Writing with a Worldview

Who Uses Worldviews?

Is a world view - a philosophy or religious underpinning necessary to one's fiction? Certainly some writers use it to good effect - Philip K. Dick consistently applies a paranoid and schizophrenic view of the world while Douglas Adams' is gently absurd. Similarly, Orson Scott Card draws on Mormonism while C.S. Lewis's fantasy and science fiction is deeply informed by Christianity. Others, such as Asimov, consciously use a scientific humanist viewpoint. How conscious should writers be of their own philosophical viewpoints?

Questions to Ask Yourself

Here's some questions that may help you discover what your world view and make you think about how you treat characters with world views that differ from their own.

1. Do you believe in a God or set of Godlike beings? Do you think God's possible and/or probable? Are you a die-hard atheist?

2. What are the most important things in life for you? How do you know whether you are or aren't successful?

3. What do you want from a relationship? How fast do you think a relationship should move? What's the point of having one?

4. What are your politics? What do you think governments should -- and shouldn't -- oversee and enforce? What do you the individual's rights are as far as things like privacy and criminal prosecution go?

5. What makes someone a hero to you? What are a person's obligations to society? To family? To their lover?

6. What things give your life meaning? What couldn't you live with?

7. What do you think makes a family? How should a family interact? What are the responsibilities of parents?

Expressing Your Beliefs in Your Writing

Should you consciously write from your heart and convictions? yes and no. You should know what your beliefs are and be able to see where they shine through or shape a piece of writing, but you don't need to set out thinking "My story is an expression of belief X."

In The Art of Fiction, Ayn Rand writes:

"The best drawn character in anyone's writing is the author himself. [...T]he author's philosophy is present--in what he chooses to say and in how he says it. In a sense, a fiction writer cannot hide himself. He stands naked spiritually.

"You cannot create style artificially, composing each sentence word by word and then weighing each word: "How does this fit with my official dogma?" A writer's style comes from his accepted philosophy--accepted in his subconscious."

It may well be that the direct opposite is also true and that the author who wants to present an opposing philosophy must work even harder at the task. Similarly, a writer may tend to be more glib and thus less believable to a reader in writing about a philosophy with whom s/he is overly familiar. No matter what, a writer should examine their own worldview in order to understand how it manifests in and is shaped by their fiction.

Explorations of such themes may allow you to give your writing a moral dimension and extra energy, as well as a chance to reflect on a philosophy or philosophies. As Gene Wolfe observes, "Almost any interesting work of art comes close to saying the opposite of what it really says."

Print Article

Email Article

View All Articles

How to subscribe to feeds