for you a chance to shed your old career and become a bounty hunter working a mark along the outer rim or a freedom fighter and some Backwater jungle there are heroes in this place Legends whose courage and sacrifices will Echo an eternity and you can be one of them you have friends here of every kind and every character and you have shared with

them those silent moments in the last seconds before a drop you know how to motivate them when to listen when to give them space and when to push them further than any of you ever thought possible and when you return when you drink to your success or failure it is always together you will recount your favorite moments boast of courageous deeds and toast to both the living and those who remain only in their memories glorious Wars and senseless Carnage have bathed this place in Blood and Bone and when the dust settles it is difficult to

know if the cause of the Victor was any more righteous than that of the defeated when you study the great campaigns of this place you can't help but Marvel at the tactics the strategy The Bravery of men and women who laid down their lives against foes that reality itself rejected as obscene and you wonder at what might have been if a single outcome had been just a little different this place has dangerous secrets and you seek them out your mind walks the darkened trails that others fear and you read the words that most deny you

see the patterns and coincidence not a swirling mass of chaos but one great game whose Fallen King might yet prevail you'll hear the theories and the rumors of returning sons and ancient adversaries and you accept that the study of the Abyss is let the abyss out of you and that whatever happens the Galaxy is a big place and you will not be missed but most of all you have a sense of longing a desire to escape whatever life you live today and find another in this place you want to discover what qualities am I recognizing

you which role you're destined to fulfill you want this world to test you to push you to your limits and reveal who you truly are yet you'd be satisfied with whatever life you might find whether you're selected to sit in the big chair or merely hang out at the bar so long as you're here in this place this world you'd be content to just exist you'll feel all these things and so much more and the longer you think about it the deeper you invest yourself in this place the more you realize that it kind of

sucks and you could probably come up with something way better or maybe you phrased it differently than that but one way or another you've thought about creating a world of your own something just as immersive and detailed as the ones that have fascinated you but how exactly does one go about World building what questions factors and ideas need to be considered and what does the World building process even look like once it's in Motion in this new series that we're calling the way of World building The templin Institute is going to discuss these questions offer

our opinions and begin to build our own worlds that might serve as a case study in each episode we'll approach some aspect of World building big or small from developing the history culture society and government of a vast and ancient empire to figuring out what drinks might be served in some Backwater Tavern someplace World building is huge it covers an enormous array of topics and ideas and as far as this series is concerned nothing is beyond our scope and to accompany each episode to serve as that case study we'll be publishing to a secondary Channel

some companion videos talking all about our world and the lore we've created for it right now though we're still getting started and we don't even know what kind of world it is we're building so before we can start crafting whatever it is we're crafting in this first episode of the way of World building I think it's important that I explain my general philosophy when it comes to this aspect of creative writing I'm going to be approaching it from a certain perspective and that's going to shape what the series looks like after that we'll also briefly

review the role of World building when compared to setting and narrative and discuss some of the most popular methods writers use finally I want to explore all the reasons why someone might choose to World build and how the warnings of world Builders disease that inevitably arise when this topic is discussed might not always be appropriate to do any of that though it needs to be emphasized again right out of the gate that this series won't always be impartial or neutral I have some strong opinions and ideas on how World building should and should not be

done but I don't want that to interfere with something else I believe World building is a deeply creative exercise and I think the process is going to look different for everyone because of that I don't think there's a wrong way to approach it writing is hard and creative writing can be a long demoralizing struggle so if you found some method of pushing through that if you're building your world using method X when everyone else is using method y who cares whatever makes sense for you is the right way of doing it the way of World

building therefore is not intended to be some definitive guide there is no shortage of people eager to tell you that what you're doing is wrong or that you've made some critical mistake myself among them but I don't believe it's possible for anyone to make some objective all-encompassing standard operating procedure that everyone can find success with so this is not a series on how to World build this is a series on how I World build build worlds whatever sounds better I can provide my thoughts give advice and show you my own process and I can be

adamant in this but it would be insane to believe that the things I consider most important and the process I use is going to be the best approach every time in every single project involving World building instead my hope is that by following along and seeing how I get started approach certain challenges and integrate various elements you can get a sense of my method and use it to inform your own if we're closely aligned on how we approach World building you might be able to directly reference this series in your own work if we're completely

unaligned and you disagree with me on everything then I think this series might be even more useful being presented with what to you might appear as the wrong way of doing things can help further an understanding of why your own method is the right one for you in either case when you're watching this series incorporate what you find useful into your own method and ditch the rest and don't rely on this series and I say put it alongside any other guides or sources of inspiration you found and come up with your own way of World

building now with all that said this series is also kind of a reaction to something I hear again and again whenever World building is discussed something that I really disagree with because it doesn't reflect at all my own experiences but before we can get into all that we need to First Take a bit of a step back and look at the basic components of World building and story better yet before we do that let's ask ourselves what is a story oh my God in heaven just as everyone approaches this whole concept a bit differently it

also seems like everyone defines it a bit differently but my personal interpretation vaguely resembles something like this if we think of Storytelling as a pyramid World building makes up the base this is the foundation of the universe whether that's a single region the continent a whole planet a star system an entire galaxy or however far that's reality extends in addition to this geography whatever form that may take this Foundation also encompasses the history of the world its cultures religions Nations and factions and every other aspect all the way down to how fuzzy the fur is

on some alien caterpillar the World building foundation of the pyramid provides the broader context and framework for our next two levels right above World building there's the setting and this is the specific part or parts of your world that the story takes place within the broadest definition of a setting is an environment where something is located the place at which something happens author Roberts McKee describes the setting as needing a distinct period location conflict and duration and the only reason I know that is because tail Foundry has covered this subject extensively if you'd like a

deeper dive into the relationship between stories setting and World building I'd recommend you check them out I mean they use different metaphors over there but it's all the same principles but back to my pyramid right at the top we have our narrative whatever plot or story that weaves through the setting which is itself a part of the greater world if our world's building consists of an entire galaxy far far away our setting might be the planet's Hoth under attack by the Galactic Empire and that our narrative would be Luke Skywalker trying to cover the evacuation

of the Rebel Alliance but we also can't forget that no metaphor is ever really perfect the lines between these levels are not always obvious or at least not always obvious to me but I like the pyramid analogy because I think it illustrates how little of the world or even its setting will be present in the actual narrative how much of the Galaxy did we actually see over the course of The Empire Strikes Back maybe not as much as you think and I also like the pyramid metaphor because I think it makes for an easy way

to show how different people go about World building although to do this we need to flip it upside down like I said no metaphor is ever perfect some people like to take a bird's eye view to World building they look at the big picture When developing their world and only once it's fully realized they actually set about telling a story within it there's a race of people called The Elves and this is their mythology and their history and their language and their culture these are the dwarves and men and Hobbits and here are the same

exhaustive details for all of them and only now that I have figured this entire world out can I finally tell my story about one of those Hobbits throwing a ring into a volcano on the opposite side of things we have those that start from ground level so to speak they write their story and figure out setting and World building as it comes up there's a group of children from a noble family who just found a litter of direwolves alone in the snow okay now we gotta figure out which Noble family they're from the Starks and

what kingdom do they rule Winterfell and the North and that kingdom is actually one of 17 Kingdom subservient to the Royal House of Baratheon and King's Landing who usurp the targaryens and on and on it goes as the story progresses George R.R Martin describes authors who follow these two methods as Architects and gardeners Architects build the world first while gardeners plant seeds and help them grow over the course of the narrative but I think these are really just two examples on either end of a spectrum and probably not representative of how most people actually go

about Road building is anyone really 100 Gardener or 100 architect between these two approaches we have every other variation starting from the middle and working outwards in both directions or maybe a swinging between one approach and the other depending on how you feel and what makes sense to you and your approach might change day to day again as far as I'm concerned if you know what you're trying to achieve there's no wrong answers in how you get there and I've wanted to emphasize that last Point pretty consistently because I think the discussions surrounding World building

or at least the aspect of that discussion Happening Here on YouTube has maybe lost its perspective a bit like I said World building at its core is a creative exercise and that process is going to look different for everyone in my minor or major ways so when advice is increasingly presented in the form of here's five World building mistakes to avoid I think that's coming from a fundamentally flawed understanding of what World building actually is here's an example in our own world rivers flow downhill hopefully that didn't shock anybody they typically start in mountains and

flow into lakes or oceans for a river to behave contrary to this is one of the most off-cited examples of a so-called mistake but good World building isn't just making sure your Rivers always start in the mountains and empty into oceans good World building is understanding how Rivers work in our world and then letting that inform how they function in your own even if you decide to throw out real world's logic entirely a river that conforms perfectly to our understanding of the natural world and a river of magic that flows up mountains intermingling with the

light of distant Stars can both be effective examples of World building provided they were crafted with intention and are consistent within the world but when these hard declarations are made your River starts in a valley this is a mistake it can have the effect of stifling the creative process before it even begins now I'm sure most people understand this distinction but it's helpful to explicitly state it every now and then in a creative process where there's no firm rules it's easier to fall into the Trap of conflating your own way with the right way and

imposing it on everyone else some of my favorite examples of World building the universes I think that are truly exceptional are the ones that broaden my understanding of what's even possible they're also the ones where if I had been presented with the initial outline having no idea what the finished world would look like I probably would have been very critical and pointed out a bunch of mistakes thank God they didn't listen to me but what I see repeated most often on YouTube when different approaches to World building are discussed is also what I kind of

disagree with the most and it's always expressed the exact same way watch out for World Builders disease World Builders disease is described as the debilitating condition in which someone becomes so invested in the creation of the minute details of their world that they forget or never get around to actually writing their story they waste all their time working out the biology of that alien caterpillar or coming up with a Kingdom's history until it spans Millennia while their characters in the actual narrative remain underdeveloped if you're approaching World building with this mindset that you should constantly

be wary of dedicating too much time to it I think it would be easy to look at my pyramid from earlier and whether intentionally or unintentionally interpret it as a hierarchy The Narrative is the most important followed by setting leaving World building as the least important element of Storytelling and if you work on it too much you'll catch a disease author Brandon Sanderson says this explicitly your time is best spent learning how to make engaging and interesting characters followed by learning how to tell a really good plot with in third place your ability to have

a really great setting I don't know if I agree on that and yet this viewpoint on YouTube at least seems to dominate most videos and conversations surrounding World building and at times this can feel a bit hypocritical with these same people praising the World building of Middle Earth as the Pinnacle of what's possible but then going on to dismiss much of the process that led to its creation as much as J.R.R Tolkien was concerned with telling stories he hardly seemed afraid of spending an inordinate amount of time on details that existed outside the main narratives

I can't imagine him being too concerned with the idea that he was spending too much time working on World building versus story but you know what most of the time the world Builders disease mindset is the right one not many of us can be like Tolkien and spend a couple decades coming up with histories and languages and then turn those into one of the greatest fantasy series ever written and to be fair to Mr Sanderson I assume In that clip he was addressing a writing class probably full of aspiring novelist to whom that advice was

entirely appropriate if your objective is to finish a novel or a screenplay or whatever so you can meet some sort of deadline yeah World Builders disease can be fatal however I think it can be an equally fatal mistake to arrive at the conclusion that World building must always be a secondary or tertiary consideration great world building might Elevate even a mediocre story while mediocre World building can drag down even a great narrative I like to think there's a delicate balance between narratives sitting and World building maybe instead of a pyramid who should be thinking in

terms of the donut three equal sections supporting and influencing one another Donuts is there anything they can't do but perhaps the worst thing the world Builders disease mindset does is reinforce the idea that World building only has a singular purpose but this warning is coming from a place of implicit bias it contends that if you're World building it's because you're writing a narrative and every moment spent World building comes at the expense of that narrative warnings of world Builders disease often fail to acknowledge or only make a passing reference to the idea that there are

a multitude of other reasons why people might want to engage in this creative exercise in any of which The Narrative might be secondary to the World building or maybe not present at all tabletop role-playing games are maybe the most popular example in the last few decades Dungeons and Dragons Pathfinder Call of Cthulhu and many other systems have broken out of nerd culture and entered the mainstream creating a whole new generation of game Masters dungeon Masters I don't know what the right term is the people who hide behind the divider thing and roll the dice these

people will undoubtedly become intimately familiar with the exercise of World building whether guiding players through established scenarios or creating their own Homebrew campaigns a compelling narrative is still important but it's usually the result of a collaborative process many dungeon Masters might have very limited control over the story and actions of the player characters and we've also seen the rise of the Cinematic Universe multiple franchises are now built on this concept in which interconnected storylines in a cohesive World extend beyond traditional storytelling mediums in some cases World building is now handled by a dedicated team with

individual directors and writers now sharing responsibility for the overarching world and its continuity as the concept of these shared universes becomes more and more popular it doesn't seem crazy to suggest that some people might enjoy the World building of a franchise first and foremost talk to fans of Warhammer 40 000 and I think the majority would tell you that they enjoy the universe more than any individual story within it and I think you'll find people who feel the same way about Star Wars Harry Potter the Marvel Cinematic Universe and so on and let's not discount

the World building projects that don't have any written narrative at all many artists set their work within a shared Universe leaving it up to their audience to imagine the context behind it all in these examples and others advice like the kind Brandon Sanderson gives intended for a class full of novelists is maybe not always entirely relevant and then there's the poor Wayward Souls like me I can't write a story worth a damn I've never been too interested in the hero's journey the Dan Harmon story Circle or whatever methods people use to craft their narratives maybe

one day that will change but for now though it's not for me but I love World building I think it can be an enormously fulfilling and creative exercise in which you can take your favorite elements from popular culture combine them with real world history and your own life experiences and in the process gain a better appreciation and understanding for all the intricate details that shape both our world and Alternate ones and that also just happens to be a fun way to kill some time and if one day whatever I've come up with forms the basis

of an interesting narrative told by me or someone else great but that's not my primary motive that's not why I'm doing this so in my case what good are warnings about world Builders disease I'm basically Typhoid Mary but there's one last grave over sight I think people make when discussing World building and that's not acknowledging that World building encompasses an enormous number of interlocking subjects in fields of study very few of which are traditionally associated with the craft of writing while being a skilled writer is certainly necessary in conveying the world you've created the art

of World building goes well beyond mere storytelling to create a hyper-realistic and immersive Universe you might need to delve into the study of anthropology history geography sociology through to Scientific Fields like physics biology and astronomy and while a few brilliant people out there can effortlessly incorporate all these things into their narrative being a great writer does not automatically make you a great World Builder and as things like tabletop Homebrew settings and shared universes become more popular and grow in complexity couldn't World Builders disease go from something to be avoidable of all costs and become a

desirable quality in a dungeon master or a writing partner or whatever and that brings us all the way back to what I hope to accomplish with way of World building I can't tell you how to write your story or the most effective ways to incorporate World building into it that's not really my area but as someone whose Consciousness has been forced into investigating alternate worlds for all eternity I think I've gotten pretty good at articulating why certain ones can resonate with us so strongly and my others might feel Bland and passionless I won't claim to

be an expert on narratives but I think I know World building and the most interesting way to explain what makes it good or bad it seems to me is in trying to create a world of our own and describe every part of that process along the way so that's where I stand on this whole exercise and that's what my Approach with this series is going to be if you are brand new to World building simply getting started can sometimes be the hardest part my hope is that by following this series it might help you break

through that initial roadblock and if you're already an expert World Builder with your own methods I think it can be equally useful to see how someone else approaches the same problems in the next video in this series we'll be covering genre there's a few particularly associated with deep World building and each brings with it its own expectations and baggage people also love arguing about sub-genres high Fantasy Versus low fantasy hard sci-fi versus soft sci-fi and I have my own opinions so all that will be an episode two so until then good luck and good World

building