Hard Worldbuilding vs. Soft Worldbuilding | A Study of Studio Ghibli

Is your worldbuilding hard or soft, and if it's soft, how do you use that softness in your story? Stay nerdy! ~ Tim

Soft world building seems to recreate that half-sense of the world you have when you're a child

Soft worldbuilding: makes a world for the story. Hard worldbuilding: makes a story for the world.

Something I notice about the most successful soft world building examples, is the use of mundane detail. Mizakis films are richly detailed, characters eat in real time, they put keys in doors before opening them, they start engines in real time, they put shoes on in real time. They do ridiculous amounts of cooking and did I mention the eating? They even walk places in real time. This is the most profound thing about Mizaki if you ask me, although it's not uncommon in Japanese cinema, battle scenes in Akira Kurosawa Seven Samuri play out like live sporting events and there is plenty of eat and walking in that too. I think this is part of what provides the depth, the depth is given not exposition about the wider location, but by showing characters engaged in very ordinary task within the location.

Miyazaki’s stories are like a magical dreams we used to have in childhood. Not everything makes sense yet it all feels so real and immersive.

Another example of soft world building is Alice in wonderland, where you never actually know what’s going.

For us, Spirited Away may not make much sense. However, for a japanese audience, it does have a different signifficance, because the movie incorporates a lot of Shinto symbolism. For example, Haku is the guardian spirit (kami) of a minor river, but the spirit that Chihiro helps is the spirit of a mayor river, therefore, he is revered by the other kami in the bath house. In the japanese folklore there's already a stablished hierarchy for the Kamis. And, the kami that Chihiro helps may be hinted to be the guardian of an actual major river in Tokyo (Kanda or Sumida, I don't remember), that during the 50's was used by some people as a dump, and when it was cleaned years later, all kind of stuff was find in there, from washing machines to bicycles.

i also find that having the main character of the story be someone who’s new to the world lends itself more easily to those soft worldbuilding techniques. having a character discover and explore the world alongside the reader/viewer creates a more immersive feeling as opposed to placing the audience in a pre established world and then catching them up through detailed explanations

One note I'd add is that Lord of the Rings (especially the books) and Spirited Away both take many elements of their stories from folklore. In Spirited Away, that includes certain characters being based on traditional yōkai, the fact that Chihiro crosses over to the spirit world at dusk and that she is allowed to eat food that she is given but her parents are punished for taking food without asking. Those things may be alien to the real world, but they're alien in ways that make sense if you're familiar with folklore about spirits. Lord of the Rings feels much more like Arthurian legends, the Kalevala, the Norse Eddas, the Mabinogion- not just because they use the tropes and traditions of northern Europe but because those stories were mytho-histories about rulers and heroes who may have been based on real people or not but either way were considered key figures in their cultures' histories. Lord of the Rings is basically the last cycle of the epic that the Silmarillion started. The Hobbit feels different from LotR because it's based on stories closer in genre to those that influenced Spirited Away- bedtime stories. Jack and the Beanstalk doesn't explain why the giant lives in the clouds, neither do most yōkai stories need to explain why the Jorōgumo was living in a waterfall. But "Beowulf" is going to tell you everything's lineage because that's part of why you care about this king, this sword, this monster, that pile of gold. They're stories serving different purposes, and you get invested by different storytelling methods- explaining everything versus leaving it to the audience's emotional intuition.

The Hobbit, taken as itself, is soft world book in a hard world universe, and it works well.

What's Soft Worldbuilding for? > Lore vids What's Hard Worldbuilding for? > Top 10 details you missed

Here’s a wild concept: hard-build your world but tell the story as if you soft-built it. Then as time goes on in your series you can reveal more and more of the world. Don’t make later “clarifications” like Rowling. Instead show it as your reader picks up the next book.

Tolkien struggled much with his hard world building approach. He spent most of his life after the publication of Lord of the Rings with trying to fit it in the larger mythology. He wrote countless essays about seemingly trivial things like how lembas bread works, what kind of facial hair the different races have, how Numenorian succession worked. He even got into meta discussions with himself how elven immortality functions, if orcs were wholly evil and where they came from etc etc. It kind of prevented him from finishing and releasing more of his work. On the other hand it achieved the in my opinion best, most coherent and deepest lore of any work of fantasy ever.

Some of the world-building elements in "Spirited Away" are actually just Japanese mythology and Shintoism; for examples, if you're Japanese or familiar with the mythology a bit, a hopping lantern doesn't really need any more explanation than a vampire does, and the ideas about pollution and spirits have a bit of a Shinto vibe. That being said, any kind of mythology allows many interpretations and worlds based on them, and "Spirited Away" is definitely still pretty soft.

The scene where Chihiro cries while eating a rice ball....this always makes me tear up. The first time I saw it I balled my eyes out... because I've literally done that. Holding everything thing, trying to stay calm in turmoil...then eating something so comforting..it just breaks you down and releases you from the tension.

I just want to say "... in the middle of an endless ocean made by rain, with a train running through it like an artery." is a hell of a line. Damn.

Something I love about the ghibli films is the fact that places just exist. Outside of our main cast, life goes on. Like the other towns the magic door in Howl's moving castle leads to. There are just other places in the world. I feel as though most other stories make a big deal out of other places just existing.

Soft world building really helps capture a “child-like” wonder. The floating city of Laputa in Castle In the Sky is a really amazing example. I watched the movie for the first time at 18, and it made me remember what child wonder felt like.

Soft Worldbuilding : Let's the characters make the world. Hard Worldbuilding: Makes the World a character.

When I play DnD with my friends, I love to use soft worldbuilding elements as a DM. The players can then create there own interpretations and act accordingly. I also want there characters to have "a" goal. In this way, I feel like we are building a world together which is more immersive to them.