On March 7, I attended my very first local RWA chapter meeting after being local chapterless for over five years. It wasn’t like there wasn’t a local chapter where I lived in Cincinnati–there’s a very large and active one–I just never felt like I fit in there. Had nothing to do with the chapter and everything to do with me. I also worked at a newspaper, and had to do late Friday nights every week, so there just wasn’t that much incentive for me to wake up at 8 a.m. or so on a Saturday, after getting home at 2 or 3 a.m., to get to a morning meeting.

My new local chapter that’s oozing with awesomesauce is RWA/NYC. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking: “Stephanie, you live in Philadelphia. Valley Forge Romance Writers is like a half hour drive. Yet you join a chapter in Manhattan??”

Umm, if you were like a two hour bus ride (okay, four hours round trip) away from Manhattan… a city dripping with awesomesauce… wouldn’t you join that chapter instead? Yes? I thought so.

Tangent. Sorry. Back to the meeting.

Leanna Renee Hieber and Isabo Kelly did a presentation (which I totally think they should do for a workshop at National) called Isabo and Leanna’s Chaos Theory Guide to Non-Linear World-Building.

World-building has been the thing that’s blocked me on my forever-shelved SF/urban fantasy/cyberpunk/romantic elements novel that I wrote from 2002 to 2004. I made the slight mistake of getting involved in some science fiction writer groups, attended some SF conventions, where the writers were really hardcore about their world-building, and that’s what led me to my current block with my SF/urban fantasy/cyberpunk/romantic elements novel. I just got so overwhelmed by the mere idea of extensive world-building and not knowing where to begin… that I just kinda stopped, period. (That itself is probably worthy of a blog post or two).

The week after the RWA/NYC meeting, I read some SF erotic romance, motivated to try my hand at a cyberpunk short story to get past my forced block of writing romantic cyberpunk in general.

I finally understand why SF writers are hardcore about their world-building.

One story reminded me of why I tend to avoid or am scared of romances billed as science fiction. Just because you’re writing a romance… just because you need to focus on the romance and the erotic elements… doesn’t mean you need to drop the ball on the world-building.

Maybe I was more critical of this particular SF erotic romance than the others because it was a cyberpunk. I like to think not, but let’s just say yeah. This writer already had one strike against her in the opening paragraphs because of my bias against netrunners.

A simple analogy: Ranchers and cowboys are to Harlequin as netrunners are to cyberpunk.

*sigh*

I never have a problem with the evil corporation (that’s usually a character itself) in cyberpunks. I always have a problem with the netrunners. Because all the cyberpunks I’ve read… William Gibson aside since he is to the cyberpunk genre as Stephen King is to the horror genre… the main character is always a netrunner. Can we please have a main character that’s not a netrunner? Please?? You have a whole big fun cyberpunky world full of people having to deal and cope with all sorts of nifty technology. I’m more curious about the affect of that technology on the Average Joe or Jane… someone who is not used to or doesn’t like (for example) it… than a netrunner where dealing with the technology is part of his/her job.

So this cyberpunk erotic romance: The author did a good job of establishing in the opening scene that when the hero and heroine go by their given name… they’re in our reality. When they go by their net names, they’re in virtual reality. So, right there, she established one of her world’s rules. And it’s a simple rule. Won’t be so easy to break.

Yet… as the story went on… I got confused in places on if the hero and heroine were in our reality or virtual reality. Why? Because as the hero and heroine grew closer, they started using their real names to refer to each other than their net names. I can understand that. They’re falling in love. They’re having lots of sex. They’re moving toward their HEA or HFN ending. But the real names/net names were key to showing which reality the main characters were currently in. If you’re going to suddenly throw out that rule… you have to, have to, HAVE. TO. give the reader some other clue as to which reality the characters are currently in.

“But Stephanie,” you may be saying, “wouldn’t you be able to tell on description and setting alone when the characters were in our reality and virtual reality?”

No. Even that started to blend together. Which… oh my God… now that I get thinking about it… totally worked with the ending of the story. *headdesk* Which the ending was awesome. It made me stop and go huh. A totally good huh. It made me think. Which is what science fiction is supposed to do.

I’m going to have to re-read that story and pick it apart in a good way now. Huh.

So how about you? How do you world-build? How do you know if you’ve got too much world-building goodness in your story? What happens if you have too little? Do you start out with creating the world first, then your story? Does the character or story come first, then you create your world? Clue me in, people, because I need advice and handholding. I haven’t wrote weird in almost five years.

I’ll be back on March 29. If you haven’t started celebrating already–like the people here in Center City this weekend–have a Happy St. Patrick’s Day. I had this for breakfast today: