Thank you for asking. My magic like the ring in lotr is symbolic. But instead it symbolizes greed and the horror of the people who become greedy. Like the arkenstone.
Haven't gotten to writing anything yet, but thiking back about what you mentioned when it came to the importance of the hobbits being the protagonists of LOTR an idea struck me. Think about how little even real human beings knew about the world around them a couple centuries ago. This could be translated into a mysthical/fantasy world in which the protagonist is way ahead of his time and has a passion for something like cartography. He/she realizes that the boundries of their known maps are not the actual boundries of the world they live in, so the protagonist sets out to explore the world. This would provide an opportunity to consistently expand the map and add more and more interesting features, while never putting any restrains on the authors or the readers imaginations...what hasnt been discovered yet still might. You haven't seen a dragon after the first couple hundered pages? That doesnt mean there are no dragons. You could invent new races, new lore new everything, while you go on and build the world as it fits you :D
Mine is more like a mix of the two. I only use soft writing on certain concepts that words could not easily elucidate like the mechanics behind certain kinks in a magic system. Time Magic is one of them since I am not exactly privy to the advanced levels of Quantum Physics and the like. Thus, I make my own rules using soft worldbuilding. I only use Hard Worldbuilding for the creation of a world that readers can enter and explore, but to the point of limiting their fantasy experience.
The D&D campaign world I am working on at the moment ist hard as concrete ( or at lesat that's what I'm trying to do). I kind of can't stand not having answers for my Players or at least a vague idea when the question comes "why..."
This is amazingly accurate you deserve a million likes. I always wondered why I felt so nostalgic watching Miyazaki movies even though I never even saw them as a kid, and you explained it perfectly in a single sentence.
Maybe because as a child we didn't saw all the logic and science behind everything, like how we don't know how soft world building doesn't explain us those things
The scene where Chihiro cries while eating a rice ball....this always makes me tear up. The first time I saw it I balled my eyes out... because I've literally done that. Holding everything thing, trying to stay calm in turmoil...then eating something so comforting..it just breaks you down and releases you from the tension.
For me, it’s the scene where she goes to Zenbaba’s home. The music, the lighting, the overwhelming feeling of coziness... I first watched Spirited Away at my grandma’s house. My grandma was basically like a third parent to me growing up, and all that love and comfort comes rushing back whenever I get to Zenbaba. And I always cry.
Yes, you can imagine it's something her parents would give her to eat, and it's so familiar and normal in the middle of all the overwhelming strangeness. Rice balls often seem to carry that sort of resonance in anime.
Especially since the rice ball is the only thing that binds her back to her reality and routine, in a world where she is out of her comfort zone, constantly surprised, fearful and alienated from.
For us, Spirited Away may not make much sense. However, for a japanese audience, it does have a different signifficance, because the movie incorporates a lot of Shinto symbolism. For example, Haku is the guardian spirit (kami) of a minor river, but the spirit that Chihiro helps is the spirit of a mayor river, therefore, he is revered by the other kami in the bath house. In the japanese folklore there's already a stablished hierarchy for the Kamis. And, the kami that Chihiro helps may be hinted to be the guardian of an actual major river in Tokyo (Kanda or Sumida, I don't remember), that during the 50's was used by some people as a dump, and when it was cleaned years later, all kind of stuff was find in there, from washing machines to bicycles.
Yeah, I did a double take at this despite being distracted by his butchering of Chihiro's name. Those scenes tell us EVERYTHING. Even as an outsider to Japanese mythology.
Yeah, as Western outsiders there is more mystery and the spirit world is more bizarre, while to Japanese and other people who have been immersed in their folklore, there is plenty that makes sense already and doesn't need explaining.
Like in the ocean, the train doesn't a bath for the monologue to pacify specially for the payment of great reverence defined by the trash wherein it is corrupted by major healing behind lose ends. Therefore it is not fleeting that which has been explored can't justify the sound through the lens and previously it also can't logically conclude to process the important crafting tools and view the works of conscious spirits. Finally, the profound aim of the obelisk prioritizes the clams and other foreign middle dips.
I feel like what makes Spirited Away so good is that it's literally like a dream. You don't understand why things are happening, you just fill the holes with your own interpretation and imagination. Like why your dog was apparently flying but unknown creatures were also chasing him? It's weird but so imaginative and great to think about.
I hated the movie for that exact reason: I didn't understand why things were happening and I couldn't grasp onto anything. That's why I like Lord of the Rings better, because it punches you in the gut with reality.
Oh gosh… thanks for reminding me of that old nightmare of being chased by swarms of cockroaches that were also shadowy demon puppies (yes both at the same time).
Soft world building really helps capture a “child-like” wonder. The floating city of Laputa in Castle In the Sky is a really amazing example. I watched the movie for the first time at 18, and it made me remember what child wonder felt like.
That's the *exact* same way I describe it too: "a child-like wonder". I'm in my early 20's, and I watched Castle in the Sky for the first time this past week. As I was watching it, I noticed a very 'magic-y', warm feeling. I noticed my eyes widen, and a wide smile form across my face just looking at the scenery and the magic/technology. I explicitly thought to myself, "I feel like I'm a little kid again".
i like to call that childlike wonder in any type of setting as something violet. Playful, yet somewhat deep and mysterious.... violet is full of wonder
I played the video game Ghibli was helping to make, Ni No Kuni, and it felt the same as watching Ghibli movies. Childhood fuzzy feeling of wide-eyed wonder! The Ghibli method clearly works for that, no matter the medium of their art.
Some of the world-building elements in "Spirited Away" are actually just Japanese mythology and Shintoism; for examples, if you're Japanese or familiar with the mythology a bit, a hopping lantern doesn't really need any more explanation than a vampire does, and the ideas about pollution and spirits have a bit of a Shinto vibe. That being said, any kind of mythology allows many interpretations and worlds based on them, and "Spirited Away" is definitely still pretty soft.
@@1250ou In Japanese folklore, a tsukumogami (tsukumo=tool, gami=kami=supernatural being) is a household object that is animate, i.e., one that can think and move around. Often some sort of physical transformation, such as growing a tongue or eye or foot is involved and depicted in art, although Miyazaki seems not to have gone with this very much. It's unclear whether any tool that gets old enough (100 years old according to some) will become one or whether these are actually tanuki/foxes that have transformed into inanimate objects and lived as such for long enough that it becomes there normal form. (Note that the shape-shifting abilities of tanuki/foxes are a well-established part of Japanese folkore.) When I tried to look up the specific yōkai that this is, I noticed that the standard one for lanterns is typically depicted as footless, while the one for umbrellas has a foot. Both hop around and typically have one eye and a mouth with a giant tongue sticking out. Maybe I was confusing multiple tsukumogami when I thought that the Spirited Away version was a fairly normal representation, but I do think I have seen ones that look like that a lot (although I might be confusing it with some kind Will-o'-the-Wisp-type thing from British/Celtic folklore). The traditional Japanese chōchin-obake lantern tsukumogami is footless simply because traditional Japanese chōchin paper-lanterns hang from above rather than standing on feet. The Ghibli-like hopping lantern, which I think I have seen depicted with a tongue and eye before, would be a natural tsukumogami for more modern, western-style, outdoor lanterns that stand on one leg. Thus, maybe I actually have seen it a lot in modern Japanese media like video games and such, but I just can't find it in descriptions of older, more traditional, folklore, since it's a more modern extension.
The Japanese framework for story telling is even the root of most of the popular game franchises. Setting up a world that is only explained by your level of participation and even then leaving many unanswered questions, is a part of traditional Japanese folktales.
actually spirited away has a very different meaning to it. the artist himself was dissapointed in his own people for not understanding it. if you research into the japanese edo period and bath houses, you’ll find that spirited away is not soft at all. in fact, all his productions are not soft at all. it’s easily missable because of it’s beautiful and light palette animation but once you look past that, it’s a lot more dark.
@@wooa2100 The thing y'all are missing is that even if Miyazaki totally intended on the entire story being completely explained by Japanese history/mythology (and I highly doubt he did), the fact that the story doesn't tell the readers itself and opens itself up to broader interpretation is what makes it soft world-building. What makes a story soft vs hard world-building is the degree to which the story itself explains and justifies its elements. There will always be context in every fictional world, as every fictional world has its own influences. Knowing that context doesn't change whether a story is or isn't soft world-building simply because someone who doesn't know that context, or even someone who DOES know it, can still believe in a completely different interpretation while not neglecting a single element of the source material.
Something I notice about the most successful soft world building examples, is the use of mundane detail. Mizakis films are richly detailed, characters eat in real time, they put keys in doors before opening them, they start engines in real time, they put shoes on in real time. They do ridiculous amounts of cooking and did I mention the eating? They even walk places in real time. This is the most profound thing about Mizaki if you ask me, although it's not uncommon in Japanese cinema, battle scenes in Akira Kurosawa Seven Samuri play out like live sporting events and there is plenty of eat and walking in that too. I think this is part of what provides the depth, the depth is given not exposition about the wider location, but by showing characters engaged in very ordinary task within the location.
Apparently, in Smallville, the actor who plays Jonathan Kent actively wanted any talking scene to have an action. He said that farm work is never done and a farmer would always have something to work on, so in any scene where he talks with another character, he is never shown to idly sit and talk, he always does some form of labour.
This is something I thought about while watching his new film. All his characters (afaik) have a HOME that we know of either through off hand mentions or more or less detailed visuals. It’s really neat and just having a home provides a sense of humanity and understanding of every being, not just the ones who’s individual personality you get to know.
I think your assessment of the soft world-building of Harry Potter is one of the big reasons why it became such a huge fanfiction fandom - the world-building was so open people could think up a lot of creative stories because it had so much space to do so in.
As for my own world-building, well I have a world I keep notes on, on my Dreamwidth account, but it's a combination of being inspired by Tolkien, and Dungeons and Dragons. Hell, the founding essay I wrote about it was done from the perspective of it being the thought process of creating a homebrew gaming world concept. Since then however more of the Tolkien has gone into it in the form of porting over characters I RP'd with a friend on Twitter, and every so often writing more posts about various details that come to my mind, including of late, an Avengers port, because I wanted to throw a little sideline Stucky romance into it. Because of the D&D inspirations, further development of this world concept would probably be a combo of D&D world-building style, and me keeping on throwing out various little in-universe stories that way I have been for the last few years.
But I also think it had just enough rules and consistency in it that it laid a solid foundation for all that creativity to springboard off of. Some of Miyazaki's stories for example, have so much less to go off of in the worldbuilding that I actually have a much harder time imagining new stories and ideas for them than I do for Harry Potter. In Harry Potter you still understand that there's a school with four houses, and you know the names and subject matter of many of the classes it offers. You have knowledge of very specific spells they can use and methods of transportation, as well as a general sense of how the society is structured with the Ministry of Magic and some of its specific departments, what their legal system is like, what their journalism is like, etc. There's actually ton of structure given by the worldbuilding, but there's still plenty of open space left over that you can fill in with your own imagination. If we take Kiki's Delivery Service as an example though, you barely know a thing about witch society or how their magic works. You know that they fly with broomsticks, and that their emotions and the quality of the broom affects flight. You know they can do fortune-telling (but don't know how), and you know they can make potions, one of which is good for rheumatism. Children witches can talk to their black cat familiars, and they traditionally go out for a year of training when they turn 13. There might be fewer witches in the world than before, and Kiki's mom is "President Witch" in her rural hometown. That's it. That's everything. Most people are not theorizing quite as much about about Kiki's witch society (though there are probably still some who do), because you'd probably have to build most of the system from scratch yourself if you wanted to explore that more. Plus if you did write a story about, say, another witch in the same universe, unless you put your own character in the same city as Kiki's, or made them interact with specific characters from Kiki, there'd be very little about your story that would tie it to the original. tl;dr -- I think Harry Potter struck just the right balance between hard and soft worldbuilding that it became a perfect ground for lots of fan creativity, because while there's lots of freedom to work with, there isn't so much freedom that you practically have to invent most of the world yourself.
I think Avater the last Airbender is a case study of how soft and hard worldbuilding can interact. The 4 nations and all that are very hard worldbuilding defined, but the moment we touch the spirits, they become unknowqble and mystical
Also, the world of the four nations, its clearly logical and everything make sense, but not everything that the creators established is explicitly said to de viewers, i know is not exactly soft worldbuilding but it borrows some of its strenghts and it is great, this is also immersive and it feels real too, we dont know everything in our world, we dont need to know everything of this fictional world.
@@alien2383 Remember Hard-Soft Worldbuilding is a spectrum, not one or the other. I think Avatar is more on the hard side, but contains some soft elements as well.
@@randomcommenter7343 They are having a near death experience, but anything beyond that is open to interpretation. Like, what would have happened if one of the brothers had been taken by the old man? We don't know.
Alice in Wonderland actually has very little world building. There's no real connection from one place or the next. Most of the characters have no connection with any of the places. Instead, there's a lot more focus on silly mathematical word puzzles, because Lewis Carroll was fascinated by the mathematical study of logic. The setting is rarely ever of any importance beyond merely providing some sort of backdrop.
Actually a lot of it is based off of mukashi banashi. They make a lot more sense if you've studied Japanese literature, mythology, and religions. In spirited away, even all the fictionalized locales, the bazar, the bathhouse, the flood train, are based on real places.
I'd say: Soft Worldbuilding > Vids portraing mostly a character to explore more general concepts Hard Worldbuilding > Series and sub series of detailed lore vids :)
Soft world building is for lore vids? The core concept behind hard world building is creating a rich and believable world, which usually means a lot of lore for the world itself and all of the little ways things slot together.
Y'all are missing the point. Lore vids wouldn't exist if the lore was actually TOLD to the viewer or reader. "top 10 details you missed" wouldn't exist if the story being told didn't include that many deep, worldbuilding details.
i also find that having the main character of the story be someone who’s new to the world lends itself more easily to those soft worldbuilding techniques. having a character discover and explore the world alongside the reader/viewer creates a more immersive feeling as opposed to placing the audience in a pre established world and then catching them up through detailed explanations
Which is also what JRR Tolkien's popular 4 book series does within his hard built world. We follow around a child-sized hobbit that's an upper class Englishman in all but species. He lives in a modest old house with no servants except a gardener, and knows his own family and traditions. Then an old wizard of unspecified size plays a trick on a migrating band of dwarfs on a mission to retake their family business from a greedy monster, causing our protagonist to come along for the ride amongst great people and fantastic places. The second bigger story has leftovers from the first story turn out to be of extreme importance, with world elements appearing as necessary as the world is rewritten to match. Throwaway lines about distant wizards expand into a secret council of superior beings. The westward migrations of elves through forests become an epic journey to a hidden paradise. Randomly encountered disinterested pygmies are expanded to a few ancient statues inserted in an earlier chapter. Etc. etc.
I disagree with you. Clark Ashton Smith's fantasy stories (set in alien planets, dying worlds, and dying continents) often feature purely native characters, but the stories do not waste time trying to defined everything for the reader. Every story is purely focused on the character's journey and the sheer atmosphere of the world, with little care for consistent world-building detail.
I like both, both are great The world feels more mystical in both. One with how alive and lived in it feels b/c the character is already established somewhat, it is done well without exposition dumps. Just piecing the information together yourself, the bread crumbs left there (which is done in both tbf) Whereas a world both us and the character are new to is this mystical new adventure of learning alongside one another. It’s fun
its really useful but i feel like a lot of shows/movies/games/books can do it in a really lazy or uninspired way. isekai anime are the worst offender of this, where the main character is usually transported into a fantasy world from tge real one, but often have little to no personality or actual interaction with that world. a good example i can think of is breath of the wild, the protag link loses his memory after sleeping for 100 years, but the story revolves around those memories and how link rediscovers the world and how it has changed
to be clear: Tolkin didnt create elvish for his world, he created his world for the elvish language bc he realized a language can not exist without the world being that speak it and hece without a world the speakers live in.
@@bethzilla44 Tolkien was making a cool language, called elvish. But languages don't pop out of nowhere, they reflect the people they come from, so Tolkien made a people, called Elves. From there middle earth was created. Elvish came first, everything else was the context for Elvish.
@luigi mario Tolkien Elves are sufficiently different from their mythological counterparts they might as well be original. In some translations of LOTR like german for example they even get a different name.
I’ve been trying to put my finger on this for so long, saying, ‘Stop throwing proper nouns at me,’ ‘Stop pausing fights to explain how they work, just let me get caught up in the unbroken motion,’ ‘Leave me asking “What the fuck did I just watch?” because my attempts to unpack it will have me talking about your story for years.’ And this finally narrows it down. Soft world building. I’ve grown up in a media culture so focused on hard world building that I over-explained so many of my younger stories and wondered why I wasn’t capturing the silent wonder of special art pieces like Ghibli films. There it is. In most things these days, I’m a big fan of Team ICO’s ‘design by subtraction.’ A minimalist setting that says that one moment in time between two people, without any words exchanged, can be enough for a story. This can be so delicate that extra detail leaves it bloated. Enjoy the silence.
I agree completely. Some people don't like the confusion of Miyazaki's works, especially Spirited Away, but I always found it enchanting and engaging. During other movies, if I spaced out for even a second it would suddenly feel like 1000 years had passed--same with books. Hard worldbuilding can work but it also leads to terribly boring scenes sometimes, and info-dumping. Missing or forgetting just one detail could skew all the logic of a hard-built story, but in works like Spirited Away, you can hardly forget or miss a detail in the first place because your brain soaks in what little information it gets and tries to form conclusions. It's an incredible way to keep your audience engaged.
@@iferawhite7661 I immensely enjoy the old Ghibli movies, but the comparison you make is rather unfair. A 'Hard' world should not get bogged down, should not suffer from pacing issues, should not endlessly info-dump. Comparing mediocre hard worlds to the absolute prime of soft worlds does not make a point. Although I do acknowledge that epic fantansy as a genre, until about 20 years ago, considered those aspects as a necessary evil (some books just do not stop with the exposition). But that happens in both soft and hard worlds. In both LotR and HP, so to speak. By now there are stories that organically weave the world-building with the story. Both are journeys filled with discovery. But where one is filled with wonder, the other is filled with understanding. Both are great when done right.
@@Drakonflare Yes, I agree. I never said that all "hard" stories were bad, I just noticed that often times I find softbuilt stories more engaging and easy to follow. Both can be bad or good, but in general with my short attention span, I prefer softbuilt stories :)
I've found that giving the necessary details and nothing more seems to work best, because if you're not careful, you can end up painting yourself into a corner and then it's time for a rewrite.
There's a video I saw some time ago where someone discussed the present of silence in samurai jack. It's very interesting I'd give it a watch, your last sentence reminded me of that.
One note I'd add is that Lord of the Rings (especially the books) and Spirited Away both take many elements of their stories from folklore. In Spirited Away, that includes certain characters being based on traditional yōkai, the fact that Chihiro crosses over to the spirit world at dusk and that she is allowed to eat food that she is given but her parents are punished for taking food without asking. Those things may be alien to the real world, but they're alien in ways that make sense if you're familiar with folklore about spirits. Lord of the Rings feels much more like Arthurian legends, the Kalevala, the Norse Eddas, the Mabinogion- not just because they use the tropes and traditions of northern Europe but because those stories were mytho-histories about rulers and heroes who may have been based on real people or not but either way were considered key figures in their cultures' histories. Lord of the Rings is basically the last cycle of the epic that the Silmarillion started. The Hobbit feels different from LotR because it's based on stories closer in genre to those that influenced Spirited Away- bedtime stories. Jack and the Beanstalk doesn't explain why the giant lives in the clouds, neither do most yōkai stories need to explain why the Jorōgumo was living in a waterfall. But "Beowulf" is going to tell you everything's lineage because that's part of why you care about this king, this sword, this monster, that pile of gold. They're stories serving different purposes, and you get invested by different storytelling methods- explaining everything versus leaving it to the audience's _emotional_ intuition.
At the same time, Miyazaki is playing around very freely with Japanese spirit characters and yokai. I grew up in Japan and many friends turn to me trying to get an explanation for why certain characters behave in one way or an other. But often I can't tell them, because he's not pinning them down, reinterpreting them and adding characters that are unknown, like the reddish god. At the same time I also feel like the Japanese spitit world and yokai are very open for interpretation anyway, because they don't have a fixed canon of stories, myths, and legends. It's often just one character that different kind of legends evolve around. In that way they are very alive and still open for adding stories, rediscovering stories and evolving them further.
Um, the Kalevala is NOT hard world-building. Have you ever read it? Different chapters (or runos) of the book regularly contradict each other, and literally anything can happen because the characters are constantly using magic. If anything, the Kalevala is as soft as Spirited Away.
@@racoonlittle1679 Uncles and Aunts can be younger then their nephews and nieces, or not that far off. Besides, what's wrong with age? ...Not that he seems to old to my 30 something perspective...
When I first watched Spirited Away, my only emotional response was confusion. Nothing made sense to me. Not the world. Nor the plot. And least of all the characters. I was looking for logic. Anything to cling to. And was only bombarded with more nonsense. It was a deeply unpleasent experience. At least now I understand on a logical level what other people find so great about the movie, even if I will probably never share their opinion.
@@olafmeiner4496 while that was not my experience, I can completely understand why that was the case with you. I recently went on a binge and watched 12 out of the 13 Studio Ghibli works of Miyazaki and I feel that in order to enjoy his movies, you have to suspend disbelief and go in without prior expectations of where the story might go and without getting too bogged down by the nitty-gritty details. A lot of his movies have relatively simple premises so the characters' emotional journey is at the core of the story. The animation and music are also (imo) equally important aspects to enjoying his movies. TLDR to enjoy Studio Ghibli movies you should follow the wise words of the great Guru Laghima and "Let go of your earthly tether. Enter the void" lol
@@olafmeiner4496 well I first watched it when I was like 5 so that's probably why I didn't understand it at all. It was so weird to me I just accepted it as a crazy fever dream. I also remember being scared of Noface. I rewatched it recently and now I absolutely love it. I love all the absurdity of it, and the end is kind of heartwarming and wraps up the story nicely imo. If you ignore all the crazy stuff the story is pretty simple and relatively easy to follow. But i completely get why you wouldn't like it. It is very weird and can be hard to process at some points. Maybe try rewatching it again if you haven't recently.
@@olafmeiner4496 That's so interesting! I re-watch Spirited Away occasionally and when I did so the first time with my SO I just gave her this instruction as we sat down to watch: 'you know that feeling when you're in a dream and while you're experiencing everything it makes perfect sense? Then when you wake up and look back at it you feel like it was bizarre? Go into this movie as if you're dreaming, because that's what it feels like'. It's just so captivating and somehow deeply connecting that I (even to this day and with this video explaining it) can't quite figure out why the movie makes me feel so 'right' without making any sense. I should note that I have very, very weird dreams at times. It could well be a way that brains are wired.
Something I love about the ghibli films is the fact that places just exist. Outside of our main cast, life goes on. Like the other towns the magic door in Howl's moving castle leads to. There are just other places in the world. I feel as though most other stories make a big deal out of other places just existing.
"When worldbuilding, you don't need to feel compelled to justify everything that you create." I'm learning this reeeaaally slowly as I keep writing. I get so overwhelmed with details about my worlds that by the end of it all I'm just like, "ok, so what happens in the plot?" And I struggle with characters and plotlines because my consciousness is always "it has to make sense." Thanks for putting this advice to words!
@@bubbletea695 Dante's a poet of the 1200 A.D. He is known for his "La Divina Commedia" which is a poem where he wrote in triplets (the metrics system, is this right?). Basically la Divina Commedia is a journey between Hell, Purgatory and Paradise. He was accompanied by Virgillio (a Roman Poet), Beatrice (which is important because it's a figure we find so much in his writing. She's a angel women if you know what it is) and Saint Bernard. Basically in la Divina Commedia Dante roasted some of his contemporary and people from the past, from Popes to even Ulysses. His writing is important because basically so much of the west's conception was made because of him, and by the way he even influenced people like Shakespeare, which is the base of English literature.
I've always felt that world building works best when the Author knows how the world works, why things do as they do, but don't feel the need to justify how the world works to the audience. That way there is a hard constant for the rules of the world that isn't broken, and the audience is able to figure it out as they read, not because it is ever said to them but because the story and world never breaks those rules, but lets the reader in on the ones that are important for the story as necessary. This also means that if a story continues across multiple books that you have less world inconsistencies, and the readers are able to piece together and theorize about how your world works. I will be the first to admit that my thought processes is flawed, it isn't going to work for every story, but it is a personal view. It combines some of the elements of hard world building (admittedly leans heavily that way) where you had consistency and hard rules that once the reader understands is able to follow, but it maintains some of the ability to pace and flexibility of soft world building.
I agree. I don’t need everything explicitly explained to me but it should be internally consistent because the author has thought it through. That’s why Harry Potter is so frustrating-later additions undo or contradict previous statements. While learning more about Ghibli movies doesn’t undermine what the viewer understood before.
This is very much the definition of ahowing not telling, something that everyone can benefit from using in any media, be it writing, video, or speaking. There is so much good to it, you let the person feel a part of the place you are illustrating by letting them experience it rather than just hearing a lecture about it. It is the essence of what we do as we truly grow up and experience the world, we learn by what we see and what we do.
one thing I love so much about soft world building is how many times you can rewatch a film and find something new every time. I have watched howls moving castle so many times and every time I find a new little detail about how the world works and it makes the movie even more beautiful every single time.
I like the idea of spending a lot of time doing hard world building and planning out your world in extreme detail but then write it purposely leaving some of that detail out.
Yeah I don't know who it was but some fantasy (?) author was saying you should know way more about your world and characters than you use in your book. Probably Sanderson.
@@YodasPapa idk about Sanderson… I took a worldbuilding class from him and his advice was to not worry about creating every little detail in your world but instead maintain a vague idea of everything and create specific details only around the story you tell- basically fake an intricate world without actually having to do the work😂
@@praxusjoon2478 oh nah I’m fully convinced that’s the way to go. He’s just a master of making everything seem so deep and intricate without actually having to do the work- explains how he gets so many books done so fast
Then based on this wouldn't Spirited Away be classified as hard worldbuilding? That's what I thought before watching this video. I don't agree with this channel's analysis. Especially when he used a culture that isn't his own as the center of his argument.
@@moniqueloomis9772 Feel free to disagree with the thesis of the video, but you're being unreasonable claiming he has no right to use the PRODUCT of a foreign culture to flesh out his argument. That's like saying I have no right to argue modern Chinese goods are trash due to poor quality control because I'm not part of the Chinese cultural mindset. Your argument comes across as disingenuous to say the least. (I'm Chinese Canadian by the way. People in my community make judgments based on others' products all the time.) An alternative summary would be: Soft Worldbuilding: We're free to analyze and interpret the world on our own. Hard Worldbuilding: Author wants you to see the world a CERTAIN way. I think Hellofutureme did a great job with this video. He used famous examples of media we're familiar with to drive home his point about how one can go about constructing a fictional world for people to explore. The man wasn't trying to maliciously appropriate somebody else's culture or goods for personal gain. He just wants to inform budding or aspiring writers what tools they have at hand to build their worlds. They don't have to construct it as elaborately as Tolkien did if they don't want to.
Over the garden wall's logic feels exactly like the poems and tales of old folklore, 'a bird snipping it's wings off with a pair of magic scissors to become human again' makes -perfect- sense in a fairytale with the freedom that the fairytale environment affords you. If traditional magic is the promise of getting something from nothing then the conception of hard-soft sci-fi is the intrigue of finding out how close to magic you're getting in storytelling.
@@abg5381 Or in The Wizard of Oz, where the Wizard gave the Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion placebos instead of symbolic representations of the things they wanted. For the Scarecrow, he stuffed his head full of putty to give him "brains" and securing them in place with needles; for the Tin Man, he opened his chest and placed a silk heart inside like you would do with a Build-a-Bear; for the Cowardly Lion, the Wizard fed him a green drink and just told him it was a "courage potion."
Tolkien struggled much with his hard world building approach. He spent most of his life after the publication of Lord of the Rings with trying to fit it in the larger mythology. He wrote countless essays about seemingly trivial things like how lembas bread works, what kind of facial hair the different races have, how Numenorian succession worked. He even got into meta discussions with himself how elven immortality functions, if orcs were wholly evil and where they came from etc etc. It kind of prevented him from finishing and releasing more of his work. On the other hand it achieved the in my opinion best, most coherent and deepest lore of any work of fantasy ever.
Ayoooo was looking for this , I really love the way over the garden wall is done . I like it more than Miyazaki's films , his films are awesome but I do think his story heavily depends on visuals. His films stories as I have grown older seem to lack a lot depth in the character , maybe it's cuz of lack of time but they really do look like shells of people plus there are a lot of character ,OTGW on the other hand really let's it ho , they mainly focus on the two children and Beatrice and let's everyone else blends in the dream like world making them not stand out as much as the side characters do in Miyazaki's films.
This is a really fascinating study of the use of soft and hard world building and the possibilities and intensity of each to help improve and deepen the understanding of story. Most of my stories are a sort of mixture, the elements that are important to the story itself are used that would be the harder worldbuilding elements, but the rest is usually soft. Great study as always!
Here’s a wild concept: hard-build your world but tell the story as if you soft-built it. Then as time goes on in your series you can reveal more and more of the world. Don’t make later “clarifications” like Rowling. Instead show it as your reader picks up the next book.
Neil Gaiman once said “write down everything that happens in the story and then in your second draft, make it look like you knew what you were doing all along”. So yeah, nice advice🤣
One Piece was initially presented as soft built. But over time, it became hard built. Revealing more and more of the One Piece world in smart ways over the course of 1000+ chapters is a part of why One Piece is so great.
That's just hard world building. The other method for hard world building would be an all encompassing info dump at the beginning I suppose but they're pretty rare
Dunno if you’re a fan of David Lynch but his shows and films have a similar dreamlike quality, though that dial is cranked to the nightmare end most of the time.
I've been writing for twenty years and this literally shifted my entire paradigm on worldbuilding. I thought _everything_ needed to be explained, but it doesn't have to bed. Sometimes going overboard with worldbuilding is a good thing, depending on how you tell your story, but not everything needs to be insane. I love worldbuilding personally, but honestly, soft worldbuilding may personally be more of my thing. I'm more of a character-driven writer. I love explaining things, but I also love mysticism and mystery.
Characters can be the driving point of both hard and soft world building. Look at Full Metal Alchemist. The logic is all there, but you add interesting characters to use that logic to achieve their goal.
I highly recommend you watch Brandon Sanderson's lectures. He uploads them on RUclips. He really goes into this topic. He called it a hollow iceberg: Put in just enough detail that the reader believes the author thought of everything without the author wasting time on thinking of everything.
Same here (not the twenty years part just everything else) I always read/hear critics complain about how nothing is ever explained and somehow, that makes a movie bad to them. As if the movie is trying to pull the wool over their eyes and say, “just accept it.” But the soft world building is not just trying to get away with anything, it’s just as if the viewer/reader were part of the world the whole time and to question often would be like if someone who spoke English all their life asked what language they speak
Also you have to think about theme and genre when choosing one over another. A murder mystery or political drama often requires a harder world building than horror or fantasy romance, just by the virtues of the types of stories and themes they tackle. SoIaF has to have a pretty hard worldbuilding regarding the society in Westeros for the backstabbings part of the story to work, the same with the Watch series for Pratchett is more grounded than other parts of Discworld because murder mysteries need clear rules, but Stephen King books often have very soft worldbuilding because well, not knowing what to expect is a big part of horror or Princess Brides where the emotions and the thrill is what matters and the details are that to give flavour and uniqueness to the story.
@@BeefWagon Thank you for sharing your insight on movie critics. I realized after watching this that I do a lot of soft world building, and am having a lot of trouble getting short stories published anymore due to editors getting flustered by not knowing 'the answers' (even though they often guess the correct answer, so it's not me doing my job badly.) I'd rather not insult a reader's intelligence by telling them everything.
When I play DnD with my friends, I love to use soft worldbuilding elements as a DM. The players can then create there own interpretations and act accordingly. I also want there characters to have "a" goal. In this way, I feel like we are building a world together which is more immersive to them.
I was thinking about role-playing a lot while watching the video and I think that while for a singular campaign soft world building works and is collaborative, in general there needs to be a hard-built foundation too, in this case the dnd dramework of the rules and the kind of things that the world of a specific campaign allows. I don't think it can work if the approach is soft building only.
Hard world building works perfectly fine as well with DnD as long as you don't use too much exposition or hand out 20 page guides to the history and geography of the world at the start of the campaign. There are ways through adventures and interacting with npcs to explain history and rules of your world in bits and pieces. The key is to leave most of your world blank so if the players have a character concept or a story they want to pursue you can always fit it in. If you know the world building of your campaign not the players it gives you a foundation to respond when the players ask questions. It's not soft versus hard that is important it's the willingness to allow the players their own say on the world.
Spirited Away is *absolutely* beautiful, even watching it in my 20s it almost feel like when my mother read me a bedtime story. It somehow invoke a memory of my imaginative childhood mind that no media has ever managed to achieve
You're so right! When I first watched Howl's Moving Castle, there were so many things I didn't get, but I still loved the movie. I've found that the more times I rewatch a Ghibli movie, I find more tiny hidden details that add to my love of the story, even though they weren't necessary.
I feel like movies like Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke are maybe a lot less soft in their worldbuilding when you are already familiar with Japanese mythology and shinto.
I came to the comments section to make this exact point. But that doesn't make the movie any less good at all and that's one of the great things with it.
Actually miyazaki has stated on several occations that he goes out of his way to not reference japanese mythology or folklore in his stores, so No, probably not.
@@karlfredrikhonningsvagg6303 I'd say he probably references mythology and folklore from all cultures. The idea of the forest spirit having two distinct forms depending on the time of day is similar to the world spirit(?) in Michelle Paver's novels, so I'm sure it must have some origin in real life mythos.
I've been trying for a while to define why certain settings (such as Harry Potter) seem to take readily to fanfiction, and others (such as Sanderson's works), don't. I wonder if what you are discussing here is part of the reason for that: that "soft-built" settings can take more readily to fanfiction because the world is more flexible and there is more room for secondary worldbuilding, whereas creating fanfiction for a "hard-built" setting is more difficult because everything is interconnected, and so it's hard to change one element without having to tear apart and rebuild the entire system. I'll have to think more on this...
Also none of Brandon Sanderson’s work has been adapted into a feature length movie. Say what you will about the movies but they brought a lot of people into the world of Harry Potters, a lot of people only started reading the book after watching the movie and i know people who only watch the movie (either because they feel no need to experience the story again in book form, books compared to movies is a lot less approachable as many people prefer actually hearing and seeing compared to reading). Also soft world building is a lot more suitable for casual readers, not everyone can be a avid reader and not everyone is interested in intricate world building, a casual reader can just jump into Harry Potters, follow along the journey and be marveled by the wonders of the world and not think much about it. In contrast to fully enjoy Sanderson work you must keep in mind the rules set by the magic system, pay attention to details, cues and implications about the magic system and world building which isn’t the most fun thing to people who haven’t read much fantasy
@@pancakeandwaffle4849 Same goes for the Marvel Universe, as much as certain people hate movies for how they portray original source material, they are arguably the biggest medium we see the source material in. Reading is far more niche than movies are and like you said, movies help people get interested in the original source material.
You can say the same about LOTR. A lot of people haven't read the books but the moment they watch the movies they get invested because it allows Tolkien's world to truly come to life without the really heavy worldbuilding aspects. Soft-worldbuilding is great for more audience engagement because it doesn't get bogged down in details which a lot of people don't want to put the time into remembering; this is why soft-worldbuilding novels usually recieve more widespread popularity than hard-worldbuilding. ATLA blended hard and soft perfectly which is why we're still talking about it.
Hard world building isn't necessarily "making a story for your world." It's a scenario where the world itself is the story. The world and its history are major characters.
The only "clarification" I really like was Hufflepuff being a party house and their common room being closest to the kitchens. That made Hufflepuff my favorite house.
I honestly wonder if they (Miyazaki included) watch some videos that their fans make, especially to get better, even if they see themselves in one lens but are praised in other lenses, do they see videos based on those other lenses
Honestly, while I can kinda agree that the soft worldbuilding of HP does have to do with the clarifications sounding dumb, it's not really in the way he thought. She's basically trying to pretend she planned all that and just hid it from us, but rather, she just came up with those things 20 years later and is trying to sound smart and/or progressive for whatever reason. It's like trying to pretend she planned a city from its subterranean level all the way to its sky-crappers, when in reality, she just placed some buildings where it looked pretty at the time, and everyone else just kinda build their lives around them. Even if she now tries to puts a monument where it kinda looks neat, and thinks in retrospect should've always been there, houses and parks are already there, and just throwing the monument from the sky on top of that both looks awkward, and will piss people off. Quite honestly, I don't think she TRIED to make a soft worldbuilding, I suspect her full intent was to create a HARD one, but by accident created a decent-good soft fantasy world, its accidental nature more easily noticed when she utterly murders it with later unnecesary additions (not just the new tweets, how Abada kedabra reduces all ofensive magic to voice-commanded guns, free teleportation makes flu magic tunnels irrelevant, so on and so fort).
I want to propose a third alternative: "hard immersion." Frank Herbert uses this to great effect in the original _Dune_ trilogy. The reader is immersed in a coherent world, but the rules are not immediately apparent, and there is very little explication. Thanks for an excellent video.
I’ve never read the trilogy, so how would you say it differs from soft or hard worldbuilding? For contrast, I sensed the movie to be more soft, with many systems already being in place and-as you said-being left unexplained.
@@shabr1ri Most aspects of the world become clear and make sense given the history of the "Duniverse," but the reader must assemble the pieces. There are few "exposition dumps." If the reader doesn't do the work, then the world remains mysterious.
I haven’t read the books, but as far as I understand, Dune has a hard building world. All details are explained and logically connected. The fact that the author does not explain them immediately is just a mean of storytelling. He hides some aspect, but makes us discover them later (probably we only know what the main character knows??) Still, the world itself is detailed and logical. That’s what I’ve seen in a movie, so correct me if I’m wrong🙏🏻 (and sorry for poor English)
@@СветланаЯковенко-н5ж That's a pretty fair assessment. The world is very coherent, but the way the reader gains an understanding of this world is unique.
It's funny because if you read the Nausicaa manga it reads a lot more like a hard world build story. The level of detail Miyazaki goes into in the manga is insane.
I’ve been thinking about this since I went on a mission to watch all available ghibli films on netflix, but I couldn’t really explain it. The magic in ghibli films is how they captures how it feels to be a human, it’s all nebulous and vague and while there are many invisible rules and structures we rarely understand more than a couple of them concretely
Although I’m not a writer I have continuously come up with stories since I was a child. I noticed more recently that I keep questioning the whys of how my story or imagined world works. And it gets to the point where it’s no longer fun to imagine a story because I keep poking at the details and asking how does that work. Thank you for introducing the concept of soft world building to me. I think keeping that in mind will help me enjoy the stories I come up with rather than me feeling like I need to add unnecessary details.
I write expert-systems AI software. I regularly run into stuff best described by Chaos theory. Really complicated interactions of seemingly simple systems. Logic... logic has flavors.
I mean, if by logic he means to just put together a set of coherent tropes, sure, it's not that hard for semi competent people. But creating not just whole coherent worlds, but characters that interact with it in a way that makes sense according to their established personality, AND THEN, you are able to guide them in a way that both entertains and sends whatever message/emotion you want to the audience, SUCCESSFULLY. Yeah no, the logic necessary to do all that outside the bounds of proven tropes ain't easy, specially because over-reliance of established sets of tropes loses their effect on the audience over-time. And just trying "subvert expectations" can backfire even harder than just doing the expected if poorly executed.
I thought that worldbuilding means that we have to have everything explained in the story or else the readers will say "HA! plot holes!" while reading. I'm never this glad to be wrong.
No, it’s in the name. You build worlds, small pockets. A plot hole is more like a missing link between point A & B that feels like it should be explained but isn’t. Like “how did character A regrow their leg when character B cut it?” and it’s never explained. Not a plot hole would be “I wonder why the rivers in this world have the color purple” it creates a believable world and may lead to fan theories, but it doesn’t take the audience out of the film, or get them confused. Or maybe I’m wrong, who knows. I sure don’t, I’m still a student.
@@mslightbulb This is exactly correct. A plot hole is a failure of the world to be logically consistent and, therefore, we as readers/viewers come away saying, "Why does X work now when it didn't work before?" or "Why does the character do X when Y was a perfectly suitable alternative?" A perfect example is how, in "Deathly Hallows", Bill explains to Harry that he has become the secret-keeper for Shell Cottage. This begs the question of why James Potter did not make himself the secret-keeper of the Potter home all of those years ago. Previously, we've seen it to be the case that a secret-keeper has to be outside of the place being kept a secret, which makes sense because it makes the Fidelius Charm imperfectly protective and explains why James needed to trust Wormtail. However, Bill's explanation makes all of this unnecessary. That's a plot hole. Conversely, Quidditch scoring, which makes no real sense, is not a plot hole since it does not conflict with something else in the lore. It's just a wacky and idiosyncratic part of the magical world that Harry has discovered.
One of my favourite soft worldbuilding is The Last Unicorn. I watched it as a kid, and I vividly remember how mystified I was by half the things that happened in it. Basically all the magic that happened in the movie was random stuff, a lot of it by mistake, but it served a point - to teach life lessons via character arcs and development. And also, thicc trees.
To me, Ghibli movies are like a euphonic phantasmagoria of whimsy and the sound of rain, the loving embrace of warm lights, the soft melodies overflowing with nostalgia and pleasantry. That childlike wonder captured and bottled into one sequence of piano notes. So simple, so kind, yet so very melancholic, so very wonderful.
Neon Genesis Evangelion does jumping-jacks over the line between hard and soft worldbuilding. And when people ask the series creator (in interviews or whatever) to explain it, yeah he just trolls them.
I'm not 100% on board with calling Miyazaki's work "soft worldbuilding" because it all makes sense within the context of preexisting "Japanese" Nipponese mythology/Legend and culture/history. Like, he didn't "leave massive gaps in his stories" for you to pick up on... the "gaps you're referring to are culture shock/knowledge that you don't have." (It's all rooted in Japanese Tropes; sometimes with a twist). - Example: you don't need to "explain through worldbuilding" to a Japanese person why there is a "spirit" in the story that represents a body of water; a "water spirit" (Suijin) and that pollution "corrupts/sickens" it... because they are Japanes and know that Shinto is a thing that exists (even if they follow a different religion/ or none at all). The "gold" literally represents "finding gold that had been exposed by erosion and deposited in the river/creek" - what allegorical lessen did he intend that to teach/ present... well that is left up to the viewers' interpretation (I think he meant it as; clean up pollution and be rewarded - but of course the reward wouldn't actually be "gold" but instead clean water/nature.) - Example: The Concept Of Kamikakushi, Ubasute, Yama-uba mountain, Kintaro, Oshira-sama dolls, Shikigami. - Example: "healing bud" (I don't know where you got that idea from; maybe a poor translation/Dubbing?) It's a traditional Chinese/asian medicine ball/pill. - Example: "hoping lantern" Chōchin-obake/Kasa-obake (Yokai). - Example: "Spirited Away" literally a traditional Japanese folktale that explained missing people. - I'm sure there are more: but I'm not Japanese so I didn't pick up on all of them either. 🙂
I'd argue his point is that to those of us who didn't grow up with those stories or cultural norms gives off a different feel than if we had, there's a mystery to it for non-native audiences that adds a lot to the atmosphere.
I think it is about more than just including unknown elements though. Yes Miyazaki draws on Japanese culture to create Spirited away, and the result is something that feels more unusual and mysterious to Western audiences than Japanese ones, but knowing about them does not make the movie hard world building all of a sudden. There is no attempt to define them for his story, let alone nail down how everything fits together. Consider a western example like vampires. There are many many stories about vampires and few things consistent across all of them. Some authors take the time to carefully define what exactly a vampire can do, how vampire society functions and how vampires coexist with humans or other supernaturals. They may even come up with a justification for the existence of vampires, like a virus (I hate this trope). Other authors just say "It's a vampire" and leave it at that. Being a westerner familiar with vampires doesn't make both these approaches hard world building. It just makes it less surprising when someone turns in to a bat.
@@Splattedable I was going to try to express something similar. If you write a story drawing on (Western) fairy tale tropes, then even if people get all the references, it can still be soft worldbuilding if these tropes aren't somehow explained and justified within the context of the story. If the worldbuilding needs to be interpreted through allegory, it's not hard--even if you understand all the metaphors. In my opinion.
I think you fundamentally misunderstood the meaning of soft/hard worldbuilding. It isn't about the nature of the world, but how it is presented. Tolkien and Rowling both draw on European lore as their foundation but their approach to that lore is the distinction being made. Miyazaki builds his worlds without concern for the nitty gritty. Compare to something like Death Note. The story goes to great lengths to explain how Shinigami interact with the world in explicit detail despite Shinigami being standard fare in Japan.
Off-topic, but Chihiro is one of my favorite characters ever. Besides being simply ADORABLE, her compassion and growth throughout the story is genuinely inspiring.
I feel like i like the idea of having a hard world but told softly, room to imagine, but thoughts are taught along the way and hopefully leaving room for the reader to keep their individuality as though they have been brought up in this world by the end of the 1st-3rd book. I feel like this is how the HarryPotter series pulled me in.
"You dont have to explain every little detail of your world" I think that's one of the best pieces of advice I've recieved from you....I spend alot of time trying to find interesting explanation for certain parts of my story.... But I guess it's ok for certain things to be bizzare...
1:15 Hard World-Building Immerse The Reader into a Unique Culture Intended Depth 2:24 Soft World Building Leave The Scenes for Viewers to Interpret for Themselves Imagined Depth
@@PauLtus_B I think that depends on how those extra details were used for the narrative. I encountered stories giving so much exposition and non of it was used.
@@PauLtus_B you said hard world-building does not lead to depth so I said it depends on how those extra details were used (which I think what you meant when you said "extensive surface) then. Then I argued what constitutes a bad usage of adding to much detail by saying that there are stories with too much exposition without using those details in the narrative.
@@bohenian People tend to confuse breadth with depth. No matter what, if you need to take detailed consistent rules into account, that's gonna give you limitations on what you can do.
Soft worldbuilding also seems good for quick, temporary visits to magical other worlds that our protagonists don't-or maybe can't-understand. For a normal person from our world "just visiting" it makes sense. But you have to put in more work the longer they've stayed there snd the more time they have to learn about the world.
Thank you for this explanation. I was stressing out worrying that my world wasnt detailed enough like LOTR or GOT, but I realized that I've been doing soft world building and it's okay, it's not wrong to do.
My favorite form of worldbuilding is when both are used, when sound histories and logic are established for the world, but later added on to and expanded as the story progresses and as the characters learn more, so do you, and suddenly that rigid predefined world becomes fluid and changing, leaving you wondering what fills those open spaces left in the world, speculating what is really possible as the logic and rules previously established are bent and broken.
I remember the first time I saw Spirited Away as a teenager. My friend told me to see it, because she had liked it. The movie made me feel very confused. Nothing made sense. I remember feeling disappointed, because I wanted to know more about the story and why things happened the way they did. Now as a grownup I absolutely love Miyazaki and soft world building and I also use it myself!
Actually surprised you didn't get it as a kid. Watched it at 10 years old and I thought it was pretty straight forward. Then again I've never needed explanations for every little thing. Just read stories and see where they take you
@@TheSilverwing999 Well I suppose it depends on what kind of stories you grow up with. What parts are explained and what aren't. What the characters' motives are. Every culture has a different kind of story telling tradition. If you thought this movie was straightforward, you must have heard similar stories in the past and learned to interpret them in the right way.
I've heard Yubaba's oath in real life -- when defenders of the rich say, "There's a job for everybody who is willing to work." It's the flip-side of the coin: Anybody who doesn't have a job, just isn't willing to work. Note Yubaba's resistance to her saying, "I want to work!"
Consistency is still very important for Soft Worldbuilding. You can't change the rules without a good reason, because those rules _are then_ the emotional core of your story. Once it's established that Kiki's magic is directly related to her mood, that defines the main conflict of the movie. Chihiro's is constantly confronted by new and strange things, but they're always called back on later to cement those things in the viewers mind and provide future context for what's possible within the Spirit World. Food and how you get it is an important touchstone. The fact that every spirit has a purpose and that there is some kind of hierarchy is what drives the plot forward, even if we never get to find out what purpose each spirit's purpose is or where they fall on that hierarchy. Chihiro is forced to find purpose to continue living within this world, and finding Haku's purpose fulfill's the main emotional arc, even while the plot still has to play out. Worldbuilding is built on the reuse of material. Something happening once is trivia, something happening twice is worldbuilding. Harry Potter is a series that (more or less) made the transition from one type to the other(despite how Rowling may hate the concept) because of a buildup of those ideas. She started with whimsy, but eventually the rules of the Wizarding World became too numerous to continue adding at the same rate that she did, so she instead played on the rules she already had in place. When Dobby was introduced, House Elves were a fantastical thing, but over the course of Chamber of Secrets we learn all of the important rules that govern their service. By the end of Deathly Hallows she has twisted and turned those rules so that we've seen every facet. And it's still slavery, but what are you gonna do?
Why I like OG Star Trek: The worldbuilding of each episode provided just enough sci-fi whimsical context to provoke an interesting question and then the story asked Kirk, Spock and McCoy what they FELT and THOUGHT of that question. It was usually a dilemma, and the Trio were portrayed as so mature for being able to argue through that dilemma, work through it. Come to some conclusion. So many other stories... 1) Visit new world/town. 2) Some conflict happens. 3) Fix the villagers' problems for them. 4) Leave, with nothing personally changed.
Maybe this video and your comment explain why I like TNG and LOTR more than TOR and Harry Potter. While I enjoy the process of Kirk and Co. answering those questions, I like exploring the universe more.
You're right. Almost every episode, they introduced a new world with odd races and systems but didn't put a lot of focus on how they actually work. They instead focused on the meaning.
@@bluesbest1 I read every Harry Potter book religiously, but it always bothered me that Harry didn't really have an opinion on the wizarding world or the places he went to. He just kinda blandly experienced them, vaguely agreed with Ron, bemusedly tolerated Hermione's opinion. I could tell you what Data and Georgie, or Basher and Miles, or Picard, Wolf, Kirk, Spock or Seven of Mine THOUGHT about the worlds they visited, how they affected them.
@@Cityweaver Hmm. I think I remember a sense of wonder at Hogwarts and Diagon Alley, disgust at Draco, and other appropriate responses at various points, but that could've been Rowling transmitting that directly to the reader without involving Harry's internal reactions. I'll admit, it's been a long time since I've read the actual books, so you'd know a lot more than me.
I absolutely love this subject/idea, and I think you have struck on something very important here about the force of the author and the freedom of the reader. I do feel as though I need to point out that I think you have misunderstood Tolkien and his world building. Before anyone jumps on me, because I know that you are very knowledgeable about Tolkien and have thought this subject through more than I probably have, but one of the key things that I have learned about Tolkien is how much more nuanced and alien Middle Earth really is than my first impressions from reading the books the first two times. Tolkien's writing process was not as methodical as even he attests in his letters, as we now can see with the History of Middle Earth books which show his process intimately. The fact is that Tolkien treated writing like archaeology, and made slow and hard earned discoveries about his world as he wrote and then meditated on what that writing meant. He did change the mythology and even the language (and the maps) as he wrote and discovered that it didn't match what the story meant. He also famously resisted explaining key parts of the world such as the Entwives, Tom Bombadil and Elvish magic precisely because he wanted those elements to remain mysterious, even if his personal instinct was to investigate every detail. Additionally, something that I only recently started to fully appreciate is the fact that despite the writing style, the Lord of the Rings never has an omniscient narrator, even when written after the fact and with hindsight: there are times when the writer asserts things that are clearly not completely accurate because of other details we can find later on, but Tolkien lets us discover those details for ourselves and rarely ever highlights them. But critically, we now know literally volumes more about Middle Earth than Tolkien ever dreamed we would, because of the work of his son, Christopher, and I think that can give us the illusion that everything definitely had an answer and that Tolkien slavishly uncovered a story that he had determined in his mind long ago, when in fact the truth is anything but that. He may have more hard world building than say, Miyazaki, but I would argue that (with the exception of twitter retcons), Rowling is the one who sets out rules more or less from the beginning, and despite playing fast and loose with those rules at times, she largely adheres to them, especially even with her claim to have written the end of the series first. I may be missing some of the finer points, but I will revisit this more in time. Thank you again for the great content!
You said it better than I could. The Hobbit and LOTR certainly have parts of its world that are bizarre and unexplained. The video does make it clear that it's a spectrum but I was hoping for these elements to be mentioned.
Tolkien your ultimate hard world builder understood this as well, most of the background lore was just never expanded upon, there is a poem in elvish, that is heard and partly translated by the characters in the story, that Tolkien had written the whole of, and was a whole story of it's own, but this was never meant to be published, it gave the world a deep backstory that you only glimpsed, Tolkien being Tolkien at least knew what is was but often didn't write more than a few never published notes Pratchett one of your examples of soft world building, is on record at discussions on world building of wanting to know how a city works, where the water comes from where the waste goes, how the food gets there, he wanted the structure there because it gave him ideas for stories, but he didn't let it constrain him too much, but was aware of it and wanted to be consistent if possible Miyazaki builds very softly, but is still consistent, once a rule is evident it is not broken without reason, he just avoids making most of the rules evident Rowling didn't plan, she just wrote, she didn't build a world, she just added ideas as needed, she is still doing this - this is why her pronouncements jar, and there are so many plot holes if you care to look... but you can just enjoy the stories and ignore this
Listing Pratchett as being on the soft end struck me as odd as well. I kinda see it, but at the same time, as the series progressed, it got harder and harder. Take for example Small Gods. A book that is all about how religion in Discworld works. It breaks down all the rules from how gods gain power, to what happens when they lose power. I suppose you could still point to it as being Soft worldbuilding since it took multiple books for him to get there, but when he eventually did it had fairly rigid rules. Another great example is the Rincewind stories. Rincewind could be argued to have almost no character growth throughout multiple books. He's a coward that runs away and only ends up doing the right thing when there is literally no option left. He exists primarily to explore the world and introduce it to readers. The Last Continent is pure world building. It's literally a novel length explanation of the origins of a continent, and an explanation of why that continent is the way it is. Thief of Time is an even larger example imo, as it can be viewed as one big plot hole patch for the world as a whole. It basically takes the reader and says "ok, you know how timelines from book to book dont always line up, and sometimes stuff gets a little weird? Well here's why, now dont worry about minor retcons anymore" Pratchett may have started with a world full of mystery and barely defined limits, but over the course 40+ novels he steadily expanded and explained that world until you could extract a list of rules for said world to write your own stories in.
While Howl's Moving Castle is my favorite movie, Spirited Away has a special place in my heart. I love how there are so many elements to the world, and not all of the elements affect the story line. It almost feels like a dream when you watch it.
Hard world building tries to immerse you in reality, while soft world building tries to immerse you in a dream. That’s basically what I’m getting from this.
This was really a helpful video! I've spent so much time trying to figure out how I can explain an important element in my story logically (even though it's fantasy) to the point I read dozens of articles on biology to find _anything_ that might fit my story. It got to the point I stopped writing because I was so frustrated about this. So hearing that I don't need to justify everything really helped and motivated me. Thank you so mich!
Miyazaki gives so many subtle nods to the book that he didn't put into film, and I love him all the more for it. For example, Sophie has two sisters in the book, but in the movie you are never really sure. When she goes into the Waste, the old man that warns against it says to his partner that she's going to visit her sister, but the audience (if they didn't read the book) doesn't know if this is a cover story or true and it could work either way.
Agreed. Her book in itself is a perfect example of soft world building. Miyazaki still did something incredible with it, but I wish Jones’ foundation she built for the movie was acknowledged. Didn’t Miyazaki pick it in the first place was because it had that soft world whimsy feel he gravitates toward?
@@OhAlice1951 Well it was also his adaptation of the source material, so in a way he does own the version that he has created, which is why the vidoe only mentions Miyazaki's. It doesn't mean any other version is inferior, people just need to read up about who wrote it.
I meant in the essay. As others have said, it feels like a miss to not mention the foundation that Miyazaki used to build his film. It would be another way to exemplify soft worldbuilding.
@Christopher Stanley I doubt we're actually related. My father was named after the wrong man so I'm not a genuine Stanley... or, I am, but I'm a second generation of a new line. New magic systems? No, but I am becoming very familiar with an old one, specifically, D&D's magic system. It's pretty wonderful, and I'd recommend looking into it, if you're not familiar. I'll have to look into the one you mentioned. Got any selling points about it that might inspire me further?
This was such an excellent video, sometimes I do fall into the trap of thinking every aspect of the world has to be rationalized. But there can be a lot of reward when readers can draw their own conclusions, or just enjoy being part of the world no matter how bizarre it is. But the point you make about soft worldbuilding in character-driven stories makes a lot of sense. Great content.
I've been watching this channel for over a year and a half, and my worldbuilding professor in college just used this video to open the course. Just goes to show how good your content is, Tim
@@tomlxyz yeah, but it wouldn't change the fact that it would be the same world. Having some outlandish stuff and explaining why that outlandish stuff exists are two different things.
But we do tend to do that too. Center Street, And where I grew up we had Tabletop mountain, why...because it looks like it is flat from the the ground. Also some other words have a very simple/basic meaning. Oahu in Hawaiian meant “The Gathering Place”...take a couple guesses to figure out why it has that name?
Commodore Stargazer It seems like it’s the only place named like that, though...if you look at a Middle Earth map, everything else in the region is named with the created tongue. 😅 I mean, the mountain has a proper name, sure, but no one calls it that. They seem perfectly happy saying “Osgiliath” “Ithilien” “Ephal Duath” “Minas Tirith” and “Mordor”, that one mountain, though...”Doom” well, if you say so. 😆
@@LadyAneh "Mount Doom" is known as Orodruin, or Amon Amarth to the people of Middle-Earth. It is however translated, like "Middle-Earth" itself, because it is important within the context of the story that the reader understand the word. Understanding what Ithilien or Minas Anor mean is nice, but doesn't bring you much information except for lore. "Middle-Earth" informs you of a central element of the conflict : the elves going west (if ME is in the middle, there has to be something elsewhere) ; you can also understand it as the world of men being in between the land of the gods (Valinor to the west) and the land of Evil (Mordor to the east). Similarly, "Mount Doom" clearly signifies that this mountain is hugely important to the story, as it is where fate unravels (where the power of the Dark Lord was forged, casting doom upon the world, but also where the world is liberated from his influence, where Doom much like Apocalypse take their earlier meaning of revelation and enlightenment rather than only the modern sense associated with dread).
Franz Patrick I know Mount Doom has a proper name (as I say, they don’t use it) but actually Middle Earth doesn’t necessarily refer to its location on the globe, as it’s named after Midgard, or the realm of the mortals. While Valinor is a bit more like Alfheim...it’s not quite somewhere with the same rules as Middle Earth. After the fall of Numinor, a human on their own couldn’t just sail there. It’s another realm, separated from Middle Earth by Eru Ilúvatar. I just think it’s funny that out of all the made-up words, he chose a name that’s so mundane to be used on a regular basis. I find it humorous, regardless of any reasoning.
As I commented, "Middle-Earth" has both logical (such as elves having somewhere to go by moving west) and thematic (such as humanity / mortals being placed between good and evil) implications. It is indeed also a reference to norse mythology, where it already had a strong thematic meaning. -- Also if Valinor is anything, it is Asgard, as the land of the Valar, i.e. Top Gods, like Asgard is the land of the Ases. It also *used to* be a definite part of the world, before the Valar cut it off at the end of the Second Age.
To be fair, idk where you guys are from, but saying 'gibli' seems to be fairly common in Australia/New Zealand (where Tim is from), I know I said 'gibli' for YEARS before being told it was ''jibli'. Dunno if that's a thing but yeah
Excellent video! I like how you use examples from both books and film to explain the difference. I think most writers stick to soft or hard worldbuilding, but there are a few like myself who combine the two into something else. Cause if you really think about it, to the characters living in that world for their entire lives, the rules of magic use or fictional creatures or whatever, are normal to them. Therefore I keep these general things in mind: 1. Dialogue drives the plot and/or discusses rules of magic/creatures/social structures in a common knowledge way. 2. Characters and readers learn simultaneously. 3. Objects, locations, plants, animals, people, can all resemble the real world and still be different at the same time. (Such as explaining something enough to make logical sense, but not over-explaining so the reader can't follow it all). 4. Don't dump the whole world on the reader. Let the reader discover it and live in it with the characters.
AAAAA THANK YOU HI. I love hearing you talk about the Hsrd and Soft magic systems, I'd like to hear more about that if possible cause I couldn't find more anywhere else. You're amazing hi thank you for your videos I can't wait to watch this one about worldbuilding. I love how you explain things in such an easy to understand way.
If you haven't seen them, he's covered those before in previous On Writing and Worldbuilding videos. As for finding discussion of them elsewhere, just Google "Brandon Sanderson laws of magic". His three essays there are, I believe, what formalised or at least helped popularise the concepts of hard and soft magic systems.
I have recently discovered some of the movies from Studio Ghibly, and I fell in love immediately with them. I noticed as you explained, that the way the world was conceived generates an atmosphere/mood that hooks you the entire movie, because you want to know more about that world, discover those unique places, contemplate their beauty and see what the characters do inside them in order to continue with their journey. It's not only fantasy but also pure adventure, if you think about it.
Thanks so much for this video Tim ^_^ I've been working with hard world-building, but I still wanted that fantastical element of mystery in the story so I appreciate the way you explored the nuances of the two styles. Also, love the way you blur the backgrounds for the quotes, your editing style is so satisfying to my brain.
Sometimes the screenwriter of a book-to-movie adaptation can be just as important. A good example is Annihilation (2018). Alex Garland's screenplay employed a MUCH harder world building style than the book by Jeff VanderMeer, which went as far as not even giving the characters names, only ever referring to them as "the psychologist" or "the surveyor". I haven't read the book yet (It's on my list!) so I don't know if that's the case with Howl's Moving Castle, but it could be.
The Howl's Moving Castle book and movie are vastly different creatures. The screenplay, plot and dialogue of the movie takes inspiration from the book, but in the end, it's not a faithful adaption. I love the book, but to say Diana Wynne Jones wrote the screenplay is wrong. Did she inspire the movie? Yes. But on the subject of the worldbuilding, I'd say the book is quite a bit harder than the movie. And that's a Ghibli thing.
Dudes, the movie is so much better than the book. The book is fricking weird and isn’t so streamline in plot (it goes everywhere, including Wales!) There’s also two more books following the first that I haven’t read, so maybe Sophie does get young again??
@@catherinepoteat Sophie does becomes young again in the book as well as the film, so I'm not sure why you thought she didn't - the sequels are within the same world but have different characters as the main characters. I wouldn't say you can concretely say the book is worse than the film, it's just different - to me it represents a very english weirdness, which isn't present in the film.
Amazing essay! There are things I never knew how to name but always loved. Ghibli is one of the best movies to show soft world building. They enchant and bring you to the world without many explaining. I just love it.
![On Worldbuilding: Class, Wealth, and Power [ Stormlight | Dystopias | Witcher ]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Jr18Q0Cug_w/mqdefault.jpg)
![On Worldbuilding: Class, Wealth, and Power [ Stormlight | Dystopias | Witcher ]](/img/tr.png)
Is your worldbuilding hard or soft, and if it's soft, how do you use that softness in your story? Stay nerdy!
~ Tim
Ok...
Thank you for asking. My magic like the ring in lotr is symbolic. But instead it symbolizes greed and the horror of the people who become greedy. Like the arkenstone.
Haven't gotten to writing anything yet, but thiking back about what you mentioned when it came to the importance of the hobbits being the protagonists of LOTR an idea struck me. Think about how little even real human beings knew about the world around them a couple centuries ago. This could be translated into a mysthical/fantasy world in which the protagonist is way ahead of his time and has a passion for something like cartography. He/she realizes that the boundries of their known maps are not the actual boundries of the world they live in, so the protagonist sets out to explore the world. This would provide an opportunity to consistently expand the map and add more and more interesting features, while never putting any restrains on the authors or the readers imaginations...what hasnt been discovered yet still might. You haven't seen a dragon after the first couple hundered pages? That doesnt mean there are no dragons. You could invent new races, new lore new everything, while you go on and build the world as it fits you :D
Mine is more like a mix of the two. I only use soft writing on certain concepts that words could not easily elucidate like the mechanics behind certain kinks in a magic system. Time Magic is one of them since I am not exactly privy to the advanced levels of Quantum Physics and the like. Thus, I make my own rules using soft worldbuilding. I only use Hard Worldbuilding for the creation of a world that readers can enter and explore, but to the point of limiting their fantasy experience.
The D&D campaign world I am working on at the moment ist hard as concrete ( or at lesat that's what I'm trying to do). I kind of can't stand not having answers for my Players or at least a vague idea when the question comes "why..."
Soft world building seems to recreate that half-sense of the world you have when you're a child
This is amazingly accurate you deserve a million likes. I always wondered why I felt so nostalgic watching Miyazaki movies even though I never even saw them as a kid, and you explained it perfectly in a single sentence.
Maybe because as a child we didn't saw all the logic and science behind everything, like how we don't know how soft world building doesn't explain us those things
This is super random but we have the same name 🙃
I always disliked that feeling
Or dreaming
The scene where Chihiro cries while eating a rice ball....this always makes me tear up. The first time I saw it I balled my eyes out... because I've literally done that. Holding everything thing, trying to stay calm in turmoil...then eating something so comforting..it just breaks you down and releases you from the tension.
For me, it’s the scene where she goes to Zenbaba’s home. The music, the lighting, the overwhelming feeling of coziness... I first watched Spirited Away at my grandma’s house. My grandma was basically like a third parent to me growing up, and all that love and comfort comes rushing back whenever I get to Zenbaba. And I always cry.
I wish I had a rice ball to eat...
Yes, you can imagine it's something her parents would give her to eat, and it's so familiar and normal in the middle of all the overwhelming strangeness. Rice balls often seem to carry that sort of resonance in anime.
Exactly my thoughts. This scene defined the movie for me.
Especially since the rice ball is the only thing that binds her back to her reality and routine, in a world where she is out of her comfort zone, constantly surprised, fearful and alienated from.
For us, Spirited Away may not make much sense. However, for a japanese audience, it does have a different signifficance, because the movie incorporates a lot of Shinto symbolism. For example, Haku is the guardian spirit (kami) of a minor river, but the spirit that Chihiro helps is the spirit of a mayor river, therefore, he is revered by the other kami in the bath house. In the japanese folklore there's already a stablished hierarchy for the Kamis. And, the kami that Chihiro helps may be hinted to be the guardian of an actual major river in Tokyo (Kanda or Sumida, I don't remember), that during the 50's was used by some people as a dump, and when it was cleaned years later, all kind of stuff was find in there, from washing machines to bicycles.
Yeah, I did a double take at this despite being distracted by his butchering of Chihiro's name. Those scenes tell us EVERYTHING. Even as an outsider to Japanese mythology.
Yeah, as Western outsiders there is more mystery and the spirit world is more bizarre, while to Japanese and other people who have been immersed in their folklore, there is plenty that makes sense already and doesn't need explaining.
Like in the ocean, the train doesn't a bath for the monologue to pacify specially for the payment of great reverence defined by the trash wherein it is corrupted by major healing behind lose ends. Therefore it is not fleeting that which has been explored can't justify the sound through the lens and previously it also can't logically conclude to process the important crafting tools and view the works of conscious spirits. Finally, the profound aim of the obelisk prioritizes the clams and other foreign middle dips.
@@krioni86sa what?
...
What?
@@radikaldesignz -- It sounds like a bot made that comment...
Soft worldbuilding: makes a world for the story.
Hard worldbuilding: makes a story for the world.
pretty much captures the whole idea. Nice
This is capture pretty much perfectly-dang, nice
Very well put
This is true. THis is why i find alternate and additional stories work better in hard worlds because we know the rules of the land.
welp, don't have to watch the video now, thanks dude
I feel like what makes Spirited Away so good is that it's literally like a dream. You don't understand why things are happening, you just fill the holes with your own interpretation and imagination.
Like why your dog was apparently flying but unknown creatures were also chasing him?
It's weird but so imaginative and great to think about.
what the dog doin'?
@@speedycube3239 we have found the answer at last.
@@GammaFZ yea, but who let the dogs out in the first place?
I hated the movie for that exact reason: I didn't understand why things were happening and I couldn't grasp onto anything. That's why I like Lord of the Rings better, because it punches you in the gut with reality.
Oh gosh… thanks for reminding me of that old nightmare of being chased by swarms of cockroaches that were also shadowy demon puppies (yes both at the same time).
Soft world building really helps capture a “child-like” wonder. The floating city of Laputa in Castle In the Sky is a really amazing example. I watched the movie for the first time at 18, and it made me remember what child wonder felt like.
That's the *exact* same way I describe it too: "a child-like wonder". I'm in my early 20's, and I watched Castle in the Sky for the first time this past week. As I was watching it, I noticed a very 'magic-y', warm feeling. I noticed my eyes widen, and a wide smile form across my face just looking at the scenery and the magic/technology. I explicitly thought to myself, "I feel like I'm a little kid again".
@@YinYangLogo Exactly.
i like to call that childlike wonder in any type of setting as something violet. Playful, yet somewhat deep and mysterious.... violet is full of wonder
I played the video game Ghibli was helping to make, Ni No Kuni, and it felt the same as watching Ghibli movies. Childhood fuzzy feeling of wide-eyed wonder! The Ghibli method clearly works for that, no matter the medium of their art.
Castle in the Sky and its floating city Thewhore is really a good movie
Some of the world-building elements in "Spirited Away" are actually just Japanese mythology and Shintoism; for examples, if you're Japanese or familiar with the mythology a bit, a hopping lantern doesn't really need any more explanation than a vampire does, and the ideas about pollution and spirits have a bit of a Shinto vibe. That being said, any kind of mythology allows many interpretations and worlds based on them, and "Spirited Away" is definitely still pretty soft.
@@1250ou In Japanese folklore, a tsukumogami (tsukumo=tool, gami=kami=supernatural being) is a household object that is animate, i.e., one that can think and move around. Often some sort of physical transformation, such as growing a tongue or eye or foot is involved and depicted in art, although Miyazaki seems not to have gone with this very much. It's unclear whether any tool that gets old enough (100 years old according to some) will become one or whether these are actually tanuki/foxes that have transformed into inanimate objects and lived as such for long enough that it becomes there normal form. (Note that the shape-shifting abilities of tanuki/foxes are a well-established part of Japanese folkore.) When I tried to look up the specific yōkai that this is, I noticed that the standard one for lanterns is typically depicted as footless, while the one for umbrellas has a foot. Both hop around and typically have one eye and a mouth with a giant tongue sticking out. Maybe I was confusing multiple tsukumogami when I thought that the Spirited Away version was a fairly normal representation, but I do think I have seen ones that look like that a lot (although I might be confusing it with some kind Will-o'-the-Wisp-type thing from British/Celtic folklore). The traditional Japanese chōchin-obake lantern tsukumogami is footless simply because traditional Japanese chōchin paper-lanterns hang from above rather than standing on feet. The Ghibli-like hopping lantern, which I think I have seen depicted with a tongue and eye before, would be a natural tsukumogami for more modern, western-style, outdoor lanterns that stand on one leg. Thus, maybe I actually have seen it a lot in modern Japanese media like video games and such, but I just can't find it in descriptions of older, more traditional, folklore, since it's a more modern extension.
The Japanese framework for story telling is even the root of most of the popular game franchises. Setting up a world that is only explained by your level of participation and even then leaving many unanswered questions, is a part of traditional Japanese folktales.
actually spirited away has a very different meaning to it. the artist himself was dissapointed in his own people for not understanding it.
if you research into the japanese edo period and bath houses, you’ll find that spirited away is not soft at all. in fact, all his productions are not soft at all. it’s easily missable because of it’s beautiful and light palette animation but once you look past that, it’s a lot more dark.
@@wooa2100
The thing y'all are missing is that even if Miyazaki totally intended on the entire story being completely explained by Japanese history/mythology (and I highly doubt he did), the fact that the story doesn't tell the readers itself and opens itself up to broader interpretation is what makes it soft world-building. What makes a story soft vs hard world-building is the degree to which the story itself explains and justifies its elements. There will always be context in every fictional world, as every fictional world has its own influences. Knowing that context doesn't change whether a story is or isn't soft world-building simply because someone who doesn't know that context, or even someone who DOES know it, can still believe in a completely different interpretation while not neglecting a single element of the source material.
Sakere oh, this actually makes a lot of sense! didn’t think of it this way.. thank you for broadening my perspective!
Something I notice about the most successful soft world building examples, is the use of mundane detail. Mizakis films are richly detailed, characters eat in real time, they put keys in doors before opening them, they start engines in real time, they put shoes on in real time. They do ridiculous amounts of cooking and did I mention the eating? They even walk places in real time. This is the most profound thing about Mizaki if you ask me, although it's not uncommon in Japanese cinema, battle scenes in Akira Kurosawa Seven Samuri play out like live sporting events and there is plenty of eat and walking in that too. I think this is part of what provides the depth, the depth is given not exposition about the wider location, but by showing characters engaged in very ordinary task within the location.
It also makes the environment relatable where they are otherwise very different from ours.
Apparently, in Smallville, the actor who plays Jonathan Kent actively wanted any talking scene to have an action. He said that farm work is never done and a farmer would always have something to work on, so in any scene where he talks with another character, he is never shown to idly sit and talk, he always does some form of labour.
So err... your take on the most successful soft world building is... That it's hard worldbuilding?
Yea In real-time they swallow hole, enough food to feed 6 grown men in 30 seconds
This is something I thought about while watching his new film. All his characters (afaik) have a HOME that we know of either through off hand mentions or more or less detailed visuals. It’s really neat and just having a home provides a sense of humanity and understanding of every being, not just the ones who’s individual personality you get to know.
I think your assessment of the soft world-building of Harry Potter is one of the big reasons why it became such a huge fanfiction fandom - the world-building was so open people could think up a lot of creative stories because it had so much space to do so in.
As for my own world-building, well I have a world I keep notes on, on my Dreamwidth account, but it's a combination of being inspired by Tolkien, and Dungeons and Dragons. Hell, the founding essay I wrote about it was done from the perspective of it being the thought process of creating a homebrew gaming world concept. Since then however more of the Tolkien has gone into it in the form of porting over characters I RP'd with a friend on Twitter, and every so often writing more posts about various details that come to my mind, including of late, an Avengers port, because I wanted to throw a little sideline Stucky romance into it.
Because of the D&D inspirations, further development of this world concept would probably be a combo of D&D world-building style, and me keeping on throwing out various little in-universe stories that way I have been for the last few years.
But I also think it had just enough rules and consistency in it that it laid a solid foundation for all that creativity to springboard off of. Some of Miyazaki's stories for example, have so much less to go off of in the worldbuilding that I actually have a much harder time imagining new stories and ideas for them than I do for Harry Potter. In Harry Potter you still understand that there's a school with four houses, and you know the names and subject matter of many of the classes it offers. You have knowledge of very specific spells they can use and methods of transportation, as well as a general sense of how the society is structured with the Ministry of Magic and some of its specific departments, what their legal system is like, what their journalism is like, etc. There's actually ton of structure given by the worldbuilding, but there's still plenty of open space left over that you can fill in with your own imagination.
If we take Kiki's Delivery Service as an example though, you barely know a thing about witch society or how their magic works. You know that they fly with broomsticks, and that their emotions and the quality of the broom affects flight. You know they can do fortune-telling (but don't know how), and you know they can make potions, one of which is good for rheumatism. Children witches can talk to their black cat familiars, and they traditionally go out for a year of training when they turn 13. There might be fewer witches in the world than before, and Kiki's mom is "President Witch" in her rural hometown. That's it. That's everything. Most people are not theorizing quite as much about about Kiki's witch society (though there are probably still some who do), because you'd probably have to build most of the system from scratch yourself if you wanted to explore that more. Plus if you did write a story about, say, another witch in the same universe, unless you put your own character in the same city as Kiki's, or made them interact with specific characters from Kiki, there'd be very little about your story that would tie it to the original.
tl;dr -- I think Harry Potter struck just the right balance between hard and soft worldbuilding that it became a perfect ground for lots of fan creativity, because while there's lots of freedom to work with, there isn't so much freedom that you practically have to invent most of the world yourself.
I was thinking the same thing!
crys in fanfic
Though Tolkien's fandom is much greater.
I think Avater the last Airbender is a case study of how soft and hard worldbuilding can interact. The 4 nations and all that are very hard worldbuilding defined, but the moment we touch the spirits, they become unknowqble and mystical
Also, the world of the four nations, its clearly logical and everything make sense, but not everything that the creators established is explicitly said to de viewers, i know is not exactly soft worldbuilding but it borrows some of its strenghts and it is great, this is also immersive and it feels real too, we dont know everything in our world, we dont need to know everything of this fictional world.
Avatar is pretty heavily hard.
@@deponensvogel7261 The Legend of Korra is. But The Last Airbender has A LOT of soft world building aspects.
@@alien2383 Remember Hard-Soft Worldbuilding is a spectrum, not one or the other. I think Avatar is more on the hard side, but contains some soft elements as well.
Yes!
Another example of soft world building is Alice in wonderland, where you never actually know what’s going.
Add to that is the Kingdom Hearts series.
If you've watched Over the Garden Wall it has a similar feeling of "what's going on?" that doesn't exactly get answered.
@@randomcommenter7343 They are having a near death experience, but anything beyond that is open to interpretation. Like, what would have happened if one of the brothers had been taken by the old man? We don't know.
Agreed. Carroll's mocking of English schooling wouldn't be half as effective if there was hard worldbuilding.
Alice in Wonderland actually has very little world building. There's no real connection from one place or the next. Most of the characters have no connection with any of the places. Instead, there's a lot more focus on silly mathematical word puzzles, because Lewis Carroll was fascinated by the mathematical study of logic. The setting is rarely ever of any importance beyond merely providing some sort of backdrop.
Miyazaki’s stories are like a magical dreams we used to have in childhood. Not everything makes sense yet it all feels so real and immersive.
Actually a lot of it is based off of mukashi banashi. They make a lot more sense if you've studied Japanese literature, mythology, and religions. In spirited away, even all the fictionalized locales, the bazar, the bathhouse, the flood train, are based on real places.
What's Soft Worldbuilding for?
> Lore vids
What's Hard Worldbuilding for?
> Top 10 details you missed
No just more lore vids
I'd say it's the other way around.
I'd say:
Soft Worldbuilding > Vids portraing mostly a character to explore more general concepts
Hard Worldbuilding > Series and sub series of detailed lore vids
:)
Soft world building is for lore vids? The core concept behind hard world building is creating a rich and believable world, which usually means a lot of lore for the world itself and all of the little ways things slot together.
Y'all are missing the point. Lore vids wouldn't exist if the lore was actually TOLD to the viewer or reader.
"top 10 details you missed" wouldn't exist if the story being told didn't include that many deep, worldbuilding details.
A prime example of soft world building which I had to think of: Over the Garden Wall.
Perfect example!
That show is criminally under-appreciated by the public. It's a modern Halloween, children's classic.
Exactly my thought!
I just love how mysterious and odd the world is.
So sad they removed it from netflix, would have loved to see it in the fall...
yeah, that show was way too short.
That’s a great example
The Hobbit, taken as itself, is soft world book in a hard world universe, and it works well.
Alec Joseph exactly but he already made a insane amount of sketches and notes about the world before he ever started on the hobbit
The Hobbit was in the beginning, if I remember correctly, nothing more than a bedtime story.
That explains why I like it so much more than the original series
@@alec8182
The hobbit didnt borrow anything from the simarillion. The silmarillion was written after the hobbit.
@@goat6354 That was when it was published. It had been in the works since the late 1910s.
i also find that having the main character of the story be someone who’s new to the world lends itself more easily to those soft worldbuilding techniques. having a character discover and explore the world alongside the reader/viewer creates a more immersive feeling as opposed to placing the audience in a pre established world and then catching them up through detailed explanations
Which is also what JRR Tolkien's popular 4 book series does within his hard built world. We follow around a child-sized hobbit that's an upper class Englishman in all but species. He lives in a modest old house with no servants except a gardener, and knows his own family and traditions. Then an old wizard of unspecified size plays a trick on a migrating band of dwarfs on a mission to retake their family business from a greedy monster, causing our protagonist to come along for the ride amongst great people and fantastic places. The second bigger story has leftovers from the first story turn out to be of extreme importance, with world elements appearing as necessary as the world is rewritten to match. Throwaway lines about distant wizards expand into a secret council of superior beings. The westward migrations of elves through forests become an epic journey to a hidden paradise. Randomly encountered disinterested pygmies are expanded to a few ancient statues inserted in an earlier chapter. Etc. etc.
I disagree with you. Clark Ashton Smith's fantasy stories (set in alien planets, dying worlds, and dying continents) often feature purely native characters, but the stories do not waste time trying to defined everything for the reader. Every story is purely focused on the character's journey and the sheer atmosphere of the world, with little care for consistent world-building detail.
I like both, both are great
The world feels more mystical in both. One with how alive and lived in it feels b/c the character is already established somewhat, it is done well without exposition dumps. Just piecing the information together yourself, the bread crumbs left there (which is done in both tbf)
Whereas a world both us and the character are new to is this mystical new adventure of learning alongside one another. It’s fun
One piece
its really useful but i feel like a lot of shows/movies/games/books can do it in a really lazy or uninspired way. isekai anime are the worst offender of this, where the main character is usually transported into a fantasy world from tge real one, but often have little to no personality or actual interaction with that world. a good example i can think of is breath of the wild, the protag link loses his memory after sleeping for 100 years, but the story revolves around those memories and how link rediscovers the world and how it has changed
to be clear: Tolkin didnt create elvish for his world, he created his world for the elvish language bc he realized a language can not exist without the world being that speak it and hece without a world the speakers live in.
I’ve read this quite a few times and I have absolutely no idea what it says
@@bethzilla44 Tolkien was making a cool language, called elvish. But languages don't pop out of nowhere, they reflect the people they come from, so Tolkien made a people, called Elves. From there middle earth was created.
Elvish came first, everything else was the context for Elvish.
@luigi mario Tolkien Elves are sufficiently different from their mythological counterparts they might as well be original. In some translations of LOTR like german for example they even get a different name.
@luigi mario Oh I'm aware of that aspect I meant his Elves, not Elves in general.
unnecessarily complicated wording smh lol
I love that my teacher sent this link into our creative writing class, for an exercise, love your stuff as always!
Writing-Advice-Sources,
can i recommend you some?
I’ve been trying to put my finger on this for so long, saying, ‘Stop throwing proper nouns at me,’ ‘Stop pausing fights to explain how they work, just let me get caught up in the unbroken motion,’ ‘Leave me asking “What the fuck did I just watch?” because my attempts to unpack it will have me talking about your story for years.’ And this finally narrows it down. Soft world building.
I’ve grown up in a media culture so focused on hard world building that I over-explained so many of my younger stories and wondered why I wasn’t capturing the silent wonder of special art pieces like Ghibli films. There it is.
In most things these days, I’m a big fan of Team ICO’s ‘design by subtraction.’ A minimalist setting that says that one moment in time between two people, without any words exchanged, can be enough for a story. This can be so delicate that extra detail leaves it bloated. Enjoy the silence.
I agree completely. Some people don't like the confusion of Miyazaki's works, especially Spirited Away, but I always found it enchanting and engaging. During other movies, if I spaced out for even a second it would suddenly feel like 1000 years had passed--same with books.
Hard worldbuilding can work but it also leads to terribly boring scenes sometimes, and info-dumping. Missing or forgetting just one detail could skew all the logic of a hard-built story, but in works like Spirited Away, you can hardly forget or miss a detail in the first place because your brain soaks in what little information it gets and tries to form conclusions. It's an incredible way to keep your audience engaged.
@@iferawhite7661 I immensely enjoy the old Ghibli movies, but the comparison you make is rather unfair.
A 'Hard' world should not get bogged down, should not suffer from pacing issues, should not endlessly info-dump. Comparing mediocre hard worlds to the absolute prime of soft worlds does not make a point.
Although I do acknowledge that epic fantansy as a genre, until about 20 years ago, considered those aspects as a necessary evil (some books just do not stop with the exposition). But that happens in both soft and hard worlds. In both LotR and HP, so to speak. By now there are stories that organically weave the world-building with the story.
Both are journeys filled with discovery. But where one is filled with wonder, the other is filled with understanding. Both are great when done right.
@@Drakonflare Yes, I agree. I never said that all "hard" stories were bad, I just noticed that often times I find softbuilt stories more engaging and easy to follow. Both can be bad or good, but in general with my short attention span, I prefer softbuilt stories :)
I've found that giving the necessary details and nothing more seems to work best, because if you're not careful, you can end up painting yourself into a corner and then it's time for a rewrite.
There's a video I saw some time ago where someone discussed the present of silence in samurai jack. It's very interesting I'd give it a watch, your last sentence reminded me of that.
One note I'd add is that Lord of the Rings (especially the books) and Spirited Away both take many elements of their stories from folklore. In Spirited Away, that includes certain characters being based on traditional yōkai, the fact that Chihiro crosses over to the spirit world at dusk and that she is allowed to eat food that she is given but her parents are punished for taking food without asking. Those things may be alien to the real world, but they're alien in ways that make sense if you're familiar with folklore about spirits. Lord of the Rings feels much more like Arthurian legends, the Kalevala, the Norse Eddas, the Mabinogion- not just because they use the tropes and traditions of northern Europe but because those stories were mytho-histories about rulers and heroes who may have been based on real people or not but either way were considered key figures in their cultures' histories. Lord of the Rings is basically the last cycle of the epic that the Silmarillion started. The Hobbit feels different from LotR because it's based on stories closer in genre to those that influenced Spirited Away- bedtime stories. Jack and the Beanstalk doesn't explain why the giant lives in the clouds, neither do most yōkai stories need to explain why the Jorōgumo was living in a waterfall. But "Beowulf" is going to tell you everything's lineage because that's part of why you care about this king, this sword, this monster, that pile of gold. They're stories serving different purposes, and you get invested by different storytelling methods- explaining everything versus leaving it to the audience's _emotional_ intuition.
It’s not often you read a comment as thought-provoking as this one.
Omg hayao mizaki is a swiftie?
That's VERY interesting. Thanks for sharing.
At the same time, Miyazaki is playing around very freely with Japanese spirit characters and yokai. I grew up in Japan and many friends turn to me trying to get an explanation for why certain characters behave in one way or an other. But often I can't tell them, because he's not pinning them down, reinterpreting them and adding characters that are unknown, like the reddish god. At the same time I also feel like the Japanese spitit world and yokai are very open for interpretation anyway, because they don't have a fixed canon of stories, myths, and legends. It's often just one character that different kind of legends evolve around. In that way they are very alive and still open for adding stories, rediscovering stories and evolving them further.
Um, the Kalevala is NOT hard world-building. Have you ever read it? Different chapters (or runos) of the book regularly contradict each other, and literally anything can happen because the characters are constantly using magic. If anything, the Kalevala is as soft as Spirited Away.
not a single avatar reference, I'm impressed
Yeah same
I'm impressed and slightly disappointed
I think Avatar leans towards hard worldbuliding.
We know stuff like the nations, their history, the avatar cycle, the politics of Ba Sing Se...
But disappointed
There's enough of Tolkien's to compensate for that.
You feel like a cool uncle and the smart friend mashed up into one person.
This is something that I never knew I was aware of until you summed it up for me.
The fact that u referred to him as an uncle is... um... showing his age a bit too much.
@@racoonlittle1679 Uncles and Aunts can be younger then their nephews and nieces, or not that far off. Besides, what's wrong with age? ...Not that he seems to old to my 30 something perspective...
Dang it. Now you made me wish he WAS my uncle
A good friend will end up being a cool uncle to that person's child.
Thank you for putting into words why watching Miyazaki's movies feels like such a magical experience
To me they're like the best kind of dream
When I first watched Spirited Away, my only emotional response was confusion. Nothing made sense to me. Not the world. Nor the plot. And least of all the characters. I was looking for logic. Anything to cling to. And was only bombarded with more nonsense.
It was a deeply unpleasent experience.
At least now I understand on a logical level what other people find so great about the movie, even if I will probably never share their opinion.
@@olafmeiner4496 while that was not my experience, I can completely understand why that was the case with you. I recently went on a binge and watched 12 out of the 13 Studio Ghibli works of Miyazaki and I feel that in order to enjoy his movies, you have to suspend disbelief and go in without prior expectations of where the story might go and without getting too bogged down by the nitty-gritty details. A lot of his movies have relatively simple premises so the characters' emotional journey is at the core of the story. The animation and music are also (imo) equally important aspects to enjoying his movies.
TLDR to enjoy Studio Ghibli movies you should follow the wise words of the great Guru Laghima and "Let go of your earthly tether. Enter the void" lol
@@olafmeiner4496 well I first watched it when I was like 5 so that's probably why I didn't understand it at all. It was so weird to me I just accepted it as a crazy fever dream. I also remember being scared of Noface. I rewatched it recently and now I absolutely love it. I love all the absurdity of it, and the end is kind of heartwarming and wraps up the story nicely imo. If you ignore all the crazy stuff the story is pretty simple and relatively easy to follow. But i completely get why you wouldn't like it. It is very weird and can be hard to process at some points. Maybe try rewatching it again if you haven't recently.
@@olafmeiner4496 That's so interesting!
I re-watch Spirited Away occasionally and when I did so the first time with my SO I just gave her this instruction as we sat down to watch: 'you know that feeling when you're in a dream and while you're experiencing everything it makes perfect sense? Then when you wake up and look back at it you feel like it was bizarre? Go into this movie as if you're dreaming, because that's what it feels like'.
It's just so captivating and somehow deeply connecting that I (even to this day and with this video explaining it) can't quite figure out why the movie makes me feel so 'right' without making any sense.
I should note that I have very, very weird dreams at times. It could well be a way that brains are wired.
Something I love about the ghibli films is the fact that places just exist.
Outside of our main cast, life goes on. Like the other towns the magic door in Howl's moving castle leads to. There are just other places in the world. I feel as though most other stories make a big deal out of other places just existing.
"When worldbuilding, you don't need to feel compelled to justify everything that you create."
I'm learning this reeeaaally slowly as I keep writing. I get so overwhelmed with details about my worlds that by the end of it all I'm just like, "ok, so what happens in the plot?" And I struggle with characters and plotlines because my consciousness is always "it has to make sense."
Thanks for putting this advice to words!
If 2020 has taught me anything it's that nothing anyone does has to make a lick of sense.
Another thing people worry about is getting it right when we really need to be plausible instead.
Hannah Atela what I do is create the world first, and make the story later.
I still love that tolkien wrote the hobbit cus his son was fact checking him on continuity errors 😂😂
Tolkien is one of the greatest writers ever in history. He will be remembered 2000 years from now the way we still remember Homer or Dante
@@John_on_the_mountain who?
@@bubbletea695 Dante's a poet of the 1200 A.D.
He is known for his "La Divina Commedia" which is a poem where he wrote in triplets (the metrics system, is this right?). Basically la Divina Commedia is a journey between Hell, Purgatory and Paradise. He was accompanied by Virgillio (a Roman Poet), Beatrice (which is important because it's a figure we find so much in his writing. She's a angel women if you know what it is) and Saint Bernard.
Basically in la Divina Commedia Dante roasted some of his contemporary and people from the past, from Popes to even Ulysses.
His writing is important because basically so much of the west's conception was made because of him, and by the way he even influenced people like Shakespeare, which is the base of English literature.
I thought the Hobbit are the one who came first.
@@rizkyanandita8227 he Hobbit was his first book, written and published after decades of world building and years of tell his kids bedtime stories.
I've always felt that world building works best when the Author knows how the world works, why things do as they do, but don't feel the need to justify how the world works to the audience. That way there is a hard constant for the rules of the world that isn't broken, and the audience is able to figure it out as they read, not because it is ever said to them but because the story and world never breaks those rules, but lets the reader in on the ones that are important for the story as necessary. This also means that if a story continues across multiple books that you have less world inconsistencies, and the readers are able to piece together and theorize about how your world works. I will be the first to admit that my thought processes is flawed, it isn't going to work for every story, but it is a personal view. It combines some of the elements of hard world building (admittedly leans heavily that way) where you had consistency and hard rules that once the reader understands is able to follow, but it maintains some of the ability to pace and flexibility of soft world building.
I agree. I don’t need everything explicitly explained to me but it should be internally consistent because the author has thought it through. That’s why Harry Potter is so frustrating-later additions undo or contradict previous statements. While learning more about Ghibli movies doesn’t undermine what the viewer understood before.
@Samuel Dimmock yay
This. Yes. Agree. Leave the mystery, keep the hard rules.
This is very much the definition of ahowing not telling, something that everyone can benefit from using in any media, be it writing, video, or speaking.
There is so much good to it, you let the person feel a part of the place you are illustrating by letting them experience it rather than just hearing a lecture about it. It is the essence of what we do as we truly grow up and experience the world, we learn by what we see and what we do.
I think it's also important that the author not push their own version of the world that they created outside of their book.
one thing I love so much about soft world building is how many times you can rewatch a film and find something new every time. I have watched howls moving castle so many times and every time I find a new little detail about how the world works and it makes the movie even more beautiful every single time.
That happens with hard world building too lmao
I like the idea of spending a lot of time doing hard world building and planning out your world in extreme detail but then write it purposely leaving some of that detail out.
Yeah I don't know who it was but some fantasy (?) author was saying you should know way more about your world and characters than you use in your book. Probably Sanderson.
@@YodasPapa idk about Sanderson… I took a worldbuilding class from him and his advice was to not worry about creating every little detail in your world but instead maintain a vague idea of everything and create specific details only around the story you tell- basically fake an intricate world without actually having to do the work😂
@@brycedecker7142 do you find that to be odd considering how great the worldbuilding is in his books? maybe he knows what hes talking about 🤔
Iceberg principle: The audience sees the part of the icerberg above the surface, but the entire iceberg is what you've come up with.
@@praxusjoon2478 oh nah I’m fully convinced that’s the way to go. He’s just a master of making everything seem so deep and intricate without actually having to do the work- explains how he gets so many books done so fast
Soft Worldbuilding : Let's the characters make the world.
Hard Worldbuilding: Makes the World a character.
Holy shit that's such a good way of putting it
Then based on this wouldn't Spirited Away be classified as hard worldbuilding? That's what I thought before watching this video. I don't agree with this channel's analysis. Especially when he used a culture that isn't his own as the center of his argument.
This explains it best
THANK YOU! I JUST SCREEN-SHOTTED THIS
@@moniqueloomis9772 Feel free to disagree with the thesis of the video, but you're being unreasonable claiming he has no right to use the PRODUCT of a foreign culture to flesh out his argument. That's like saying I have no right to argue modern Chinese goods are trash due to poor quality control because I'm not part of the Chinese cultural mindset. Your argument comes across as disingenuous to say the least. (I'm Chinese Canadian by the way. People in my community make judgments based on others' products all the time.)
An alternative summary would be:
Soft Worldbuilding: We're free to analyze and interpret the world on our own.
Hard Worldbuilding: Author wants you to see the world a CERTAIN way.
I think Hellofutureme did a great job with this video. He used famous examples of media we're familiar with to drive home his point about how one can go about constructing a fictional world for people to explore. The man wasn't trying to maliciously appropriate somebody else's culture or goods for personal gain. He just wants to inform budding or aspiring writers what tools they have at hand to build their worlds. They don't have to construct it as elaborately as Tolkien did if they don't want to.
This reminds me of why Over the Garden Wall is so compelling
Over the Garden Wall is the only successful western attempt to recreate the tone and atmosphere of Miyazaki's work.
Over the garden wall's logic feels exactly like the poems and tales of old folklore, 'a bird snipping it's wings off with a pair of magic scissors to become human again' makes -perfect- sense in a fairytale with the freedom that the fairytale environment affords you. If traditional magic is the promise of getting something from nothing then the conception of hard-soft sci-fi is the intrigue of finding out how close to magic you're getting in storytelling.
@@abg5381 Or in The Wizard of Oz, where the Wizard gave the Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion placebos instead of symbolic representations of the things they wanted. For the Scarecrow, he stuffed his head full of putty to give him "brains" and securing them in place with needles; for the Tin Man, he opened his chest and placed a silk heart inside like you would do with a Build-a-Bear; for the Cowardly Lion, the Wizard fed him a green drink and just told him it was a "courage potion."
Tolkien struggled much with his hard world building approach. He spent most of his life after the publication of Lord of the Rings with trying to fit it in the larger mythology. He wrote countless essays about seemingly trivial things like how lembas bread works, what kind of facial hair the different races have, how Numenorian succession worked. He even got into meta discussions with himself how elven immortality functions, if orcs were wholly evil and where they came from etc etc.
It kind of prevented him from finishing and releasing more of his work. On the other hand it achieved the in my opinion best, most coherent and deepest lore of any work of fantasy ever.
Well put!
His works are finished unfinished
The soft worldbuilding conception and examples reminds me of Over the Garden Wall which is also a perfect example
That is another good example
Ayoooo was looking for this , I really love the way over the garden wall is done . I like it more than Miyazaki's films , his films are awesome but I do think his story heavily depends on visuals. His films stories as I have grown older seem to lack a lot depth in the character , maybe it's cuz of lack of time but they really do look like shells of people plus there are a lot of character ,OTGW on the other hand really let's it ho , they mainly focus on the two children and Beatrice and let's everyone else blends in the dream like world making them not stand out as much as the side characters do in Miyazaki's films.
This is a really fascinating study of the use of soft and hard world building and the possibilities and intensity of each to help improve and deepen the understanding of story. Most of my stories are a sort of mixture, the elements that are important to the story itself are used that would be the harder worldbuilding elements, but the rest is usually soft.
Great study as always!
"There are more profound things than simply logic that guide the creation of the story."
-Miyazaki
I just wanted to save this for later
Here’s a wild concept: hard-build your world but tell the story as if you soft-built it. Then as time goes on in your series you can reveal more and more of the world. Don’t make later “clarifications” like Rowling. Instead show it as your reader picks up the next book.
Neil Gaiman once said “write down everything that happens in the story and then in your second draft, make it look like you knew what you were doing all along”. So yeah, nice advice🤣
One Piece was initially presented as soft built. But over time, it became hard built. Revealing more and more of the One Piece world in smart ways over the course of 1000+ chapters is a part of why One Piece is so great.
@HY 314 I love you
Literally what I'm doing with my series
That's just hard world building. The other method for hard world building would be an all encompassing info dump at the beginning I suppose but they're pretty rare
You just explained to me why ghibli films, always felt like watching dreams.
Dunno if you’re a fan of David Lynch but his shows and films have a similar dreamlike quality, though that dial is cranked to the nightmare end most of the time.
Honestly read some Japanese books, Kafta on the shore by Murakami is a good choice. It’s so surreal and dreamy and quite mundane at the same time
“Something enchanting”
Studio Ghibli
Sounds about right.
I've been writing for twenty years and this literally shifted my entire paradigm on worldbuilding. I thought _everything_ needed to be explained, but it doesn't have to bed. Sometimes going overboard with worldbuilding is a good thing, depending on how you tell your story, but not everything needs to be insane. I love worldbuilding personally, but honestly, soft worldbuilding may personally be more of my thing. I'm more of a character-driven writer. I love explaining things, but I also love mysticism and mystery.
Characters can be the driving point of both hard and soft world building. Look at Full Metal Alchemist. The logic is all there, but you add interesting characters to use that logic to achieve their goal.
I highly recommend you watch Brandon Sanderson's lectures. He uploads them on RUclips. He really goes into this topic.
He called it a hollow iceberg: Put in just enough detail that the reader believes the author thought of everything without the author wasting time on thinking of everything.
Same here (not the twenty years part just everything else)
I always read/hear critics complain about how nothing is ever explained and somehow, that makes a movie bad to them. As if the movie is trying to pull the wool over their eyes and say, “just accept it.”
But the soft world building is not just trying to get away with anything, it’s just as if the viewer/reader were part of the world the whole time and to question often would be like if someone who spoke English all their life asked what language they speak
Also you have to think about theme and genre when choosing one over another. A murder mystery or political drama often requires a harder world building than horror or fantasy romance, just by the virtues of the types of stories and themes they tackle. SoIaF has to have a pretty hard worldbuilding regarding the society in Westeros for the backstabbings part of the story to work, the same with the Watch series for Pratchett is more grounded than other parts of Discworld because murder mysteries need clear rules, but Stephen King books often have very soft worldbuilding because well, not knowing what to expect is a big part of horror or Princess Brides where the emotions and the thrill is what matters and the details are that to give flavour and uniqueness to the story.
@@BeefWagon Thank you for sharing your insight on movie critics. I realized after watching this that I do a lot of soft world building, and am having a lot of trouble getting short stories published anymore due to editors getting flustered by not knowing 'the answers' (even though they often guess the correct answer, so it's not me doing my job badly.) I'd rather not insult a reader's intelligence by telling them everything.
When I play DnD with my friends, I love to use soft worldbuilding elements as a DM. The players can then create there own interpretations and act accordingly. I also want there characters to have "a" goal. In this way, I feel like we are building a world together which is more immersive to them.
Any advice on how to do soft world building as a DM?
Would love advice as well on how you added that into your story?
This is the way.
I was thinking about role-playing a lot while watching the video and I think that while for a singular campaign soft world building works and is collaborative, in general there needs to be a hard-built foundation too, in this case the dnd dramework of the rules and the kind of things that the world of a specific campaign allows. I don't think it can work if the approach is soft building only.
Hard world building works perfectly fine as well with DnD as long as you don't use too much exposition or hand out 20 page guides to the history and geography of the world at the start of the campaign. There are ways through adventures and interacting with npcs to explain history and rules of your world in bits and pieces. The key is to leave most of your world blank so if the players have a character concept or a story they want to pursue you can always fit it in. If you know the world building of your campaign not the players it gives you a foundation to respond when the players ask questions. It's not soft versus hard that is important it's the willingness to allow the players their own say on the world.
Spirited Away is *absolutely* beautiful, even watching it in my 20s it almost feel like when my mother read me a bedtime story. It somehow invoke a memory of my imaginative childhood mind that no media has ever managed to achieve
Someone: What do you look for in a-
Fantasy Writer: Worldbuilding
Someone: ...I was going to say partner
Fantasy Writer: *Worldbuilding*
Fantasy readers too lol
if they haven't been worldbuilt, can they even *be* a partner?
Yes🙂
How THEY worldbuild lol
Fantasy writer:
DID I FUCKING STUTTER
I just want to say "... in the middle of an endless ocean made by rain, with a train running through it like an artery." is a hell of a line. Damn.
Waxing poetic with no real reason is just distracting.
@@Novarchareskoh my god I've just discovered people sometimes have different tastes
You're so right! When I first watched Howl's Moving Castle, there were so many things I didn't get, but I still loved the movie. I've found that the more times I rewatch a Ghibli movie, I find more tiny hidden details that add to my love of the story, even though they weren't necessary.
I feel like movies like Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke are maybe a lot less soft in their worldbuilding when you are already familiar with Japanese mythology and shinto.
I came to the comments section to make this exact point. But that doesn't make the movie any less good at all and that's one of the great things with it.
But aren't most mythologies and religions as stories essentially soft in their worldbuilding?
Actually miyazaki has stated on several occations that he goes out of his way to not reference japanese mythology or folklore in his stores, so No, probably not.
@@eoincampbell1584 exactly
@@karlfredrikhonningsvagg6303 I'd say he probably references mythology and folklore from all cultures. The idea of the forest spirit having two distinct forms depending on the time of day is similar to the world spirit(?) in Michelle Paver's novels, so I'm sure it must have some origin in real life mythos.
I've been trying for a while to define why certain settings (such as Harry Potter) seem to take readily to fanfiction, and others (such as Sanderson's works), don't. I wonder if what you are discussing here is part of the reason for that: that "soft-built" settings can take more readily to fanfiction because the world is more flexible and there is more room for secondary worldbuilding, whereas creating fanfiction for a "hard-built" setting is more difficult because everything is interconnected, and so it's hard to change one element without having to tear apart and rebuild the entire system. I'll have to think more on this...
Also none of Brandon Sanderson’s work has been adapted into a feature length movie. Say what you will about the movies but they brought a lot of people into the world of Harry Potters, a lot of people only started reading the book after watching the movie and i know people who only watch the movie (either because they feel no need to experience the story again in book form, books compared to movies is a lot less approachable as many people prefer actually hearing and seeing compared to reading). Also soft world building is a lot more suitable for casual readers, not everyone can be a avid reader and not everyone is interested in intricate world building, a casual reader can just jump into Harry Potters, follow along the journey and be marveled by the wonders of the world and not think much about it. In contrast to fully enjoy Sanderson work you must keep in mind the rules set by the magic system, pay attention to details, cues and implications about the magic system and world building which isn’t the most fun thing to people who haven’t read much fantasy
@@pancakeandwaffle4849 Same goes for the Marvel Universe, as much as certain people hate movies for how they portray original source material, they are arguably the biggest medium we see the source material in. Reading is far more niche than movies are and like you said, movies help people get interested in the original source material.
You can say the same about LOTR. A lot of people haven't read the books but the moment they watch the movies they get invested because it allows Tolkien's world to truly come to life without the really heavy worldbuilding aspects. Soft-worldbuilding is great for more audience engagement because it doesn't get bogged down in details which a lot of people don't want to put the time into remembering; this is why soft-worldbuilding novels usually recieve more widespread popularity than hard-worldbuilding. ATLA blended hard and soft perfectly which is why we're still talking about it.
@@peachesandcream8753 whats ATLA?
@@John_on_the_mountain Avatar: The Last Airbender
I've just realized, that Tolkien made am elfabet!
Majd ELFelejtettem.
Ba Dum Tss! 🥁 (That was terrible, I love it.)
__But it's not an alphabet it's an abugida.__
plot twist. that pun is what drove him to do it.
Oh my God, you didn't...
Hard world building isn't necessarily "making a story for your world." It's a scenario where the world itself is the story. The world and its history are major characters.
The only "clarification" I really like was Hufflepuff being a party house and their common room being closest to the kitchens. That made Hufflepuff my favorite house.
Hard world-building: the author immerses the reader
Soft world-building: the reader immerses themselves
Is it just me, or are you deliberately trying to remind J. K. Rowling of her own words on this subject? Fantastic video, as always!
It did strike me as incredibly ironic when I heard that quote XD
I honestly wonder if they (Miyazaki included) watch some videos that their fans make, especially to get better, even if they see themselves in one lens but are praised in other lenses, do they see videos based on those other lenses
Honestly, while I can kinda agree that the soft worldbuilding of HP does have to do with the clarifications sounding dumb, it's not really in the way he thought.
She's basically trying to pretend she planned all that and just hid it from us, but rather, she just came up with those things 20 years later and is trying to sound smart and/or progressive for whatever reason.
It's like trying to pretend she planned a city from its subterranean level all the way to its sky-crappers, when in reality, she just placed some buildings where it looked pretty at the time, and everyone else just kinda build their lives around them. Even if she now tries to puts a monument where it kinda looks neat, and thinks in retrospect should've always been there, houses and parks are already there, and just throwing the monument from the sky on top of that both looks awkward, and will piss people off.
Quite honestly, I don't think she TRIED to make a soft worldbuilding, I suspect her full intent was to create a HARD one, but by accident created a decent-good soft fantasy world, its accidental nature more easily noticed when she utterly murders it with later unnecesary additions (not just the new tweets, how Abada kedabra reduces all ofensive magic to voice-commanded guns, free teleportation makes flu magic tunnels irrelevant, so on and so fort).
@@jhonejay1426 i dont think so, atleast not miyazaki he doesnt even watch movies
@@tumamaencosplay JK just did not think through the consequences. She just threw stuff in she found, some is well done and a lot is just not working.
I want to propose a third alternative: "hard immersion." Frank Herbert uses this to great effect in the original _Dune_ trilogy. The reader is immersed in a coherent world, but the rules are not immediately apparent, and there is very little explication. Thanks for an excellent video.
I’ve never read the trilogy, so how would you say it differs from soft or hard worldbuilding? For contrast, I sensed the movie to be more soft, with many systems already being in place and-as you said-being left unexplained.
@@shabr1ri Most aspects of the world become clear and make sense given the history of the "Duniverse," but the reader must assemble the pieces. There are few "exposition dumps." If the reader doesn't do the work, then the world remains mysterious.
I haven’t read the books, but as far as I understand, Dune has a hard building world. All details are explained and logically connected. The fact that the author does not explain them immediately is just a mean of storytelling. He hides some aspect, but makes us discover them later (probably we only know what the main character knows??) Still, the world itself is detailed and logical. That’s what I’ve seen in a movie, so correct me if I’m wrong🙏🏻 (and sorry for poor English)
@@СветланаЯковенко-н5ж That's a pretty fair assessment. The world is very coherent, but the way the reader gains an understanding of this world is unique.
I experienced that with "His Dark Materials" Trilogy
It's funny because if you read the Nausicaa manga it reads a lot more like a hard world build story. The level of detail Miyazaki goes into in the manga is insane.
Hard Worldbuilding: Invite the readers to discover what is
Soft Worldbuilding: Let the readers imagine what could be
I’ve been thinking about this since I went on a mission to watch all available ghibli films on netflix, but I couldn’t really explain it. The magic in ghibli films is how they captures how it feels to be a human, it’s all nebulous and vague and while there are many invisible rules and structures we rarely understand more than a couple of them concretely
Are there any Ghibli films on Netflix? Last I heard, they were still being stingy with signing any deals with streaming services.
well said.
@@jasonschuler2256 A lot of them are (about 20 of them). They were added earlier this year.
+1
@@jasonschuler2256 I believe they are available in most countries except the US and Canada as HBO Max has the license for them
Although I’m not a writer I have continuously come up with stories since I was a child. I noticed more recently that I keep questioning the whys of how my story or imagined world works. And it gets to the point where it’s no longer fun to imagine a story because I keep poking at the details and asking how does that work. Thank you for introducing the concept of soft world building to me. I think keeping that in mind will help me enjoy the stories I come up with rather than me feeling like I need to add unnecessary details.
"Everyone can make a movie with logic."
If only...
I write expert-systems AI software. I regularly run into stuff best described by Chaos theory. Really complicated interactions of seemingly simple systems. Logic... logic has flavors.
hmm
Lol yeah miyazaki has way more faith in people than I do!
I mean, if by logic he means to just put together a set of coherent tropes, sure, it's not that hard for semi competent people.
But creating not just whole coherent worlds, but characters that interact with it in a way that makes sense according to their established personality, AND THEN, you are able to guide them in a way that both entertains and sends whatever message/emotion you want to the audience, SUCCESSFULLY.
Yeah no, the logic necessary to do all that outside the bounds of proven tropes ain't easy, specially because over-reliance of established sets of tropes loses their effect on the audience over-time. And just trying "subvert expectations" can backfire even harder than just doing the expected if poorly executed.
Fascinating.
I thought that worldbuilding means that we have to have everything explained in the story or else the readers will say "HA! plot holes!" while reading.
I'm never this glad to be wrong.
No, it’s in the name. You build worlds, small pockets. A plot hole is more like a missing link between point A & B that feels like it should be explained but isn’t.
Like “how did character A regrow their leg when character B cut it?” and it’s never explained.
Not a plot hole would be “I wonder why the rivers in this world have the color purple” it creates a believable world and may lead to fan theories, but it doesn’t take the audience out of the film, or get them confused.
Or maybe I’m wrong, who knows. I sure don’t, I’m still a student.
@@mslightbulb This is exactly correct. A plot hole is a failure of the world to be logically consistent and, therefore, we as readers/viewers come away saying, "Why does X work now when it didn't work before?" or "Why does the character do X when Y was a perfectly suitable alternative?"
A perfect example is how, in "Deathly Hallows", Bill explains to Harry that he has become the secret-keeper for Shell Cottage. This begs the question of why James Potter did not make himself the secret-keeper of the Potter home all of those years ago. Previously, we've seen it to be the case that a secret-keeper has to be outside of the place being kept a secret, which makes sense because it makes the Fidelius Charm imperfectly protective and explains why James needed to trust Wormtail. However, Bill's explanation makes all of this unnecessary. That's a plot hole.
Conversely, Quidditch scoring, which makes no real sense, is not a plot hole since it does not conflict with something else in the lore. It's just a wacky and idiosyncratic part of the magical world that Harry has discovered.
Real life have plot hole itself.
Ax9 not really
The fear of creating plot holes is one of the factors that keep me away from writing -.-
One of my favourite soft worldbuilding is The Last Unicorn. I watched it as a kid, and I vividly remember how mystified I was by half the things that happened in it. Basically all the magic that happened in the movie was random stuff, a lot of it by mistake, but it served a point - to teach life lessons via character arcs and development.
And also, thicc trees.
To me, Ghibli movies are like a euphonic phantasmagoria of whimsy and the sound of rain, the loving embrace of warm lights, the soft melodies overflowing with nostalgia and pleasantry. That childlike wonder captured and bottled into one sequence of piano notes.
So simple, so kind, yet so very melancholic, so very wonderful.
"You might like it. And others might too"
That statement is so inspiring. Thank you
I find it hilarious that you found a JK Rowling quote of her supporting "Death of the author".
She used to be very in favor of it.
Didnt Daniel Radcliffe write Harry Potter?
There is no authorial intent in Ba Sing Se.
@@camille7528 i took a trip to lake laogai
Neon Genesis Evangelion does jumping-jacks over the line between hard and soft worldbuilding. And when people ask the series creator (in interviews or whatever) to explain it, yeah he just trolls them.
I'm not 100% on board with calling Miyazaki's work "soft worldbuilding" because it all makes sense within the context of preexisting "Japanese" Nipponese mythology/Legend and culture/history.
Like, he didn't "leave massive gaps in his stories" for you to pick up on... the "gaps you're referring to are culture shock/knowledge that you don't have." (It's all rooted in Japanese Tropes; sometimes with a twist).
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Example: you don't need to "explain through worldbuilding" to a Japanese person why there is a "spirit" in the story that represents a body of water; a "water spirit" (Suijin) and that pollution "corrupts/sickens" it... because they are Japanes and know that Shinto is a thing that exists (even if they follow a different religion/ or none at all).
The "gold" literally represents "finding gold that had been exposed by erosion and deposited in the river/creek" - what allegorical lessen did he intend that to teach/ present... well that is left up to the viewers' interpretation (I think he meant it as; clean up pollution and be rewarded - but of course the reward wouldn't actually be "gold" but instead clean water/nature.)
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Example: The Concept Of Kamikakushi, Ubasute, Yama-uba mountain, Kintaro, Oshira-sama dolls, Shikigami.
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Example: "healing bud" (I don't know where you got that idea from; maybe a poor translation/Dubbing?) It's a traditional Chinese/asian medicine ball/pill.
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Example: "hoping lantern" Chōchin-obake/Kasa-obake (Yokai).
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Example: "Spirited Away" literally a traditional Japanese folktale that explained missing people.
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I'm sure there are more: but I'm not Japanese so I didn't pick up on all of them either. 🙂
I'd argue his point is that to those of us who didn't grow up with those stories or cultural norms gives off a different feel than if we had, there's a mystery to it for non-native audiences that adds a lot to the atmosphere.
All true, but he also has worlds in his other movies that are more Western-inspired that I would say are soft worldbuilding.
I think it is about more than just including unknown elements though. Yes Miyazaki draws on Japanese culture to create Spirited away, and the result is something that feels more unusual and mysterious to Western audiences than Japanese ones, but knowing about them does not make the movie hard world building all of a sudden. There is no attempt to define them for his story, let alone nail down how everything fits together.
Consider a western example like vampires. There are many many stories about vampires and few things consistent across all of them. Some authors take the time to carefully define what exactly a vampire can do, how vampire society functions and how vampires coexist with humans or other supernaturals. They may even come up with a justification for the existence of vampires, like a virus (I hate this trope). Other authors just say "It's a vampire" and leave it at that. Being a westerner familiar with vampires doesn't make both these approaches hard world building. It just makes it less surprising when someone turns in to a bat.
@@Splattedable I was going to try to express something similar. If you write a story drawing on (Western) fairy tale tropes, then even if people get all the references, it can still be soft worldbuilding if these tropes aren't somehow explained and justified within the context of the story. If the worldbuilding needs to be interpreted through allegory, it's not hard--even if you understand all the metaphors. In my opinion.
I think you fundamentally misunderstood the meaning of soft/hard worldbuilding. It isn't about the nature of the world, but how it is presented. Tolkien and Rowling both draw on European lore as their foundation but their approach to that lore is the distinction being made. Miyazaki builds his worlds without concern for the nitty gritty. Compare to something like Death Note. The story goes to great lengths to explain how Shinigami interact with the world in explicit detail despite Shinigami being standard fare in Japan.
Off-topic, but Chihiro is one of my favorite characters ever. Besides being simply ADORABLE, her compassion and growth throughout the story is genuinely inspiring.
Writing-Advice-Sources,
can i recommend you some?
I feel like i like the idea of having a hard world but told softly, room to imagine, but thoughts are taught along the way and hopefully leaving room for the reader to keep their individuality as though they have been brought up in this world by the end of the 1st-3rd book.
I feel like this is how the HarryPotter series pulled me in.
I agree, I enjoy a good visualization but when there are too many details it takes some effort to make it happen in the mind
"You dont have to explain every little detail of your world"
I think that's one of the best pieces of advice I've recieved from you....I spend alot of time trying to find interesting explanation for certain parts of my story....
But I guess it's ok for certain things to be bizzare...
Hard world building is ninja gaiden. Soft world building is Yoshi’s Woolie World
That's pretty literal for non-literary examples - LOL!
WOAHSHI, ITS A DOUBLE YOSHI EXPLOSHI !
@@SapphireSolstice67 This comment gets better every time I read it.
@Joseph Douek or star wars in general
@Joseph Douek Legends lore was pretty good tho
H.P.Lovecraft basically uses hard worldbuilding at the start of his stories and then slowly switches to soft toward the end.
Yo this comment is really fucking good
1:15 Hard World-Building
Immerse The Reader into a Unique Culture
Intended Depth
2:24 Soft World Building
Leave The Scenes for Viewers to Interpret for Themselves
Imagined Depth
Hard World-building does not lead to depth.
It's just extensive surface.
@@PauLtus_B I think that depends on how those extra details were used for the narrative. I encountered stories giving so much exposition and non of it was used.
@@bohenian
Your argument doesn't really seem to support your point.
@@PauLtus_B you said hard world-building does not lead to depth so I said it depends on how those extra details were used (which I think what you meant when you said "extensive surface) then. Then I argued what constitutes a bad usage of adding to much detail by saying that there are stories with too much exposition without using those details in the narrative.
@@bohenian
People tend to confuse breadth with depth.
No matter what, if you need to take detailed consistent rules into account, that's gonna give you limitations on what you can do.
Soft worldbuilding also seems good for quick, temporary visits to magical other worlds that our protagonists don't-or maybe can't-understand.
For a normal person from our world "just visiting" it makes sense.
But you have to put in more work the longer they've stayed there snd the more time they have to learn about the world.
so like Narnia ;)
Thank you for this explanation. I was stressing out worrying that my world wasnt detailed enough like LOTR or GOT, but I realized that I've been doing soft world building and it's okay, it's not wrong to do.
My favorite form of worldbuilding is when both are used, when sound histories and logic are established for the world, but later added on to and expanded as the story progresses and as the characters learn more, so do you, and suddenly that rigid predefined world becomes fluid and changing, leaving you wondering what fills those open spaces left in the world, speculating what is really possible as the logic and rules previously established are bent and broken.
I remember the first time I saw Spirited Away as a teenager. My friend told me to see it, because she had liked it. The movie made me feel very confused. Nothing made sense. I remember feeling disappointed, because I wanted to know more about the story and why things happened the way they did. Now as a grownup I absolutely love Miyazaki and soft world building and I also use it myself!
Actually surprised you didn't get it as a kid. Watched it at 10 years old and I thought it was pretty straight forward. Then again I've never needed explanations for every little thing. Just read stories and see where they take you
@@TheSilverwing999 Well I suppose it depends on what kind of stories you grow up with. What parts are explained and what aren't. What the characters' motives are. Every culture has a different kind of story telling tradition. If you thought this movie was straightforward, you must have heard similar stories in the past and learned to interpret them in the right way.
Great theoretical break down! This will come handy in my future projects! Thank you and greetings from Germany
I've heard Yubaba's oath in real life -- when defenders of the rich say, "There's a job for everybody who is willing to work." It's the flip-side of the coin: Anybody who doesn't have a job, just isn't willing to work. Note Yubaba's resistance to her saying, "I want to work!"
Consistency is still very important for Soft Worldbuilding. You can't change the rules without a good reason, because those rules _are then_ the emotional core of your story. Once it's established that Kiki's magic is directly related to her mood, that defines the main conflict of the movie. Chihiro's is constantly confronted by new and strange things, but they're always called back on later to cement those things in the viewers mind and provide future context for what's possible within the Spirit World. Food and how you get it is an important touchstone. The fact that every spirit has a purpose and that there is some kind of hierarchy is what drives the plot forward, even if we never get to find out what purpose each spirit's purpose is or where they fall on that hierarchy. Chihiro is forced to find purpose to continue living within this world, and finding Haku's purpose fulfill's the main emotional arc, even while the plot still has to play out.
Worldbuilding is built on the reuse of material. Something happening once is trivia, something happening twice is worldbuilding.
Harry Potter is a series that (more or less) made the transition from one type to the other(despite how Rowling may hate the concept) because of a buildup of those ideas. She started with whimsy, but eventually the rules of the Wizarding World became too numerous to continue adding at the same rate that she did, so she instead played on the rules she already had in place. When Dobby was introduced, House Elves were a fantastical thing, but over the course of Chamber of Secrets we learn all of the important rules that govern their service. By the end of Deathly Hallows she has twisted and turned those rules so that we've seen every facet. And it's still slavery, but what are you gonna do?
Why I like OG Star Trek: The worldbuilding of each episode provided just enough sci-fi whimsical context to provoke an interesting question and then the story asked Kirk, Spock and McCoy what they FELT and THOUGHT of that question. It was usually a dilemma, and the Trio were portrayed as so mature for being able to argue through that dilemma, work through it. Come to some conclusion.
So many other stories... 1) Visit new world/town. 2) Some conflict happens. 3) Fix the villagers' problems for them. 4) Leave, with nothing personally changed.
Maybe this video and your comment explain why I like TNG and LOTR more than TOR and Harry Potter. While I enjoy the process of Kirk and Co. answering those questions, I like exploring the universe more.
You're right. Almost every episode, they introduced a new world with odd races and systems but didn't put a lot of focus on how they actually work. They instead focused on the meaning.
@@bluesbest1 I read every Harry Potter book religiously, but it always bothered me that Harry didn't really have an opinion on the wizarding world or the places he went to. He just kinda blandly experienced them, vaguely agreed with Ron, bemusedly tolerated Hermione's opinion.
I could tell you what Data and Georgie, or Basher and Miles, or Picard, Wolf, Kirk, Spock or Seven of Mine THOUGHT about the worlds they visited, how they affected them.
@@Cityweaver Hmm. I think I remember a sense of wonder at Hogwarts and Diagon Alley, disgust at Draco, and other appropriate responses at various points, but that could've been Rowling transmitting that directly to the reader without involving Harry's internal reactions. I'll admit, it's been a long time since I've read the actual books, so you'd know a lot more than me.
@@bluesbest1 Well, I think most fans would agree that Draco Malfoy gives Harry a strong emotional reaction.
:3
I absolutely love this subject/idea, and I think you have struck on something very important here about the force of the author and the freedom of the reader. I do feel as though I need to point out that I think you have misunderstood Tolkien and his world building.
Before anyone jumps on me, because I know that you are very knowledgeable about Tolkien and have thought this subject through more than I probably have, but one of the key things that I have learned about Tolkien is how much more nuanced and alien Middle Earth really is than my first impressions from reading the books the first two times. Tolkien's writing process was not as methodical as even he attests in his letters, as we now can see with the History of Middle Earth books which show his process intimately. The fact is that Tolkien treated writing like archaeology, and made slow and hard earned discoveries about his world as he wrote and then meditated on what that writing meant. He did change the mythology and even the language (and the maps) as he wrote and discovered that it didn't match what the story meant. He also famously resisted explaining key parts of the world such as the Entwives, Tom Bombadil and Elvish magic precisely because he wanted those elements to remain mysterious, even if his personal instinct was to investigate every detail.
Additionally, something that I only recently started to fully appreciate is the fact that despite the writing style, the Lord of the Rings never has an omniscient narrator, even when written after the fact and with hindsight: there are times when the writer asserts things that are clearly not completely accurate because of other details we can find later on, but Tolkien lets us discover those details for ourselves and rarely ever highlights them. But critically, we now know literally volumes more about Middle Earth than Tolkien ever dreamed we would, because of the work of his son, Christopher, and I think that can give us the illusion that everything definitely had an answer and that Tolkien slavishly uncovered a story that he had determined in his mind long ago, when in fact the truth is anything but that. He may have more hard world building than say, Miyazaki, but I would argue that (with the exception of twitter retcons), Rowling is the one who sets out rules more or less from the beginning, and despite playing fast and loose with those rules at times, she largely adheres to them, especially even with her claim to have written the end of the series first.
I may be missing some of the finer points, but I will revisit this more in time. Thank you again for the great content!
You said it better than I could. The Hobbit and LOTR certainly have parts of its world that are bizarre and unexplained.
The video does make it clear that it's a spectrum but I was hoping for these elements to be mentioned.
Tolkien your ultimate hard world builder understood this as well, most of the background lore was just never expanded upon, there is a poem in elvish, that is heard and partly translated by the characters in the story, that Tolkien had written the whole of, and was a whole story of it's own, but this was never meant to be published, it gave the world a deep backstory that you only glimpsed, Tolkien being Tolkien at least knew what is was but often didn't write more than a few never published notes
Pratchett one of your examples of soft world building, is on record at discussions on world building of wanting to know how a city works, where the water comes from where the waste goes, how the food gets there, he wanted the structure there because it gave him ideas for stories, but he didn't let it constrain him too much, but was aware of it and wanted to be consistent if possible
Miyazaki builds very softly, but is still consistent, once a rule is evident it is not broken without reason, he just avoids making most of the rules evident
Rowling didn't plan, she just wrote, she didn't build a world, she just added ideas as needed, she is still doing this - this is why her pronouncements jar, and there are so many plot holes if you care to look... but you can just enjoy the stories and ignore this
Listing Pratchett as being on the soft end struck me as odd as well. I kinda see it, but at the same time, as the series progressed, it got harder and harder. Take for example Small Gods. A book that is all about how religion in Discworld works. It breaks down all the rules from how gods gain power, to what happens when they lose power. I suppose you could still point to it as being Soft worldbuilding since it took multiple books for him to get there, but when he eventually did it had fairly rigid rules.
Another great example is the Rincewind stories. Rincewind could be argued to have almost no character growth throughout multiple books. He's a coward that runs away and only ends up doing the right thing when there is literally no option left. He exists primarily to explore the world and introduce it to readers. The Last Continent is pure world building. It's literally a novel length explanation of the origins of a continent, and an explanation of why that continent is the way it is.
Thief of Time is an even larger example imo, as it can be viewed as one big plot hole patch for the world as a whole. It basically takes the reader and says "ok, you know how timelines from book to book dont always line up, and sometimes stuff gets a little weird? Well here's why, now dont worry about minor retcons anymore"
Pratchett may have started with a world full of mystery and barely defined limits, but over the course 40+ novels he steadily expanded and explained that world until you could extract a list of rules for said world to write your own stories in.
While Howl's Moving Castle is my favorite movie, Spirited Away has a special place in my heart. I love how there are so many elements to the world, and not all of the elements affect the story line. It almost feels like a dream when you watch it.
Hard world building tries to immerse you in reality, while soft world building tries to immerse you in a dream. That’s basically what I’m getting from this.
This was really a helpful video! I've spent so much time trying to figure out how I can explain an important element in my story logically (even though it's fantasy) to the point I read dozens of articles on biology to find _anything_ that might fit my story.
It got to the point I stopped writing because I was so frustrated about this.
So hearing that I don't need to justify everything really helped and motivated me. Thank you so mich!
It slightly annoys me how Howl's Moving Castle is referenced without mentioning the author Diana Wynne Jones.
Miyazaki gives so many subtle nods to the book that he didn't put into film, and I love him all the more for it. For example, Sophie has two sisters in the book, but in the movie you are never really sure. When she goes into the Waste, the old man that warns against it says to his partner that she's going to visit her sister, but the audience (if they didn't read the book) doesn't know if this is a cover story or true and it could work either way.
Agreed. Her book in itself is a perfect example of soft world building. Miyazaki still did something incredible with it, but I wish Jones’ foundation she built for the movie was acknowledged. Didn’t Miyazaki pick it in the first place was because it had that soft world whimsy feel he gravitates toward?
@@OhAlice1951 Well it was also his adaptation of the source material, so in a way he does own the version that he has created, which is why the vidoe only mentions Miyazaki's. It doesn't mean any other version is inferior, people just need to read up about who wrote it.
Yes? It is? It’s credited to her in the credits at the beginning of the movie!
I meant in the essay. As others have said, it feels like a miss to not mention the foundation that Miyazaki used to build his film. It would be another way to exemplify soft worldbuilding.
14:58 THAN FOR THIS 🎯💯😭📚
I wrote myself into a corner trying to over-explain & justify every little thing... no more!!!
I wish I had friends to talk about world building and magic systems with.
@Christopher Stanley Dude... you and I have the same last name. Maybe we can be friends, if we're not related.
@Christopher Stanley Dude... you and I have the same last name. Maybe we can be friends. Maybe we're related. Lol
@Christopher Stanley I doubt we're actually related. My father was named after the wrong man so I'm not a genuine Stanley... or, I am, but I'm a second generation of a new line.
New magic systems? No, but I am becoming very familiar with an old one, specifically, D&D's magic system. It's pretty wonderful, and I'd recommend looking into it, if you're not familiar.
I'll have to look into the one you mentioned. Got any selling points about it that might inspire me further?
This is an interesting point, the thing I love about Ghibli is how it seems so imaginative, like the creativity is just unbelievable.
This was such an excellent video, sometimes I do fall into the trap of thinking every aspect of the world has to be rationalized. But there can be a lot of reward when readers can draw their own conclusions, or just enjoy being part of the world no matter how bizarre it is. But the point you make about soft worldbuilding in character-driven stories makes a lot of sense. Great content.
I've been watching this channel for over a year and a half, and my worldbuilding professor in college just used this video to open the course. Just goes to show how good your content is, Tim
Soft vs hard is really just about the style in which the world is conveyed to the audience. The same world can be conveyed in both ways.
I don't think so. Having an explanation for everything makes a world appear much different than if you don't
@@tomlxyz yeah, but it wouldn't change the fact that it would be the same world. Having some outlandish stuff and explaining why that outlandish stuff exists are two different things.
Tolkien: creates entire languages and civilizations.
Also Tolkien: I’ll call it “Mount Doom” 🙃
But we do tend to do that too. Center Street, And where I grew up we had Tabletop mountain, why...because it looks like it is flat from the the ground. Also some other words have a very simple/basic meaning. Oahu in Hawaiian meant “The Gathering Place”...take a couple guesses to figure out why it has that name?
Commodore Stargazer It seems like it’s the only place named like that, though...if you look at a Middle Earth map, everything else in the region is named with the created tongue. 😅 I mean, the mountain has a proper name, sure, but no one calls it that. They seem perfectly happy saying “Osgiliath” “Ithilien” “Ephal Duath” “Minas Tirith” and “Mordor”, that one mountain, though...”Doom” well, if you say so. 😆
@@LadyAneh "Mount Doom" is known as Orodruin, or Amon Amarth to the people of Middle-Earth. It is however translated, like "Middle-Earth" itself, because it is important within the context of the story that the reader understand the word. Understanding what Ithilien or Minas Anor mean is nice, but doesn't bring you much information except for lore. "Middle-Earth" informs you of a central element of the conflict : the elves going west (if ME is in the middle, there has to be something elsewhere) ; you can also understand it as the world of men being in between the land of the gods (Valinor to the west) and the land of Evil (Mordor to the east). Similarly, "Mount Doom" clearly signifies that this mountain is hugely important to the story, as it is where fate unravels (where the power of the Dark Lord was forged, casting doom upon the world, but also where the world is liberated from his influence, where Doom much like Apocalypse take their earlier meaning of revelation and enlightenment rather than only the modern sense associated with dread).
Franz Patrick I know Mount Doom has a proper name (as I say, they don’t use it) but actually Middle Earth doesn’t necessarily refer to its location on the globe, as it’s named after Midgard, or the realm of the mortals. While Valinor is a bit more like Alfheim...it’s not quite somewhere with the same rules as Middle Earth. After the fall of Numinor, a human on their own couldn’t just sail there. It’s another realm, separated from Middle Earth by Eru Ilúvatar.
I just think it’s funny that out of all the made-up words, he chose a name that’s so mundane to be used on a regular basis. I find it humorous, regardless of any reasoning.
As I commented, "Middle-Earth" has both logical (such as elves having somewhere to go by moving west) and thematic (such as humanity / mortals being placed between good and evil) implications. It is indeed also a reference to norse mythology, where it already had a strong thematic meaning.
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Also if Valinor is anything, it is Asgard, as the land of the Valar, i.e. Top Gods, like Asgard is the land of the Ases. It also *used to* be a definite part of the world, before the Valar cut it off at the end of the Second Age.
Nobody:
Tim: "Gibli, Shishiro."
Do not forget "Howl's Moving Council"
Considering how much thought it seems like he put in the video , I wonder how that happened 😅
To be fair, do we know how those names are pronounced in the original japenese?
@@wreckitremy As someone who is learning Japanese I can assure you that Chihiro is definitely not pronounced like that.
To be fair, idk where you guys are from, but saying 'gibli' seems to be fairly common in Australia/New Zealand (where Tim is from), I know I said 'gibli' for YEARS before being told it was ''jibli'. Dunno if that's a thing but yeah
Excellent video! I like how you use examples from both books and film to explain the difference. I think most writers stick to soft or hard worldbuilding, but there are a few like myself who combine the two into something else. Cause if you really think about it, to the characters living in that world for their entire lives, the rules of magic use or fictional creatures or whatever, are normal to them. Therefore I keep these general things in mind:
1. Dialogue drives the plot and/or discusses rules of magic/creatures/social structures in a common knowledge way.
2. Characters and readers learn simultaneously.
3. Objects, locations, plants, animals, people, can all resemble the real world and still be different at the same time. (Such as explaining something enough to make logical sense, but not over-explaining so the reader can't follow it all).
4. Don't dump the whole world on the reader. Let the reader discover it and live in it with the characters.
So to boil it down, soft worldbuilding is basically entirely "Where the wizards went" with a few solid points.
I love this. It illustrates perfectly the reason why Spirited Away is my favorite movie.
AAAAA THANK YOU HI. I love hearing you talk about the Hsrd and Soft magic systems, I'd like to hear more about that if possible cause I couldn't find more anywhere else. You're amazing hi thank you for your videos I can't wait to watch this one about worldbuilding. I love how you explain things in such an easy to understand way.
If you haven't seen them, he's covered those before in previous On Writing and Worldbuilding videos. As for finding discussion of them elsewhere, just Google "Brandon Sanderson laws of magic". His three essays there are, I believe, what formalised or at least helped popularise the concepts of hard and soft magic systems.
I have recently discovered some of the movies from Studio Ghibly, and I fell in love immediately with them. I noticed as you explained, that the way the world was conceived generates an atmosphere/mood that hooks you the entire movie, because you want to know more about that world, discover those unique places, contemplate their beauty and see what the characters do inside them in order to continue with their journey. It's not only fantasy but also pure adventure, if you think about it.
Thanks so much for this video Tim ^_^
I've been working with hard world-building, but I still wanted that fantastical element of mystery in the story so I appreciate the way you explored the nuances of the two styles. Also, love the way you blur the backgrounds for the quotes, your editing style is so satisfying to my brain.
OK, I'm just going to have to nit-pick. Miyazaki did not write Howl's Moving Castle- that honor belongs to the British author Diana Wynne Jones.
Sometimes the screenwriter of a book-to-movie adaptation can be just as important. A good example is Annihilation (2018). Alex Garland's screenplay employed a MUCH harder world building style than the book by Jeff VanderMeer, which went as far as not even giving the characters names, only ever referring to them as "the psychologist" or "the surveyor".
I haven't read the book yet (It's on my list!) so I don't know if that's the case with Howl's Moving Castle, but it could be.
The Howl's Moving Castle book and movie are vastly different creatures. The screenplay, plot and dialogue of the movie takes inspiration from the book, but in the end, it's not a faithful adaption. I love the book, but to say Diana Wynne Jones wrote the screenplay is wrong. Did she inspire the movie? Yes. But on the subject of the worldbuilding, I'd say the book is quite a bit harder than the movie. And that's a Ghibli thing.
Dudes, the movie is so much better than the book. The book is fricking weird and isn’t so streamline in plot (it goes everywhere, including Wales!) There’s also two more books following the first that I haven’t read, so maybe Sophie does get young again??
@@catherinepoteat Sophie does becomes young again in the book as well as the film, so I'm not sure why you thought she didn't - the sequels are within the same world but have different characters as the main characters. I wouldn't say you can concretely say the book is worse than the film, it's just different - to me it represents a very english weirdness, which isn't present in the film.
@@catherinepoteat the book has a plot.
Amazing essay! There are things I never knew how to name but always loved. Ghibli is one of the best movies to show soft world building. They enchant and bring you to the world without many explaining. I just love it.