All language subtitles for Masterclass N. K. Jemisin Teaches Fantasy and Science Fiction Writing - 02.Elements Of Worldbuilding

[MUSIC PLAYING]

NARRATOR: You've
already stepped away

from our world a little bit, so
don't be hesitant about really

striding away.

Get into world building
and have fun with it.

Go forth and create
something new.

If you're writing science
fiction and fantasy,

world building is
kind of essential.

It's one of the pieces
that make science fiction

and fantasy different
from other genre fiction.

So it's-- in a lot of cases,
you're going to be writing

things that are set on Earth,
which we call the first world,

but sometimes you're going to
be writing things at one removed

from Earth, i.e.
secondary world material.

And you want your
world to feel real.

You want it to feel lived in.

And then if it does
feel real and lived in,

then people are going to
be able to pay attention

to characters and plot, which
hopefully is what you really

want them to pay attention
to, and the world will sort of

fade into the background.

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If you're building
a new world, you

are able to sort of go into
topics and materials that

can be a little
uncomfortable for readers

to engage with when they're
set in the real world.

We have personal
feelings attached

to all of the
politics of our world,

and politics is anything
having to do with people.

So even if you don't
think that you're

talking about the
politics, if you've

got a story that
has people in it,

you are talking about politics.

So if you're trying to
tell a story about just

an ordinary kid going
to school every day,

you're going to evoke emotions
attached to that because people

who have gone to school
are going to remember

their own school incidents.

They're going to remember what
it was like to walk to school.

They're going to have flashbacks
of the time they got beat up

by some bully on
the way to school.

If you're writing a story
set in the real world,

you may want to use those
brush strokes of emotion

and deliberately evoke something
that your audience is trying

to kind of meet you halfway on.

But if you're writing
something set in another world

and you want people to
engage just with the ideas

or just with the
characters in that setting,

then you take them away from
the real world on purpose.

You're doing that as
a means of detaching

your reader from their
own personal experiences

to some degree.

Now, because you're telling
a story about people

and because stories
about people always

evoke some sort
of emotion, you're

still going to get
a little bit of that

in there, but not as much.

And in a way, it's sort of
an imagination cleanser,

and that way you can draw
people into ideas or allegories

for the real world
that take them

away from their own personal
experiences as much.

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You need to know all the
minutia, and as the artist,

that means that you have to
understand the day to day.

How does a person
get up every day?

How do they put
their clothes on?

How do they brush their teeth?

How do they go to the bathroom?

When I was researching
for "The Killing Moon,"

which is actually set in an
ancient Egypt-like society,

I had to research how
did ancient Egyptians go

to the bathroom because I
needed to make sure that--

I wasn't planning some
dramatic scene on the toilet.

But I needed to be able to
say that this amount of time

is what they're going
to have to allot to--

if they've got to walk a long
way to get to an outhouse

or something, then I needed to
kind of have that in my head.

The world builder
is someone who's

going to understand that
world as if they live in it.

The reader doesn't have to
understand it on that level,

but you need to understand
it enough to not

kick the reader out.

You don't think about
how, in your kind of day

to day activities,
as a person who's

just kind of going
through their typical day,

they don't think about
the fact that they

are exercising all kinds of
really complex world building

details.

Just the simple act of
commuting to work, for example.

And this is a thing that
humans encounter all the time.

People who come to New York
who've never been here suddenly

have to factor in learning
the subway system.

They may never have
done it before.

But by the time that they've
been in New York for a while,

they're naturals at it.

They've got it.

And that learning
process is just

part of acclimating
to a new environment.

It's the same
thing for a reader.

When a reader is starting to
read a secondary world fantasy,

they've got to ramp up.

They've got to learn a
little bit about that world.

And you try not to make the
learning curve too steep,

but at the same time,
you want to put them

through the same
process of acclimation

to their new environment
that any human being does

when they go into a new place
because that's how you learn.

That's how you really kind
of become part of a space.

And I was able to
do that explicitly

in "The City We Became,"
where the viewpoint

character of Manny is a guy
who's never been to New York

before and so all of
this is new to him.

You know, hailing
a cab, all of that.

All of these little rituals
that we're so used to.

But those rituals,
those processes,

that infrastructure, that's
all part of the world

that we live in.

So when you're creating
a secondary world,

it's got to be just as
plausible and just as lived in.

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When I first started learning
different methods of world

building, what I was told
by many different people

in the science fiction
field was that it should

be sort of like an iceberg.

90% of it is not visible.

It's below the water.

10% of it is all you kind
of really put into the work.

The problem with that analogy
is, first and foremost, you

may need more than 10%.

Second, the work that you
put into the story that's

not sort of immediately
visible is still

helping to support
that other 10%.

It's important.

And suggesting
that it's something

that you are going to
discard or is unseen

implies that it's not important.

It also implies that
it's sort of scary.

I mean, you know,
icebergs sink ships,

and it's usually the
part that you can't see.

And so that that's
sort of an ominous way

of framing world building
as far as I'm concerned.

What I want people to do
is get into world building

and have fun with it.

Really kind of dig into those
little details and that minutia

because that stuff is
what makes the 10% work.

You can't have those
10% pieces visible

if you haven't put
in a lot of effort

to make the other 90%
kind of look just as good.

There's an example in
"The Broken Earth" of--

in the appendices of
"The Broken Earth,"

there's a list of
all the seasons

that I initially put together
and ultimately decided

to publish.

But, I mean, that's an
example of the kind of stuff

that I'm putting together
in the background

when I'm creating the story.

And so I actually created a lot
more seasons that we don't see,

and you guys are getting the
greatest hits of the worst

seasons.

So there's some-- in
my notes somewhere,

there's probably another 20
seasons that I did not share.

The old adage goes that if
you are over world building,

if you are doing too much
of it, if you are drowning

your readers in your
world, it is often

because you as the
world builder have

become too attached
to the amount of work

that you put into this.

The thinking is
that you're trying

to inflict all of
that on your reader

because you did so much work.

You're proud of that work.

It's nothing wrong
with it, but if you

suffer for your art, that
doesn't mean your audience

has to as well.

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The most common
mistakes that writers

tend to make in world
building beyond the attempt

to just rub the serial numbers
off of an existing culture

because they're afraid
to create something new

is to replicate the mistakes
that other creators have made,

and that's something
that a lot of us

tend to do because we are soaked
in a media environment that

is rife with underrepresentation
of certain groups,

or certain belief systems, or
certain perspectives on life.

And so we constantly
see repetition

of the same bigotries, the same
biases, the same assumptions,

the same misconceptions of
how the world actually works.

And it's important that a
writer do enough research,

learn enough about the
world that they realize

those are stereotypes
or cliches,

and that they're just
regurgitating them

so that they're able
to at least recognize

when they're doing it.

You don't have to
know every people.

You don't have to know how
the entire world functions.

It is impossible, in some
cases, if you didn't grow up

with a particular background,
for you to understand

another group of people.

But you can at least recognize
when you're getting them wrong

or recognize when you're
possibly just replicating

an existing cliche and
go research that and try

and make sure that it's
actually a true thing,

or if it's not a
true thing, depict

what actually is a true thing.

But that's when you take
a culture that exists,

you decide that
you want to create

a society that looks
like ancient China,

so you pick an era of China.

You write your
characters as aliens,

but they're dressed in
clothes from that era.

They speak to each other as
if they're from that era.

They have a societal structure
that resembles that era,

but they're all bug eyed
aliens from the planet Flox

or whatever.

And that's lazy.

It's also treating real people
like props and a real culture

like a prop.

And if that's your
goal, if that's

what you want to do, if
you're trying to critique

that culture, ideally if
you're from that culture

and can critique it,
then sure, OK, go ahead.

But there's no reason to kind
of go with an existing society,

especially if you're talking
about a world that isn't Earth,

or a world where things have
happened that don't happen

on our world, like
magic exists, or there's

unusual high levels
of seismology,

or something like that.

You've already stepped away
from our world a little bit,

so don't be hesitant about
really liked striding away.

Don't make that a little
baby step and then freak out,

and back up, and then
retreat to the familiar world

that you know.

Go ahead if you're
going to do it.

Go forth and create
something new.