World Building is a key element of science fiction and fantasy writing. Many of you may have signed up for this cohort to work on world building specifically, which is great!
What is world building?
World building involves a lot of setting work, creating a world where your characters and plot can exist. All fantasy will involve some amount of world building, even magical realism, as you'll have to think about how your magic and other fantasy elements effect the world of your characters.
Here's a quick overview on some important concepts
What is world building?
World building involves a lot of setting work, creating a world where your characters and plot can exist. All fantasy will involve some amount of world building, even magical realism, as you'll have to think about how your magic and other fantasy elements effect the world of your characters.
Here's a quick overview on some important concepts
Where do you begin? Let's break it down
There are more or less two parts to world building: 1. Inventing your world and 2. Showing you world to your reader.
Let's start with the first part.
Inventing Your World
One of the key elements in world building is considering how different elements and parts of your world will function. If you only have a surface level understanding of how your world works, it might cause problems, and can make your writing piece feel cramped, closed in, and unreal. If you have a comprehensive knowledge of your world and the various ways it works and functions, your setting can come alive and create a rich and incredibly compelling world for your readers to explore alongside your characters.
A great example of fantastic world building is the Lord of the Rings series by J.R.R. Tolkein. If you haven't read his works or seen the movies based on them (I would highly recommend the movies; they're fantastic), Middle Earth is a complicated world with a long, fully planned history, several kingdoms, political struggles, and over fifteen unique languages that Tolkein made up with their own grammar, vocabulary, dialects, and history. Tolkein created an incredibly rich world with deep, compelling history and more details than anyone could reasonably want to know. That is one of the things that gave his work so much impact and such a strong effect on the fantasy genre.
So, how do we do this? How do you flesh out a world and give it the detail and thought that makes it come alive?
We write about it, ask ourselves questions, try to consider the details and intricacies. You want to ask yourself as many questions about your world as possible.
Activity Part One:
Imagine a world just like ours but with one major difference. This could be in the form of a "what if?" question.
Example in purple: What if there were domesticated dragons?
Let's start with the first part.
Inventing Your World
One of the key elements in world building is considering how different elements and parts of your world will function. If you only have a surface level understanding of how your world works, it might cause problems, and can make your writing piece feel cramped, closed in, and unreal. If you have a comprehensive knowledge of your world and the various ways it works and functions, your setting can come alive and create a rich and incredibly compelling world for your readers to explore alongside your characters.
A great example of fantastic world building is the Lord of the Rings series by J.R.R. Tolkein. If you haven't read his works or seen the movies based on them (I would highly recommend the movies; they're fantastic), Middle Earth is a complicated world with a long, fully planned history, several kingdoms, political struggles, and over fifteen unique languages that Tolkein made up with their own grammar, vocabulary, dialects, and history. Tolkein created an incredibly rich world with deep, compelling history and more details than anyone could reasonably want to know. That is one of the things that gave his work so much impact and such a strong effect on the fantasy genre.
So, how do we do this? How do you flesh out a world and give it the detail and thought that makes it come alive?
We write about it, ask ourselves questions, try to consider the details and intricacies. You want to ask yourself as many questions about your world as possible.
Activity Part One:
Imagine a world just like ours but with one major difference. This could be in the form of a "what if?" question.
Example in purple: What if there were domesticated dragons?
If your question is as broad as mine is, maybe you'll want to set some parameters.
Domesticated dragons are the size of big dogs. They can't talk but they're quite clever(like those smart dogs that get into all kinds of trouble), can do some basic magic, and fly.
Now, we start asking questions. What effect would this have? How would this make the world look different? What problems would it cause? How might people adapt/take advantage of this difference?
Pet stores would probably sell clothes and leashes for dragons. People would have probably had a lot of issues with houses burning down due to dragon breath, so maybe there would be more firefighting technology available. Dragons could work on farms, pull wagons, guard livestock like dogs. Maybe people would have service dragons. Because dragons could fly, they could train their service dragon to fly them to the hospital in the case of a medical emergency. Since dragons can do magic, perhaps there are various spells or magical objects you can place around you home to dragon proof it. If dragons can do magic, that means that magic exists in this world. Did humans learn magic from studying dragons? Is it considered a scientific field of study? Maybe, but maybe people don't consider it to be very important or prestigious. In this world, magic is to physics as veterinarians are to doctors, so it's still important and studied in universities, but doesn't pay as well as engineering.
Keep digging into your alternate reality. How would different groups use this change?
Farms that sell dragon eggs, political movements focused around dragons. Would people make Instagram accounts to post pictures of their pet dragons? Maybe pet dragons would be illegal in big cities because they're so big. What would feral dragon populations do? Swoop down and steal people's food like seagulls? Create forest fires and have to be closely monitored? Live in the sewers and frighten people? Would there be dragon shows? Dragon training? People trying to use domesticated dragons to take over the world? Would dragons have an instinct to kidnap princesses (and thus perhaps express this instinct by stealing dolls and figurines of characters from Frozen?)
Sometimes, really mundane questions are really important (or really fun!)
How does this existence of dragons effect grocery and convenience stores? Can you take your dragon to the dog park? Do electrical lines have to be reinforced from dragons sitting on them like birds?
Don't forget to consider how you're going to remember all the things you decide abut your world. Consistency is important, not to mention, if you think up a bunch of ideas and (like me) immediately forget them, you're going to have a bad time. Consider how you'll record them, organize them, and make it possible to refer back to them later. Some people make a book/repository of this information and call it their "World Building Bible." Here's some more info:
Domesticated dragons are the size of big dogs. They can't talk but they're quite clever(like those smart dogs that get into all kinds of trouble), can do some basic magic, and fly.
Now, we start asking questions. What effect would this have? How would this make the world look different? What problems would it cause? How might people adapt/take advantage of this difference?
Pet stores would probably sell clothes and leashes for dragons. People would have probably had a lot of issues with houses burning down due to dragon breath, so maybe there would be more firefighting technology available. Dragons could work on farms, pull wagons, guard livestock like dogs. Maybe people would have service dragons. Because dragons could fly, they could train their service dragon to fly them to the hospital in the case of a medical emergency. Since dragons can do magic, perhaps there are various spells or magical objects you can place around you home to dragon proof it. If dragons can do magic, that means that magic exists in this world. Did humans learn magic from studying dragons? Is it considered a scientific field of study? Maybe, but maybe people don't consider it to be very important or prestigious. In this world, magic is to physics as veterinarians are to doctors, so it's still important and studied in universities, but doesn't pay as well as engineering.
Keep digging into your alternate reality. How would different groups use this change?
Farms that sell dragon eggs, political movements focused around dragons. Would people make Instagram accounts to post pictures of their pet dragons? Maybe pet dragons would be illegal in big cities because they're so big. What would feral dragon populations do? Swoop down and steal people's food like seagulls? Create forest fires and have to be closely monitored? Live in the sewers and frighten people? Would there be dragon shows? Dragon training? People trying to use domesticated dragons to take over the world? Would dragons have an instinct to kidnap princesses (and thus perhaps express this instinct by stealing dolls and figurines of characters from Frozen?)
Sometimes, really mundane questions are really important (or really fun!)
How does this existence of dragons effect grocery and convenience stores? Can you take your dragon to the dog park? Do electrical lines have to be reinforced from dragons sitting on them like birds?
Don't forget to consider how you're going to remember all the things you decide abut your world. Consistency is important, not to mention, if you think up a bunch of ideas and (like me) immediately forget them, you're going to have a bad time. Consider how you'll record them, organize them, and make it possible to refer back to them later. Some people make a book/repository of this information and call it their "World Building Bible." Here's some more info:
Having it all thought out is well and good, but how is your reader supposed to see it? Let's talk about helping your reader see that world.
Communicating Your World
Have you ever read a book that starts out with five to six pages explaining the rules of every single thing that can happen in the world? Consider what it would be like to read three thousand years of history, twenty different royal lineages, the engineering mechanics of three different types of space ship, and the nuances of all the different types of shoes your reader might encounter all in the first ten pages of a story. While these details are all (arguably) important, it just going to be too much to slog through all at once.
That's called an exposition dump, and it's generally not recommended for writers to give a big, long list of information all at once. It can be tricky, but your reader will usually be more compelled if you weave that information into the story and let your reader discover it as you move through the narrative.
Check out this explanation from author Ian McHugh, on some of the ways you can weave exposition into your writing, both in short stories and in longer pieces
Activity Part Two:
Take your world from Part One and write a short scene that takes place in it. It can be a simple scene: someone going to the grocery store or work, engaging in a hobby, etc., but try to convey your alternate world and some of the complex details of it to your reader through the narrative and experiences of the characters. Unless there's been a sudden change to create your alternate world, remember that even though this is a strange world to you, this is your characters' every day life.
Communicating Your World
Have you ever read a book that starts out with five to six pages explaining the rules of every single thing that can happen in the world? Consider what it would be like to read three thousand years of history, twenty different royal lineages, the engineering mechanics of three different types of space ship, and the nuances of all the different types of shoes your reader might encounter all in the first ten pages of a story. While these details are all (arguably) important, it just going to be too much to slog through all at once.
That's called an exposition dump, and it's generally not recommended for writers to give a big, long list of information all at once. It can be tricky, but your reader will usually be more compelled if you weave that information into the story and let your reader discover it as you move through the narrative.
Check out this explanation from author Ian McHugh, on some of the ways you can weave exposition into your writing, both in short stories and in longer pieces
Activity Part Two:
Take your world from Part One and write a short scene that takes place in it. It can be a simple scene: someone going to the grocery store or work, engaging in a hobby, etc., but try to convey your alternate world and some of the complex details of it to your reader through the narrative and experiences of the characters. Unless there's been a sudden change to create your alternate world, remember that even though this is a strange world to you, this is your characters' every day life.
Since in real life I wouldn't stop to examine my dog in great detail or to be amazed that such a creature exists, my characters in my world won't be surprised by the existence of dragons. However, they might stop to take photos of their dragon, pet their scales, or get annoyed when the dragon knocks a vase off a shelf with its big, scaled wings. They might check its claws when it's limping to make sure it isn't hurt, or carefully tighten it's collar because it somehow always slips out and wreaks havoc in the neighborhood during their walks. A major part of world building is considering how your characters would react to the things around them to create a whole, complete world that makes sense.
One more tip: you probably won't be able to put all your details into your story. The sad fact is, even though you come up with them, they won't all fit in one narrative. That's okay though! Don't feel bad about lost details. Your reader will be able to feel the amount of thought you put into your story, and it's always better to have more details and more background than not enough.
One more tip: you probably won't be able to put all your details into your story. The sad fact is, even though you come up with them, they won't all fit in one narrative. That's okay though! Don't feel bad about lost details. Your reader will be able to feel the amount of thought you put into your story, and it's always better to have more details and more background than not enough.
Some Resources
World AnvilWorld Anvil is a tool for organizing your setting, making notes, and planning aspects of your world. There are a lot of little facets to it but I've gotten some good use out of it! (There is an option for a paid subscription but users can also create and use a free account easily)
|
InkarnateIf you want a visual representations of you world, Inkarnate is a good resource. Use it to turn your setting into a map!
|
List of Other ToolsA list of other world building tools compiled by writer Sam Hollon
|
Another resource, a blog post about making your world more complicated. Consider the ramifications of different aspects of your world, how different elements interact with each other.
Consider: What problems does this world aspect create? How would people adapt to solve these problems?
Consider: What problems does this world aspect create? How would people adapt to solve these problems?