Literary Enlightenment.

The following has been quoted word-for-word from a post by Rosefae on a forum thread debating world building and character creation. Specifically, which of the two one prefers to do first, and how to compensate if one is far better at doing one than at doing the other. She was a tad off-topic, but it was a discussion, not a question/answer thread, so this essay-sized post qualifies.

Your characters and your world should feed off each other. In the real world, the world is shaped by the people who populate it, and what the world is like depends on the perception of the character. For example, to a drug addict on the streets, the world is gritty, cruel, and bleak. To a sheltered four-year-old from a well-off family, the world is a happy cheerful place where the cookie jar is always filled. Make your world suit the needs of your plot and your characters. If your character is a total nerd that would rather die than be parted from his beloved laptop, having a medieval-esque world for him is not a good idea.

Vice versa, your characters should be shaped by your world. A pre-1860 southern plantation, for example, might generate a character who honestly believes that slavery is the righteous way to go and the white race is superior to all other races. This same character would be less plausible in, say, present-day California. You characters should be shaped by the world and reinforce its key characteristics. They should be a critical part of the world, because, especially in a fantasy setting, your audience would see your world through your characters, so the perception of the world and the perception of the characters shape each other. If your character doesn't seem to fit properly into their originating world, s/he's less believable a person and won't seem "real". They'll seem to have been "put" there rather than "born" there. (This is great is for universe-hopping characters, but for everyone else, not so much.)

In short, your characters are part of your world. It's not much of a world if there aren't any people. The optimal way is to build the two elements at the same time and have them influence each other. But if you've already built up one of the two, and you go to build the other, don't flip to a new page and go "okay, character time" and start afresh. If you have a world and culture already shaped up, have your characters be influenced (or counter-influenced) by their culture. Have them be influenced by events that may have happened in that world. Build up a backstory that clicks with the way your world works. If you have your characters already done, build the world around them instead of building it somewhere else and then putting them in. And of course, your plot should also be taken into consideration. But that's another topic for another day.

... Oh good god. I could do a thesis on character/world correlations.

Tune in next time (aka in a decade or so) when we debate the ethics of character backstories and Rosefae continues (badly) talking in the third person as though she were an television announcer.

(Also: My router needs to die, or like, die. Or it could fix itself; that works too. I mean seriously, the only way to upload things is to unplug it and plug the modem directly to the PC. And the cord can't even reach the comp I normally like to use. wtf.)