“It’s turtles all the way down” and other things behind the scenes of worldbuilding.
The walking fortress of Revance is a turtle, in a way.
Slight deviation today from the usual pattern of these blog posts. Instead of talking about my creations or the inspirations in the world of the Droughtlands, I'd like to illustrate a part of the fundamental (you can't have fundamental without fun!) approach to designing a fantasy and/or sci-fi world. No pictures today either, so you’ll have to use your imagination.
I've asked many different writers, creators and dreamers how they approach their world building and have observed it in a great deal of media, and I think one of the key things that distinguishes a shallow world from a deep and interesting one is the layers that are hidden below the story itself.
A king does not arrive at his regal position without first being born a prince, nor does his castle stand proudly upon a hillock that wasn't once a barren field. While this may seem like a rather obvious observation, it is frequently forgotten, I feel, by many writers as they struggle to prioritise the timeliness of their plot and the expansion of the world it takes place in.
All elements of the tale’s world have history and origin. It is not something that is conjured into existence the moment a protagonist or point-of-view moves across it, but instead a series of circumstances that guide the happenings into their current being.
The aforementioned dichotomy between plot and worldbuilding is, to me at least, a fallacy to be happily ignored.
Doing this makes for a cleaner and faster paced plot arc that doesn't get bogged down in the minutiae of, for example, a magic system or a geopolitical conflict, while also ensuring that the parts of the world that are shown off are relevant and meaningful to the reader.
Think of it this way, why would a reader entrust their attention span to a tale that repeatedly tells them isolated and useless pieces of information?
Therefore blindly charging ahead as the story is written and treating the plot in the world building is one in the same means that the writer can easily conjure mcguffins or divert the flow of the story as it is necessitated.
As a note, you can certainly approach both matters with some inclinations of what you want them to shape up as, but I advise that any rigidity in adhering to anything more detailed than the broad strokes of the idea can have a writer quickly painted into a corner, or worse still, missing out on an unforeseen avenue of another plotline or piece of world building that wasn't present during the books planning and outlining. I’ve found a great deal of the time that these discoveries are far more interesting than the idea they originally spawned from.
To mention my own work for just a moment, my soon to be released (and it's really good I promise,) novel Molten Flux centres much of its conflict around the use, trade and consequences of the mysterious liquid metal by the same name.
But six years ago when I first hatched the idea for the story, the substance of molten flux did not exist. It wouldn't do so for another three or four years. Its discovery led to a complete rewrite and a much greater connection between the various plotlines within the numerous layers of the world, both in the present where the story was being told and in the past where the world had come from.
As messy as it can sometimes be, I'm extremely thankful that I can allow the elements of this world to be fluid. It makes adjusting the layers of the various histories involved in the story a much smoother process. Unfortunately, this is a privilege I will be surrendering piece by piece with each published work as set things more and more in stone.
However, I think it has been vital in understanding and outlining greater universe of the Droughtlands and the stories I want to tell within it. As I've mentioned above (and have been attempting to segue to) this would not be possible if I did not acknowledge and ensure I connected the various layers that make up this world.
There's a saying in the Droughtlands that is uttered when attempting to understand the ruins of those-of-glass, the mysterious, hyper advanced civilization that had long ago been wiped out and buried by the desert sands, leaving behind only their derelict towers and unfathomable magics.
“Ruins within ruins, worlds upon worlds.”
This phrase acknowledges the many that came before those that walk the sands today, and readies them to be buried all the same when the time comes. (Have a look at my last post on Ozymandias for more about this.) I find this phrase also makes conscious another layer of worldbuilding. That which lies in the future, or that which is left behind.
While this is not important for the matters at hand for the story, it bears consideration both for what options one has for the sequel and what the reader will come away with at the end of the story. What will they be wondering about? What elements will stick with them? What characters will they want to follow up with?
The strangely alternating release schedule I am embarking on has placed the utmost importance on this concept. The Flux Catastrophe series and the upcoming Hytharo series are set 30 years apart. While not directly related, they are set in the same world, so as I alternate writing and releasing books in these two series, I've had to be wary of the effects that the events of the Flux Catastrophe will have on the decades-later Hytharo series, and also what discoveries, circumstances and histories from the Hytharo series must be set up or reverse-engineered back into the Flux Catastrophe. All this while staying on top of how they relate to those-of-glass, and then how that plays into the mysteries of what is yet to come!
When I first started exploring the Droughtlands over eight years ago I never imagined it would have the potential to become this complex, yet it has done so out of wonderful and serendipitous necessity. The very first version of the Droughtlands (which I've mentioned previously) was a failed first attempt at what is now The Hytharo Redux, the next book I'll be releasing after Molten Flux and the start of its titular series. It followed a boy, the only one of his extinct kind that could bring rain back to these desert lands, who’d been thrown forward through time and had somehow lost his memory in the process.
For me, it was a wonderful writing exercise as I explored this exciting new world through the eyes of a boy who knew nothing, shepherding him into the various quarrels of the land to see what happened, yet by the end of the story I had completely failed my duty of care as this character's creator.
He may have helped those he'd stumbled across, yet this poor boy was no closer to finding his memories, the reason he'd been thrown through time or what had happened to his people. I had failed the plot, too, as this boy, as protagonist, had no connection, metaphorically or literally, to the world I'd tossed him into. The story of his past bore no relevance to the goings-on he was involved in in this present-day, nor did they draw any allegories to those-of-glass, whose abandoned ruins I wanted so desperately to have as the backdrop for this story.
The past several years since coming to this painful realisation have seen half a dozen re-attempts, back-to-the-drawing-board, false-starts at telling this story. It was only when I looked deeper that I found a way to finally make it work.
“Ruins within ruins, worlds upon worlds.”
This phrase I raise again because it bears another meaning, in that the nature of history is often cyclical, even if it is only vaguely so. For this story at work, for it to be cohesive and meaningful and impactful, the goings-on of the present-day had to bear resemblance in theme to the goings-on of the past from which this boy had come, the time of the now extinct Hytharo, and that had to bear the same thematic motif as shown by those-of-glass.
If I did not link these element, there would be no point in revealing them all, as intriguing as they are, to the reader unless they were a tool in a larger message carried by the story. To connect them I had to ask myself what the point would be of something happening in a story if it has had no circumstances to lead up to it? These circumstances must have circumstances, too, no?
“Ruins within ruins, worlds upon worlds.”
The acknowledgement of this endless, infinite regress is one that I believe can make a series so much stronger, that lends weight and emphasis to the concepts that are brought up, and can allow the reader to trust the writer with blind faith when a new concept, item or character appears with little prelude and disappears without fanfare, because they believe that the writer has shown this information for a well-thought-out purpose. That the writer has given it the history it deserves, even if it cannot be seen.
My phrase I've used as a refrain in this uncontrollably long reflection on the craft is loosely inspired by the one in this post’s title.
“Turtles all the way down.”
This is a way of referring to infinite regression, outlining the mythological concept that if the world was flat and sat on the back of a single turtle, then what would that turtle stand upon? Another turtle, of course! And that turtle? And the next?
There are many different origins and attributions for this expression, but my favourite (and most likely apocryphal) is one from the philosopher and psychologist William James, who after a lecture regarding the cosmology and structure of the solar system, encountered this conversation with a rather stubborn little old lady.
"Your theory that the sun is the centre of the solar system, and the earth is a ball which rotates around it has a very convincing ring to it, Mr. James, but it's wrong. I've got a better theory," said the little old lady.
"And what is that, madam?" inquired James politely.
"That we live on a crust of earth which is on the back of a giant turtle."
Not wishing to demolish this absurd little theory by bringing to bear the masses of scientific evidence he had at his command, James decided to gently dissuade his opponent by making her see some of the inadequacies of her position.
"If your theory is correct, madam," he asked, "what does this turtle stand on?"
"You're a very clever man, Mr. James, and that's a very good question," replied the little old lady, "but I have an answer to it. And it's this: The first turtle stands on the back of a second, far larger, turtle, who stands directly under him."
"But what does this second turtle stand on?" persisted James patiently.
To this, the little old lady crowed triumphantly,
"It's no use, Mr. James—it's turtles all the way down."
By any means, I hope you've enjoyed this rather lengthy and wordy glimpse into my writing process, I hope it's been informative and if you’d like to talk more about it, do reach out! I love talking shop.
While I did want to explore more of the world of the Droughtlands itself with this post, the depth of the topics I'd like to delve into are quite spoiler-laden, so I may have to set up a separate, secret blog only accessible to those that email me to pinky promise they've read everything so far released.
Until next time!