Thread by @KateElliottSFF

I'm hoping to do a "World-building Wednesday" thread here every Wednesday, but realistically I won't manage it regularly until long distance season (outrigger canoe paddling) is over.
However I want to say a few words today about The Black God's Drums by @pdjeliclark
#WBWSFF

Our recent hurricane scare here in Hawaii made this lovely novella seem EXTRA topical (it was always topical). #WBWSFF

Here it is:

I'm only going to talk about the 1st paragraph & why it worked so well for me that I practically cried while reading it. I have a lot of experience reading sff. I have strong opinions about worldbuilding because it matters to me.
#WBWSFF

Why does worldbuilding matter to me in the context of sff? Or of fiction in general? (because all fiction is about worldbuilding even if set in our world)

It's a matter of craft, as anything is, and also because wb has implications that reach far beyond the words & story
#WBWSFF

Today I'm not going to talk about wb and implications. I'm going to start by quoting the first paragraph of The Black God's Drums.
#WBWSFF

The night in New Orleans always got something going on, ma maman used to say—like this city don’t know how to sleep. You want a good look, take the cable-elevator to the top of one of Les Grand Murs, where airships dock on the hour. +
#WBWSFF

Them giant iron walls ring the whole Big Miss on either side. Up here you can see New Algiers on the West Bank, its building yards all choked in factory smoke and workmen scurrying round the bones of new-built vessels like ants.
+
#WBWSFF

Turn around & there’s the downtown wards lit up with gas lamps like glittering stars. You can make out the other wall in the east over at Lake Borgne, & a fourth one like a crescent moon up north round Swamp Pontchartrain—what most folk call La Ville Morte, the Dead City.
#WBWSFF

First of all, every reader comes to a new story with the knowledge and experiences they have. They can't come with anything else. The idea that there is a universal or proper story is a myth except insofar as we tell stories about ourselves (humanity)
#WBWSFF

So first of all Clark situates me immediately: it's night (always something a bit ominous or mysterious about night) and it's New Orleans. But in case I don't know NO is a city, it's referenced as "this city" later in the first sentence.
#WBWSFF

But that "this city" reference also starts giving me a time frame and reference point, based on my own understand of American history, which may well be flawed or incomplete (almost certainly the latter).
#WBWSFF

"ma maman" I recognize as a Creole term, in the language sense, so now I know the narrator is likely native to the city? Or from a larger Creole-language population or background.
The verb construction of the rest of the first sentence confirms this.
#WBWSFF

The city is also characterized as not knowing how to sleep. That the city is characterized is a form of worldbuilding, the idea that cities have aspects or personalities, aesthetics, that as a reader I can expect to see more of that to come.
#WBBSFF

That's just the first sentence. Look how much work it has done. Part of it based on knowledge I have, and all of it is based on the writer's clear comprehension of what he is doing, and not messing around with generics & platitudes.
#WBWSFF

Because what's interesting to me as a reader and as a writer is the way everything is doubled in that sentence so a reader who knows of the existence of NO can read it with expectation of layers to come, & one who's never heard of NO can also follow it
#WBWSFF

In sentence two we take a cable-elevator
--wait, here's technology that helps situate my possible ideas of a time frame--
to the top of Les Grand Murs
--I don't know French so Murs? idk but I can guess it's walls or towers, and in fact "walls" is confirmed in sentence 3
#WBWSFF

So here's another craft bit: introducing a term that not all English speakers may know and defining it very quickly as confirmation, and in fact the rest of the first paragraph defines the walls & their placement & thus the city itself
#WBWSFF

But wait!
There are airships in sentence 2.
I'm in a steampunk novel! OMG so excited. <== my thought process while reading
And the airships dock on the hour, a small phrase that tells us how frequent & important air traffic is
#WBWSFF

And this is confirmed in sentence 3 when we get a glimpse of the factories. I assumed the "new-built vessels" are more airships. The choking smoke and scurrying workers 'like ants' confirm a prosperous shipyards & economy.
#WBWSFF

I sometimes feel readers don't always understand how much work good worldbuilding does quietly in the background. For a while wb was kind of out of vogue, deemed clunky & intrusive & dorky, but for me as a reader it's at the heart of great sff. Purely my taste.
#WBWSFF

But also the airships & walls & factories & gaslamps in the downtown wards, as well as the casually introduced proper names, create in one paragraph a texture, a sense of what is coming.
They GROUND me.
After one paragraph I'm grounded already.
#WBWSFF

My two biggest takeaways from the opening paragraph are:
1. That I'm already grounded in this new world I'm about to explore.
2. A sneaking suspicion I'm going to see a story told from a different angle than the stories the market has accustomed me to.
#WBWSFF

That's worldbuilding at root: grounding your reader because you the writer know your world well enough to not need to explain it.
As a writer I have too often explained; I'm still learning.
As a reader, getting grounded this fast in a story thrills me.
#WBWSFF

The Black God's Drums is available from @tordotcom, written by @pdjeliclark and edited by @writersyndrome
#WBWSF

One last & very important thing: there are at least 3 set-ups embedded in the 1st paragraph laying the groundwork for the alternate history aspects of the story (& it’s a fabulous alt history fantasy). Find them all! #WBWSFF