Thread by @tordotcom

Happy Day 2 of #BookCon19! We're at The Magic of Worldbuilding with @nkjemisin @joe_hill @marissa_meyer @Marie_Lu!

@nkjemisin @joe_hill @marissa_meyer @Marie_Lu Cars named after famous vampires that run on human lives, supervillains upending the system, futures determined by gameification, and fantasy set here in NYC--lots of worldbuilding to talk about!

@nkjemisin @joe_hill @marissa_meyer @Marie_Lu How do these authors begin building worlds? @nkjemisin's Broken Earth trilogy started w/a dream "of a woman walking toward me with a furious look on her face and a mountain floating behind her." @Marie_Lu was watching the Liam Neeson Les Mis and wanted to write a teen version.

@nkjemisin @joe_hill @marissa_meyer @Marie_Lu 💥 @marissa_meyer's Renegades series is superheroes vs. supervillains, but immediately her subconscious had questions that demanded answering: "Where did superpowers come from? Were the heroes always in control?" etc.

@nkjemisin @joe_hill @marissa_meyer @Marie_Lu You want to explain how a world works in the cleanest, most elegant way possible, @joe_hill says—"because explanations suck." But you also want to know the solutions to whatever mystery you're setting up ahead of time.

@nkjemisin @joe_hill @marissa_meyer @Marie_Lu Case in point, an anecdote from writing Locke & Key and getting advice from Alan Moore: "'Only a jackass would start writing a story and publishing it and posing questions that they don’t know the answer to'... which is when I realized, I was that jackass."

@nkjemisin @joe_hill @marissa_meyer @Marie_Lu When do you explain vs handwaving?

@nkjemisin builds infodumps into the book; there's a reason the character is pausing to tell you a story.

@joe_hill's The Fireman characters ponder different explanations for their world: "They don't know, so why does the reader need to know?"

@nkjemisin @joe_hill @marissa_meyer @Marie_Lu 🎯 @Marie_Lu revisits the Legend world for Rebel, but she needed to write a duology (Warcross) in-between, in order to hear the characters' voices again, before she could understand what was going to happen in Rebel.

@nkjemisin @joe_hill @marissa_meyer @Marie_Lu Renegades came about after @marissa_meyer was stuck on a Lunar Chronicles draft and said, "I just want to write about a superhero and a supervillain who fall in love! It’s all I care about, but I can only do it in one book."

*Make that three books, but she got her wish!

@nkjemisin @joe_hill @marissa_meyer @Marie_Lu How do you worldbuild in short fiction?

@joe_hill cites Clarke's Law ("sufficiently complex science is indistinguishable from magic" + vice versa) in "All I Care About is You": basically magic "but I figured 150 years in the future all this stuff will be possible via technology"

@nkjemisin @joe_hill @marissa_meyer @Marie_Lu ✍️ @nkjemisin uses her short stories as testers for novels: "Do I have enough background material? Do I have the mood right?" etc. It's a proof-of-concept.

@nkjemisin @joe_hill @marissa_meyer @Marie_Lu 💥✨ @Marie_Lu + @nkjemisin on creating stories within beloved franchises like (respectively) Batman and Green Lantern. In both cases, it was finding a story in relatively untreaded ground, from teenage Bruce Wayne to a female Green Lantern from a far-off sector.

@nkjemisin @joe_hill @marissa_meyer @Marie_Lu How about writing a new superhero story using familiar tropes and superpowers? With Renegades @marissa_meyer tried to create or establish "a new set of ideas and personalities to these kinds of superpowers you’ve seen before."

@nkjemisin @joe_hill @marissa_meyer @Marie_Lu How do you as a writer have your characters interact with this world in a seamless, authentic way?

🌎 be choosy with language, avoid expository phrases like "as you know..."

🌍 what details are familiar/boring to characters vs readers?

🌏 tailor your POV character to the story

@nkjemisin @joe_hill @marissa_meyer @Marie_Lu How do you stay out of the weeds when worldbuilding—or how do you pull yourself out?

🗣 character dialogue, forward momentum

📚 @nkjemisin limits her research to 1-2 months

🛑 if the story starts slowing down, you're in trouble

@nkjemisin @joe_hill @marissa_meyer @Marie_Lu 🤔 @joe_hill with the important worldbuilding questions about #AQuietPlace: "If one of them farts in their sleep, is it over?"

@nkjemisin @joe_hill @marissa_meyer @Marie_Lu How do they come up with their characters? What comes first, chars or worlds?

@nkjemisin: "Mine come up with themselves. I don't have a choice."

@Marie_Lu + @marissa_meyer take notes on others' quirks.

@joe_hill: "Idk, but if you don't have a good one, you don't have a story."

@nkjemisin @joe_hill @marissa_meyer @Marie_Lu That's the end of The Magic of Worldbuilding! #BookCon19