This is an in-person workshop that takes place at Inprint House.
This workshop is open for K-12 educators and staff. Up to 12 CPE hours are available for this workshop by request.
Rewriting the Rules: World-building in the Real World
As readers, we joyfully follow authors into worlds unlike our own—futuristic and fantastic, or contemporary but culturally unfamiliar—whether we’re walking through a wardrobe, hearing the clocks strike thirteen, or scaling an ancient stone wall to escape captors. But how do we, as writers, create a world we would like to invite our readers into? How do we help our readers understand the rules of this new place and time without sounding like we’ve written a Wikipedia entry?
“World-building” is a term most often used by writers of genre fiction such as sci-fi and fantasy, but in reality, every author builds a new world in every new stroy. Even non-fiction writers like memoirists, biographers and historians must use writing craft (i.e. world-building tools) to keep readers engaged and invested in the stories they tell. Whatever you write and whatever worlds you want to build, join author, Caroline Leech, for a weekend’s intensive adventuring. Through readings, discussions, and writing exercises, this workshop will help you:
- Identify the similarities and differences between the world you are creating and the reader’s reality, so you can use them to develop the bond between protagonist and reader.
- Develop your understanding of how character, setting, pace, atmosphere and language can be used to build a created world, without “info-dumping.”
- Avoid the pitfalls in world-building for storytelling and find a balance between your created world’s philosophies and your reader’s contemporary sensibilities and sensitivities.
