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[BigMoosey]

I'm just wondering exactly how in depth everyone else goes in on the setting to their stories. The setting I am currently working on, an Urban Fantasy sort of thing, is about the most detailed setting I've ever really come up with, and at the moment, I'm not quite sure about any of the over-arching plot points or even characters, beyond a vague idea of the main character.

Also, at what point do you consider an idea an homage to an influence of yours, versus outright ripping the thing off?

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

As an SF writer tending in the space opera direction my shorthand is "make the physics work. Once the physics work, make the biology work accordingly. Once the biology works, make the culture work based on that."

To my way of thinking, there is a certain degree of handwaving you will have to do to make genre work. (In space opera you need to handwave an FTL drive. in UF you have to handwave how magic works, or, if you have a secret world of werewolves and vampires alongside our own, you have to handwave how they fit with the mundane world and how they work internally.)  I think the more solid you make the stuff that you are taking from reality, the better that will hold up the stuff that you are making up; so if you're writing about renaissance history, talk to some Renaissance historians and get them to beta.  If you're writing something set in Montreal in 1980, talk to people who lived in Montreal in 1980, and so on.  (Space opera is much easier than urban fantasy or historical fiction this way.  Nobody's going to nitpick you for getting the cultural details of the beings living around Epsilon Aurigae wrong so long as you make them hang together in an internally plausible way.)

The corollary of this is; never write in any detail about guns, horses, or sailing ships.  The world is full of people who will always know more than you about those topics, and many of them are on the internet and will say so at length.

[Wordmaker]

The setting of my Locked Within series is actually quite detailed, but mostly in my own head. My rule of thumb is that if a piece of setting information isn't somehow relevant to a given scene, I don't mention it. You'd be surprised how much detail you can slip into off-hand comments, important dialogue, etc.

There's a lot of information about my setting that will never appear in one of the books, because it's not important to the story and would only slow the pace if I took time out to go into it.

[arianne]

I think it's important to have a very clear idea of your story's setting (as in, how everyone got to where they were, how supernatural creatures were born, how everything works in terms of biology, physics etc), but not to info dump everything on the reader. I really hate those books that spend pages and pages describing the history and science of their world until the reader wants to scream "NO ONE CARES!!" (a variety of this is the thinly disguised Q&A info dump wherein a newcomer spends pages and pages asking pointless questions about the history and science of said world...)

[The Deposed King]

Neuro's right about getting your background resources right from the start.

and Arianne has a definite point.

But Wordmaker has it down!

Know it all, have it all internally consistent and only put in what actually fits into your story and dump the rest.  I quibble slightly in that I think over a 7-12 book story you could probably fit all or nearly all of that info in at some point or another.  But for a single or trilogy he's spot on.  (I'll let you know at the end of my big series if I was right or not  )




The Deposed King

[Wordmaker]

Oh, jeez, yeah for a longer series you really owe it to yourself to have all the information established somewhere in there. In a series like Harry Potter or the Dresden Files, the story is the story of the setting, not just the characters.

My series is a trilogy, so it's really Nathan Shepherd's story first and foremost.

[BigMoosey]

I'm glad that I'm not just going overboard with it. I'm still working on creating the characters, and some of the finer aspects of the setting, but I appreciate the input. I appreciate everyone's input here, and will keep it in mind. Thanks, folks.

[The Deposed King]

I'm glad that I'm not just going overboard with it. I'm still working on creating the characters, and some of the finer aspects of the setting, but I appreciate the input. I appreciate everyone's input here, and will keep it in mind. Thanks, folks.

What works best for me is to take a core idea, a direction and fixed destination for the first book with ideas for the next and flesh it out as I go.

For instance with Admiral Who I knew I wanted a noble type with no power, big useless rank and gets put in charge of a big clunky old battleship.  Along the way he'd be forced to save the day and deal with the first galactic menace.  The Bugs.

My original progression was envisioned

bugs
pirates
droids
warlords
Imperials

one each per book.  Things expanded until I've got a whole universe rolling around in my head and I'm at book three and only just dealt the pirates a major blow, while the bugs are still kicking around out there.  But if I stopped to put it all down before I wrote, then for me personally where's the fun in that?  I need to know where we are and where we're going and a good idea of the direction we're going to take.  But if I'm going to enjoy writing the thing the actual journey has to be a surprise!



The Deposed King

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

The setting of my Locked Within series is actually quite detailed, but mostly in my own head. My rule of thumb is that if a piece of setting information isn't somehow relevant to a given scene, I don't mention it.

Depends on how you define relevant, though.  As a reader, if i can't see how the world logically fits together to support some SFnal or fantastical element, that's going to damage my suspension of disbelief; the characters may not care about that information or even have it available, but it still needs to be there to make the story work.  (Unless you are writing something explicitly not at that level of realism, such as a fairy tale.)

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

I really hate those books that spend pages and pages describing the history and science of their world until the reader wants to scream "NO ONE CARES!!" (a variety of this is the thinly disguised Q&A info dump wherein a newcomer spends pages and pages asking pointless questions about the history and science of said world...)

personally, I like that sort of detail, but when i am looking for it I read RPG sourcebooks. Unless you're Neal Stephenson, the infodump as an artform in and of itself is usually better not attempted.  There is a difference, however, between stopping for three pages to explain how since the Bioterror Wars everyone is now identified by an unfakeable barcode inside their right nostril, and establishing that detail up by having somebody go through a security checkpoint and grumble about how many noses that scanner has been up today.  (And if there's no indication in that particular setting that either colds and the like spread like wildfire or there's a visible plausible degree of efforrt on keeping the scanners sterile, the worldbuilding fails.Which of those options you take has implications for hwo the government of the setting views the procedure. And so on, and so on.)

Also, how much that gets explained or thought through (if you're in first person or tight third) is a characterisation decision, not a style decision. Detectives ask questions and put facts together and make hypotheses.  Scientists think about the world and try to come up with explanations for the interesting new aliens they've just met. And so on.  It's certainly possible to do incurious characters who will run by one Cool Thing after another without ever thinking about them, but as a reader that drives me wild; if you're not interested in worldbuilding as a cool thing in and of itself (and for what it does to your characters; a seventeenth-century samurai and a medieval Christian monk are not going to approach significant moral dilemmas from the same perspective, and neither is someone from an alien world) then why are you writing in genre at all ?

[Wordmaker]

Of course. The trick is doing that in a way that feel natural and not forced or laden with exposition.