Young Writers Society

I've always wanted to write my own fantasy novel or series with a whole other, entirely new world. I was wondering if any of you guys have tips for building a world and more specifically a fantasy world.

I appreciate the help!
Alice

Hey there!

For starters, you can check out helpful places like the YWS Knowledge Base (which has a few articles I think you might find interesting here) and Springhole that have consolidations of multiple articles for almost anything you could think of.

Other than that, there are a few general tips that can be given for worldbuilding, but without telling you exactly how to build your worlds, I can't do so much more.

Tip #1: Be socially aware. It might not seem so important, but nothing happens in a vacuum. What's going on in society will influence you and your writing, and you and your writing will in turn influence society in a way.

I remember a thing -- this happened a few years back -- where a white American author decided to make a post-apocalyptic world where white people were the oppressed minority and black people were the oppressive majority. The problem is, it wasn't pulled off very well, and it came across as the author being, well, racist. This is in part because the world didn't fit well at all with what was going on in (especially American) society at the time, and it had a lot of unfortunate implications because of that.

Tip #2: Don't overdo it. It can be really, really fun to make gigantic maps with a ton of societies and languages and cultural barriers, but when it comes to actually incorporating all of that into your story... Well, if you are, you have a task ahead of you.

For example, let's take the A Song of Ice and Fire series by George R. R. Martin. Martin has a ton of countries and cultures on multiple continents that he blends, some coming out better than others, but his books average over a thousand pages each and it takes him forever to come out with the next one. He has to put a ton of work into his worldbuilding and characterization back so far as hundreds of years to make sure everything unfolds realistically in his present time.

That's less of a problem if you don't want to write a fantasy epic. (But I mean, who doesn't want to write a fantasy epic at some point?) For right now, let's focus on some smaller stuff.

Tip #3: Work your way down. By this I mean, try to figure out the big things about your world first. Are there warring powers? Are there massive climate differences in small areas? A lot of times, this will relate to the conflict in the plot of your story to some degree, because the big things are what impact your characters a lot.

Then, once you know the big important things, you can move on to medium things. (And it's okay to go back and add big things as you think of them!) And then onto small things, and add medium things. And then revise it all twenty times before you're happy, haha.

Tip #4: Your characters are part of the world. I kind of stole this one from a friend, but like your story isn't contained in a vacuum, neither are your characters. They're influenced by their world, and their world is influenced by them, so how does it change them? How do they change it?

Of course, feel free to pick and choose as you please, I'm just trying to cover some things I usually do when worldbuilding.

You can't get any better than Lareine's advice, but when it came to building my own world, this template helped me a lot because it covers everything and makes you look at your world from every angle. As writers, we're all different in the way we create things and think of new ideas, so you just have to figure out what's best for you. For me, this technique hit the spot.

Also, showers. Long showers are lovely for brainstorming.

I know it sounds strange, but what I usually do is reverse engineer my world. Normally you'd start with the geography and culture and build characters off of that, but I do the reverse. Usually the way I get inspired to write something is a single image in my head, an action sequence, an especially deamatic shot from something that doesn't exist in the space outside of my head yet. I take that and try to analyze the elements in it, usually with the characters first. I might not have their personalities or backstories yet, but I have a general feel of what they can do and want to achieve. I work from there. I ask myself about the character, in what universe could a person like this exist? what did thay have to go through to get to this specific point? From there I can work out a backstory and maybe some rules about the universe (if they have powers, for example, i can determine that things like that exist in that world). The world itself follows smoothly after the backstory, forming around it as if to accomodate it. From there I can branch out, creating cities, countries, cultures and new characters to suit my story.

I feel like this method works especially well for me since it makes sure that I almost never have to change something major about the character, allowing me to portray the original person, the one I saw that inspired me to write. Of course this method might not work for others since it utilizes the way I get inspiration, but I tohught I'd share it just in case.

I mostly follow @haredrier's method, especially in regards to characters. Picking them first is a fantastic starting point, but I also determine if the character is a "black sheep" (anomaly/unaccepted) or "white sheep" (norm/generally accepted) to see what tensions I have.

Start with the characters I want to have, then reverse engineer the culture parts that make the most sense. I have a little backwards and forwards byplay where sometimes I'll pick a rough idea of a culture, then modify it how I see fit for fantasy, then go back and make sure it's respectful, then adjust the real world for stuff that makes sense in fantasy, and repeat until it's "done".

Another thing to keep in mind when worldbuilding is you'll probably never figure everything out, and this is just fine. It means you keep focus on the story, and it actually gives more room for fanfiction if you leave gaps in lore, which in turn makes the story resonate more because readers can put their own twist on things.

For example, a decade of worldbuilding has made it I understand, roughly, the tension between the majority of nobles and my main character, and the attitudes around guards, and the underground crime. I have very little concept of the priest class, the merchant class, farmers, or the average urban citizen... and this is a good thing. It means I don't get caught up in all sorts of details that just complicate the story, or make me feel compelled to add in what I've worked on.

You're writing a story, not an encyclopedia, so it's perfectly acceptable to only figure out the parts of the world your character is going to directly interact with.

It's also perfectly fine to worldbuild as you go. I have "farming/average" life on my "to build" list, because that's part of an upcoming plot arc. But this is where I can take what I need and what makes the most sense— by now, I have a good idea of how this world works so I have some constraints for myself, but I'm also not going to take it absolutely like the real world.

Fantasy worldbuilding is not as big an undertaking as it initially looks. Yes, it is a big undertaking, but the amount of up-front investment is about the same as it is for realistic fiction— start with characters, figure out a rough setting, polish as you write.

I'm probably a bit late, but if you want to worldbuild, I can help you. I would not use that template posted earlier, since "countries" is not as universal of a concept as many people seem to think. I'll even build a world with you and make a sketch of a language and other stuff (but I probably won't be able to go super hardcore on it, just light help).

Hey Alice, I'm probably a bit late to the party as well but I hope my advice will be of some help you. Before I launch into it, you said you want a new world. I'm assuming you want a high-fantasy world like the ones in Harry Potter or LOTR. Because no matter what world you create, there are certain principles of reality you follow otherwise no reader would be able to relate to it. This brief 5 minute talk gives you a basic rundown of the basics of worldbuilding, I highly recommend it if you're a newcomer to worldbuilding.

I'm going to be another rebel here, I dislike templates. Some people like them, I don't. Simply because I don't think you can build a world by categorising everything nicely, on top of that, when you have a template your mind unconsciously box itself into those areas. I'm a very new comer to world building, so I don't have the experience and expertise that some other writers here have. (You should definitely ask them for further tips and what works and what doesn't, experience counts in writing.)

So assuming you're a newcomer, as a fellow newcomer to a newcomer. Here are my tips.

1. Don't over complicate things.

World-building can be are extremely intricate thing, you're creating a whole new world. There are an infinite amount of things one needs to consider. But don't forget that those things can be summed up into categories too. If you know you can't handle history, don't make this world have an overly complicated history with 100 wars every two centuries.

2. You don't have to pull a Tolkien or Martin or Rowling.
In other words, you don't have to know every detail about every country that exists, every race down to their last detail. I think it's important to keep in mind as writers in general (unless you're really into worldbuilding or if your story is deeply rooted in this world), to not spend too much time thinking about your world. Keep in mind that although the story is set in this fictional world, it is ultimately your characters that will carry the story. If you write an intimate story with a narrow scope (geographically or otherwise), you can reveal the world in small bits that are only pertinent to the core characters as you need it as you write without going overboard with world building.

3. It helps if you visualize it.
'Oh wait, did he come from this country or the country? Wait, which one of them came from what bloodline? Did this war come before that war, and which war was it that affected later events?'

Suffice to say, world building can be confusing and humans are visual learners. It helps if you map it down on paper, not only does it make everything clearer once your thoughts aren't jumbled you'll also come up with new insights as to where you can improve.

4. Wing it as you go.
Rosey's advice is excellent, especially when she said that you'll probably never figure all of it out. Sometimes, when you're worldbuilding and you feel frustrated because everything is tangling together and you don't know where the pieces match. Don't world build. Start writing, and build as you go. No one writes a masterpiece on their first go, and the good thing is you can always go back and rewrite things with every new discovery you make.

5. Check this out, it'll save you a lot of time and energy.

Trust me on this. Jump down to the part where it says worldbuilding , it has everything from alternate universes to architecture design. It's good to take advantage of the internet, there are a lot of useful resources out there.

And lastly, I hope this has been of some help to you. Best of luck with your worldbuilding!