Deep over Shallow

This is the last chapter before I dive deeper into the four steps of my process (and eventually magic systems). I wanted to include it here, however, because it’s such an important principle. It should guide everything you do when building a world.

The principle is in the title.

Pick deep over shallow.

Prefer picking ONE unique aspect and exploring it as much as possible, over throwing MANY aspects at the reader (but superficially). Deep over shallow. Focused over broad.

The reasons for this have been discussed in all the previous chapters. You simply don’t have the time to communicate many aspects of your unique world in one story. It’s overwhelming and destroys the focus your plot should have.

But it’s easy to think you adhere to this principle when you actually don’t. (I’ve certainly made this mistake several times!)

Why? Because most ideas can be categorized in many ways.

An example (of doing it wrong)

I might create a world in which all magic is derived from nature. One person touches a plant and becomes powerful. Another holds a rock and gets magic. Another one uses sunlight, and so on, and so on.

Yes, all of that can be put under one umbrella: magic from nature. It feels like I’m going deep on this one idea, instead of shallow.

But it’s a very, very wide umbrella. So wide that you can basically explain away anything as “magic from nature”. (Isn’t nature … all around us? :p)

As such, this is still a shallow exploration of many disjointed magic systems.

An example (of doing this right)

We can improve this by picking just one of these. Let’s say … plants.

No, more specific, flowers.

No, even more specific, flowers of a single color. (So, the whole flower is RED or PURPLE or whatever.)

Our world gains magic from colored flowers. Nothing more, nothing less.

To make our world deep, not shallow, we try to come up with many different types of Flowermagic.

• The flowers do something different depending on their color.
• Maybe touching the flower is enough for a little bit of magic.
• But you can also extract the sap from them and drink it for much more power.
• Maybe touching flower seeds also has a use in our world.
• A consequence of this might be that this world is 99% filled with nature reserves full of flowers (of the same color). And these are highly secure, well-guarded places.
• Another consequence you might reveal at some point, is a two-colored flower which some evil scientist managed to create.

Hopefully you see what I mean. Try to come up with a unique twist for your world and make it as specific as possible before you continue. From that specific definition, you can go deeper and deeper, finding all possible consequences or applications.

You might be surprised how many stories you can fill just by exploring this one aspect.

And when you do, the stories (and the world) will be much more focused and easier to understand for the audience.

This is a general creative rule

I’ve been making projects in many creative fields for a long time now. I would call this principle a golden rule in all of them.

So many good projects are ruined because the writers think “no it’s not enough, I need to add another interesting idea”. (Similarly, many movies are ruined by Hollywood executives who do not understand that a story is not a mishmash of “I want this idea in the story, and this theme, and this so we can sell toys”.)

Pick one thing. Pick a specific thing and go as deep as you can, exploring it through your story.

If you feel the need to add more interesting ideas, either

• Find a way to repurpose them, so they deepen this story.
• Write them down, but for a different book.
• Or just ignore this inevitable self-doubt.

On that second point, you can introduce new ideas if you have a series. If your first book was completely about Flowermagic, then yeah, sure, the second book can be completely about Stonemagic. (Even better if the two of them are tightly integrated and complement each other, of course.)

I guess the point, as always, is focus. Keep your ideas focused on the same thing for a longer period of time. This makes stories coherent and easy to follow. Once you’ve explored as much as you can, you are free to jump to a completely different focus.