Writing Craft
Worldbuilding with Magic vs. Science
Examples from my own writing
After writing a primer on worldbuilding with magic versus science, I wanted to share examples from my own writing.
I’m working on two stories, one about plastic surgery taken to an extreme (sci-fi), the other a remake of a Korean folktale (fantasy). Typical worldbuilding elements aside (recreating Korea, past and present, for a largely non-Korean audience), each story requires its own set of rules.
Worldbuilding in Sci-Fi
In the plastic surgery story, even though I’m extending the world into the future, I wanted everything to be as believable as possible. I ended up chasing down rabbit holes in the following fields to flesh out my world:
- Medicine: Which procedures could be developed? What materials besides silicone can we safely insert and store in our bodies?
- Economics: How would shocks to the plastic surgery industry spill over to others? What would happen to the price of silicone? What would happen to the Korean job market, since getting plastic surgery for a job interview has become almost as normalized as prepping your resume?
- Domestic policy: What are the ramifications of a silicone tariff on dating and therefore marriage and childbirth? If we make it prohibitively expensive to get plastic surgery, will people simply stop hooking up since they’re so unused to seeing unmodified humans? Can we use such a tariff to shape family policy?
- Chemistry: If we make our bodies a cocktail of foreign chemicals and materials, isn’t it a matter of time before some sort of nasty reaction happens?
I dug into all these areas to ground my story. I chased every lead with gleeful curiosity but also frantic anxiety. I wanted to build strong defenses against nitpickers.
The problem is, of course, that you only have so much space. You can ramble on as long as you want, but eventually readers want a story. So will you.
In my case, I ended up stripping out all of economics; it wasn’t a key part of the story. I used just one strong element of chemistry for a surprise twist (climax), and one strong element of domestic policy for my ending (resolution). I used medicine not in a direct way, but in little snapshots that decorated the setting and set the grimly clinical atmosphere.
Ideally, worldbuilding elements should both be fun and serve a (higher) purpose.
Worldbuilding in Fantasy
The folktale I’m re-interpreting is about humanoid, female creatures called seonnyeo (“sun” and “ñuh,” where the second syllable starts with a Spanish n with a tilde and ends with “uh”; I’m going to use this word as both singular and plural, like “deer.”).*
Seonnyeo live in the clouds and bathe in lakes on Earth; special robes allow them to fly back and forth between the realms. Without the robe they cannot fly. This is obviously a convenient object to create dramatic tension.
In the original fairytale, conflict arrives in the form of a lumberjack who steals one the seonnyeo’s robes and thereby traps her here on Earth, effectively forcing her to marry him. She escapes only after discovering her robe, three children later.
The story is told from his point of view — as a love story. To the modern viewer, it is obviously tragic.
But even as a feminist, I found myself wanting to move past stories that portray and even glorify women trapped in unfortunate circumstances.
I kept asking myself: What about the seonnyeo, these beautiful, mystical creatures? How do they spend their days when they’re not bathing? Where does their silk come from? Most importantly, what prevents another seonnyeo from flying down and handing the main seonnyeo a robe to help her escape?
The answers came quickly in the form of worldbuilding rules, but I had to wrangle them and get them to play nice and maintain internal consistency. I’d try to board up a loophole by hammering one rule down, only to strip it and replace it, again and again.
The challenge was that, compared to all the sci-fi-contingent stories I’ve written, this story was so far removed from the reality we know. I didn’t have basic scientific principles to guide me, and I didn’t want to copy-paste Western mythology into an Eastern fairytale. By their nature, fairytales don’t really explain the rules; we don’t know why the Wolf was able to speak like a human to Little Red Riding Hood.
That meant I was able to come up with literally anything. And then I’d ask myself, why?
Let me share the rabbit holes I fell into when trying to flesh out just one worldbuilding element: where do the robes come from?
- Say the women spin the silk for their robes up in the clouds. What tools do they use? Do they collect materials while they’re down here on Earth bathing? Why haven’t more of them been caught or sighted if they’re stealing the materials? If they’re not stealing, how do they participate in the Earthling economy?
- Say the robes are not in fact made of silk. What are they made of? Do the seonnyeo just spin the threads out of thin air, and if so, what other magical powers do they possess?
- Whatever system I choose, what stops the main seonnyeo from creating a new robe and just flying off? Are the materials readily accessible on Earth if not for her controlling husband? Or are they only available in the clouds?
- All this led to another question: what stopped the other seonnyeo from rescuing her sooner? Is the lack of sisterhood the main reason no one came to save her? This in turn led to the question of: what does their sisterhood look like?
In the midst of all this, I also had to sort through which elements were necessary for the plot and character arcs, and which were just fun. Fun is a worthwhile goal, but personally I’m not a fan of elements that are only fun. Some people find these type of worlds too fluffy and rightfully note they tend to be vulnerable to plot holes, as if the writer was so excited to add vampires they forgot or chose to ignore how the vampires would fare in the sun.
I’m also not a fan of elements that are only utilitarian without adding some flair or grit. Readers rightfully note these worlds can quickly get boring and produce stories not worth remembering. Ideally, worldbuilding elements should both be fun and serve a (higher) purpose.
Fortunately, I’ve found a system of rules that (I hope) are not only visually pleasing but also airtight. I arrived at this system by first allowing my intuition to drag me towards what I liked, then by fidgeting and nitpicking tremendously to weed out any irregularities. I felt like I was writing a mathematical proof.
When it comes to worldbuilding in fantasy, I tend to fall back on ‘Frozen II: Into the Unknown’ as a North Star. It’s an incredible case study of how to use magic and mythology to build a world, theme, and character arc:
Conclusion
In both cases, I let the story guide me. When essential for the flow and premise, I eased up on strict “truth.” I left out details that would only bog down the reader (more appropriate for essays or journal articles), but more importantly, I eased up on myself as the writer. Would I like everything to be tight and irrefutable? Yes, but there’s no point in muzzling the story (unless you’re writing in high fantasy or hard sci-fi).
I hope these examples and tips helped, but at the end of the day, to paraphrase Stephen King from “On Writing,” the bells and whistles are nice, but only the story is the story.
Footnote
*Lazy translations call seonnyeo “angels” or “fairies.” I appreciate trying to bridge the cultural gap, but stripping seonnyeo of their unique name to make them more palatable to non-Korean audiences does a disservice to everyone. Give people the chance to learn about new cultures and the creatures that inhabit their fairytales, geez! Imagine if we non-Scots were only ever told about “Scottish mermaids” instead of the very specific concept of selkies.
