Worldbuilding for Masochists

Episode 104: Riffing on the Real World, ft. KAT HOWARD

Sometimes, the world you're working in is already built... because it's the one we live in! But that doesn't mean you don't still have choices to make. Guest Kat Howard joins us to talk about what happens when you flick one of reality's dominos and see what changes.

Maybe you've added magic -- but is it a secret, hidden society, or something that's out in the open? One will lead to different worldbuilding considerations than the other! Or maybe you've added dragons, werewolves, fairies, or some other paranormal or supernatural force. How do they fit it -- or not -- to life as we know it?

And then, when you know you're changing the world, how do you prepare for -- or dismiss -- the Authenticity Police who may start to nitpick?

(Transcript TK)

Our Guest: Kat Howard is a writer of fantasy, science fiction, and horror who lives and writes in Minnesota.

Her novella, The End of the Sentence, co-written with Maria Dahvana Headley, was one of NPR's best books of 2014, and her debut novel, Roses and Rot was a finalist for the Locus Award for Best First Novel. An Unkindness of Magicians was named a best book of 2017 by NPR, and won a 2018 Alex Award. Her short fiction collection, A Cathedral of Myth and Bone, collects work that has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award, performed as part of Selected Shorts, and anthologized in year’s best and best of volumes, as well as new pieces original to the collection. She was the writer for the first 18 issues of The Books of Magic, part of DC Comics' Sandman Universe. Her next novel, A Sleight of Shadows, the sequel to An Unkindness of Magicians, is coming April 25, 2023. In the past, she’s been a competitive fencer and a college professor.

You can find her @KatwithSword on Twitter and on Instagram. She talks about books at Epigraph to Epilogue.

Episode 103: Worldbuilding - It Builds Character, ft. KRITIKA H. RAO

We sometimes see people complain, "Worldbuilding is just pointless background info; I want to know about characters!” But what are your characters without the world they exist in? Guest Kritika H. Rao joins us to examine how world shape characters and how characters can, in turn, change the shape of their worlds.

Characters are typically shaped by their environments, whether they're trying desperately to fit in or beating their wings against the bars of their cage. Maybe they're defending the status quo; maybe they want to smash it with a hammer. In this episode, we explore the interplay of these elements, as well as the difference between building a world that feels like a maze created specifically for your protagonist and building a world that has room for lots of characters in it.

[Transcript TK]

Our Guest: Kritika H. Rao is a science-fiction and fantasy writer, who has lived in India, Australia, Canada and The Sultanate of Oman. Kritika’s stories are influenced by her lived experiences, and often explore themes of consciousness, self vs. the world, and identity. When she is not writing, she is probably making lists. She drops in and out of social media; you might catch her on Twitter, Tiktok, or Instagram @KritikaHRao. Visit her online at www.kritikahrao.com. Permission is granted to use this picture for promotional or press purposes.

Episode 102: Side Dishes and Second Helpings: Serving Up Some Food Culture, ft CHANA PORTER

From sumptuous feasts to the standard stew, food plays an important role in flavoring a lot of speculative fiction. But how do the people living in your invented world think about their food? What's their relationship to eating, mealtime, and their cultural delicacies? Guest Chana Porter joins us to discuss food culture and all the wonderful things it can communicate!

In this episode, we consider elements of scarcity and abundance: How does a relationship to food change if it's always available versus if it's harder to come by? If you could take a pill to sustain your basic caloric needs, would you do that instead of eating? We also explore the intersection of food and status. Are the people who make food possible -- agricultural workers, cooks, wait staff -- honored in your society? Or do they get forgotten? Is there a sliding scale of food respectability? And what does how people eat, when they eat, with whom they eat as communicate status?

 

[Transcript TK]

Our Guest: Chana Porter is a novelist, playwright, teacher, MacDowell fellow, and cofounder of The Octavia Project, a STEM and writing program for girls and trans and nonbinary youth that uses speculative fiction to envision greater possibilities for our world.

Her debut novel The Seep was an ABA Indie Next Pick, Open Letters Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Book of 2020, a 2021 Lambda Literary Award Finalist, and a Times (UK) Best Sci-fi Book of 2021. As a playwright, her work has been produced and developed at New Georges, Playwrights Horizons, Cherry Lane, Dixon Place, Target Margin, and many more. She was writer-in-residence at The Catastrophe Theatre in Houston, Texas from 2017-2019. Chana is currently adapting Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed into an opera with the composer Ted Hearne.

She lives in Los Angeles. Pronouns: she/they

Episode 101: All About the Zhuzh

It's time to get specific -- about magic!

When you're building a magical system for your fantasy world, there's a lot to consider. Where does it come from? Who can access it -- everyone, or just some percentage of the population? Does it come naturally, or does it have to be trained? All of these choices will affect how magic is perceived, valued, and used in society.

In this episode, we poke at all these considerations and make some choices for the expression of magic in our co-created world.

Also! If you're eligible to nominate for the 2023 Hugo Awards, then as of the time of posting, you've still got a few days to get your ballot in! We'd love your consideration for Best Fancast.

Episode 100: The Game is Afoot! ft. CATE OSBORN, ANDREW NOME, and SHARANG BISWAS

It's the 100th Episode! Because we know how many of our listeners play TTRPGs and worldbuild for those, rather than for prose fiction, we wanted to celebrate our 100th episode with a panel episode on gaming! We're delighted to welcome Cate Osborn, Andrew Nome, and Sharang Biswas to discuss worldbuilding for and in games. (We usually overload your TBRs, but our guests are guaranteed to overload your To-Be-Played list.)

In this conversation, we talk a lot about how the communal nature of ttrpgs creates a very different worldbuilding process than a writer creating a world more or less in isolation. The great joy of gaming is in the collaboration of the storytelling! We also examine how the worldbuilding can both inform and be informed by the gaming mechanics.

[Transcript tk]

Our Guests: 

Cate Osborn / Catieosaurus (she/they) is a certified ADHD sex educator, mental health advocate and full-time content creator. As a professional streamer and TTRPG influencer, she is passionate about opening conversations about neurodiversity and accessibility into the gaming community.

Andrew Nome has been running tabletop games in various systems for twenty years, and is the creator of the Cartesian TTRPG system. He lives in Denver with his terrible cat, who he loves far more than she deserves, and spends his time overthinking things on twitter as @NomeDaBarbarian.

Sharang Biswas: I'm a game designer, writer and artist based in New York City. I have a particular love of role-playing, interactive storytelling and immersive theater. I have a Masters from ITP (Interactive Telecommunications Program) at NYU-Tisch, and a B.A. and B.E. in Biotechnology and Biochemical Engineering from Dartmouth College. You can learn more about me on on my LinkedIn page, and follow me on Twitter. You can also access some of my games at itch.io.

Episode 99: Connect the Dots

In the midst of a season full of amazing guests, we take a little breather to reflect on some of the recent topics and to apply them to our co-built world! The world of the MNG is complex and interconnected, which makes it absolutely ripe for thinking about matrices of power and privilege.

So, we think about geography and space; we think about gender and gender roles; we think about magic; we think about the intersections of identity that might matter both in our world and in the smaller societies within the world. Then, we ask: How does the existence of the MNG complicate or simplify dynamics of power and identity?

We also would like to take a moment to remind listeners that we are again eligible for the Hugo Award for Best Fancast! Nominations are open until April 30th, so if you were a member of ChiCon 8 or if you are a member of Chengdu WorldCon, we would love your consideration!

Episode 98: Mysterious Worlds, ft. ANDREA STEWART

Is your world so big because it's full of secrets? From lost civilizations to prowling cryptids, from Unidentified Aerial Phenomena to covert cabals, people love a good mystery, in real life and in fiction. So how can you build these mysteries into your world? Guest Andrea Stewart joins us to explore the possibilities!

As you create your world, you might know more of its truths and secrets than your characters. What are you withholding from them? How much of their own world is known to them, and how much is beyond the fields we know, off the edges of the map, or hidden in plain sight? If something strange happens, what tools do they have for explaining it to themselves? Science, technology, religion, magic -- all these things and more may play a role in the mysteries of your invented world!

(Also, because Cass promised: It's spelled "Coelacanth".)

[Transcript tk]

Our Guest: Andrea Stewart is the daughter of immigrants, and was raised in a number of places across the United States. Her parents always emphasized science and education, so she spent her childhood immersed in Star Trek and odd-smelling library books. When her (admittedly ambitious) dreams of becoming a dragon slayer didn't pan out, she instead turned to writing fiction. Her short stories can be found in such venues as Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Daily Science Fiction, Galaxy’s Edge, and others. Her debut epic fantasy novel, The Bone Shard Daughter, was a finalist for the Locus Award for Best First Novel, the British Fantasy Award for Best Novel, the Goodreads Choice Award for Fantasy and Debut Novel, and the BookNest Award for Best Traditionally Published Novel. She now lives in sunny California, and in addition to writing, can be found herding cats, looking at birds, and falling down research rabbit holes.

Episode 97: Perfect Pairing - Intersectionality and Worldbuilding, ft SUYI DAVIES OKUNGBOWA

When you're building a world, how do you think about all the different levers of power and privilege that your characters may encounter -- or manipulate, or be manipulated by? Guest Suyi Davies Okungbowa joins us to think about the matrix of identity and its potential in speculative storytelling.

Intersectionality gives us a framework for examining the pluralism of existence. Exploring these concepts allows writers to build more nuanced, vivid, breathing worlds out of all the layers of complexity in life -- gender, race, religion, class, and so forth. How do you show your reader what those layers are and how they interact in your world? Do you begin with a character in a situation where they're comfortable in their power? Or do you place them in a situation where they're less secure and supported? What choices will they make based on their relative positions of advantage and disadvantage in their world? These decisions not only give heft to the world, but also help writers find juicy plot hooks!

(Transcript TK)

Our Guest: Suyi Davies Okungbowa is an award-winning Nigerian author of fantasy, science fiction and general speculative fiction.He has published various novels for adults, the latest of which is Son of the Storm (Orbit, 2021), first in the epic fantasy trilogy, The Nameless Republic (the second book in the series, Warrior of the Wind, is forthcoming in 2023). His debut novel. David Mogo, Godhunter (Abaddon, 2019) won the 2020 Nommo Award for Best Speculative Novel by an African.

He has also published works for younger audiences (under Suyi Davies) such as Stranger Things: Lucas on the Line (Random House, 2022), Minecraft: The Haven Trials (Del Rey, 2021) and contributed to the instant #1 NYT bestselling anthology Black Boy Joy. His shorter works have appeared in various periodicals and anthologies, and have been nominated for various awards.

Okungbowa is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Ottawa in Ontario, where he currently lives. As a speaker and instructor, he has taught writing at the college level and spoken at various venues, institutionally and publicly. He earned his MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Arizona.

Episode 96: The Big Blue World: Oceanic Worldbuilding, ft DARCIE LITTLE BADGER

In worldbuilding, we think a lot about the cities and towns that populate our worlds, as well as the enchanted forests, the treacherous mountain ranges, the gloomy swamps, and all those other terrains that adventurers on a quest find themselves trekking across. But what about the feature that makes up over 70% of our own planet and likely a significant percentage of the one you're creating?

Darcie Little Badger joins us to talk about worldbuilding on and under the water! From the teeming biodiversity of coral reefs to the fascinatingly weird creatures of the depths, what inspiration can writers take from the oceans and seas? How do the denizens of your world flourish with -- or in spite of -- the effects the oceans have on them?

 

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Our Guest: Darcie Little Badger is a Lipan Apache writer with a PhD in oceanography. Her critically acclaimed debut novel, Elatsoe, was featured in Time Magazine as one of the best 100 fantasy books of all time. Elatsoe also won the Locus award for Best First Novel and is a Nebula, Ignyte, and Lodestar finalist. Her second fantasy novel, A Snake Falls to Earth, received a Nebula Award, an Ignyte Award, and a Newbery Honor and is on the National Book Awards longlist. Darcie is married to a veterinarian named Taran.

Episode 95: Building and Bending Gender, ft. G.R. MACALLISTER

When you're building a society's conceptions of gender and gender roles... where do you start? Do you want to draw from historical precedent (for good or ill), or try to create something from scratch? G.R. Macallister joins us to discuss thoughtfully incorporating ideas of gender into your world, whether or not you're making it a cornerstone of your premise.

We also discuss where gender intersects with other important worldbuilding concepts: religion, government, sexuality, family structures, and more!

(Transcript for Episode 95 tk)

Our Guest: G.R. Macallister is the author of the Five Queendoms series, beginning with Scorpica, which Publishers Weekly called “a must-read for fans of Game of Thrones and Priory of the Orange Tree.” She also writes bestselling historical fiction under the name Greer Macallister. Her novels have been named Indie Next, LibraryReads, and Amazon Best Book of the Month picks and optioned for film and television. A regular contributor to Writer Unboxed and the Chicago Review of Books, she lives with her family in Boston. Scorpica is her epic fantasy debut.