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Worldbuilding (WHY is it important (Implications) (Recognizing that the…

- - - - Possible Worlds Theory
        
        Possible Worlds Theory tends to be limited to an analysis of the ontological structures such language produces (Gavins & Lahey 2016:3).
        
        The influence of possible- worlds logic extends far beyond the literary and narrative theory of the late twentieth century, however, and continues to lend its ontological structure and terminology to more recent cognitive- linguistic models of literary and non- literary discourse processing, such as Text World Theory (Gavins & Lahey 2016:2).
        
        Text world Theory
        
        In more recent usage- based linguistic approaches, such as Text World Theory, the real- world situation in which language occurs is called ‘the discourse- world’ (2016:3).
        
        The discourse world from a Text World Theory perspective, then, is seen as fundamentally socially and culturally situated; the language produced by the discourse participants within it is recognized as being greatly influenced by their personal and shared knowledge and experiences (Gavins & Lahey 2016:3).
        
        ...reflects the focus of the text-world framework on language as an interactive and negotiated event (Gavins & Lahey 2016:3).
        
        A schema (Bartlett 1932; Schank and Abelson 1977) is a cognitive framework that helps the participant in the discourse- world (in the case of creative writing, the reader) to sort, organize and interpret incoming linguistic information by activating pre- existing ‘mental baggage’, often dependent on cultural context and background. (Scott 2016:131).
        
        Here, Possible Worlds Theory (Bell 2010; Doležel 1998; Ronen 1994; Ryan 1991) in relation to world- building will be called into service due to its connection with truth- conditional semantics, which provides the creative writer with a way of thinking explicitly about the status as ‘truth’ of his or her created, imaginary world as well as the relationship between it and the context (AW) in which the creative practice takes place (Scott 2016:135).
        
        (a) Identity of properties: TAW is accessible from AW if the objects common to TAW and AW have the same properties. (Ryan 1991:32).
        
        (b) Identity of inventory: TAW is accessible from AW if TAW and AW are furnished by the same objects.
        
        (c) Compatibility of inventory: TAW is accessible from AW if TAW includes all the members of AW, as well as some native members.
        
        (d) Chronological compatibility: TAW is accessible from AW if it takes no temporal relocation for a member of AW to contemplate the entire history of TAW.
        
        (e) Physical compatibility: TAW is accessible from AW if they share natural laws.
        
        (f) Taxonomic compatibility: TAW is accessible from AW if both worlds contain the same species, and the species are characterized by the same properties.
        
        (g) Logical compatibility: TAW is accessible from AW if both worlds respect the principles of non- contradiction and of excluded middle.
        
        (h) Analytical compatibility: TAW is accessible from AW if they share analytical truths, i.e. if objects designated by the same words share the same essential properties.
        
        (i) Linguistic compatibility: TAW is accessible from AW if the language in which TAW is described can be understood in AW.
        
        ... for a world to be deemed possible, it must be linked to the [actual world] by a relation of accessibility, which refers to the various ways in which the [actual possible worlds] are connected/ linked to the [actual world].(Scott 2016:135)
        
        Fiction arises through what Ryan (1984, 1991) describes as recentring; the implied reader’s frame of reference as used for locating notions of possibility and truth shifts from the AW to a possible world. Crucially, however (and I would argue that this point is of great relevance to creative writers), these worlds must be familiar enough, similar enough, to the AW (the context of the discourse situation) to be recognizable. The point is: the further we stretch the gap between the world of the story and the AW, the more difficult it becomes to maintain that essential contract between reader and writer. (Scott 2019:136).
        
        The Leibnizian concept of possible worlds was rediscovered by twentieth-century philosophers as a convenient tool in building a semantic model for the modal operators of necessity [...] and of possibility [...]. lt will be remembered that according to Leibniz, an infinity of possible worlds exist as thoughts in the mind of God. Of all these possible worlds, only one is actual: the best of them all, chosen by the divine mind to be instantiated. This privileged world is the one we live in, what we call reality (Ryan 1991:16).
        
        The real world of everyday human experience forms the central matrix point for all worlds- based frameworks and theories. In Possible Worlds Theory, this world is known as ‘the actual world’ – the world from which all other imagined possibilities and alternatives are generated, and against which their truth status and relative accessibility are assessed (Gavins & Lahey 2016:2).
        
        The philosophy of possible worlds provides a philosophical foundation for fictional worlds, and its application to narrative theory has helped to emphasize the role of the world in which a story takes place. However, in addition to focusing almost exclusively on narrative-based worlds, most philosophical writings look mainly at questions of language, taking their examples from literature […] (Wolf 2012:20).
    - - Once again, all worlds frameworks agree on the crucial point that a discourse has the potential to produce a multitude of worlds and that human beings have the ability to shift their attention and comprehension between these worlds unproblematically (Gavins & Lahey 2016:4).
- - - - Each of these has its organizational tools, examined in the following sections: maps structure space and connect a world’s locations together; timelines organize events into chronological sequences and histories which show how they are temporally related; and genealogies show how characters are related to each other (the term can be applied more broadly than merely biological kinship). (Wolf 2012:154).
        
        Worldbuilding Tools
        
        Self-reflexivity, whether it refers to the world or the world-building process, and ranging as it does from subtle analogy to thinly-veiled autobiography, allows an author to comment on the subcreative process and its relationship to the world it produces; and perhaps the greatest device for doing so (though it is often more reflexive than self-reflexive) is the presence of a subcreated subcreator. (2012:233).
        
        ...later discussed as a practice in “how-to” books on world-building for writers, like Orson Scott Card’s How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy (1990) or Stephen L. Gillett’s World-Building: A Writer’s Guide to Constructing Star Systems and Life-Supporting Planets (1995). (Wolf 2012:6).
        
        . To construct plausible and moving ‘other worlds’ you must draw on the only real ‘other world’ we know, that of the spirit (Lewis 1966:19)
        
        Practical ideas
        
        Sometimes, I start with a local setting and then expand it until the world is fleshed out. This is building from the inside out. Other times, I start with a broad framework that is large but shallow, and then focus in on certain areas to give them greater detail. This is building from the outside in. (Pramas 2012:17).
        
        A map is a functional object. Its first and foremost purpose is to clearly display information (Roberts 2012:47).
        
        As mentioned above, details make a world real. Dietary preferences determine agricultural methods—and the scenery through which folks walk (Stackpole 2012:57).
    - - It may not be ‘like real life’ in the superficial sense: but it sets before us an image of what reality may well be like at some more central region (Lewis 1996:22).