Worldbuilding is an incredibly satisfying endeavor when done correctly for both the writer and the reader.
In fiction having an immersive and interesting world is critical for creating believable situations.
Luckily, there are various tricks you can do to create an immersive world without much explanation.
Summarising all of these tips best is the cartoon Cow Tools
What is Cow Tools?
There’s a comic that is a perfect example of how to create interest and immerse your reader into a world.
Cow Tools
It’s glorious.
Cow Tools is a single-panel cartoon by Gary Larson published by The Far Side in October of 1982.
The cartoon was released as just a joke for the newspaper.
However, the comedy in the image is rather hard to understand. The cartoon confused so many readers that on mass they wrote or phoned into the newspaper seeking an explanation of the joke.
The idea of dialing a number, waiting, and asking a human being to explain a joke is the funniest thing to me.
Nevertheless, Cow Tools became somewhat of a meme before the internet was really a thing.
The image drove people crazy, and mystery created about what the other three tools meant was a feedback loop that was never closed.
Which made many many people come up with their own meanings for the panel.
The creator of the panel even did a press release about the image saying that it was nothing more than a silly image that wasn’t really a joke or had any particular meaning.
This is where Cow Tools becomes incredibly useful for us as writers.
The Power of Cow Tools
The fact that the meaning behind the image is not apparent at first glance is what makes this such a potent example of worldbuilding.
The scene revolves around a cow’s creation of their own tools, one clearly resembling a familiar human device, a saw.
Next to the saw is something resembling a cane or a walking stick of some kind.
Because two of the four items have some sort of foggy meaning to us it primes our monkey brains to think that the other two ‘tools’ must have some sort of human equivalent.
When you become invested in the meaning of these items you become sucked into the world of the creator.
What are Cow Tools?
Are they used for something?
Do humans exist in the world of Cow Tools?
The act of being sucked into a piece of content is exactly what we want to replicate for our writing.
Writing Cow Tools
The power of Cow Tools is what we want to duplicate in our fiction.
So, how do we do that?
To write like Cow Tools you need to understand one thing.
Often the best worldbuilding is the details your audience comes up with.
This is so so so valuable I’m going to even bold it this time.
Often the BEST worldbuilding is the details YOUR AUDIENCE comes up with.
It’s understanding that your world is yours as much as it is your readers, so why not let them join in?
To get your readers to come up with their own meanings you have to do two things.
- Include highly specific details for similar things such as the type of government or food source
- Then include odd details such as specific way of life differences and DON’T include details of their meaning
This technique is so powerful because it’s able to immerse your readers into your text by giving the impression that you know EXACTLY why every detail is in your world, making them assume that the things you write are all connected in some way.
Use this technique and I GUARANTEE you will create more immersive worlds for your audience.
Geneuinly, thank you so much for your attention.
Happy Writing 🙂
If you enjoy writing tips my content is all of that, so check out this post about the art of effective dialogue;
Leave a Reply