Post History

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/26833
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Such a story with no worldbuilding or little has made some of the great stories of our time.

"No Exit" a French play by Jean-Paul Sartre is a great example of that. In a room with closed and locked doors and a cast of different characters, provides us with one thing about their world - wherever it is, they are trapped.

Does it make any difference if they are locked in a closet or jail cell? Or on a spaceship? That depends on the story. If the characters and plot make no reference to where they are, only about who they are and how they can get out, you have to do little to no world building.

Another example is the American play "A Walk In The Woods." I'm talking about the 1988 play by Lee Blessing about an American and Russian arms negotiator where their physical world is a park bench. Does it matter to the story whether they are sitting on a park bench or seated next to each other on an airplane? Or in a movie theater?

Again, you have a very limited world that plays no part in the story. I've seen this play done where the two characters sat on two chairs on an empty stage, devoid of anything else but two spot lights on them so we can see them.

If the story on its own is powerful enough to keep an audience captivated, who cares where it is?

Ask someone who has seen "No Exit" and "A Walk In The Woods" and ask them about the physical setting of the world they were in. Most will not remember.

However, the world the was created by the character's dialog will be remembered, but that world did not exist except in the minds of the characters, and in both plays, each character viewed the world differently.

This shows that sometimes, the world they are in is less important or not important at all to the story being told. And the story does not even have to define a world. A state of being, a state of existence is all that is required to write a gripping story.

Plays, which I have written several, are more about the character and the drama between them. The world is just another prop for the story, and props can change or not exist at all.

**EDITED 2/21/2017:** Since I don't have enough points to make comments on others' I read a comment about how writers are more interested in plot than worldbuildng. And this the key. While elements of the world the characters live in is part of the plot, you can take any story and put it in any world and it will work.

"Romeo & Juliet" is a great example of this. The plot works well during Shakesphere's time, and it surely worked for Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes as well as for Douglas Booth and Hailee Steinfeld.

Even in the modern city of Los Angeles, DeCaprio and Dane's speaking the King's English didn't violate what we associate with the modern world.

When plot and characterization are done right, the world matters not.

Original score: 4