How To Actually Worldbuild


When you start worldbuilding, it usually feels like you just pulled up a very, very large empty canvas but have no idea how to fill it. How do you create all those interesting things? How do you use those ideas in your head to make something marvellous? Here's how.

 

Contents

  • Know Your Goals
    • Hobby Or Tool?
    • Fun Is Important Regardless
    • The Paradox Of Making An Entire World
    • Yes, You Will Forget It
  • The Three Steps Of Creation
    • Step 1: Collect
    • Step 2: Ask
    • Step 3: Connect
  • No Shackles
    • Originality And Inspiration
    • It's Its Own Thing
    • Geography Comes Last
  • Realism And Believability
    • The Suspension Of Disbelief
    • Internal Consistency
    • Building On Foundations
    • Making Changes
  • Take Control

 

Know Your Goals

To start building, there are some guidelines you need to know about. They help you define what you want and provide a general concept of what worldbuilding is like.


Hobby Or Tool?

Just like with any creative project, it's important that you know what you're actually trying to achieve. If worldbuilding is the background of a book or a roleplaying game for you, you aren't going to want to spend a lot of time doing it, and should always try to focus on whatever you need at the moment. Alternatively, you can entirely ditch worldbuilding and just improvise what you need next.

However, if you worldbuild for fun, you'll want to work on various details of your world, things that aren't necessarily relevant but that you still find exciting.

By the way, of course, you can enjoy it and use it for something else at the same time. In that case though, acknowledge it as both, so that you know what you're sitting down to do at any given moment.


Fun Is Important Regardless

If you spend hours of work and a lot of effort creating a world, make sure you're also having fun. This includes not forcing yourself to work on certain parts of your world if you don't feel like it, but also remembering that it's your world; regardless of what other people say, if you like an idea, include it in the lore.


The Paradox Of Making An Entire World

This concept burrows itself deep into our subconscious and tells us to do everything. Here's the truth: you can never create the entire world. So don't try to do so, because any world is way too complex to be fully finished. All you can do is work on it. But detail is not the sole factor of making a world feel realistic; more on this later, though.

 

Yes, You Will Forget It

Sometimes you'll have a great idea on the go and think you can remember it. Write it down. Write everything down. Your document (or wherever it is you're keeping your data) exists to serve as a source of information you can look up anytime you forget something. Indicate whether it's an idea or canon lore. Organise it, make sure it's neat. You'll need it a lot.

It can be difficult to organise a world bible, so here's a guide to help you with it.


The Three Steps Of Creation

There is a lot of nuance and variability to a creative method, but I'll summarise my process in three points.


Step 1: Collect

Before you start coming up with ideas, you should take into account what you already know. It can prove helpful to write a short list of bullet points, summarising what you want to include in whatever it is you're creating. These ideas are the skeleton of your new creation; it might look different in the end, but they define a key foundation. Keep them short though; you need to be able to quickly remind yourself of concepts by glancing at it later.


Step 2: Ask

If the previous step was the skeleton, this is the blood and flesh of a creative process. All you need to do is ask yourself about the circumstances, background or details of your lore. Answering these questions will slowly broaden your perspective. If you can't answer a question, feel free to skip it; you can always come back to it later.


Step 3: Connect

The last step is like the skin on the flesh. You already know most there is to know about whatever you're creating, and now you're making sure it's one coherent thing that works as intended. Read through everything you have, and think about how it looks in the context of your world. Compare it to other similar things. Make connections between cultural aspects, geographical locations and magic.

 

No Shackles

When worldbuilding, you will often accidentally limit yourself, with your attitude or creative process. Of course, you want to avoid this as much as you can. So here are the most important things you need to know to be able to create freely, without unnecessary pressure.


Originality And Inspiration

Let's make one thing absolutely clear: you probably won't invent something completely unique. You can't. There are thousands of fictional worlds, made by thousands of creators from all around the world. So if you want to avoid using tropes and other features of existing worlds: you can't. Of course, you can stay clear of common tropes that you really hate in creative works. But don't ditch a great feature just because you've seen it used somewhere else.

This also applies to taking inspiration. Don't be afraid to copy other creative works. Why? Because it's not just the idea that matters - in fact, it's mostly not the idea. Sure, ideas are important, but what really matters is how you combine your ideas and create the actual setting; or execution, in other words. The same core idea can be slightly altered, combined with other concepts and put into two different types of universes to create entirely different features. So, steal away!


It's Its Own Thing

Sometimes classifying your own work can make a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. You'll have an idea and discard it, thinking that it doesn't fit the genre you believe your work belongs to. In reality, there are no ideas that don't fit in a setting, only poorly executed ones. So don't try to label your creative work, just take it as it is.


Geography Comes Last

This is just one aspect of developing a universe, but this following point is very important. Don't start with maps. If you do, you'll find yourself making unnecessary decisions that limit a lot of worldbuilding possibilities. Make sure you have at least a few ideas about your culture, biomes, creatures and landmass sizes before you start working on actual geography and make a map or two.


Realism And Believability

This is a big deal for a lot of worldbuilders, and even if you're not one of them, it still matters. There a few things you need to know about fiction.

 

The Suspension Of Disbelief

Let's look at the psychology of fiction a little. What makes people enjoy it? Why do we care about silly made-up things? Well, turns out that our brains have this weird feature that blocks disbelief so we can enjoy a good bedtime story. Suspension of disbelief is essential for fiction to work properly. It's a very neat little feature. And, if you do it right, you can use it to play with your audience's emotions.

You should also remember that everyone's limits for suspension of disbelief is different. Some people can fully immerse themselves in a high-fantasy world, others can barely handle some minor changes to history. Since this range is so wide, you can't possibly please everyone; thus, you shouldn't try to accommodate your work to other people's needs; just go with whatever you yourself find believable.


Internal Consistency

Whatever anyone says, this one aspect is essential for suspension of disbelief, and thus, for any fictional world. Hopefully this doesn't need much explaining, but it's very hard to enjoy a story when there's a massive hole in the plot; surely, you've experienced this before. 


Building On Foundations

Did you ever think about why people use the same measurements in fiction as us? Why they count distance in metres or feet and why they use hours to tell the time? The answer is quite simple: because these things are too fundamental to ditch. There are some instances where creators and authors tried creating their own measurement systems, but most of these just ended with a large portion of the audience not remembering the system. A good example of this are calendars; many worlds have different calendars, some multiple, but rarely do you remember any timekeeping system from a fictional work you've consumed, right? Because it doesn't come up often and it's a lot of unnecessary lexical knowledge.

But these systems come from our history; the calendar we currently use is based on the Gregorian calendar for example, which was a Christian invention. So why don't they break the suspension of disbelief? Simply put, these things are so fundamental that we accept them as basic reality. Just like we expect things to fall when let go, we also expect time to be measured in hours.

By the way, this doesn't apply in every case, only basic units. If you read a fantasy novel where people measure force in Newtons for example, your suspension of disbelief might get a little shaken; that's because most people don't talk about forces as commonly as hours or metres so their brains don't need to handle these concepts as often.

 

Making Changes

Didn't I just tell you about internal consistency and whatnot? Doesn't changing lore instantly ditch all of these guidelines we just talked about? Well, yes it does - if it's done within a narrative. Don't do that. But the creation process for your world is not one single story, it's a slowly developing universe, a creative process in itself. So if you make something a certain way and then realise it's better being something else, don't keep yourself from changing it.

If you have reservations about this, it's because you're afraid you'll upset your own suspension of disbelief. That's okay; if you feel like something is too fundamental in your world to change, keep it that way. But it's important to remember that in the case of a setting, you can actually change things after you create them. Mind any butterfly effects these changes may cause somewhere else in your world, though.

 

Take Control

All you've just read are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to worldbuilding. This is an incredibly creative hobby, and your journey is going to be long and completely unique. So develop your own methods, work on whatever you like in whatever way you prefer, and use the freedom one of the most creative activities provides you with. And, most importantly, have fun!

There are many more things to learn, though. Fortunately you can find more lessons on this blog; for example, if you'd like to read about different ways of worldbuilding, I recommend checking out this short lesson. Otherwise, feel free to ask questions or request topics in the comments. I hope you found this lesson helpful.

See you next time!

 

Images from Pixabay