“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.”
—Genesis 1:1 AV
Forget for a moment that the Creator speaks the universe into existence. He makes everything in its astonishing complexity without a template. Theologians call this process “ex nihilo”—or “out of nothing.” I just call it “amazing.” To begin with zero—zero—and build a cosmos from quarks and bosons all the way to galactic superclusters—and with everything from kittens to quasars in between—requires a creativity that makes the greatest human genius look like a monkey with crayons.
But aside from the monumental brilliance of Creation, the human methods of creativity follow many of the same principles. Writers, too, must build worlds, and although our job is infinitely simpler than God’s, the method is not as different as one might expect.
Let’s take some tips from a real pro:
“And the earth was without form and void…”
If the birds are singing, the flowers are blooming, and everything is perfect, there is no story to tell--at least until the protagonist cleverly uncovers some sinister plot underneath the peaceful façade. The “world out of order” automatically presents a problem that the protagonist must navigate and resolve. Examples range from Duke Orsino and his ridiculous infatuation for the lady Olivia in Shakespeare’s comedy Twelfth Night to Tolkien’s dragon Smaug hording the dwarves’ treasure in The Hobbit. In fantasy epics, however, the issue at stake usually involves a tyrannical overlord who badly needs killing.
“And God said, Let there be light….”
Focused thought, intelligence and research will illuminate the work in progress and separate it from the trite, “been-there-done-that” ideas that novices often present. Tolkien’s Middle Earth, for example, is amazing, but I’d better not try to recycle it under a different guise and expect readers to buy it. It helps to muzzle our pesky internal editor for a while and brainstorm the world into existence. Later on, we can eliminate any ideas that don’t prove to be useful.
“And God divided the light from the darkness…. and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament…and let the dry land appear….”
We’re not worried about the details yet. We’re hammering out the world in very general shapes. As we build our world, are we talking fantasy or sci-fi? A historical or period piece? We don’t worry about texture at this stage. We can sketch maps and rough plotlines to give us a starting point, with the full expectation that they will change as determined by characters and ideas not yet conceived.
Furthermore, just as God conceived physical forces like gravity and electromagnetism to bring the cosmos to its proper shape, we must begin to think about the “rules” of our universe. Even in fantasy, things had better follow the laws of nature for that particular world. Otherwise, the reader feels that his intelligence is not being respected. For example, in J.K.Rowling’s wizard world—although it has crazy and whimsical rules—it does consistently follow those rules.
“And God said, ‘Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth.’”
Like to the flora of Creation, texture brings our world to life. In Robert Jordan’s monumental Wheel of Time series, people have prejudices, language barriers, cultural variations, and accents. The texture is almost overwhelming, but the reader grows to feel like he lives in a real, alternate universe complete with smells and foods. Otherwise, the characters and plot don’t feel like they really happen anywhere specific. The world has to be real and tangible.
“And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth…”
Time to choose the mood lighting—the style choices for our story: heroic verse like Milton’s Paradise Lost (good luck with that!), the high-sounding language of Tolkien, simple prose like C.S. Lewis, or even a whimsical Silverstein-esque poem for children (“Ickle Me, Pickle Me, Tickle Me too…”). We might choose a light, comedic feel, or a dark and dramatic tone.
“And God created great whales and every living creature that moveth…”
God’s fauna might represent the secondary characters that will populate our world. Of course, we probably don’t even know who most of them are until we flesh out the main characters, so we’ll need to jump back and forth from this stage and the next.
“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”
Let’s place the protagonist(s) into the world. Of course, if we are bothering to write a story in the first place, we probably began with the idea of a certain kind of protagonist. But now that we have cobbled together a world for him to interact with, we’ll start to understand him a lot better.
“…In the image of God created he him.”
God puts some serious effort into Man.
“…Male and female created he them.”
What is a story without a little romance? Relationships reveal the inner layers of people. The writer of the Proverbs claims that the “way of a man with a maid” is “too wonderful” for him (30:19). Romance in any or all of its permutations—eternal love, betrayal, frustration, etc—will shape and reveal your protagonist like little else. And although some stories may not lend themselves to romance, relationships of some sort will be necessary to end up with anything more than a cardboard cut-out of a character.
“…And God said unto them, ‘Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it….’”
Our protagonist cannot simply exist in this world. He must interact with it. The story will probably involve a conquest or an overcoming of some sort—unless it is a tragedy—and there is something that needs to be subdued. He will change the world, and the world will bring changes in him.
“And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.”
It’s ok to sit back after you have created your textured, well-engineered world and say, “That’s some good stuff!” You may not have built the real world, but be content with a real world.
