Depth Trumps Breadth

First of all, stop snickering. That’s not what I’m talking about.

Widely acclaimed Fantasy author Brandon Sanderson once noted in an episode of the Writing Excuses podcast that depth in worldbuilding is worth more in terms of investing the reader into your work than breadth is. In other words, a handful of core ideas explored thoroughly and with their implications made manifest in the world of your story is going to resonate with your audience far more strongly than a great many ideas given only shallow consideration.

Often, the goal of worldbuilding is to create what we think of as a “well-realized” fictional world in service of our stories, but in the context of the above- which to me has become something approaching another one of Sanderson’s Laws, all of which I already venerate as near-ironclad laws of fantasy writing- what does it mean for a world to be well realized? That it is very complete, or that what’s there is thoroughly fleshed out?

I’m looking to start a discussion on this topic. I think it’s one worth talking about, and that we who concern ourselves deeply with world-building can benefit from. I have a lot more to say on the topic as well, but in the interest of getting the discussion going, I’m going to hold back for now and present some questions that might spark some conversation.

Do you think Sanderson is right, or does breadth of focus come with its own set of advantages to counterbalance depth? Is this a false dichotomy?

What are some particularly good examples of deep worldbuilding you’ve come across? Has it served the story more or less than breadth, in your opinion?

How do you approach this issue in your own writing? Where do you put your focus? Do you have some sort of tradeoff of one for the other?

edited 25th Aug '14 1:42:07 AM by gault

I would be inclined to agree with Sanderson. It's better to have a few well-thought out aspects than a lot of half-baked ones. Of course, it's even better to have both breadth and depth, but not everyone is a Tolkien or a Herbert.

I often find that breadth and depth tend to leverage one another. You think, okay, what kind of foods does such and such eat and how does that effect their culture or their health? What kind of trade routes does the kingdom have and how does this effect their politic? Everything in the world is connected to each other, either directly or indirectly. Feel out these connections, understand the relationships, and a setting practically builds it'self.

Granted, it helps to be a cosmopolitan so go out and study a bit of everything.

edited 22nd Aug '14 8:13:22 PM by Belisaurius

I think a well-realized world is one you'd make plans to either go vacation at or rally to send troops to, and get as far as working out the local exchange rate before catching yourself. It's one you can get lost in mentally - and physically as well, if you've made the culture different enough. Doesn't matter if it's mostly limited to a room (I'd say Kafka's Metamorphosis is like this), a home, or a neighborhood; if you can close your eyes and see that world the author has deigned to show you, and feel that you can interact with it, it's a success.

I won't go so far as to call it a false dichotomy, but are several flaws in it that prevent it from being a useful rule. (Gault? Unless you link to your source, we have only your word to go on. I may be misunderstanding Sanderson's words spectacularly here.)

• First and foremost, the 'your audience' Sanderson's talking about is not the only kind of reader. Different ages and cultures have different expectations: pick up a popular YA 'fantasy', and see how little depth it has, then note how well it's selling, or find a really dry doorstopper about the modern concentration of capitol and see how well it's selling - and then try to explain that they're the same audience. (Or compare Tom Clancy and Kim Harrison - they're both pretty good, but I doubt their readership overlaps very much.) As for culture... My own experience was with the Japanese translation of the Twilight Saga (the second one), which was inexplicably quite passable in a Four Yorkshiremen sort of way. (I'm pretty sure it was more the translator workin' some hell of magic rather than it being an inherently 'Japanese' novel.)

• It's not a false dichotomy for shorter stories, when you really can only chose to focus on one or the other, but it is with longer stories or a series. You should do both, if you have the time and space, or at least try to strike a 'gray balance' between the two extremes (my example here is the Discworld series). A wonderful room is just that - a room - and there's only so much story you can experience there. While you could conceivably run a whole series of Bottle Episodes, the audience, no matter who they are and how much they like your style, are eventually going to wonder what's outside of the bottle. Likewise, you can focus a series on everything that's outside of a certain room the characters congregate in, but that just raises the same question (and I've found it generally relies on the audience being aware of the initial stories in the room to work anyway - fanfic can get really damn boring or inherently meaningless if the audience is unfamiliar with the original).

• Speaking of extremes... It's all well and all to focus on advantages, but Depth comes with the disadvantage that it essentially forces the reader to go down a rabbit hole of the writer's choosing. That's fine if they want to do that, but unless you've really worked some magic, it's going to affect its appeal. Go too deep, and you've basically written a textbook that may be the authority on the matter, but is so specific that it has no appeal outside of its field. For that matter, focusing solely on Breadth will result in a superficial image of the world - no one does this, because you're taking a picture (and captioning it 'this is all posed') without telling a story. That's actually very difficult to do with real-life photography, too!

I will also take ...not offense, really, as Sanderson seems to be speaking to a specific audience. Hm. What is it... I dunno. But Sanderson's argument as presented here assumes a minimum level of skill, appealing style, and that a story (any sort of art, really) must be intended for consumption by an audience besides the writer. (I assume it's Sanderson talking, because the questions Gault is asking are broader.)

Technical skill and style are not the same thing, and hopefully this isn't a revelation and I'm just stating it to be complete; they're the difference between an almanac/encyclopedia entry and a travel brochure about a place. They both tell you something about somewhere, but one tells you what everyone needs to know, and the other tells you what the writer thinks you want to see - but they're clearly meant to appeal to different needs for knowledge.

I'm also pretty sure that everyone who has every 'arted' has 'arted' something - anything from a few words in a story to a lifetime of work - that holds so personally important a meaning as to trump Depth vs. Breadth.

I suppose my point is that this boils down to a complaint that the artist is not showing as much of the world in the clarity that the audience wants - and that's not a duty on the artist's part, unless they're contractually obligated to do so. In writing this response, I don't give two shits about what anyone here wants me to say, because I'm writing this out of my own desire to do so and no one has asked me to comment on anything specific. (This doesn't mean I'm trying to half-ass anything or think ill of anyone here - I still want to present as full an argument or opinion as possible, to try and increase the depth/breadth of this discussion.)

Overall, I see depth as something to adjust based on the needs of the audience you intend to reach. If you're trying to write for someone who you're pretty sure won't take the time to think about what you've said, ease up on the depth a bit and go for breadth - and vice-versa. (If I didn't think someone here was going to read all of that, I wouldn't have bothered. Though I certainly appreciate the chance to order my thoughts by putting them into writing...) But never do simply one or the other if you can help it, as that's just not very good writing, and there's no excuse for focusing on something at the expense of a good story.

(I realize that I've mostly been talking about Depth/Breadth of a story rather than the ideas in it - that's because I feel the ideas are less important than the story containing them. To play off of Shiro_okami's words a bit: as long as the ideas work with each other and in the story - and more importantly get the reader asking 'I want to know more' instead of having a Fridge Logic moment - it doesn't matter how well-cooked they are. There are many aspects of Adventure Time that don't make a lick of sense, but it manages to keep being interesting for this reason.)

I think that's about it.

edited 23rd Aug '14 11:26:27 AM by DeusDenuo

Based on you twist on my post, I think it also depends on the seriousness and tone of a work. When people mention "worldbuilding", I tend to think of epic fantasy and science fiction, which usually has a more serious and realistic tone and where too much Fridge Logic and Plot Holes that result because the reader starts seeing implications and interactions from the world's aspects that the author did not foresee or notice can actually ruin the work, especially if it affects the story as a whole. The author should know how their world would actually function better than the reader, not the other way around. OTOH, if the work does not take itself seriously, the reader may lower their expectations of having everything add up at the end.

It's sort of like Wild Magic vs. Magic A Is Magic A. Wild Magic hides its depth while Magic A Is Magic A exposes its depth completely to the reader. While Magic A Is Magic A may engage the reader more, if you break your own rules for no reason, you decrease the credibility of the story. If a writer can't effectively manage Magic A Is Magic A, then Wild Magic may be the better option. OTOH, if the writer wants Magic A Is Magic A, they should devote the attention necessary to actually have it make sense before moving onto something else.

edited 23rd Aug '14 6:10:36 PM by shiro_okami

Well, first it's easier to focus on a couple of important things in your work and explore them than go with a slapcrap bunch of things that aren't connected to one another. I wrote about the importance of this approach in tabletop RPGs after a particularly awful adventure concocted by my former GM. Wolsung: Steam Pulp Fantasy, so a steampunk fantasy world like Arcanum, but with the geography more or less similar to Earth. Archeologists find the tomb of a templar in the crypt of a church in the UK. First important thing that deserves some exploration. One of the archeologists disappears, and somehow she is the only one that wasn't a member of an elite and secretive college fraternity. That's a plot already. And then plot points started piling up without much exploration, with the story ending on something completely unrelated that didn't even made much sense in itself.

Another argument against too much breadth is that the reader is forced to focus on a lot of different things at once. That might be confusing, especially if each of those things is nebulous and not well thought out. So, whatever happens, depth before breadth. You'll avoid making things look like Ass Pulls.

edited 24th Aug '14 2:25:26 PM by NotSoBadassLongcoat

Huh. I didn't even consider tabletops at all. ...but even then, it sounds like that depends on a GM's competence and willingness to railroad the players.

I would add that, if they're simple enough, the upper limit on the number of ideas you can introduce in succession is quite high. And it has to be - otherwise you'd never be able to keep the attention of someone new to fantasy or alternate reality settings with few commonalities with the real world. I think the trick is to keep things moving quickly enough to keep the audience from focusing.

Sanderson has noted that Fantasy and Science Fiction tend to have steeper learning curves than other genres.

By the way, I checked back and found that it wasn't one of Sanderson's lectures I was remembering, it was actually an episode of Writing Excuses, a podcast that Sanderson co-hosts. The link to the relevant episode is here:

http://www.writingexcuses.com/2014/05/18/writing-excuses-9-21-sandersons-3rd-law/

edited 25th Aug '14 1:40:53 AM by gault

The trick is in making the players explore the plot points. Same as making the readers interested in what's going on. With the additional difficulty that a reader has more than enough time to find Fridge Logic if not obvious plot holes.

Ah! Yeah, "Sanderson's Third Law" makes a whole bunch of sense.

Depth is important, but breadth- well...

Part of really making a fictional world feel alive is making it feel bigger than whatever the story is focusing on. Too many 'verses loose verisimilitude when they become too incestuous with their lore. Making everything too closely connected robs the world of its sense of scale. Having everything explained robs it of its mystery.

I think the real problem with bad world-building comes from failing to give audiences a connection to it. I roll my eyes whenever some fantasy video game starts with ten minutes of boring historical exposition. You need a solid jumping-on point, and then you need to build from there. The audience needs to care about whatever chunk you've given them before you give them the next one. There also needs to be a focus on quality over quantity; a few really potent ideas will be memorable. A thousand generic fantasy ideas will be forgotten as soon as they're presented.

In books, depth definitely is more important than breadth.

Breadth focused worldbuilding operates ONLY on a large scale and neglects the local setting of the story so the worldbuilder call go on an Author Tract about the ancient history of a random country on the other side of the world when the teenage protagonist isn't interested in history and/or has no way of knowing about it (this is one of the pitfalls of writing fantasy in the omniscient POV and annoys me so much I almost exclusively read and only write close-third-person or first-person). This type of worldbuilding relies on Infodumps for exposition because most of the information is too irrelevant to be woven in as the story moves along, and a lot of readers - if they haven't put the book down in search of something better - will just start skipping over the Infodumps, and when there's actually something relevant, they'll miss it. The cultures in the story will almost always fit the Planet of Hats trope, and there might be Loads and Loads of Races that never show up. No Character Development will happen and even the protagonist will be a Flat Character because the writer thinks that the war that happened 5,000 years ago is more important than their characters' personalities and relationships. Breadth-based worldbuilding usually happens because the writer is a newbie (my worldbuilding used to be terrible) or has a "the bigger the better" mentality.

On the other hand, depth-based worldbuilding is full of information that has an effect on the characters' daily lives and mindsets, such as social norms/cultural customs. Depth-based worldbuilding creates and strong sense of place that helps readers maintain a Willing Suspension of Disbelief, and everything in the setting that will affect the story is well-researched and richly-detailed. There is no infodumping necessary because the information can be seamlessly worked into the story. The plot is not neglected and the characters act like real people (since cultures are created by PEOPLE, putting people who act realistically into the story will make the culture seem more "real").

I'm not saying depth-based worldbuilding is flawless (a lack of internal consistency and bad storytelling can easily mess up ANY type of worldbuilding) and making the world feel like it extends beyond the story also increases realism/believability. The key to adding breadth to worldbuilding without annoying the audience is to put it in in small doses. If part of the world outside of the main setting is really important (i.e. you're writing a political intrigue story and your protagonist is an ambassador from a country that's on the edge of war with the one the story is set in ), you will have to make sure it has a high level of depth, too.

edited 11th Jun '16 3:31:30 PM by 1AuroraAngel1

Yeah, with world-building, keep in mind that your setting should usually be an Adventure-Friendly World-that is to say, your world exists to be friendly to the adventure, not the other way around. It's fine to think of ideas regarding your world's background, but if they aren't relevant to your character's story you might wish to leave them out.

A good example: imagine if Rubber-Forehead Aliens were reading a story that took place on Earth during World War II, told from the perspective of an American soldier. How much detail would they need to know? Probably not that much, all things considered.