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Old 05-21-2022, 04:37 AM   #9
gmw
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Quote:
Originally Posted by hildea View Post
When I say "worldbuilding" I think of the author's creation of the world, what they decide about how the world is and how it works. How they then describe that world can be heavy handed with lots of info dumps, or subtle and gradual, "world hinting".

The lack of info dumps was part of what I liked about The Angel of the Crows: We learn about the world gradually, and figuring it out is as much of a mystery as the crime mysteries our protagonists are investigating.
It seems to me that world-hinting is what all authors think they are doing, but some are more successful than others. When I see the reader commenting about "world-building" it's like they are talking about sentence structure or the cliff-hanger chapter ends or other formal writing techniques. What I want to see is the reader telling me that the world felt real to them; if they can see the construction then something has gone wrong.

Often world-hints, like the one you offer in the OP, get rather heavy handed. Instead of the subtlety of a medical journal "of course" carrying medical information relevant to the world, we might have the protagonist reading from the medical journal to inform the the reader - which is all very well if the context supports it, but ofttimes it's just another info dump. Similar issues arise in mystery stories where an out of place info-dump calls itself out as "look at me, I am a key to the mystery!"

And sometimes getting thrown in the deep end leaves me floundering. There has to be something to grab onto or you risk drowning.

The fantasy series Kira Chronicles by K.S. Nikakis (the first book is called The Whisper of Leaves - I'm a sucker for evocative titles), was very much an in-the-deep-end fantasy and it took so long for me to get comfortable there that I felt I needed a break after that first book ... but then the series hit publisher/availability problems and I've never made it back.

In contrast the Malykant Mysteries by Charlotte E. English, a series of fantasy novellas, is deep-end story where I thought the world felt real (dark and dismal, but almost tangible). Each novella added to my knowledge of the world but never did I feel dumped on or manipulated. I tired of the stories, too much alike, not enough growth, but the world I thought was fascinating.

Mark Lawence's series Book of the Ancestor also put me in a world that had me convinced almost right from the start, and yet I'm hard pressed to describe why it worked - although the occasional touch of science-fiction I found tantalising. I so much wanted to learn more about the world but he turned me off in other ways so I gave up early in the second book.

One that failed dismally for me was Cory Doctorow in Walkaway. Here, under the pretence of characters idly talking, we get the current world order explained to us. And besides the blatant politicising, most of what he was presenting was already obvious from the context, I didn't need the characters patronising me by explaining it in detail. This was a DNF, so maybe it got better.

Whereas I found complete success in The Binding by Bridget Collins. The world grows and changes shape around you so subtly that at first you don't notice it happening, but it gets faster and more dramatic as you sink further in.
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