Fractal Storyworlds Part 2: Know Your Nodes

I admit it: I promised fractals in the title of my previous post, but in the end failed to deliver them. So before diving into another session of “define your terms,” I figure I should go over what I mean when I’m talking “fractal storyworlds.”

Fractal images are “self-similar” patterns. If you zoom in on a portion of a fractal’s pattern, you find the same pattern repeated at each scale.

Fractal storyworlds follow the same principle. If you zoom in on some portion of the storyworld, you find the premise of the world repeated at smaller scales. The focus and details will change, but the overall themes remain the same.

For example, let’s look at yesterday’s Game of Thrones example. We said its premise looks like this:

Characters: Feuding nobles
Conflict: Fight for power
Setting: In a low fantasy world where magic and monsters are reappearing.

Now let’s “zoom in” on the North. What do we see? Desperate, overwhelmed guardians sworn to protect the land from the dangers on the far side of the Wall.

At first first glance, this might not seem like a pattern that’s “self-similar” to the premise. Where are the feuding nobles fighting for power? But those aspects ARE still here; they’re the reason the guardians are desperate and overwhelmed (feuding keeps the nobles from supporting them properly).

Send in the Nodes

While it’s perfectly fine to say that you can zoom in on “a portion of a storyworld,” it tends to be a bit a mouthful. That’s why I like to use the term “node” to describe any feature of the world you want to focus on. (I dig the term since it suggests both interconnection and modularity; a node is a part of a greater world, but can be changed or swapped out without destroying the world overall.)

“A ha!” you say, your finger dramatically in the air. “Since you can ‘zoom in’ on practically anything, doesn’t that mean that a storyworld can have any number of nodes?”

“Very good,” I say with an encouraging smile, and toss you a shiny quarter for being so clever.

However, while a node could be just about anything, it needs to have its own premise. That is, it needs characters, a conflict, and a setting.

For our “the North” node above, we can say the premise looks like this:

Characters: Desperate guardians
Conflict: Defend against northern dangers
Setting: In a low fantasy world where magic and monsters are reappearing.

As you can see, an aspect of a node’s premise may be carried straight through from the overall premise — in this case, the setting.

Other times, the aspect merely suggests or reinforces another aspect (the guardians are desperate because the nobles are too busy feuding to support them).

And yes, you can have an aspect that doesn’t tie directly to the overall premise, so long as it still works within that premise and doesn’t contradict it. (Those “northern dangers,” for example, can’t be giant robots in our low-fantasy world.)

Zooming In…

If all all this jargon hasn’t sent you running from the room, I’d encourage you to come back next week, when we’ll look at pulling these ideas out of the theoretical and body-slamming them into the practical, where they can do some good.