Thursday, January 28, 2021

World-building

World-building is a vital part of anything you create, whether it's a world for a Dungeons & Dragons campaign, a world for a fantasy novel, or an entire universe populated with aliens for a science fiction idea. Because of how prominent and important world-building is, there are a variety of sources available online for crafting worlds. 

I should admit now that world-building is my favorite part of the creative process. When I wrote my first novel for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), I did barely any world-building before I started, but I did establish a system of magic and a few important facts about the world. It needed to be more in-depth the more I wrote and, due to the fast pace of novel writing during NaNoWriMo, I didn't have time to fill in the blanks more than what was needed during the story. 

That leads to an important thing to keep in mind. While world-building is vital to the writing process, it is important not to get bogged down sharing every little detail with your audience in your novel. Sure, you may spend weeks figuring out the tiniest nuances of why Culture A is different from Culture B despite the fact that they share the same country, but unless it is relevant to the story you're telling, you don't need to share it. Many readers aren't interested in hearing about the calendar system for Culture A, unless there's an important event that happens on a certain day and they need to know how long until then for plot-related reasons. 

You might be thinking, "Then why waste time on world-building if most of it isn't going to be relevant?"

The answer: Because you as the creator need to know these things to keep the world and rules consistent or have reasons why they aren't. You need to know how the world informs plot and character. You need to know when the celestial event that heralds the coming cataclysm happens so you know when to have the heroes (and villains) take notice. You need to know why Culture A and Culture B are different and how their minute differences play a role in the war they've been waging for generations, even if your characters are actually from Culture C, because the war between Cultures A and B will have effects on other cultures. You need to know the biomes and climates of that planet the characters briefly visited because it's unlikely to be just one type of climate and the life forms there are going to be varied based on these environmental factors. You need to know why things are the way they are in your world because that impacts your characters and plot, even if you never share all the information with your readers. 

Now, onto the fun bit: the world-building sources. These are just a few that I've used that have been helpful to me.

On the subreddit r/worldbuilding, there was a challenge that involved using December for world-building. Thirty-one topics which were grouped into six separate facets of world-building can be found here. This came in handy to me, especially for my science fiction idea. I'm still in the process of world-building but my idea is to answer all of those topics for every alien race involved in the project. It's very clear that this would also work for a fantasy setting. This isn't a complete list of every detail for world-building, but it is a start. 

Another month-long world-building source is 30 Days of WorldBuilding, found here. Not only does it provide some ideas for world-building topics like climate & variety and education, but it also provides days dedicated to characters and plot hooks to show how closely connected these are to world-building. It also includes exercises that you can do whenever you have the time and different formats for you to download the guide in so you don't have to use the internet for it. 

One of the first world-building guides I found when I was starting out was "Fantasy Worldbuilding Questions" by Patricia C. Wrede (available here). As you can tell, this is a very in-depth list of questions pertaining to every facet of world-building. Some of them are repeated where they overlap with other categories, but this is a complete list and one that I relied on a lot when I was starting out with novel ambitions. 

A source that has been particularly helpful for me since I've started my science fiction project has been the Universe Builder, found here. It includes a variety of aspects that are common in science fiction such as interstellar travel and AI interfaces as well as galactic neighbors. This has helped me figure out details about what is possible in my science fiction setting and what some of the technology looks like as well as how different alien races interact with each other and with humans. 

These are by no means the only world-building resources out there, but these are the ones that have been helpful to me over the years. Check them out and if they're helpful to you, great. If not, that's okay. There are thousands of world-building questionnaires and guides and templates out there that you can try out. 

I'll admit that I don't always world-build, especially if the setting is more or less modern day Earth, such as with The Agency, but even then I do make notes about what is different between the real world and the world I'm working in because this will help make things consistent later and consistency is the key to having a novel as close to plot-hole free as you can make it. 

Even though I don't world-build all the time for a project, I enjoy world-building and will spend months crafting a world because I want it to make sense and want every culture of that world to have evolved organically based on the setting. This means that I also do a fair bit of research regarding biology, history, and geography. For example, if I want to have a dragon species in Antarctica, I look at the climate and geography of Antarctica, look at some animals that live there, then figure out what that dragon might look like. Researching history gives me an idea about how wars may effect the borders of the countries in the setting as well as the economy, education, and even attire. 

World-building reminds us that things don't evolve in a vacuum. Cultures, with a few exceptions, don't exist without interacting with other cultures and borrowing aspects from them. Characters don't spring up with their missions, opinions, trauma, and philosophies without having a history that was developed through interacting with their world. Plot doesn't happen unless there is a world for it to happen in. World-building is vital to character and plot development. While you may not share all the work you put in with your readers, world-building is necessary to make sure everything comes together and your readers will thank you for putting in the effort and the work. 

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