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World of Pandora
James Cameron’s vision of the world of Pandora in the movie Avatar
The Glorious Art of World Building
by JL Nich
Writers build worlds. Readers critique worlds. It’s a simple formula called Writer bleeds from the readers cut. Of course, there are band-aid readers too but knives to band-aid are 100:1. That’s a random ratio made up in my very creative mind.
Writers create the fly that lands on the web that struggles and entwines himself and vibrates the message to the spider who moves in for the battle. But we do not just create the fly. We create the transparency of the wings, the buzzing sound of the rapid beat through the air, the 800 hexagonal-paneled compound eyes, the brilliant greens and yellows, and oranges before we move on to the intricacies of the web and its silk bend and twist as the cables sway in the breeze, then the delicate sticky textures, the trap is sprung, the battle begins.
That was a world-building metaphor. The task we set is immense. We conceptualize the world (i.e. cities, water, land, flora/fauna, animals, food, money, time, space, location, characters, transportation, religion, language, technology, etc.). We color it with senses and flavors and sounds, within our minds. We imprint the patterns, the textures, the excitement, the silence. And we draw it with words onto the page. We capture the reader’s mind with a vision, we enhance the vision with a wellspring of feelings that the reader can recognize. Hopefully.
There isn’t any step-by-step but there are tips and tricks. As a writer, you need to see the details, hear the sounds, feel the depths of the imagination stretching tangibly into the areas you know are important.
In James Cameron’s World of Pandora as shown in the movie Avatar, the world grows progressively more robust, colorful, intimate, and excitingly different than other worlds developed in science fiction fantasy. Initially, its advance military technologically seems impressive, but we soon realize it has its limitations in movement, heavy structures, the machines are all angles, weighted and grounded. Then we meet the Na’vi natives, all magical, deity driven, skilled, a richly cultured people, with the unique fabric of the society they have built both in nature and in the skies. We hear songs, we meet aspects of the deity, we feel the rhythms of the flora, fauna, waterways, trees, the skies through the natives of Pandora. The world begins to capture our eyes with beauty and dangers and layers of depths. This fantasy world culminates nature vs machine in all its glory. And spoiler alert, the machine rusts.
World of The Giver
The monochrome overview of the perfect society. Where the Odeon, a central meeting place, is set in the exact middle of the communities in this utopian world.
I also like the alternate of something so enchanting such as the utopian build of The Giver, a perfect world purged of all emotive imperfections that most of us would like to eliminate in our society today. No more fear, pain, hunger, illness, hatred, or conflict. Life is without the past and by this structure, the individuals are no longer passionate or connected. The rules of this society suppress the intellectual or emotional freedoms we currently enjoy today. Families are joined as spouses are assigned and children are assigned to the parents. The language is adapted to erase the word love as ambiguous and babies who do not develop quickly enough are euthanized. This world amplifies how wack society becomes when the joys of living are suppressed.
World of the future
Blade Runner (1982) a predicted Los Angeles after society has decimated the environment.
Another favorite unique world is featured in Blade Runner (1982), a futuristic view of societies plunge into the synthetic workforce and how societies careless disregard for the environment has damaged Earth. The global environment has been destroyed, and rain falls all the time in the city of angels. And the Main Character hunts through the streets of Los Angeles, with its dark, dank, dangerous, dismal build of Video streaming billboards and spam-filled holographic advertisements, to capture some intelligent synthetics.
There are so many. I could go on and on. I’ve mostly listed examples of movies since people tend to remember the visuals easier. Yet we can see exotic examples such as historical fantasy when we look at The Hobbit, the school of wizardry in Harry Potters world, the warrior background of the Black Panther, or the epic HBO saga of Game of Thrones. Epic fantasy worlds such as Dunes Arrakis cannot be mentioned enough, the brilliant magical world of the Chronicles of Narnia and throw a little Mad Max future into the mix.
Worldbuilding is a craft. From weather to money to color, sounds, tastes, location-location-location, to the very method of delivery (i.e. first person, 3rd person, etc). Hone your craft. Read in the craft. Google the freak’n craft. Ask authors about their craft. Make the world you build your piece of life that as a writer inherits you to become the Goddess creator. Don’t get a complex. Just do it right. It’s your responsibility is to make the reader see it as clearly as you need them too without telling them to look.