worldbuilding, unnecessary?

[dragonimp]

Y'know, if you make a blanket statement about writing which lumps everything under a few poorly executed examples, you're likely to irritate a bunch of writers. Heh.

I get that his reaction is most likely to the kind of thing that would make your novel read like a D&D manual, but calling worldbuilding in general dull, numbing, and unnecessary? What sort of writer does absolutely no worldbuilding? (Well, yes, I'm sure there are books that take place in a complete fog, but really.) For me, it's like character design and that incessant internal narrator; there's no freakin' OFF switch!!

The problem is not in worldbuilding - which is unavoidable - but in poor writing and infodumping.

Comments

[yumikoyoshihana.livejournal.com]

I agree with you: Worldbuilding is like character development. You can either have a story with bad character development or good character development, but that doesn't make character development bad, if you get what I mean (I know, not very coherent).

Some of my favorite books are the ones that worldbuild. Dragonriders of Pern? Half the fun of reading that series was figuruing out the social structure and the history and the 'rules' of that world. So, yea, this guy needs to get smacked upside the head. ^^

[dragonimp.livejournal.com]

Pern is a good example; insane amounts of worldbuilding. But the books work because the main focus is still the characters and the story. I think this guy's problem is when worldbuilding overshadows the story, but that's not what he said.

[rainjoyous.livejournal.com]

Sounds a bit like s/f writer who wishes they wrote literary fiction syndrome to me - that kind of self-loathing 'must attack own genre!!' desire. Because to have written s/f, he *must* - it's a necessary of the genre even if all it amounts to is 'a world identical to our own but some people have psychic powers' or something - have worldbuilt. Just because he didn't draw the bloody maps, even if he let it happen holistically, it's still worldbuilding.

So as a philosopher and a writer, I look at his argument like this: *head tilted a little, eyebrows raised* Hm.

[dragonimp.livejournal.com]

"great clomping foot of nerdism"? "I write this genre, but I'm not like those writers ::nose in the air::"
It's not just in SF/F, either; as some of the people who posted in that second entry pointed out, *all* fiction requres worldbuilding, even if it's usually invisible worldbuilding. (kinda makes me want to tell him to get his head out of his ass.)

[lynx212.livejournal.com]

Your question - What sort of writer does absolutely no worldbuilding?

My thoughts as a response to the above question are as follows:

1) The sort of writer that has no vision (or a very limited one)
2) The kind of writer that has a novel that rings so horribly familiar and cliche that you put it down after forcing yourself to read the first 3 chapters just to give it a fair shot
3) And last but not least *shudder* ...the kind of author that lacks growth and creativity

Not trying to put him down but that's my opinion ... I can't see how one can avoid wordbuilding altogether *shrugs*

[dragonimp.livejournal.com]

Same here. I'd hate to see a novel without worldbuilding c_c;.