Worldbuilding 11: tools of the trade?
Magazine
Fantasy literature is a niche in the publishing market but it has spawned a rather larger industry online: the myriad websites, agencies and resourceful individuals that promise to guide you through the process of creation, from inspirational beginnings to successful outcomes. These various agencies hold out the promise that you are not alone in your ivory tower - help is at hand.
The most curious and interesting of these aids to the budding fantasy novelist are the worldbuilding toolkits; one stop shops that effectively allow you to construct a comprehensive world in kit form. In this article I'll explore the toolkit market and consider its utility for the writer.
So what are worldbuilding toolkits and what do they offer? There are, broadly, two types of tools: the first type is akin to a Wiki, a database where you store the worldbuilding elements of your story so you can refer to them as you write; the second type (referred to in the trade as MoaWs, or Mother of all Worldbuilding) is far more comprehensive, offering not just storage but suggestions for the various elements of your world - character types, monsters and animals, demons and mages, plot devices, interactive maps of your world, lore and background information.
The first type is clearly designed for writers who already have some experience in worldbuilding; they are not looking for suggestions but rather need a handy, always available way to organise worldbuilding material. In most respects, these tools are no different than a well-organised database, or a file of notes made by the writer on the disparate elements that make up their world.
The second is an altogether more serious proposition; these apps do more than simply store material that the writer has created. The sites are usually designed as complex, wide-ranging menus of the elements that conventionally make up the world of a fantasy novel. When you click into a menu item you are offered a lot of choices; for instance, suppose you are creating character types and thinking about non-human characters. The app will bring up a list of such characters, categorised as good or bad, powerful or less so, with or without magical abilities; you can choose a type, customise it to suit your novel, and store information about it.
I visited a few sites and tried the free sample sessions. My overall impression was of a shopping trip, though I'm happy to acknowledge that I went there on spec rather than having specific tasks I needed performed. Each sub-section of the app is a kind of department in the store: characters, geographical features, styles of magic, languages (yes, you can buy a fictional language online), history and lore. If you buy or subscribe to the full version, you are also offered plot suggestions and some elements of editorial support.
What's not to like? I have an idea for a fantasy novel, I visit the site or buy the app and I am supplied with all the things I need to turn my idea into reality; all that is left for me to do is sit down and write the thing, and I'm even offered help in that department. Perhaps; and then again, perhaps it is not quite so simple.
Worldbuilding apps were originally designed for role playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons. If you are a dungeon master looking for ways to spice up the game, originality is likely not top of your priority list. You want things that fit the context and the milieu of the game, with scalable power and appropriate abilities. When I looked at the toolkits, I got the impression that much of the DnD ethos still inhabited (haunted, even) the writing versions. This meant, for me, that much of what was on offer fell into fairly conventional categories and felt as much like toys as tools.
More pertinently, I came away from my trial experience with some questions and reservations. The first is about choice and influence. The sheer amount of options on the apps is a little overwhelming; a new author, with a loose idea for a story, could quite easily be influenced by this smorgasbord of plug-in story elements to a point where their own idea disappears under an avalanche of external suggestions.
So my first caveat would be: don't go to these apps until you have a firm idea of what you want to write. If you go there too early in the process, when your narrative is still full of gaps and questions, you are vulnerable to what is effectively marketing on the part of the app. Shiny toys with instant appeal are difficult to refuse, especially in an age when we all succumb to the lure of online shopping.
My second reservation is the hardy perennial problem of ‘assisted' writing in any form: quality. While there are a lot of options on the apps, they tend, perhaps inevitably, towards the typical rather than the original. This is hardly a surprise. Products oriented to a mass market tend towards the middle of that market; if you are aiming higher, you may find your progress hindered more than helped.
Finally, consider the future. If the worldbuilding apps add AI to their armoury - surely inescapable in the current climate - then we will soon be looking at apps that build a world, populate it with characters, lore, geography and magic, and then produce a text to go with it. The putative author may have done little more than click. Text produced by AI (chatbots) is not exactly in the ‘masterpieces R us' category, and is unlikely to improve in the near future. Do we really want a world of books riddled with automatically generated mediocrity?
When he isn't editing, Noel Rooney writes a regular column for Fortean Times magazine, and wilfully obscure poetry. He lives in South London with his family and rather too many animals.
Worldbuilding 1: character names in fantasy novels
Worldbuilding 2: the basics of writing fantasy fiction
Worldbuilding 3: geography and physical location
Worldbuilding 7: it's a kind of magic
Worldbuilding 8: non-human characters
