WriteHive Online Confererence 2024: Worldbuilding in Real World Settings
Gustav Holm, Vilhelm Garde, Wooden maps of the east coast of Greenland collected by Gustav Holm’s expedition circa 1883, Public domain (https://books.google.com/books?id=iDspAAAAYAAJ)
Now that the 2024 WriteHive Online Conference panels are available on their YouTube channel, I’m catching up on the ones I missed during the conference itself and sharing some of the things I gleaned from them here!
“Worldbuilding in Real World Settings” was an interesting discussion on what parts of worldbuilding you still need to think about, even when your writing is set in our world. The authors on the panel talked about the idea that a story set in our world might not require as much work on the worldbuilding side of things, even if there are things you need to research. Because your readers are going to be familiar with how the world works, you don’t need to spend much (if any) time explaining that, unless it’s a variation that’s directly related to what you’re writing.
They also talked a bit about accuracy when using a real world setting. One of the panelists mentioned that because places change over time, you can write something that exists in a given setting that later isn’t there. (I’ve definitely run into this in my writing and editing!) There was also a point about if/when your details are super accurate, some people will still doubt the veracity of them, so it’s important to balance them and not let the details overwhelm the story.
They also talked about the kind of research they do and how to keep track of it, and some pitfalls that can come from writing things with a real world setting. All in all, it was a super valuable panel. It runs about an hour and twenty-three minutes, and you can watch it here!
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