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cimoreneSometimes writing is more about the world building than the plot; sometimes it's basically all about the world building at the expense of plot, either because the author's not good at action or just doesn't care as much about it. And sometimes that's okay with me if the world building is more interesting (or is interesting enough to make up for plot problems, I should say).
In a book I was just reading the absence of plot included:
The reason I say that in this book the author cared about world building at the expense of plot was that most of that page real estate was spent on exposition and description instead, on all sorts of scales. It reminded me of one of those elaborate miniature setups, like model railways or people who build miniature rooms and scenes and villages, or the settings of more elaborate role playing games in the hands of enthusiastic dungeon masters. (Of course it's possible for a story to have flaws like the above or otherwise a bad or missing plot without this focus on world building.)
But what I started thinking at about the 30% mark in this fantasy novel was:
I mean at least that way if I'm reading a book that's essentially just world building the reader could then be spending that time enjoying the world building.
It should make sense. Practical questions don't have to be your sole concern, but if you're giving practical details they shouldn't appear to glaringly contradict other practical details. Basically, there should be... logic. Also it's kind of odd to be spending 80% of your time and effort with exposition that is often needlessly detailed without apparent cause and then to also just be going super vague and skimming over other details when they should have appeared on the page.
I have another entire rant I could make about the use of made-up language bits (as opposed to more complete and systematic constructed languages) in a lot of generic-level high fantasy, which is typically annoying, and then how much worse than that this book was while not improving on it in any respect, but in retrospect that isn't really relevant to the point (except inasmuch as it's a further example of the world building not being done with sufficient work/care and its corresponding lack of logic).
In a book I was just reading the absence of plot included:
- A lot of things happened one after the other, but without significant causal relationships.
- Frequently there was no sense of real agency associated with these events - like the type of newspaper writing that elides responsibility and agency through a variety of linguistic acrobatics that are widely and incorrectly labeled by many people as "passive voice" although that isn't what passive voice actually means. People made choices but the ones the narrative spent time on weren't the ones which were significant to the course of events.
- A lot of new information was presented like a twist or revelation, but most of these didn't pay off or go anywhere or tie into anything.
- Revelations eg suddenly unveiling the motivation or unmasking the secret identity of characters other than the protagonist were presented as if to make things more meaningful or resolved when in fact these revelations had no particular bearing on the outcomes. They were also presented only at the end even though the protagonist who was narrating had figured them out much earlier, with the clues that led to the protagonist's conclusions not being revealed to the reader (a frequent practice of Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot, but they weren't the narrators of their own stories. An omission like this on the part of a narrator who is omitting relevant facts artificially to increase tension is gimmicky).
- Characters were introduced and described but relationships formed almost entirely offscreen, without real character development being seen and without the work of creating their relationships with the protagonist being done. They simply appear in an introduction scene and perhaps exchange some words, get some vague exposition, and then proceed to appear as very close friends or as enemies without any work being shown.
The reason I say that in this book the author cared about world building at the expense of plot was that most of that page real estate was spent on exposition and description instead, on all sorts of scales. It reminded me of one of those elaborate miniature setups, like model railways or people who build miniature rooms and scenes and villages, or the settings of more elaborate role playing games in the hands of enthusiastic dungeon masters. (Of course it's possible for a story to have flaws like the above or otherwise a bad or missing plot without this focus on world building.)
But what I started thinking at about the 30% mark in this fantasy novel was:
If you're going to put that much effort into world building, you should do it right.
I mean at least that way if I'm reading a book that's essentially just world building the reader could then be spending that time enjoying the world building.
It should make sense. Practical questions don't have to be your sole concern, but if you're giving practical details they shouldn't appear to glaringly contradict other practical details. Basically, there should be... logic. Also it's kind of odd to be spending 80% of your time and effort with exposition that is often needlessly detailed without apparent cause and then to also just be going super vague and skimming over other details when they should have appeared on the page.
I have another entire rant I could make about the use of made-up language bits (as opposed to more complete and systematic constructed languages) in a lot of generic-level high fantasy, which is typically annoying, and then how much worse than that this book was while not improving on it in any respect, but in retrospect that isn't really relevant to the point (except inasmuch as it's a further example of the world building not being done with sufficient work/care and its corresponding lack of logic).
