You can do all the complex and intricate worldbuilding you want. You can have civilizations developed, with customs, languages, and characters. And you will fall on your face as a writer because you forgot to describe the world you built for the reader.
Whether you are writing fantasy or speculative fiction, you have to show the reader what the world looks like, sounds like, and smells like. Otherwise, you get what editors call “white room syndrome.” If you think about your characters all standing around in a completely white room, white walls, ceiling and floor, that’s what we mean by “white room.”
And how does this happen?
Mostly, white room happens because you, the writer, forget to tell the readers what is going on. YOU know what is going on, where and when, and you know this so intimately you unconsciously assume your readers do too. Of course they don’t. Right away, you have to do something about it.
There are a number of pitfalls that await the unwary author who is trying to paint the scenery. The first is the “Book of Genesis” pitfall. That’s where the author, exactly as the name implies, starts with the creation of the world, and doesn’t stop until the reader has thrown the book against the wall in true boredom.
The second pitfall is the “As You Know, Bob…” This is where one of your characters suddenly explains how it all works. “Well, as you know, Bob, the evil werewolves are the bad people and they come out at the full moon and they can turn normal people to werewolves just by biting them…” and for several pages, the author tells you way more about werewolves than you have ever cared about, and certainly more than the story requires.
Third is “The Staff Meeting.” Like an “As You Know, Bob…” the Staff Meeting takes place so the hero or one of the hero’s close associates, can bring us all up to date on the world, and everything in it. Staff Meetings can also go on for pages.
The one thing all three of these pitfalls have in common is they consist of the author TELLING the reader what’s going on. What the author should be doing is SHOWING the readers what’s going on in as much detail as is necessary, but no more.
It doesn’t take much to show the reader. One of the classic lines in science fiction is from Robert A. Heinlein’s Beyond this Horizon: “The door dilated.” Let’s look at all the information this gives you, in three words. This civilization has doors and they have high technology, and they aren’t welded to right angles. That’s a lot of showing, isn’t it?
It also doesn’t “frontload” the background more than is necessary. The job of the author is to reveal the world, but only as much is needed to move the story along. Be very careful of “narrative infodump” because, unless you are a very good, well-practiced writer, infodumps become stodgy and boring quickly. One rule is to only put in what you need to get the characters to the next scene. Lather, rinse, repeat.
One of the things authors often fail to include is how things in your world smell. Smell is even more important than sight in showing the reader. In my short story “And the Devil Will Drag You Under,” (Ring of Fire III, Baen 2011) the POV character wakes up with his face smack in a horse turd in the middle of the street. Think about how much information I’ve given in just the first paragraph, much of it by smell. One of the things modern authors forget is just how smelly, filthy, and vile the streets of any city before the late 1880s were. Since most people bathed infrequently, authors often forget how a salon full of people, even nobles and the wealthy, smelled. You can get a very nice look at your era just by mentioning how the era smells.
In the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy, not one of the characters ever had a bowel movement or needed to urinate. Ever since its first publication, readers have been commenting and making sport of Tolkien’s Victorian sensibilities.
It isn’t science fiction or fantasy, but the scene in The Godfather” where Sonny Corleone tells his consigliere to make sure that his brother, “doesn’t come out of there with just his dick in his hand.” This tells the reader or viewer more about Sonny and his brother than the eleven words in the sentence say.
One of the things an experienced author can do that new authors shouldn’t try, is the omniscient narrator. Ru Emerson does this extremely well in her “Tales of Nedao” series. In To the Haunted Mountains, and In the Caves of Exile, and the third volume, On the Seas of Destiny,” for example, the omniscient narrator is the POV character’s cat who is telling the story from the future of the action. Emerson was a very experienced author. She could handle both a character that was non-human, and an omniscient narrator at the same time.
If you are a new author, concentrate on the story. Start at the beginning, go through the middle, and stop at the end. Once you have several stories under your belt you can try out interesting ways to tell it. One of the most interesting is Roger Zelazny’s telling his story backwards. He would start at what would be the end of the chapter, and explains how his characters got there. Of course, Zelazny could write a Hugo Award-winning novel around a pun.
So watch out for “white room” syndrome.
Walt’s been an author and editor for fiction and nonfiction for more than thirty years. He was Editor in Chief of Eric Flint’s Ring of Fire Press and Editor of the Grantville Gazette magazine.
Currently he’s an acquisitions editor for Misti Media LLC and editor of their Nazca Press imprint. He’s edited over fifty novels and hundreds of short stories, and before that, he was an avid reader and fan.
Walt welcomes and encourages feedback and suggestions. He is also available for editing services.
