StoryWorld

CREATING THE STORY WORLD— WRITING EXERCISE 5

Review Truby’s exercise below, and write a few paragraphs describing as many of the elements below as you can as they relate to your story. The point of this is to create a story world–scenes, weather, setting, technology, systems with rules, etc that reflect the main action and meaning of your story–make the setting part of the story!!

• Story World in One Line Use the designing principle of your story to come up with a one-line description of the story world.
• Overall Arena Define the overall arena and how you will maintain a single arena throughout the story. Remember that there are four main ways to do this:
  1. Create a large umbrella and then crosscut and condense.
  2. Send the hero on a journey through generally the same area, but one that develops along a single line.
  3. Send the hero on a circular journey through generally the same area.
  4. Make the hero a fish out of water.
• Value Oppositions and Visual Oppositions Return to the character web of your story, and identify the value oppositions between your characters. Assign visual oppositions that complement or express these value oppositions.
• Land, People, and Technology Explain the unique combination of land, people, and technology that will make up the world of your story. For example, your story may take place in a lush wilderness inhabited only by small nomadic groups using the simplest of tools. Or it may play out in a modern city where nature has virtually disappeared and technology is highly advanced.
• System If your hero lives and works in a system (or systems), explain the rules and hierarchy of power, along with your hero’s place in that hierarchy. If a larger system is enslaving your hero, explain why he is unable to see his own enslavement.
• Natural Settings Consider if any of the major natural settings— ocean, outer space, forest, jungle, desert, ice, island, mountain, plain, or river— are useful to your story world as a whole. Make sure you don’t use any of them in a predictable or implausible way.
• Weather In what way might weather help you detail your story world? Focus on dramatic moments in the story— such as revelations and conflicts— when using special weather conditions. Again, avoid clichés.
• Man-made Spaces How do the various man-made spaces in which your characters live and work help you express the story structure?
• Miniatures Decide if you want to use a miniature. If you do, what is it and what precisely does it represent?
• Becoming Big or Small Is it appropriate for a character to become big or small over the course of the story? How does it reveal the character or theme of your story?
• Passageways If a character moves from one subworld to a very different subworld, come up with a unique passageway.
• Technology Describe the crucial technology in your story, even if it involves only the most mundane and everyday tools.
• Hero’s Change or World Change Look again at the overall change in your hero. Decide whether the world will change along with the hero or not and how.
• Seasons Is one or more of the seasons important to the story? If so, try to come up with a unique way to connect the seasons to the dramatic line.
• Holiday or Ritual If the philosophy of a holiday or ritual is central to your story, decide in what way you agree or disagree with that philosophy. Then connect the holiday or ritual at the appropriate story points.
• Visual Seven Steps Detail the visual subworlds that you will attach to the main structure steps in your story. Look especially at these structure steps:
  1. weakness or need
  2. desire
  3. opponent
  4. apparent defeat or temporary freedom
  5. visit to death
  6. battle
  7. freedom or slavery
• Figure out how to connect the major natural settings and man-made spaces to the subworlds you use. Concentrate on the following three subworlds:
  1. Weakness subworld: If your hero starts the story enslaved, explain how the initial subworld is an expression or accentuation of the hero’s great weakness.
  2. Opponent subworld: Describe how the opponent’s world expresses his power and ability to attack the hero’s great weakness.
  3. Battle subworld: Try to come up with a place of battle that is the most confined space of the entire story.

Truby, John (2008-10-14). The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller (pp. 209-210). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.