7 Considerations for World-building with Purpose

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7 Considerations for World-building with Purpose

“Anybody Can Write a Novel”

Chapter 1 World-building – Section 1 Story Types

With Links to Supplementary Material

When crafting a novel, the first thing you need to know is what type of story you are writing. I'm sure that anybody reading this has a pretty good idea of what they want their story to be about. But for writing with strategic purpose, it is important to answer a few specific questions. Doing so will allow you to establish and purposefully design the foundations for your world, plot, the characters in your story. So grab some notebook paper, or copy this article into a word document, and write down all your answers to the following questions, as will best help you in designing your story.

Question 1: Are you writing a Comedy or a Tragedy?

This question comes first because all other story types fall within this question. And while there are many types and definitions of comedy and tragedy, it all basically comes down to one question: what happens to your hero in the end? Will they triumph or at least find a happy place to settle, or will the world and plot you have created crush or even kill them? Remember that both of these story types deal with the pains and struggles of life; it is just a matter of deciding who wins in the end.

Question 2: What are you trying to accomplish with your story?

Think about, and clearly define what you hope to accomplish with writing your story—how you want it to affect your reader. Whether you are trying to create hope, to instill anger that drives them to change the world, to entertain, to escape the drudgery of the real world, or anything else, make sure that you know why you are writing, and craft your story accordingly. Tragedy, for example, is more effective in urging your readers to action, while comedy can allow them to have hope in the future.

Question 3: Which of the Basic Story Types does your story fall into?

There are many theories as to how many types of story there are—ranging from one to as many as 36 or more. And it is not so important that you conform to an established “type” as much as that you are able to clearly define what your story does. Doing so establishes a goal for designing the plot of your story. For example: is your story about a quest, revenge, overcoming adversity, finding love, perusing forbidden love, survival, rescue, etc...

Question 4: What type of antagonist does your story require?

Perhaps the biggest factor in determining what type of story you are writing, is that which stands between your protagonist and his or her goals. Are they fighting nature, another person, their world, technology, magic, an ideal, a political movement, themselves, God/gods, or something else? Answering this question, and the question of your protagonist's goal, will indicate exactly what sort of story you are writing.

Questions 5: What is your story's genre?

There are countless genres and hybrids of genres that exist within the realm of literature. Like story type, it is not so important that you use an established genre—in fact, you should feel free to mix genres together if you wish—just as long as you know what you are writing and stay consistent. My mistake in my first novel was trying to cross too many genres as I thought the individual chapter required. I wanted to be scary in the beginning and funny at the end. But failing to keep your story uniform, waters down the atmosphere and undermines the power of your story.

Question 6: What is the intensity of your story?

With any genre, you have multiple intensities. Are you writing dark humor or light humor? Heavy sci-fi that anyone can read casually and enjoy, or heavy sci-fi which requires a certain amount of dedication and preference from your audience? Choosing the intensity will often be linked to whether you are writing Comedy or Tragedy, and will dictate what audience demographic will be interested in your work.

Question 7: Is your story of High Art or Low Art?

Before I explain this, let me just say that I hate the title for this classification system. High Art simply means that it applies to a more specific and exclusive audience demographic, whereas Low Art can be appreciated by a larger audience demographic. It has nothing to do with quality—Shakespeare's work, in fact, was Low Art at the time which it was written. This classification goes along with your story's intensity, to dictate how large the audience niche for your story will be. This question will help you to set the atmosphere of your story—and dictate whether your story should include specific political themes, inside jokes, and jargon, or whether you should use more universal themes, humor, and language that could be understood in multiple cultures and education levels.

I hope this article in my chapter on “World-building” is helpful in defining what kind of story you want to create. Next time, I will be focusing on the technical details of creating an actual world that your characters live in. Please let me know if you have any relevant questions on the topic of “World-building” or anything you would like me to address.

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