So there I was, in a movie theater on a Friday afternoon watching The Avengers.  I don’t think I need a spoiler warning to tell you that there was property damage in that film.  A lot.  Whole sections of New York got trashed in the big fight scene as the movie built to its climax.  Office buildings were torn up, streets destroyed, countless vehicles mangled, the list goes on and on.

I had to turn to my wife and say, “Imagine the property taxes in New York.”

The cars and buildings, those will be covered by private insurance (and the claims will, no doubt, be declined), but the damage to streets, tunnels, bridges, public buildings, parks and so forth, who will pay for that?  The natural assumption is that the bill will pass to the citizens, by way of property, city, county and sales taxes.

My wife replied with a question of at least equal importance: “Who would want to live in New York?”*

These issues are conventions of the genre, but they are worth asking about because they relate to a key element of storytelling in every form: world-building.  It is well known that writers can get lost in world-building, going deeper into detail than they need to, and inventing whole histories of civilizations that have no significant impact on the story in question.  We tell ourselves we need to know these things before we write, but often that’s an excuse to distract us from working on the difficult part of the job: sitting in a chair and getting the story out.

Anyway, we can eliminate some details from world-building by restricting ourselves to the elements that matter most for a given story, but we also have to keep in mind the conventions of a story’s genre.  For example, in a fantasy novel readers will let slide the fact that mundane crafts such as blacksmithing, carpentry and stonemasonry might remain static for hundreds of years without the slightest sign of progress, but the magic system better be tight or readers will pick it apart endlessly (or worse, just put the book down for good).  In a science fiction novel, your tech gets no margin for error, but most readers will not notice that tactics and strategy have not progressed significantly by the events of the story.

And apart from exceptions such as Astro City, comics do not concern themselves with the effects of superhero combat on local tax rates.

So when you sit down to do your world-building, consider not only what your story requires and does not, but also what your genre requires and does not.  This way you can work with the genre conventions, but you can also diverge from them.  Do that well and your story might live longer for your readers.

I leave you now with the following food for thought (and I’d love to know what you think in the comments below): presume that Tony Stark’s business has a nonprofit division, the Stark Foundation, that donates millions and millions of dollars every year to help rebuild New York after superhero battles and defray the cost from tax payers.  This creates a significant boon for the construction industry.  What effect do all these construction contracts have on organized crime?  Organized crime in New York has long historical ties to the construction industry, so does all this money and attention help or hinder organized crime and why?

*I hope it’s obvious that we are talking about the fictional New York of the Marvel Universe, not the real New York, which I understand is a wonderful place.

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