A post from 1000 miles away
I just had some general thoughts about world building that I figured I would include here in my blog. I might end up including some of these thoughts in my essay but that will be much more formal and this is kind of a good venue for me to think out loud. If you really think about it world building is essential to any sort of fantastic story. When dealing with a comedy or drama that is situated in “real life” no world building is required just some character building. With a story like Lord of the Rings there is plenty of mythology and lore that goes along with the story. With the books there are prequels that were written to expand on the world of middle earth, and in the movies the first 15 minutes of the first film are dedicated to establishing what happened with Sauron, the ring and everyone else hundreds of years prior to Frodo and friend’s adventures.
The same thing can be said for Star Wars where after Lucas created Episodes IV-VI. He then made the prequels, there were books written that took place between the episodes, videogames that took place thousands of years before the movies and so on. An interesting thing about the Star Wars universe is that Lucas Arts has something called the Holocron and it is the assembled universe. If something is written about Star Wars , say a book by someone other than Lucas, they have to have it approved by the Holocron in order for it to be worked into the canon.
In any world building scenario consistency is so important, as it helps to make that created world or universe more real, making the reader or viewer that much more engaged. It is hard to imagine something like Lord of the Rings without all the back story that has been created. By world building an author creates a much more rich experience. This is not to say that world building doesn’t happen in Science Fiction, I am sure it does, but the effort that goes into the world building is crucial to having a better product in the end.
