World Building 101: Rome Wasn't Built In A Day
I remember my first globe. Okay, I don’t think it was mine; like that old stack of Captain America/Daredevil/X-men comics, I’m pretty sure it belonged to my older brother, but, man, I loved that globe. I used to put one finger on the O in California and see how far I could stretch my fingers to cities like New York, Miami, Dallas, Mexico City. I’d just use both index fingers and measure my way from my home to London, Rio de Janeiro, Tokyo. Just like that I was on the other side of the world, an adventurous 12 year old boy fancying himself a regular Indiana Jones, international man of mystery and all that. I’d pore through the encyclopedia (we had that 20 or so volume Britannica series, the ones you’d renew every year or so) to read about cities I found on the globe, curious to know what the rest of the world was like.
Several decades later, it’s a bit easier to imagine the world; most streets are a few mouse clicks away, and, as I learned through the current pandemic lock down, there are videos on YouTube that can take you anywhere. Fun fact: I did, in fact, spend several hours on Sunday morning on a pair of virtual train rides through both the Alps and Japan. But then you take a moment to look at these grand cities spanning the globe and consider their origins. As they say, Rome wasn’t built in a day, right?
Rome remains one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, its founding being put at more than two thousand years ago (some studies suggest perhaps twice that). And it wasn’t laid out like it is now, of course. Go back and watch some of those classic westerns and see the wooden towns and muddy streets (okay, yes, it’s not all mud, but let’s not dwell on that) – cities we now see as they appear a couple of hundred years later. The cities we see now do not even remotely resemble the scrappy little towns as they began. But understanding those whys and wherefores is important when you’re world building. So let’s peel back the years a bit and look at how these things occur.
First of all, those of our founding civilizations that stopped being nomadic did so for a couple of basic reasons: resources, travel, trade, and protection, among others. Let’s examine these in a bit more detail.
For all my fellow Settlers of Cataan (or, for the non-tabletop set, Civilization or Age of Empires), you know how important resources are. But beyond the “sheep for wood” or whatever, look at the basic needs – water, crops, pastures, hunting, fishing. Whenever these sorts of things could be found in substantive supply in a relatively small area, people would naturally begin to congregate there. Farms, ranches, or even gold rush settlements centered around a merchant or two, then of course services like saloons, hotels, banks, the odd random brothel or whatnot to fill out the necessary requirements. Seattle was founded, for example, as a launching point to miners heading up towards the Alaska territory and dreams of golden rewards. Many ghost towns remain along the west coast of the United States, a smattering of failed attempts to send down roots for cities that would never develop.
This ties into a fundamental appreciation for how things worked before the industrial age, and before the advent of automobiles or even before the construction of the transcontinental railroad. Today it’s a simple thing to travel from one coast to the other – in only a handful of hours by plane, a couple of days by train, bus or car. Back when everything was single digit horsepower, it could take a month or longer to travel from one coast to the other! And of course, you can’t just ride straight through – you’d have to stop, let the horses rest, drink and eat, and so on. So along this path, little townships would need to be formed to assist with the stagecoach lines. Trains performed the same construction development, with the little “hell on wheels”-type organizations installing main camps at regular intervals to assist with the line supplying. And as automobiles and their highways appeared, the gas stations and other assorted supply centers sprung up at 2-4 hour driving distances. Take a drive along interstate 80 someday and you’ll see just what I mean. And let’s not forget port cities – but let’s hit that next.
Trade needs two big things – access and resources. So along with the towns centered around financial acquisition, you also need an easy way to get in and out, with or without your goods to be marketed. Roads came long, yes, but even before that were the waterways. Places along the coastlines required depth of water for the larger ships, or, for the rivers, barges and shallow ferries (or paddlewheels if you lived along the Mississippi) made for additional inland ports, but as you might notice, wherever the ocean meets a broad river, a city is usually going to be close by. Ease of travel and transport brings more money to a township, giving all participants the opportunity to grow and develop, and, too, the town they live in. It’s a pleasantly recycling upward spiral. You know, in a good way.
The last general category of city development is, of course, protection. Large groups increase your defense and generates enough internal support to make any would-be aggressor have second thoughts. Larger numbers mean more guns in the old west, which turns to (hopefully) a semblance of law and order (DUN DUUNN) and that eventually turns into government and… well, you know the rest. Also, things like religion and education are commonly found, giving each community a sense of itself, which unifies the towns against outside influences, and generate its own culture and identity.
If you’re writing a story that takes place on this world, it helps to define your setting by doing the diligence and learning the locations and cultures of your places as well as having an appreciation for how their own perspective on their cities functions. You can’t just write a story taking place in Seattle and throw in a couple of Starbucks references and hope you nailed it, any more than you can write a story in New York City and hope that if you talk about the Empire State Building it is gonna capture the essence of the city. Know your locations.
If you’re making it all up from scratch, though, in place of doing research on the actual place or places, you’re going to need to both understand how the locations history unfolded and how it came to be with all its details and subtext. A good example to consider is that people speak of their town differently to the people who live there than to the people who do not. People who aren’t from the town speak differently than the people who live there. An example – people who live in Seattle call the local University of Washington “U-dub”. We don’t know how long that’s been going on, but that’s what we call it. We also don’t all drink Starbucks (there are in fact many other coffee shops here), spend every weekend at Pike’s Place, or have shares in Amazon or Microsoft. But we don’t mind the occasional kite flying at Gasworks, saying hi to the Troll or avoiding the now-vanished Aquaduct like it was the plague. And, no, not that plague. The other plague. And older plague, you wouldn’t have heard of it. This seems like a timely notification, but cities are all kind of different. They all have different energies and the people who live there are all different, and it is not uncommon to live somewhere for years and still be surprised and delighted by the hidden wonders. Let your own constructs be original, but based enough on the sorts of logical and reasoned stages of development which will allow your readers to both feel like it’s a familiar world but new enough and different enough that they can discover it for themselves.
The fact is, your setting – whether real or conceived – is one of the most important characters in your writing. It may be a wretched hive of scum and villainy, but you’re also gonna love it a little, too. If it’s dark, it’s because it’s in the shadow of something bigger. If it’s light, it’s going to need corners for the darkness to hide. And however long the place has existed, your locals will have established some shortcuts, nicknames for the places they hold precious. Mountain ranges tend to look like silhouettes. Oceans and rivers, lakes and streams have proper names, but they also have personal affectations known to many who come upon them. Give them their names, so that you can offer this shorthand to your readers. It will instantly give your settings the age and mythology your readers will expect, even if they don’t realize it yet.
There are other motivating factors, of course. Religious or political locations, geographical features, avoidance of the law (Salt Lake City and Las Vegas are great examples of this) and, you know, some places were founded on the premise of “I don’t want to take another step.” Many cities survive their infancy, but many did not. We know enough by the sheer quantity of ruins left behind to know that what makes a city a city is a vast and unpredictable number of factors, and every story of their growth - either the facts or the mythology - is worthy of a few books of their own.
Oh, and speaking of Mythology….. That’s later. Until then, however, here are some things to do to help you expand your field:
1) Choose a movie or television show set in pre- or industrial times; for the US, I can recommend “Hell on Wheels”, “John Adams”, “Black Robe”, “Lincoln” or “Amistad”, or even “Roots” or “Glory”. For other nations, I’ll leave that open to your recommendations - - please feel free to share your personal recommendations in the comments below!
2) Choose at least two historical locations in your current city. If possible, go visit it (wear a mask and wash your hands, please).
3) Find the founding date of your city, your state, your province or territory. How were its boundaries determined?
Look for a possible surprise blog next week - - see you then!