World Building for Contemporary Fiction Writers
Understanding the Impact of the Story World on General Fiction
About fifteen years ago, I decided to take a course called Beyond Structure at UCLA with David Freeman. It was excellent and I think by taking that course, I moved forward in my writing more than I had since I’d started studying writing. The interesting thing was that it was a screen writing not a novel writing class.
It helped me to look at writing differently and specifically to look at the story as a whole, not just the plot. Screenwriters and movie producers are not just interested in the plot, they pay just as much attention to where the story takes place and the world that the characters inhabit as they do to the storyline. The setting and the character’s world is just as important. If you want proof of that, look at how much movie producers spend on location, props, and the general atmosphere of a movie.
Something that I also found interesting when I was in the class which was held in an auditorium full of writers was that many of the people in the audience were not screenwriters or novelists, they were gamers.
I’m not a gamer, and back then I didn’t have my own children (well, I did, but they were babies) who were into games. My only experience with games were Pac Man and…
