On building worlds and universes (cont.)

So there are two basic elements that can make or break a story. One is cohesiveness, the other truthfulness. The former is established through the universe the story takes place in, the latter through the characters inhabiting it.

Let's address the universe part first. What you are creating is a parallel universe, even when your intention is to have the story take place in 'this' reality, like when you set out to do a historical fiction or a crime thriller. The reason is, the world you create will be grounded in your experience and yours alone, and that is a pretty restricted view. However, it's your goal to share this universe of yours and have others have a shot at making it their own. To achieve this, others have to believe in it, and to have them believe in it, it has got to add up – there must be no pinpricks, that's to say.

Now the characters. Their task is to be your audience's eyes and ears in the universe you created. It's through them that other people can experience your universe. To achieve this, your characters have got to be relatable, which is a subjective thing: one character might do the trick for A, but not for B. You can't control your audience's reaction, but what you can do is control the degree of realness they are based on: pick a person from the real world, observe him, drop him into your universe. If done right, it's the characters that will dictate the story's plot; you just channel them (at least that's how I imagine it would be). If the characters are real, then so will their actions and reactions, and the audience will perceive this as truthfulness. One contemporary writer who is a master at this is George Pelecanos.

On building worlds and universes

I am not enthused about the upcoming Transformers flick. One of the reasons being is the world the franchise has tried to create on the widescreen just doesn't click. It isn't cohesive, which is key to building a world or a universe no matter how fantastical or weird. I'll give you a couple of examples of world-building projects that came across successfully as cohesive – one did so by design and the other by chance.

The first one – the by-design one – is Joseph Heller's Catch-22. It's a sin to use adjectives, if I've read Stephen King's On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft correctly, but Catch-22 fires them off like a machine gun to great effect because they all serve the greater cause of creating cohesiveness, of making the characters appear and act in a way that's consistent with the natural laws that govern the world of Catch-22. Nothing in the novel can escape from these laws, and the reader can therefore invest emotionally in this story with confidence. The story throws you down the rabbit hole and into the world of Catch-22, and while in Wonderland rest assured you won't find a Starbucks because if you do, that would be incongruous with that world's natural laws, it would be a pinprick that makes you go "huh?" and wake you up from your dream, from the illusion.

The second example is the Guns N' Roses song Paradise City. Now, stay with me here. The song is from the album Appetite for Destruction, a truthful if not gritty account on sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll. Play the album and you can hear, see, and smell the streets of LA. It's a cohesive world that it's created and therefore safe for you to invest in emotionally. The song Paradise City, however, is our pinprick. But, like the album, it too is cohesive (and therefore a world within a world in the album's context). From the jangly guitar intro to the innocent lyrics, the whole thing operates according to its own natural laws and forms a cohesive world because… it rings true. The band was telling a truth. The song was conceived in the back of a van when the band, still unknown at the time, was traveling back home to LA from a brotherhood-forging road trip. They were feeling triumphant and out came this song.

Which tells me something else. One of the ingredients to creating a cohesive universe, no matter how outlandish, is truth. You have got to tell the truth, a truth or several truths. Star Wars is the perfect world-building success story. It's a universe that operates according to its own natural laws, and because it's so successful and popular people must have gotten some truths out of it, even if they were there by chance.

Anyway, to round this off, for something to be enjoyed on an artistic level it has got to be cohesive, meaning it has got to operate and abide by its own set of natural laws. Why? Because that's how we, humans, perceive and experience our existence in the here-and-now and if this is reflected in that something it tells us that it is being truthful. The currency of art is after all Truth.