Worldbuilding: What Goes Wrong If You Don’t Get It Right

In fantasy, we ask a lot of favours of our readers, the key one being suspension of disbelief. We take liberties with reality, and for this to work, the reader needs to accept those departures as fact. If they don’t, the entire plot will fall down. 

This is true across the whole gamut of fantasy sub-genres (and a lot of science-fiction too). If you’re writing an urban fantasy about an underground society of werewolves, or vampires living amongst us, you need a plausible reason why humans haven’t noticed. If they’re running around killing people indiscriminately and leaving a trail of bloody corpses, the reader isn’t going to accept no one’s noticed. 

This is why often these societies in urban fantasy have rules about not killing/feeding on humans, or have particular methods of doing so. Men in Black, while science fiction, has a similar problem – one solved by the neuralyser device. This is all worldbuilding – adding elements to the real world to explain and/or allow the reader to accept the departures from reality that we write about.

In high/epic fantasy, we take it a few steps further and build a world from the ground up. It’s often a completely different planet, with different people, different culture, different laws, ethics and societal values. You can do almost anything within the framework of a high fantasy world.

Provided it’s consistent with and explained by your world. 

You can’t, for example, set up a society in which women have no power or rights, and then have your female protagonist blatantly disregard the rules. In reality, she’d be arrested, stoned, killed, or punished in some other manner. If, in your book, she’s not, then that’s unbelievable (an early mistake of my own). 

You make the rules, but you have to play by the rules you invent. 

Another thing said about fantasy is that it’s even more important to ensure the characters behave true to our understanding of human behaviour than in other genres. The reason for this is because we are already asking the reader for so much suspension of disbelief in relation to the world of the story that the reader is more likely to notice when characters don’t behave true to form. 

Why is this relevant to worldbuilding? Because characters are a product of their world, their time, their culture and society, and their personal experiences.

Am I belabouring the point? Maybe, but I have a reason. 

You may have seen my review on The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty. I formed certain views about the sexual practices in that book amounting to the torture and debasement of humanity for no reason except sexual gratification – and I mean psychopathic torture, not consensual BDSM. A few people have remarked ‘but yes, it’s fantasy’ – and I’d like to make the point that it doesn’t matter. I’ve been reading fantasy for 22 years, and writing it nearly as long. ‘It’s fantasy’ isn’t an excuse for poor writing.  

So let’s look at worldbuilding using that book as a case study. 

The reason the book didn’t work for me isn’t because of the sexual practices depicted, but because of the worldbuilding – or lack thereof. 

So here are a few of the questions I asked that should have been answered by the worldbuilding and weren’t:

• Why were Princes and Princesses offered up by their parents to this kingdom knowing the physical and sexual abuse and humiliation and degradation their children would be subjected to? I’m a parent, and I can attest to the fact that the maternal instinct to protect is very powerful. Even the notion of someone treating my daughter this way stirs a primal, even feral, violence. It’s very difficult to accept a parent would tolerate this treatment. I assume the reason they do is twofold – one, they underwent the same experiences, and are essentially broken i.e. they were mistreated to the point their will broke and they will now do anything to please their tormentors. A kind of Helsinki syndrome. Two – the threat of political retribution, war, total annihilation and destruction of their kingdom. Unfortunately, neither of these reasons are spelled out – I’m making assumptions;
• Assuming my assumptions are correct, why should I not be enraged that these people have been essentially tortured to the point their will is broken? No good reason for my acceptance of this act as anything other than vile torture is offered. Also, in all the hundreds of years this has been going on, I’d think one father would have snapped and marched to war rather than see his daughter or son mistreated, but if so, no mention is made of it.
• Why does an entire society (not just a few sociopathic individuals) think this behaviour is OK? I got pulled up by an editor because a scene in which a tavern full of men accepted, condoned or participated in a rape was unrealistic. How much more so then a whole society? Terry Goodkind does a good job of this in his Sword of Truth series, offering religious and political ideologies fed down from the Emperor, and condoned and encouraged at his order by soldiers and priests, as the reason an entire culture behaves in a given way (albeit some of this compliance is procured solely by fear and there are still a few non-conformists, as in any society). No explanation is offered by Anne Rice, and we see none of the members of this society fighting against or protesting it’s cruel practices. Historically we have examples of cultures that were fairly brutal, but these are cultures in which essentially ‘might makes right’, and women are treated hardly any better than animals. How do we explain the apparently cultured and educated mistreatment of captives in Sleeping Beauty by a culture where women seem to have relative equality? I can’t.
• Even if there was a good reason, my god, wouldn’t you get bored? I was bored just reading about all the spankings. Submersion in even the vilest kind of debauchery eventually gets boring. This is why serial killers escalate in violence – they need to engage in more extreme behaviour to get the same high. And I’m expected to believe this culture has existed for hundreds of years without varying the boring old spanking routine? Puh-lease.

See what you get if you don’t build your world properly? A reader asking very hard to answer questions. If a reader develops this kind of attitude to your book, they won’t be coming back for more. 

Please, build your world properly. Make sure it explains and moulds the behaviour of your characters. Make sure your characters aren’t flagrantly breaking the rules of the world with no consequences. Make sure there are rules, because in the absence of a compelling framework for this new world, we’ll default back to our own.

Getting your worldbuilding wrong can make getting anything else right very difficult.  ‘It’s fantasy’ is not an excuse. 

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The Omen Machine by Terry Goodkind: A Review

I love Terry Goodkind. I love the Sword of Truth books – OK with the exception of Soul of the Fire and Pillars of Creation, which sucked, because why, why, would you not use a character as awesome as Richard as your POV character? But moving right along…

 The Omen Machine felt strange to me. It didn’t suck to the degree of Soul of the Fire and Pillars of Creation (which, as a rule, I don’t re-read when I read the series again – I just read the last 50 pages or so to remind me where it ended before going to the next book), but it didn’t rock my world like the other Richard books. I would have to say I even enjoyed The Law of Nines more, and it isn’t even strictly a Richard book at all. So what was the problem with it?

It’s hard to put my finger on it, but I’ve summarised it down to these issues:

• The book is primarily a mystery, albeit fantasy, without the impetus of a villain that exists in earlier books. The death of Jagang has left a void, and Goodkind attempts to fill it with a new villain, but for the early part of this book the main conflict is essentially discovering the answer to the mystery – what is the omen machine and what does it mean. I don’t feel this is handled with a sufficient degree of tension or suspense and I found the first half of the book quite slow and difficult to read;
• I noticed instances of less than stellar writing more often than I usually would e.g. excessive wordiness and the like. Possibly this was because of the less-than-gripping storyline, which left me greater leisure to notice things. Usually the plot whirls me past so fast the words are a blur.
• The book lacked the usual patterns I associate with Richard. Often I live in total dread of the terrible things happening to the characters and await that moment at the end where everyone gets his just desserts and Richard wreaks terrible, bloody havoc on everyone who deserves it. This time the problems for the characters seemed a mere inconvenience (until the very end) compared to some of the previous perils faced and the ending lacked the usual satisfaction. The tension was simply insufficient to the task. Repetition is undesirable but so are differences if the comparisons are unflattering;
• The characters seemed to overlook what I thought were obvious problems (hello, you have an inflamed cut that magic can’t heal and this doesn't concern you??) and encountered problems that seemed repetitious (how many times now have the people lost faith in Lord Rahl? OK, probably realistic but *yawn* so over it). While it may have been necessary to deal with some of these, perhaps it could have been handled with less detail. Of course, here I refer back to Soul of the Fire, which I consider to be a boring book wasted on making a point that could have been made in a shorter or more interesting fashion.

When you add them altogether, that’s some serious issues. I believe this might even qualify as ‘story porridge’ as Tobias Buckell puts it. 

To some extent, a reader should expect this book to be slow starting. Goodkind appears to be setting up a new multi-book plotline with a new villain, although I question if anyone could give Jagang a serious run for his money. The new villain takes a good stab at being more visually terrifying than Jagang, which isn’t a bad effort given Jagang wasn’t exactly a polished example of civilisation. That said, Wizard’s First Rule was the set-up for a multi-book series and had far greater tension and much faster pace, so this isn’t much of an excuse. 

If you stick it out past the first half of the book you may find yourself more engaged in the latter half of the book, but sad to say that isn’t much of a recommendation. I’ll be interested to see if the next book improves upon The Omen Machine. 

If we go with a strike rate of one dud book per five, hopefully the next will be much better!

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My Passion Play: Richard and Kahlan

The couple I have selected for my Passion Play is Richard Cypher and Kahlan Amnell from the Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind. If I had to pick my favourite books, it would have to be this series. Without a doubt theirs is the greatest romance I have yet read. 

There is so much I would love to say about their tortured relationship but there are eleven books. A twelfth has just been released that follows the close of the main conflict, but unfortunately I have not read it yet. It would definitely ruin the series for any of you who haven’t read it if I was to go on about all the insurmountable obstacles Richard and Kahlan must face. Even the little I will say here will give away some secrets in the first book, Wizard’s First Rule. Don’t worry, I’m not giving away the ending. 

At the opening of Wizard’s First Rule, Richard Cypher is a woods guide in Westland, a land screened away from the magic of the rest of the world by a barrier made of the underworld. Out in the woods, he sees a woman pursued by four big heavily armed men. Although they are obviously trained soldiers and Richard has nothing but a belt-knife, he doesn’t hesitate to interfere. He doesn’t even know why they are chasing her. That’s just the kind of man Richard is. 

Things probably wouldn’t have turned out so well for him except for the intervention of ‘thunder without sound’. Of course, things also wouldn’t have turned out so well for her without his intervention either. From their very first meeting, Richard and Kahlan rely on each other.

The woman he has rescued is Kahlan Amnell. What Richard doesn’t know is she is the Mother Confessor of the Midlands, a land of magic on the other side of the underworld barrier. The Midlands lies in great peril from a tyrant named Darken Rahl and she has come searching for the long-lost great wizard to name a Seeker of Truth.

What we, the reader, gradually learn is that a ‘Confessor’ is a woman who has the power to compel others to love her. When she releases her power it makes ‘thunder without sound’. A terrible power and one the Confessors are bound to use in the name of justice. The Confessors travel the Midlands enforcing the law and taking ‘confessions’ when necessary. A heart-breaking part of her duty is when someone condemned to death requests a Confessor. She knows he must be innocent to ask to be touched, but she must touch him anyway and in so doing destroy him. 

The problem for Richard and Kahlan’s love is two-fold:

1. Once touched by a Confessor’s power, that person is wholly and solely devoted to her, forgetting all responsibilities, family and friends. The person they were is destroyed. There is no cure to a Confessor’s touch, although sometimes someone proven innocent by a Confessor’s touch can be changed to an animal, which lessens (but does not remove) the effect of the Confessor’s touch; and
   
2. A Confessor does not ‘summon’ her power, she ‘holds it in’. It requires effort on her part to do that. If she forgets, she will accidentally release her power and anyone touching her will be destroyed. A Confessor is rarely distracted enough to forget to hold her power in... except, say, in the ultimate moment of passion?

For this reason a Confessor’s mate is always a man she has touched with her power and never someone she actually cared. To make love to a man she cared for would be to destroy the very man she loves. 

What hope do Richard and Kahlan have?

Everyone else would tell them none, but Richard is a ‘rare person’ and to his mind every problem has a solution. It is this very quality that has made him ideal for the post of Seeker of Truth. Richard always finds the truth. No exceptions.

I’m not going to tell you how he gets around it. All I will say is have hope! 

Not too much, though, because their relationship is fraught with just about every conceivable hurdle.

I have been told by a few of my readers (OK, not that I have many just yet) that I do terrible things to my characters. I am but a humble apprentice at the feet of the master. The things Terry Goodkind does to his characters boggles the mind. Re-reading this series can be hard (as much as I love it!) because I read in anticipation of the horror I know is coming. 

Just to touch on some of the things Richard and Kahlan must overcome, there are several forced separations and kidnappings, the mistaken belief than one or both of them is dead (fortunately they don’t deal with this Romeo and Juliet style), and forced, consummated marriages to other people. 

No matter what terrible things Terry Goodkind does to this couple, I read on for the last 50 pages of each book. I read on, comfortable in my faith that all will be set right and generally bloody and terminal things will happen to the bad guys.

I live for the ‘You really shouldn’t have done that’ moment in each book. I crave it. Maybe it’s what I love the most. Richard is not unstoppable (no convincing good guy is) but there is a line that cannot be crossed. It usually involves something someone has done to Kahlan. And once crossed, there is no coming back. 

Down that road lies only the bringer of death and his Sword of Truth.

Author’s Note: There is a TV series loosely based on these series of novels. The books are much better. I haven’t even finished watching the TV series because watching it just made me miss all the cool things that happen in the books but not the TV series. Richard’s total awesomeness just doesn’t come across in the TV series, although I commend Craig Horner for his depiction of Richard. The limitations were due to the script deviating from the books and not Craig Horner’s performance.

Today’s dragon picture is of Scarlet, Darken Rahl’s red dragon, with Richard and Kahlan.