Le Guin and Tolkien: Worldbuilding or Storytelling

[ThunderPerfectWitchcraft]

I'm currently re-reading the Lord of the Rings (and it is a great fun).

As you might have heard Tolkien did a great deal of "construction" regarding his world, "Middle Earth" - he started, according to his own words, by designing languages, and went on by inventing cultures, geographies, and whole histories. The stories he told are mostly events that happen in the world - his characters move through landscapes charged with history, and it weighs heavy on them - doom, fate, and destiny seem to outweigh the free will at times - maybe because most of it was planned beforehand?

Ursula K. Le Guin, who created the "Earthsea" cycle had apparently a wholly different approach: She said that she explored Earthsea herself as she wrote it - where would a path that she imagined end? There was no map that she had drawn - instead she wrote an adventure, and created the world along the path of her heroes as needed for a story she wanted to tell. And opposed to Tolkien, her stories are usually much more focused on single individuals (even though events that might affect the whole world might come into play).

The comparison of these two heavy-weights within the fantasy genre is frequently drawn - and the comparison seems to suggest itself: Tolkien with his nearly-calculated, fatepregnant epics - LeGuin with her unconstrained bildungsroman. And in many cases, it also seems that this directly condensed into the worlds: Tolkiens world is largely continental, while Earthsea is a archipelago of unconnected islands; the Lord of the Ring is a single story, whereas the Earthsea-Cycle consists of various small stories, loosely connected through Ged; the freewill seems to be stressed as much in Earthsea as fate is in Tolkiens world; the teleological nature of the norse and christian mythology that inspired Tolkien, compared to the daoist relations of LeGuin; and originally I had talking about this very "divide" in mind when thinking about this thread: What attempt is better when creating a "natural" or "good" world (and are both the same?), what do you prefer, and so on (And I'm happy to hear your thoughts and ideas about it).

But while writing above text (that went through some revisions) and talking about the whole topic with my friend (who knows much more about Tolkien and his background than I do - kudos to him!) I realized that the whole idea is a rough simplification, and at least can't hold up fully when checked: Tolkien used his mythology as backdrop, but improvised his story just as LeGuin did - the whole war of the Ring was apparently not even existent as an idea when he started to write a sequel to the hobbit; and while LeGuin hadn't as much material at hand as Tolkien, she surely had the one or the other thing in mind before she started to write - and as soon as she begun to create the world, she manifested it, and had - in turn - to built up onto it, just as Tolkien did with his prescribed history. On a closer look, both did a very similar thing - the difference seems so to be less in approach, than in the amount of unreleased material.

Additionally, there is another question rising: Is there a difference in world building and storytelling? All the preparations that Tolkien did - the inventing of a language, of a landscape, or a culture - it is the telling a story, one that might sometimes seem banal at a glance, as it is sometimes "just" the story of the language, the landscape, or a culture - but all of these are always in a situation, they have a past, and run towards a future - what is it that they tell in the moment when they are present? And as the things tell their story, they make the world - for a world is always what is happening within it.
And at the same time, LeGuin obviously couldn't do anything but to create a world when she started to tell a story - for every story conveys a world of its own, with its own cosmos, people, and rules - the only difference seems, in the end, the moment when she invented them.

In this light, "worldbuilding" can't be viewed discrete from "storytelling". The question seems to be rather: When should I think about certain things within my story, and at what point within the story should I present them to my reader/player? Since both depends heavily on the medium, the tone, and so on, I believe there is no silver bullet to solve this - but when looking at the differences and commonalities between LeGuin and Tolkien, it seems to me that amateur storytellers (and probably also some of the pros - for I believe that I've seen more than one fantasy novel that suffered from too much erratic "worldbuilding" for my taste) are far too much concerned about explaining and setting things beforehand - while there is no fault in having ideas and possible details at hand, it seems to be wiser to construct the world in the process of the story that happens in it, and make up details as they are needed, and - where the "creation" of world without a definite end is needed (like, in a pen-and-paper setting or open world video game), it might be helpful to think about these as a kind of story waiting for the players/readers: what do these things communicate to those who enter, cross, or interact with them?

Thanks for reading ;). All questions or input (for neither my knowledge about Tolkien, nor LeGuin, nor writing or worldbuilding are great) are most welcome!

[sejedensekh]

I somehow haven't read much Tolkien or Le Guin (yet...) but I write and worldbuild a lot so this post really piqued my interest lol.

Is there a difference in world building and storytelling?

To me they kinda have a venn diagram relationship. i think it's possible to worldbuild without telling a story, like if you create all these details about setting and species but you don't create a plot, or if you don't tell anyone about that world. The word "storytelling" has a more active connotation to me, like the act of sharing a world/story with someone. On the other hand I think storytelling often has worldbuilding embedded in it, especially for scifi, fantasy, etc. settings where there's stuff that just doesn't exist irl. even if the story doesn't go into detail about these fictional elements they still tie together in some way and contribute to the plot.

For example the novel Kindred by Octavia Butler has a sort of.. fantasy? magical realism? vibe to it because time travel plays an important role in the story. it's not a hard scifi/high fantasy story where every detail of the time travel is explained, the focus is more on the interactions between characters. but behind the scenes Butler was probably thinking about the finer details, she just decided not to include them because they didn't add to the story she wanted to tell.

the only times storytelling wouldn't have worldbuilding to me is if it's a realistic fiction setting with no fantastical elements at all, but even then... i feel like if those types of settings feel realistic/well-crafted enough then they kinda like their own type of worldbuilding? idk lol. Anyway tl;dr basically all storytelling has worldbuilding, but not all worldbuilding has storytelling, imo.

it seems to be wiser to construct the world in the process of the story that happens in it, and make up details as they are needed [...] what do these things communicate to those who enter, cross, or interact with them?

yeah I be doing a similar thing with my writing also. I do try to worldbuild in advance so i have enough info to like, actually start writing the story lol, but I also make up a lot of details as I go and add those to my notes later. I'm a pantser at heart who plans for the sake of getting things done

[ThunderPerfectWitchcraft]

i think it's possible to worldbuild without telling a story, like if you create all these details about setting and species but you don't create a plot, or if you don't tell anyone about that world. The word "storytelling" has a more active connotation to me, like the act of sharing a world/story with someone.

In my view, inventing the "initial point" is the telling of an story that might never be told directly - to illustrate this: All this people or species have relations, situations, and so on, that define them - and implicit, you will tell a story through them, even if your main plot ain't there (or will never come).
Furthermore, the active component of sharing the story isn't the main aspect of storytelling - for me, storytelling is much more the "construction" of a story; I also think that you can't invent a story without "telling" it at least to yourself (as you somewhat "project" it into your own consciousness in the process of creating it).

the only times storytelling wouldn't have worldbuilding to me is if it's a realistic fiction setting with no fantastical elements at all, but even then... i feel like if those types of settings feel realistic/well-crafted enough then they kinda like their own type of worldbuilding? idk lol.

I'd also say so. Even the most realistic novel is not real, but delivers a world modeled after the real world - and even a alleged factual report is always only giving us a made up world, that is torn from the real world that the author sees through their subjective view, as the empiric, "real" world ain't graspable for anybody.