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wetcircuit
wetcircuit

Even if some major events of your world do have relevancy, I believe making an entire timeline is a bit too far.

a Straw Man argument

  • Polyamory sounds ok, but marrying everyone on the planet, dead or alive is a bit too far.
  • Stopping for lunch when you're hungry seems ok, but consuming all the food in an entire city and never stopping until you burst is a bit too far.
  • Artificial Intelligence may displace some jobs but it shouldn't be allowed to globally extinct all life on the planet, that's a bit too far.

A straw man argument invents a fanciful extreme that no one advocates or has even suggested. It functions as a false dichotomy invoked to contrast with a 'reasonable alternative', but there's no dichotomy, not even an argument, since the straw man has no basis in reality.

considering that you have to add all of those thousands of years of countless events to your plotline

Appeal to Fear

This is an attempt at manipulative persuasion, but to what goal? You have presented a false problem, and are now priming the reader with a fear of vaguely large numbers – literally 'countless'..., at least 'thousands'.

But, for what? The proposed fix is... just don't do anything?

In writing, we call this anti-climactic. You have created a problem/conflict, and added tension/stakes, but there is no pay-off.

This is why plotting is necessary. There might be a better resolution, potentially some third-option, or a middle-ground where compromises are weighed against benefits. It didn't take me long to see a 'plot hole' in this argument which the conclusion doesn't address.

Is there a reason to go to all that effort?

Even if some major events of your world do have relevancy, I believe making an entire timeline is a bit too far.

a Straw Man argument

  • Polyamory sounds ok, but marrying everyone on the planet, dead or alive is a bit too far.
  • Stopping for lunch when you're hungry seems ok, but consuming all the food in an entire city and never stopping until you burst is a bit too far.
  • Artificial Intelligence may displace some jobs but it shouldn't be allowed to globally extinct all life on the planet, that's a bit too far.

A straw man argument invents a fanciful extreme that no one advocates or has even suggested. It functions as a false dichotomy invoked to contrast with a 'reasonable alternative', but there's no dichotomy, not even an argument, since the straw man has no basis in reality.

considering that you have to add all of those thousands of years of countless events to your plotline

Appeal to Fear

This is an attempt at manipulative persuasion, but to what goal? You have presented a false problem, and are now priming the reader with a fear of vaguely large numbers – literally 'countless'..., at least 'thousands'.

But, for what? The proposed fix is... just don't do anything?

In writing, we call this anti-climactic. You have created a problem/conflict, and added tension/stakes, but there is no pay-off.

This is why plotting is necessary. There might be a better resolution, potentially some third-option, or a middle-ground where compromises are weighed against benefits. It didn't take me long to see a 'plot hole' in this argument which the conclusion doesn't address.

Is there a reason to go to all that effort?

Is there a reason to go to all that effort?

Source Link
wetcircuit
wetcircuit

Even if some major events of your world do have relevancy, I believe making an entire timeline is a bit too far.

a Straw Man argument

  • Polyamory sounds ok, but marrying everyone on the planet, dead or alive is a bit too far.
  • Stopping for lunch when you're hungry seems ok, but consuming all the food in an entire city and never stopping until you burst is a bit too far.
  • Artificial Intelligence may displace some jobs but it shouldn't be allowed to globally extinct all life on the planet, that's a bit too far.

A straw man argument invents a fanciful extreme that no one advocates or has even suggested. It functions as a false dichotomy invoked to contrast with a 'reasonable alternative', but there's no dichotomy, not even an argument, since the straw man has no basis in reality.

considering that you have to add all of those thousands of years of countless events to your plotline

Appeal to Fear

This is an attempt at manipulative persuasion, but to what goal? You have presented a false problem, and are now priming the reader with a fear of vaguely large numbers – literally 'countless'..., at least 'thousands'.

But, for what? The proposed fix is... just don't do anything?

In writing, we call this anti-climactic. You have created a problem/conflict, and added tension/stakes, but there is no pay-off.

This is why plotting is necessary. There might be a better resolution, potentially some third-option, or a middle-ground where compromises are weighed against benefits. It didn't take me long to see a 'plot hole' in this argument which the conclusion doesn't address.

Is there a reason to go to all that effort?

What's the goal?

If the world building and cultural history of your own world sounds like too much effort, maybe you are not "creative"? No need to invent the wheel when there are genres and highly-specific sub-genres with ready-made worlds built-in.

Narrative-tropes include settings the reader already knows. An author uses stock characters in situations that don't require a backstory, shorthand so the reader can go straight to the action.

'Slop' fiction is not new. Worlds can be shallow and broad like Star Wars, where honestly the less backstory the better because it only embarrasses from the lack of coherency. That's not the point.

'Intelligent' world building is also appealing, where the setting is narrow (a world-building conceit that defines the story), or deep (the story evolves from the themes, characters are representative of their environment).

It's not a binary. Readers who enjoy slop-punk-pew-pew-yee-haw can also enjoy ponderous-god-fated-galactic-dynasties.... Sometimes it's not about the details, it's about how the story is told.

Creativity is not wasted effort

World building without a story might be its own creative goal. There are no constraints on what should or should not be significant. The inclusion of events is up to the author.

This is Writing, where world building is in service to a story. the presumption is that world-building is a communication tool, and the author mostly hints at a submerged iceberg that is not directly seen in the finished work, but is evident through subtext, environmental storytelling, and culture-coded details.

Sophisticated world-building is subtle and pervasive, punk world-building is fast and loud. Some genres promise 'cozy' to signal scope and scale, while others are signaling their credentials within literary or historic context.

World-building should not lore-dump the begats of a thousand-year reign of un-eventful rulers. That is an exercise in filler-content. We have AI for this now, it is not even creative just faking the obsessive completeness of fanfiction.

If a story requires a coherent timeline of events, the author should plot (at least) the parts that are relevant, or that need clarity. But respect the reader's suspension of disbelief. The goal is to spark their imagination so the reader believes they know the world already. It's always better to allow them to fill in the gaps with their own possibilities, than to kill imagination with a lot of filler and trivia.