We have a little treat today for any of you who have energy to participate in NaNoWriMo! A delicious and insightful look at creating worlds, which frankly is the first to writing any type of story, not only fantasy. So for any writers out there, enjoy and learn! And for readers, maybe see why some books work better for you than others?
Don’t forget, you can keep up with Lisa’s work on instagram too!
When I was a kid, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings were new, and I found and devoured them early. They remain my gold standard for world-building, because Tolkien actually built his world. Being a linguist by trade, he started by inventing the languages – not just the words he needed in the story, but complete systems of grammar and syntax and vocabulary. Then he wrote origin myths and long histories of the various ages of his world, covering millennia before Gandalf ever showed up in Hobbiton looking for a burglar.
As a result of these efforts, Tolkien’s stories have an unrivaled sense of depth and authenticity. To ten-year-old me, and to a lot of other readers, Middle Earth felt and still feels like a real place.
Tolkien did enjoy one advantage no longer available to us 21st century authors: he was doing something that only a few people had done before. He didn’t have to worry nearly as much as we do about copying, or seeming to copy, other authors’ inventions. He could base Hobbit culture on the English country culture he knew in an obvious straightforward way because it hadn’t yet been done to death. The traps of convention and cliché hardly existed yet.
Fifty years later, what with population growth, the power of fandom, and the Internet, story-craft has exploded, and has been radically democratized. Hoards of creators churn out an unceasing tsunami of stories in every conceivable medium – more than anyone could possibly consume. And, these days, creators and consumers are not necessarily interested in innovation. In various sectors of the storyverse, steady supply and fan service are what readers are looking for.
If, like me, you seek in your writing to achieve old-school craft and originality, I greet you. Comrade, I fear it may not be our world anymore. So far my carefully constructed, odd, and unique novels have landed like pebbles in the ocean. But, we have to write what we have to write, right? So, herewith are some thoughts about achieving originality, if that is what you hope to do, in a story-glutted world.
Thought #1: Math is on our side. Sure, there are already a gazillion stories out there, but if you’re mixing and matching influences and cultural sources, you still only need to go up to three to find a combo that no one else has ever done before. That’s how combinatorial math works.
My new novel Almond, Quartz, and Finch is an homage to Ursula K. LeGuin’s original EarthSea trilogy, which rocked my world when I was a kid. But that’s not all. It also centers around the social thought experiment of a society in which children are raised without gender and get to choose. Add to that cultural and environmental details cribbed from generic European, American Southwest, and totally made up sources, plus conlangs generated by a cool online tool that morphs old languages into new ones (zompist.com – shout out!), and I feel safe in saying I’ve conglomerated something new, even if its antecedents can be traced.
Thought #2: Style matters. I’m proud of my prose. I’ve studied writing as a serious craft, and I believe at this point I have succeeded in developing a unique and effective style, or suite of styles. Readers who consume fiction like fast food (no shade – just not my thing) may not find value in it, but I hope and trust there are still readers who enjoy a gourmet meal, prepared by an experienced story-chef. Anyway, for me style and voice are a big part of what makes the whole enterprise fun enough to be worth the trouble, so this is how I must proceed, whether it gets me on best-seller lists or not.
Thought #3: Quirky little touches! Arguably this is an extension of style, but to me it feels separate and important enough be its own item. Beyond the general choices I make about the shape and flow of story-craft, I put effort into spicing up my projects both with authentic detail and fun little easter-eggy touches.
For an example of authentic detail, having decided that wool was the central industry at my desert fortress in AQ&F, I researched traditional wool craft, from shearing to spinning to weaving, and included a chapter that takes a dive into that world. I enjoyed the twist of including a real word as though it were a conlang word – “rolag.” That word does look like it comes from one of my invented languages, but it is an actual English word for the fluffy tubes of carded fiber that spinners use to make yarn.
As for Easter-eggy insider touches, I can’t mention all of them, because that would be telling, but here’s one example: for reasons now lost in the mists of time, I make sure to include gratuitous mentions of pistachios and zombies in all of my books. And, in fact, there’s a reference to the gender-culture in this new book in one of my earlier books – it’s mentioned by a character as the origin of my gender-neutral neo-pronouns, vo/ven/veir. If I’m ever fortunate enough to have readers approach my work with the focused fan energy that constitutes one sign of writerly success in today’s literary world, there are secret prizes for them to find.
There you go – three hot tips for keeping it original when you’re building your world and crafting your story, in spite of all the stories that have gone before. Mix and match influences/sources, decide what your approach to style and craft is and then stay true to it, and don’t forget those quirky little extra touches that only you of all the writers on the planet could invent. We are legion, but there are not yet so many of us that we can’t each stake out our own little patch of unique. Good luck with your writing!
About Lisa Bunker
Lisa Bunker (they/them or vo/ven) has written stories all veir life. Before setting up shop as a full-time author vo had a 30-year career in non-commercial broadcasting, most recently as Program Director of the community radio station in Portland, Maine. Vo has also made homes in New Mexico, the LA area, Seattle, the Florida panhandle, and New Hampshire. Vo now lives in Sacramento, CA with veir spouse Dawn, an expert on anxiety in children and an author in her own right. Between them they have three grown children. From 2018 to 2022 Lisa represented the town of Exeter in the New Hampshire House of Representatives. Veir other active interests include chess, birding, choral singing, and musical composition.
