What questions do SFF authors ask themselves when creating a futurescape, and what worldbuilding considerations do they make? Tor.com has assembled a roundtable of authors with exciting new books out this year to give you a look behind the scenes of their writing processes. We asked them several questions to start with, and then gave them control of the table to ask their own questions. Their replies are as varied as their work, and their worlds.
Participating today are Peng Shepherd (The Book of M), Malka Older (Infomocracy / The Centenal Cycle), Tade Thompson (Rosewater, The Murders of Molly Southbourne), Lauren C. Teffeau (Implanted), and Mike Chen (Here and Now and Then).
Fran Wilde: What is the most important thing to keep in mind when writing / worldbuilding in near future or distant technical future worlds?
Tade Thompson: To me, that would be using worldbuilding to ground the reader and characters in place, but to avoid piling it on in a fit of “isn’t this cool?” or “hey, wouldn’t it be great if…?”. The worldbuilding should serve the story and while I may know everything about the place/time/setting, I will only give the reader enough to be able to follow the story and extrapolate. I’m not a fan of showy worldbuilding. You know how in some game engines the 3D world is rendered just before the player character arrives, and it decides just how much to render? That’s sometimes what I feel worldbuilding should be like. The grounding should, of course, let us know how this future world deviates from ours.
I’d like to add here that a recent example of excellent worldbuilding (in my view) is The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells. The balance is perfect.
Mike Chen: I think the most important thing is that the world needs rules established, and then the worldbuilding has to follow those rules. It’s okay to have fantastical elements as long as they don’t do anything to contradict something that’s previously established—any conflict or contradiction will cause the reader to pause and go “Wait, I thought they couldn’t do that?” and that’s gonna at best create confusion, at worst lose the reader and cause them to rage quit the book.
Also, the rules should be established organically and not in a giant info dump!
Lauren C. Teffeau: For me, it’s finding the right entry point into a story world. In those crucial opening scenes you’re not only establishing the rules, but you’re also setting up the reader’s expectations just by virtue of it being their first glimpse of your world, now destined to color everything that comes after. When deciding how to open a story, I try to create scenes that not only introduce my main character in an engaging way and portray some driving action approaching a plot, but also introduce at least two or more aspects of my world that help ground the reader in the story (good) and hint at cool or intriguing aspects to come (better). Getting the reader oriented so they’ll tag along for the whole ride is best of all.
