World Building in “What-If” Short Stories: Tips and Tricks
After a few months of perusing short fiction, I’ve noticed some emerging reader preferences: many of my favorite stories have been those that propose a speculative twist on our world, present a character “native” to this world, and then spin this character’s personal struggle against its “what-if” landscape to glorious effect. These stories’ authors manage to present fully lived-in worlds while still delivering satisfying narratives and character complexity: how do they do it all in the span of several thousand words?
There’s lots of advice on world building in craft guides and articles, most of which stresses that a story’s world must always serve the story’s narrative, and that such service should feel organic. As Ursula Le Guin explains, speculative writers must strive to avoid “info dumping” world-building exposition and instead, impart details strategically and selectively, so that they read like “functional, forward-moving element[s] of the story” (Le Guin).
This advice makes sense in theory, but what does application of these principles look like in practice? If one were to examine a handful of stories from a certain ilk, would there be similar patterns or authorial choices?
To determine, I analyzed two short stories categorically similar to my own creative work – “Each to Each” by Seanan McGuire and “Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom” by Ted Chiang – to see if there were any similarities or takeaways. Like my own story for this packet, both of these stories are 1) set in a speculative “what-if” world; 2) have a “native” as its central protagonist; and 3) are longer than the traditional short story (5,000-plus words).
As a threshold matter, both McGuire’s and Chiang’s speculative pieces begin with a short in media res scene, a snippet of the protagonist in motion that only hints that the story’s world is different than our own. For example, McGuire’s “Each to Each” – a story about female naval officers genetically re-engineered as mermaids – begins with the protagonist walking through her submarine, responding to an “all-hands call” from her captain (McGuire 6). McGuire does not include any straight exposition in this opening scene – indeed, there’s no mention of “mermaids.” Instead, our protagonist complains about her “uncomfortable boots” (McGuire 6); reflects on her crew, who has “signed away” their voices “for a new means of dancing” (7); and studies her colleague who struggles with her “breathing apparatus that fits a little less well after every tour” (7). McGuire’s opening scene is fast, lean, and intriguing, with just enough teasing details to throw us off-kilter and whet our interest in learning more.
Ted Chiang’s “Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom” begins with a similar scene: his story opens with protagonist and shopkeeper Nat greeting a customer who is anxious to sell her a “prism” (Chiang 270). Chiang doesn’t tell us what prisms are in this opening; instead, he shows us Nat turning the prism on to see her “paraself” (Chiang 271); quoting the customer a price; and discussing how the prism might be more valuable if it was older or if its “other branch has something really interesting going on” (271). Chiang, like McGuire, keeps his initial scene free of exposition, instead allowing story momentum and in res action to intrigue us into reading more.
After these dynamic opening scenes, however, both stories “pause” to offer a more expositional interlude that details their story’s strange new world – a short “reader orientation” before moving forward. In “Each to Each,” for example, McGuire’s protagonist detours from narrating real-time action to explain her naval mission: via this interlude, readers learn that the Navy is comprised of all women, that these female soldiers have been bio-engineered into “mermaids,” and that submarine teams now comb the seas for potential real estate (given that climate catastrophes have ravaged the surface) (McGuire 7-8). Rather than feeling like an info dump, however, the short detour feels like an exhale after the dynamism of the previous scene, and grounds readers before the action again whisks us forward.
Chiang too employs a pause after his initial scene in “Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom,” an interlude which similarly serves as a little primer on his world. We learn how prisms are activated, how they create parallel “branches” of reality, and how people use them to communicate with their parallel selves (Chiang 273-75). Chiang’s detour, while lengthier than McGuire’s, is fascinating and immersive, and also provides important details about the story’s world to frame and inform its subsequent action.
After these “intermissions,” both McGuire and Chiang return to in res storytelling. In fact, in “Each to Each,” nearly all of the remaining scenes are real-time depictions – readers follow McGuire’s protagonist on her exploratory dive with her team; in her conversations with her captain about unidentified sightings in the water; in her return to the open seas where she is confronted by a “rogue” mermaid and offered the possibility of freedom. In each scene, though, McGuire embellishes her story’s action with a myriad of world-building flourishes, all of which enhance the story’s beats and add narrative dimension. For example, when McGuire introduces the naval crew members, she describes each of them in terms of their phase of mermaid transitioning (e.g., “One of the Seamen raises her hand. She’s new to the ship; her boots still fit, her throat still works” (McGuire 9)). Similarly, during the deep-sea dive, the protagonist compares her crew to other countries’ mermaid prototypes: “The American mods focus too much on form and not enough on functionality. Our lionfish, eels, even our jellies still look like women before they look like marine creatures” (McGuire 13). McGuire’s strategically-woven details create a lush, lived-in feeling – a world that complements versus compromises her story’s forward momentum.
Ted Chiang, by contrast, continues to intersplice his real-time action with narrative “pauses,” the entire story oscillating between engaging, in res scenes and world-building asides that explore Chiang’s story construct from different technical and philosophical angles. Do we need all these detours to enjoy Chiang’s actual story? Perhaps not, but they make the reading experience a lot more fun: Chiang’s genius lies in his unique ability to sell the “impossible” as scientifically probable, and at a certain point, his meticulous details somehow transform the story and make it read “real.” Chiang’s numerous intermissions also allow his in res scenes to remain fast-moving and lean, since readers learn his world’s necessary information via these interludes. In any case, like McGuire’s, Chiang’s world still serves his story – just with a different recipe and to a different effect.
My analysis of these stories’ worlds, and their authors’ storytelling choices, was quite illuminating. The study gave me concrete takeaways and ideas that informed my own short story, as well as other potential projects in the hopper.
WORKS CITED
Chiang, Ted. “Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom.” Exhalation : Stories. 1st ed., Vintage, 2019.
Le Guin, Ursula. “Navigating the Ocean of Story: Session 1, Continued.” Book View Café, 24
Aug. 2015, https://bookviewcafe.com/blog/2015/08/24/navigating-the-ocean-of-story-session-1-continued/.
McGuire, Seanan. “Each to Each.” Women Destroy Science Fiction! Special Issue, edited by Christie Yant, Lightspeed Magazine, 2014, pp. 6-22.