What is Worldbuilding and why should you implement it more in your stories?

What is the first thing that you want or expect when you choose a new graphic novel, book or even T.V. series?

Is it interesting characters? Compelling story? Long-term planning? Creative ideas?

Well for me, it's all of that combined but especially a little concept called worldbuilding.

What is "worldbuilding" do you ask? Well, I'm assuming that you don't know the definition of the word and you're too lazy to look-up for it on Google so I did it already for you:

"World-Building: The creation of an imaginary world and its geography, biology, cultures, etc., especially for use as a setting in science fiction or fantasy stories, games, etc. Hence world-builder, n."

You probably have noticed it before in your favorite work of fiction but maybe you didn't pay much attention to it, maybe you didn't realize all the details that the author wanted to include in such universe to make it much more complex or maybe you simply didn't care about it.

If you actually did then I'm just talking out of my ass here, but still let me indulge myself a bit about why this is such a beautiful concept.

The world surrounding any story and characters is just as important as them, it's what makes you invested in exploring more, what creates a sense of intrigue everytime that its mythology is being explained, such fascination for the creatures that exist there, the kind of civilzations that were constructed that could take place only on that setting, etc.

However, despite of how relevant this idea seems to be you would be surprised the amount of times that writers prefer to ignore it and just focus on the protagonists and/or plot.

I'm not saying that's something wrong to do since a lot of talented authors have made great careers and series just based on that couple of things, I'm just talking about personal opinion and to me there's nothing more fascinating than seeing an universe being developed.

Of course, I'm not insinuating that you should "create for the sake of create", that's where I tend to disagree with some people about the basic premise of the term. Some people believe that you merely need to invent something for a series and that's enough to be called "worldbuilding", I'm sorry but I simply don't agree with that.

Inventing new things is fine, in fact is wonderful. Nonetheless, concepts should be created in a way that fit into the kind of world that you're building and that also complement the story and characters you're creating, it needs to tell something about those aspects, not all of them combined necessarily but it should have a specific mission to achieve. If you create just for the sake of create with no justification behind you're simply running the risk of making a pretentious story, one where you're only trying to demonstrate how smart you are instead of developing a compelling narrative.

Substance will always more important than style, both notions are not excluyent from one another obviously but sometimes authors tend to prefer the latter to be called "unique" (and you would be shocked that it actually works a lot of times!). I'm not going to be calling names here since that's not the point of this column and it feels like I'm digressing already.

New places, beings, mythos and whatever else you may think of need to be developed in a manner that demonstrates that there's actually a plan behind them. Again, I'm not saying that it's necessary to be so meticulous about it nor so "in your face!" about where you want to go, but at least there must be hints that you're taking a focused route and sticking to it.

That's why worldbuilding and long-term planning are notions that go so well together. When an author doesn't know exactly where he/she wants to go many of his/her ideas get lost over the course of a story and thus the universe starts getting less and less interesting with time.

Let me talk a bit about some of my favorite forms of worldbuilding.

Take for example James Robinson's run on the classic DC series Starman. This is a book that not only revitalized one of the oldest properties from the company but also created an incredibly fascinating world for him to exist, a place where the different heroes from the past could be explored and where their legacies should continue their mission.

But that was not the best part of it, not by far. The best part was without a doubt that beautiful setting called Opal City. Robinson developed an amazingly complex home for Jack Knight, the protagonist of the series, one that had its own sense of history where different heroes and villains were relevant to its growth, that had its own personality and almost was presented as a character itself and finally one that you were always intrigued to know more about.

This wouldn't have been possibly without the sense of continuity and history that Robinson implemented in the book. From the Knight family and their Starman legacy to the O'Dares' tradition to protect the city and even the popular antihero, The Shade and his centuries of experience and devotion to his home. You felt like almost every little segment from Opal City was investigated and it created a much stronger emotional impact when you eventually left such place.

People who know the work of Geoff Johns realize that worldbuilding is not a strange concept for him.

For example in his first run on The Flash he created a much bigger universe around Wally West (The Flash at the time), one where the Rogues were further developed into much more complex characters and where Keystone City, Wally's home, was cemented as the principal place where the hard-working class of the DC universe lived and therefore also represented Wally's status as an everyman.

Johns' most popular sample of worldbuilding probably reside in his Green Lantern work where he revived the franchise after being ignored for so long and connected mythos that existed for years to create the Rainbow Corps. I sometimes hear about people who insinuate that this somehow made the universe smaller instead of bigger which I find just ridiculous, how can creating more things make anything any less special or vast? While I would admit that the multicolored Lanterns concept got a bit old with time, there's no doubt that this made the franchise much more exciting than ever.

Grant Morrison is another person who found success in these terms based on his Batman work where he started revitalizing old ideas from the Silver Age and reintroducing them into the modern continuity like the Batmen of all nation which would eventually lead to Batman Incorporated.

The New 52 is something worth noticing too. Johns did it once again with Aquaman and his revitalization of the character while also recreating some of the old mythos into new forms and give them the most logical next step by creating the Seven Seas which is something that he promised he would further explore in the future.

Another title that bears mentioning is Jeff Lemire and Andrea Sorrentino's run on Green Arrow where both authors developed new mythos around Oliver Queen represented by the different clans as well as the people who were part of them. I have already talked about this in the past but I always love to repeat it.

However, a series that I find highly underrated on this notion is Justin Jordan's current run on Green Lantern: New Guardians where the writer is creating new mythos, creatures and worlds that for once are not connected to the different Corps which is something that we haven't seen in years and that should get more appreciation than what it actually receives.

All of these examples have something in common, all of them are trying to include new concepts into their respective franchises but in a way that makes sense with what came before and in fact complement the basic premise of the characters in question.

This is especially true when we're talking about company-owned properties like Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman or whatever other icon you could find. Such type of development needs to go accord with what each character represent at their core, I'm not trying to insinuate that you should only look into the past and never towards the future, at the contrary, innovation is something that should always be appreciated but there are fundamental aspects that need to be respected no matter what and then start looking into the next step.

Most of these famous characters exist in a shared universe and that's also pretty important, you should know the type of world in which these particular heroes live so you can understand what kind of things are logical and which things are not. Sure, I know that superheroes universes are anything but logical, however, there are different concepts which are already established and so can be exploited in a form that actually fit into the title that you're working on especifically.

Another point I wanted to touch is that shared universes are called like that because you need to share which basically means that the concepts you create must not only make sense to you nor be only used by you but also be able to be utilized by other people who could expand into them or maybe even make then better than what you could have done.

The world can only be limited by your own mind, think big but in a manner that it also feels like an evolution of those worlds.

Anyway, those are most of my thoughts about the subject. Remember that this only my opinion but I hope that is somehow helpful.