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Every Wednesday, Jared Gniewek discusses what feeds his fires as an author of comics, screenplays and radio dramas.

Okay, kids. It’s party time. On Monday, I started digging into the settings of stories. I explained the concept of the “Story Bible” and how it can apply to a work. I referenced Watership Down again. Now I’m going to explain how one would go about building a world…if that’s your sort of thing.

World Building exercises help a writer to more fully envision the setting into which he has plugged his characters (which by now should have been mapped in relation to each other as per Monday’s DBTP). Even if every detail you develop doesn’t make it onto the page, it’s important that you, as a writer, have a holistic world view. Here are three areas which merit special attention. I hope you are able to use them, or at least that they give you a little something to think and expand upon.

1. Begin with food. Use scenes of characters eating to make them seem all the more human. It works. I have a love of Superheroes eating. It makes me happy in so many ways to see Batman enjoying some chicken noodle soup on a cold day wrapped in a blanket before a fire. I find that when watching film the food often underscores the story. Fargo [Ed: SPOILER ALERT!] by the Coen Brothers is a great example of food playing a role, as characters are constantly referencing the foods they are eating (Pancakes House, Fricassee, McDonald’s, Arby’s, Eggs, etc.) and eventually one of them is ironically eaten by a wood chipper. The use of food in this film is such that it makes the characters seem more “real” than characters that don’t eat. One comic book example of food leading to characterization would be The Martian Manhunter’s love of Oreo cookies on the amazing Giffen / DeMatteis run of Justice League.

If your story is on Earth, use recognizable foods to dictate the type of characters that are eating them. Think of each of your characters and imagine them eating. Are they at a restaurant or do they eat at home? Do they like fancier, upper-crust types of food or simple homemade favorites? Would Captain America love apple pie with cheese half as much as one would believe? You could use the tastes of characters to challenge the accepted notions of them. Captain America’s current favorite food could be sushi.
If the story is not on Earth, well, now you’re world building. What do these people eat? Is there meat on other planets? Can humans eat this meat? It can be very effective to show strange foods in the background of a scene to show the “otherness” of the location. Star Trek (the one with holograms and Number Ones) has a great restaurant where one could order the live eels favored by Klingons. I have always wondered what the root vegetable puree that Aunt Beru is making at the beginning of Star Wars tastes like. Food is one thing that all people can relate to. Use it, create it, and describe it: it is worth your time.

2. Clothing is worth looking at. Comics are a visual format, so you need to have an idea of what kind of clothes the characters are wearing. Always describe what the characters have on as part of your descriptions. Dave Berg’s “The Lighter Side” in MAD magazine existed perpetually in the fashions of the early 1970s, so much so that if he had tried to update the fashion, the readers would have complained. It was a part of the “world” of that comic as much as a space suit or set of tights is integral to the “world” of a superhero book. Be specific about looks, eras, and hair styles. Make sure the reader knows what they are looking at.

Often, with designing the looks of alien or future clothing someone will look to eras and periods form our own past. When looking at the costumes from Star Wars (to use as an example again) you can see feudal Japanese elements, Third Reich uniforms, and American Old West motifs. All of these references say something to the audience. Try to reference historical periods to reinforce or counter audience expectations. Make the warrior people of Planet Darkon dress in ABBA-style bathrobes or suits of biomechanical leather. The question you need to ask yourself with this, and with everything I am talking about today, is, “how will this choice I am making about this setting impact the readers understanding of the work?” If you know what you are trying to say you will find the choices you make will become easier and easier. You won’t even flinch as you tell your penciller, “YES, I SAID ABBA ROBES!”

3. Stay personal. Try to keep your efforts focused on the areas of personal lifestyle and stomping grounds of your characters. You don’t necessarily need to understand beyond a vague gleaning how the superfusion that runs the jet packs work. You should know that they work and what they look like and a couple ways they can break down for future drama but the reader, mostly, won’t care about the nuts and bolts engineering. (This is not always true. If the book you are working towards is Hard SF then you need to up your game to a level far beyond what we are talking about here.)

Look around your room. Think about what is there and why. Do they need furniture in your world where everyone is a nudist? Do the seven-legged aliens of Planet Alpha Beta sleep standing up or lying down? Are there alien house pets? Do they claw the furniture? Readers love the little details slipped in. It creates a more holistic feeling that there is a living, breathing world beneath the surface of this story.
Be careful with this one. Don’t turn your story into a laundry list of weird bits. Just pepper it with background detail. In the works of Alan Moore the backgrounds of panels are often full of advertisements, graffiti, and billboards which mirror the events of the story. Don’t make the story about the background, but use it and the “everyday” to make your work seem more whole. When Jimmy Palmiotti came to my writing class he told us that he would find photo references of old door knobs and edging details for the artist to more fully convey the time period of the book. This, of course, is something to discuss with your artist but can be a very effective way to convey time periods, especially time periods that you and your artist aren’t masters of. Use the image resources of your local library and image searches in your search engine of choice.

I hope these three areas of interest help y’all more fully realize your ideas and help you convey them in your scripts and stories. There are many more things to look at in World Building: Vehicles, Housing, Infrastructure, Drugs, Recreation, Power supplies, one could go on and on but I feel the three areas I mentioned (food, clothing, and personal areas) can be used for character and small stories to greatest effect. All the best, gang, all the best!

Jared Gniewek works in the music industry as a back line technician, performer, and promoter. He is also a freelance writer whose work can be seen in the recent re-launch of Tales from the Crypt and heard on The Dark Sense, an audio anthology of the macabre for which he is also the story editor — http://www.earstage.com/darksense.htm.

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