E60 – Editing Worldbuilding

Show Notes

In this episode, V.E. Griffith, Miss Catherine M.H., and Lon Varnadore discuss the process of editing worldbuilding in creative writing. They explore what worldbuilding entails, from creating the physical environment to the cultural nuances of a story. Each host shares their personal approach to editing worldbuilding, revealing they have different methods which depend on their individual writing style and the specific story or genre. Key areas discussed include using sensory details to enrich the world, incorporating cultural elements through character interactions and dialogue, and the importance of maintaining a consistent “story bible” to track changes made during the editing process. Ultimately, they conclude there is no single correct way to edit worldbuilding, but that practice and understanding one’s own tendencies are crucial.

The Revision Wizards are at https://www.revisionwizards.com
V.E. Griffith’s website: https://www.vegriffith.com
Miss Catherine M.H.’s website: https://www.scribes-pen.com
Lon’s Twitter/X: @lonvarnadore1
Lon’s Instagram: @lon_scribbler

Transcript

[Lon Varnadore]
Welcome to the Revision Wizards podcast. I’m Lon Vondadore, and I’m joined by my weirdly dressed co-host V.E. Griffith and Miss Catherine M.H. This is episode 60.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
Today, we’re returning to Editing by Parts miniseries. In this episode, which is number two, we’ll be talking about editing world building.

[V.E. Griffith]
OK, so what is world building?

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
It’s that thing you don’t do.

[Lon Varnadore]
Yeah, it’s a thing you do when you make something and then do other stuff. You write down an idea, then it doesn’t work. So you cross it out and you work on something else.

[V.E. Griffith]
There you go. That sounds about right.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
World building is creating the, literally, the world in which your story is in. This could be the setting of just a chapter. So it could be just the room that someone’s in.

It’s building it all the way outward. So you’ve got the room, you have the house, you have the town it’s in, you have the county it’s in, the country it’s in, the continent it’s on, the planet it’s in, the solar system. It is quite literally building out your world.

So it seems realistic to the reader.

[V.E. Griffith]
So what does that entail for you, Miss Catherine? Because we always know that you and I are different.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
So different. It’s rare that I actually edit world building. It’s one of the things I’m super excited about the most, and it’s the only thing that really gets planned in my pansing idea.

The world makes sense to me and the cultures make sense to me. If anything, my editing is, I have to cut back. So this is where I am cutting out things because I am a Tolkien when it comes to world building.

[Lon Varnadore]
Well, and what about you? There are times when I’ll do what Catherine will do when it comes to writing and figuring things out. I don’t plan, but it just sort of comes out in that first draft.

And then as I’m sort of reading it and going through editing, I’ll kind of just look at it and so kind of figure out, does it make sense? Does it work? So most of the time it does.

Sometimes it doesn’t, and I have to stop and, you know, throw it away and do something else, or fix it some other way. But it completely depends on the story, really. Like it also depends on if it’s actually prevalent to the story or not, because there are times when you might just toss it because, oh, it’s a really pretty idea.

Does it work for the story? Well, not really. Then you got to toss it.

[V.E. Griffith]
That makes some sense. I, generally speaking, don’t do a lot of world building in my first drafts. I do very dialogue heavy first drafts.

And so I have to go back in later and add things that I want the world to have in it that give the reader a sense of the universe or the world that we’re in. Apparently, Miss Catherine thinks that I don’t do any.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
It’s a joke. Is it? Is it?

No.

[V.E. Griffith]
Is it? We’re going to see when you finally get to my edits.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
I’ve been reading them. That’s why the joke came up. All right.

If the grass doesn’t eat somebody at some point in one of your books, I’m going to be really upset.

[V.E. Griffith]
Oh, what am I going to do with you? Wow. Wow.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
So, V.E., I guess the only thing I do when it comes to editing for world building is making it realistic. So I will do extra research to make sure that the thing that I am talking about actually makes sense. So if I’m doing like my space opera, I’ll do the, like I’ll write however I want it to be, and then I will edit the science into it so it’s correct.

When I did Scandal’s Pen, I edited in the clothing correctly because I actually went out and got myself historical clothing so I could figure out how all of it moves. So that would be my editing for world building. When it comes to you adding in, what things are you really looking for first when you come to editing your world building?

[V.E. Griffith]
I’m looking for three basic things, and they can be difficult to add depending on the situation that the character is in. I look at the senses that the character experiences. I want to pay attention to the culture of the world, and I want to pay attention to the scenery of the world.

In terms of senses, you can do a lot, a lot with your senses that cover the scenery. I want to pay attention to what he sees. Obviously, humans, generally speaking, are very visual creatures.

So what the character sees is important. What does the building that you’re walking into look like? Is it run down?

Is it dusty? Is it brand spanking new? Is it gleaming metal?

Is it gleaming glass? Is there concrete falling off of it? Those kinds of things make for an environment that the character is going to have to interact with.

I want to know about his hearing. What do you hear when you’re in this situation? Or if you’re in a city, are you hearing the noise of traffic?

Are you hearing construction equipment backing up? Beep, beep, beep. Are you hearing people?

Are you hearing other kinds of sounds? What do you hear? If you’re in a forest, are you hearing birds and monsters or, you know, grass that eats you, what does that sound like?

When you touch something, how does it feel? When your character eats something, they, you know, stop and have dinner. You can give a sense of what the food tastes like, what the world tastes like.

Is everything bland and boring? Is it spiced and flavorful? Is it painfully hot?

What does food taste like? If a world is, if a world has food that is, you might think of as painfully hot, can I describe how hot that is? For example, at a local Indian restaurant that I patronize, they have a mild, medium, and hot, and then they have Indian mild, Indian medium, and Indian hot, if you want extra spices.

So, you know, how can I describe that kind of flavor? And the last thing that I go through is smell. If I’m in a place, what does it smell like?

If I’m in a city, do I smell car and diesel exhaust? Do I smell decaying plant matter? If I’m in a forest, do I smell bear poop?

Do I smell sewage? What does it smell like?

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
Do you write with the senses in mind, Lon, or is that like a natural piece for your writing?

[Lon Varnadore]
It’s, it’s natural that it comes to me. Like I’ll probably throw in some, a smell or a sight or something that they hear. And then later on, as I am editing, I will also sort of go through.

I won’t exactly do what one writing mentor did, which is he made, he did an entire draft of just smell draft. He wanted to make sure that every about third page he added a smell.

[V.E. Griffith]
That’s different. It makes a certain amount of sense. Because if you want to include senses in your world, you have to make a concerted effort to do so because generally speaking, what most authors will do is they will deal with sight and maybe they’ll deal with hearing and that’s about it.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
You know, what’s funny is I don’t write with taste. I’ll mention the food, but normally it’s food that people are very used to eating. I’m talking about pizza or like in my space opera, it’s going to be like normal foods that we would think of.

And I don’t know, I just don’t describe taste. I’ll go all the other ones, but taste is very rare.

[V.E. Griffith]
Well, when you’re eating a monster, you need to know how it tastes.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
I have not had a chance to eat monsters yet in any of my stories.

[V.E. Griffith]
Well, there’s an idea for you.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
All right. So on this list of yours, VE, you’ve got culture. Now culture is its own.

I feel like editing world building in general could be such a huge thing. Like we could break this down into complete like own series. So when you’re talking culture, are you going like super big or are you doing something on a smaller scale?

[V.E. Griffith]
I’m generally doing small scale stuff. I’m looking at how the character, how my main character or my viewpoint character interacts with the world around them and what they see. So are people that he deals with, and my main character in my series is a male.

Uh, is the, is, are the people that he deals with rude? Are they snippy? Are they short like New Yorkers or are they Southern not?

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
Look, man, we’ve been in the car once and I was correct. They should have literally honked the horn at that person that tried to cut us off. Okay.

Maybe speed up a little bit and then we wouldn’t have had such problems.

[V.E. Griffith]
Like the stereotype of New York City residents. You don’t live in New York City.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
No, but I grew up there. Just dig that hole a little deeper. Nah, it’s all right.

New Yorkers are paying the asses to everybody. It’s fine. I get it.

We have a right to be. We’re New Yorkers.

[V.E. Griffith]
Or do they turn on the Southern charm? Like they do where I come from. Hi, sweethearts.

Nice to see you. Would you like some pecan pie?

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
Until they say bless your heart. Yeah.

[V.E. Griffith]
For those of you who do not know, bless your heart is not a compliment. Nope. Anyway, so I want to pay attention to how other characters interact with the main character.

I don’t want them to just have a conversation. I want to get a flavor of what’s polite, what’s not, how your average citizen would react to a situation. Those kinds of things are, are important to me and, and I don’t have to go overboard with them.

I don’t have to have a cultural scene. I don’t have to have a long tell about the culture usually, but I do want to make sure that I give a flavor, especially if it’s different from what your average American is going to expect, because cultures vary place to place, even within the same country, we know that. We’ve just laughed about that.

And so I want to give a flavor of that.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
Lon, you build literally in space operas. How is culture edited in your books? Is it something like that’s focused on or not as much?

[Lon Varnadore]
It depends really on what I’m, what the, again, it just sort of comes down to story and what do I need versus if I want to focus on something, there’s been some stories I’ve written that are a little bit more based on the sort of quasi individual cultures, quote unquote, of different places, different places like Mars, and then there was the asteroids and, and further out, there were different cultures that sort of expanded and came to be because of XYZ reasons.

And that was part of, not a quasi focus of the book, but it was something I wanted to talk about a little bit more versus some things, which is just, I’m going to take one or two of these ideas and I’m just going to kind of tie them very loosely together and see if this sort of hangs there and works well, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but I also, a big thing is also a dialogue, just, just thinking in how people talk is a great way to sort of show certain, certain parts of a culture as well.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
I agree. Yeah. I think with me, culture is easy for me to write in.

So the editing isn’t too bad. The, my space opera is different because I have two, two separate time frames separated by 500 years. And in one chapter, I’ve got the culture that’s established already on this spaceship, and I have the other one that’s trying to establish the culture as they’re starting the ship’s flight.

So it’s a very interesting play to do where you’re, you’re still doing the modern stuff that we expect here on earth, but you’re trying to put it into like a spaceship. So in that case, that editing has been difficult in the sense of, cause I, I pants this stuff anyway. So I’m like, ah, where’s does this come from?

And then something will happen in the future that I’m like, Ooh, I’ve got to put that now somehow into the past. Like that has to come from somewhere. So that part will be a little tricky editing wise for me.

[Lon Varnadore]
And on the reverse side, when it comes to something like in a fantasy context, for example, you know, you’ve got to worry about other things besides just the culture, like culture of magic and culture of, and plus in, in fantasy stories, there’s usually a little bit more want and desire to sort of show different like fantasy cultures that you’re sort of come up with.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
You want to know the rules behind different races in places you want to, you want to see that that part is going to be a much bigger aspect of that world.

[Lon Varnadore]
Exactly.

[V.E. Griffith]
Yeah. It’s very much going to be dependent on genre and genre conventions. If you’re writing a cozy mystery set in Maine, you’re going to, you may have less cultural touchstones than you would in a, in an epic fantasy that’s, you know, 2000 pages long.

So it’s, it’s going to depend on genre conventions and on your particular story. There’s no real right or wrong way to do it, but it is worth thinking about so that your world is believable and is a well-rounded world. It’s not just flat.

And you know, we have, we have a building that doesn’t, that doesn’t, a white building that’s nondescript.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
Now, if you’re on the opposite end, you that one of your other points was the scenery or maybe basically like what’s around in that zone, right? So we’re not in that way. I am the opposite.

I go through and I detail everything. There is everything in this. I am that Tolkien writer who tells you that there is a bug under the leaf, seven feet away under like six trees over there.

I’m giving you that information. So when I’m going in and doing my editing, I have to cut. So I have to look and be like, what is actually vital to my story?

Is it important that there is a bug under a leaf all the way over there? No, unless that bug is a really big reason. There are small little things that I will leave in as little breadcrumbs throughout my book for certain things.

I could be really descriptive on clothing as you know, VE knows, but my clothing is based on certain aspects. Certain things that are happening is based on certain colors. So anytime, you know, Eleanor goes out to do something that’s batshit insane.

She’s usually in the color red or Theodore’s in the color red. So some, one of them is in this color that’s bright and bold and usually dangerous. So like, I’ll look for little things like that.

And that helps me cut back on all of the other descriptions that I could have. I’m going to really look to see what’s important. What is building the scene?

So I don’t have to describe this room every time you walk into it. I’m only going to look to describing it once, unless something changes in it. So that is, that’s my editing when it comes to world building is how much can I take out of the book?

Before VE even got the book, I cut about 40,000 words. And most of that was description and like three extra chapters.

[V.E. Griffith]
One of the things that you can do, I saw a really good example of this in the movie, the matrix where everything that’s in the matrix is a green color to it. There’s sort of a green cast or a green tent over the entire world. Whereas everything in the real world is blue.

That’s never explained explicitly in the movie. And I only know about it because I’ve watched some of the feature it’s at the end of the DVD. But that is a very deliberate choice that the, that the cinematographer has made.

And so it’s some, it’s an approach that in the right genre, in the right situation, an author can delineate various settings in their world.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
Yeah, that’s, that’s a big one. So it’s, it’s the small things like your world building. Well, yes, important.

And it is extremely important to the author to understand the world building. Your reader does not need to be bogged down with world building. Now, certain genres, totally acceptable to have more world building than others.

We’ve talked about fantasy, um, science fiction. They usually have more of that world building. Science fiction wise, you’re going to have more of that science world building in there most of the time.

Depends on what kind of sci-fi you’re doing. And again, you’re not going to have like a thriller be super detailed unless the detail is literally the world building is trying to kill the person. Then that would be interesting.

It’s the grass. The grass is trying to eat people. So yeah.

So world building, it’s a fine line, I think. And the more you write and read, I think the better you get at editing and writing world building.

[V.E. Griffith]
Very much so. Like everything else, it just comes down to practice. The more you do it, the better you get.

Yep.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
Is there anything in particular that you do differently, Lon, for your books, world building and editing wise?

[Lon Varnadore]
I try to sort of, when I’m trying to write a scene or something, I will, I know I will try to like get either find a picture or something that will work as like something to sort of like look at as I’m writing it. And then even as I’m editing, I’ll kind of go back and look over and go, no, that’s not really what I wanted or something like that. I have to change, change something because of, oh, the guy’s coat’s wrong.

So wait, I have to put it, it’s more of a blue than a green or whatever. But I do try to look for sensory. I do put more sensory things in, more like, more like VE, but I don’t find myself being overly, I don’t, I don’t, I am not the Tolkien type writer where I will just write all of these details.

Yeah, I’m sort of like in the middle between the two of you.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
Do you, so I know for me, which my present writing self loves to do, but my editing self hates my past for, I’ll be writing and then I’m like, ooh, wait, I’m going to change this, how this person looks. And then I’ll leave a note that goes from here on out, you’re going to be like this. And then from there on out, I write that, but I never go back to fix it until editing self goes back.

That is a, I really curse out my writing, like my past self every time I do that. But I also, because, you know, I use this wonderful thing called OneNote to, uh, keep all of my notes together and all of my stuff in order and organized. If I change things, it goes in there too.

So I have whole sections of like, this is my world building, my vision boards and stuff, and I’ll put in notes of like, this is now what this is as of page this on this day. So this way, my, my editing self can curse myself out more when it comes time to it.

[V.E. Griffith]
Those kinds of changes are an excellent use of your, of your story Bible, which is what you’re talking about. And we’ve talked about story Bibles in the past, but you want to make sure as you’re writing and as you make these kinds of changes that you keep your Bible up to date and you do a pass where you make sure that all of your characters match your Bible. So your Bible should always be current.

And when you do your editing passes and you’re looking at characters or you’re looking at settings where you might have changed the way a building looks or the color of the spray paint graffiti or something like that, that that goes into your Bible so that you can cross check later.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
Yeah. It’ll help with editing. That if you’ve got your, you know, series Bible that is up to date with all of the stuff, you can then cross-reference it, which really does help, especially if you’re building huge worlds, you have a complicated culture, you’re going into all those details, you’re trying to have that science, having that science background of this is how an actual engine works or something like that.

It really helps you to then cross-reference when you’re doing your editing for your world building. Lon, or not Lon, V.E., do you ever change anything in the middle of writing and then have to leave yourself a note? I’ll go back and finish that later.

Or are you the type who goes back and changes it?

[V.E. Griffith]
No, I don’t go back and change when I’m doing first drafting. I work very hard to keep forward momentum in my first drafts because I am the sort of author I have learned that will go over and over and over and over and over a first chapter to make sure that I get it absolutely perfect. I can’t do that if I’m going to make any progress in my manuscript.

So the only way that I can do it is through the story Bible method. So I go edit my story Bible and say, I changed this in chapter five. I need to go back in one, two, three, and four and fix it.

Makes sense. So what about you, Lon, do you do that?

[Lon Varnadore]
I will very much, as Katherine does, write myself a little note. It’s like, oh, from here on, it’s such and such. Won’t go back.

Won’t just, you know, not even going to go back. And then when I run into that note as I’m editing, it’s like, I’m going to go back and steal this all over again.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
Now, I have a question for you. Are your notes nice to yourself? Because my notes are not.

[Lon Varnadore]
Oh, no, no, no, no, no.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
Mine are like, fuck you, bitch. You just changed his eye color. Shut the fuck up and just keep writing.

And then it’ll be from there on. I’m like, oh, I changed his eye color.

[V.E. Griffith]
Yep. I make my notes polite because if I don’t, I will get so depressed at how terrible my writing is. I already get depressed about how terrible my writing is, so I don’t need to make it worse on myself.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
Let me add this. His writing is not bad, friends. His writing is not bad.

Reading.

[V.E. Griffith]
You can hear the whistling sound of how, how hard it sucks. So I want to make sure also in case I die and somebody’s going through my manuscript. Never thought of that.

Wow. V was V to himself. Exactly.

A hundred years from now, when people are, are, are going through my, my sucky writing, I want to make sure that, that I appear not quite as neurotic as I actually am.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
There was a, a full draft of my opera that it starts off in being like, Hey, pick a name for this character. And I left it in that. I still hadn’t picked a name for this character by the end of the book.

And by like, and it just kept getting worse and worse the more this character was like brought up here and there, it’d be like, you still didn’t pick a name, bitch. Like, and it just kept going till the end. And I can’t remember what name I picked for this poor person, but I do know I picked like a combination of the amount of initial, like the first initial or like first letter of like the long sentence that it finally got to by the end of when I’ve chosen his name.

Um, and then I had to go back through and search for all those sections and stick his name in. And it’s just really funny to like watch how it was like, please pick a name. Let’s insert a name here.

Insert a name. You still haven’t picked a name. What is wrong with you?

And it just like kept going. It’d be real interesting whoever read that version.

[V.E. Griffith]
That actually is an important part of world building. Names are important and they can indicate things about where people come from and what their culture looks like. Just like in the real world, your culture can determine not necessarily what your name is, but can give you a set of names to choose from that indicate where you’re from.

Or what your cultural background might be. And so if you’re trying to write diverse characters, you want to go ahead and make sure that you pay attention to that aspect of culture.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
That’s very true. Which is interesting because I don’t think much in that sense of names. I will look through baby names because I own multiple baby name books, which originally terrified my fiance the first time I came home with a pile of baby name books.

And he was like, are you telling me something? And I was like, I haven’t figured out a name for this character yet. He’s like, nevermind.

Usually I’m looking for the name, which is going to build a character, which is then suddenly going to put a world in. Once I have the character’s name, the world’s kind of builds around that. And then all of the other character names get based off of the world and the culture that appears in my office, my little green couch and the pigeons.

You weren’t here for last episode, Lon, but I have this weird little world.

[Lon Varnadore]
Sounds like it, but hey, I go to something even almost more specific than the character name, different, sorry, not, not more specific or less specific. Just, I will do what they might be holding. Like if it’s a weapon or if it’s like a cup or something, and then I kind of like just can go from there and sort of start to build outward from, from that.

Nine times out of 10, it’s usually a gun of some kind. That’s cool. Sword or something.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
All right, VE, where does your world building come from? It comes from hell. Well, the demons just whisper in your ear, huh?

[V.E. Griffith]
Yes. Because I haven’t taken my medication.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
Well. All right. So he trips friends.

That’s how he figures out building.

[Lon Varnadore]
Yeah, basically. Yeah.

[V.E. Griffith]
Carlos got the native American magic mushrooms. Hey, usually I start on the larger end. I start with buildings.

I start with smells. I start with grass. I start with character appearance, and then I go downward into smaller stuff.

For example, character is holding a book. What does the book look like? What does the book feel like?

Is it small? Is it large? Does it have foil on a cover?

What do the edges look like? Are they, is it a painted edge? Is it a straight edge like most modern books that you see?

Is it an edge where it’s ridged like some literary fiction that’s supposed to look old timey? What does the book look like? And those are things that I would notice and that a character would notice when they’re looking at, for example, a book of magical something or other.

And those kinds of details can be important in the genre in which I write. So I pay attention to those little things, but those tend to come after the larger overall world.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
That’s fascinating. I wouldn’t be able to, I don’t think I could picture having like a world and then zooming in on it. I always have to have something and then zoom out on it.

[V.E. Griffith]
That’s because you’re weird.

[Lon Varnadore]
I, I can kind of do both, but it depends again, story. Like it depends on if I have like the idea, the character first, or is it more the world or is it something even more strange, like, you know, the names of the gods, I think so.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
In other words, there’s no right way or wrong way to edit world building. We all have different ones.

[V.E. Griffith]
Yep. We do have different ones, but in some ways we all have to attack the same problems. The difference is going to be just how we attack them.

Exactly. Yep. All right.

So I guess that does it and we will sign off.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
Stay magical.

[V.E. Griffith]

Bye.