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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:

--- Quote from: BigMoosey on April 27, 2013, 07:11:13 PM ---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.

--- End quote ---

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:

--- Quote from: Wordmaker on April 26, 2013, 02:07:34 PM ---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.

--- End quote ---

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:

--- Quote from: arianne on April 26, 2013, 03:31:57 PM --- 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...)

--- End quote ---

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 ?

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