World Building

The Tricky Bit
For a novel to be popular, I think, people want to lose themselves in the world behind it.

For example, I love the Discworld novels, by Sir Terry Pratchett. I have often dreamed of going to Ankh Morpork to explore the streets and meet the characters who live and work there. I imagine Angua giving me a suspicious look, and Dibbler offering me one of his delicious pies. I imagine the smell of the Anhk as it slides its way through the city and the tower from the Unseen University reaching up above the rooftops.

In the Harry Potter books there is a whole wizarding world. They have a sport, newspapers, modes of transportation, education institutions, there world is real and substantial. A reader can imagine themselves living there, and thanks to the magic of cinema, they can even visit the set themselves.
So, a world that is believable is essential.

This is how I build mine:
There are a lot of websites that have tips on building worlds but I don’t feel they cover everything. So, I have pulled everything they’re saying together to create a world building model that works for me.

In We Are Not Alone, it’s a post dystopian utopian world. Food and resources aren’t plentiful yet, but it is getting that way. The world is still growing and changing, so money hasn’t been established yet. The society structure focuses around the teenagers and the world they choose to create for themselves.

In Conexion, the world is very much like our own, but set a few hundred years into the future. Money is needed to buy food, power, clothes and everything else a teenager might need. I had to create a whole society that wasn’t quite a dictatorship, as it is in A New Hope or Firefly, but not a free for all as in Mad Max.

Curious Events takes place in the modern day, a lot like Harry Potter in that respect, but there is a hidden magical world behind our own.

It is in Guardian Chronicles that I need to create an entirely new society with its own rules, its own economy and even geology.

So how did I do that?

Where to start?

Google!

I’ve just read Chuck Wendig’s post (not for children!!) about world building and it’s a really good start. I will also be drawing inspiration from Charlie Jane Anders post about the 7 Deadly Sins of World Building and Chuck Sambuchio’s Tips on World Building for Writers. (There are more but we would literally be here all day.)

Now you’ve Googled

Now we have somewhere to start, we’ve gathered our sources, lets begin.

1. Plan the setting based on your genre.Unless you’re writing Outlander, you’re not going to have aliens turning up in your fantasy world or leprechauns on your space station. So this first and most simple tip is to plan your setting, your world in the appropriate location for your story.
   
   That sounds really basic to me. Of course you’d do that, it would be silly not to. I’m not going to write an epic space opera in Narnia. Anyway, I digress.                                                              
2. Decide on the detail that’s going to appear in the book.
   By that I mean, do you need to know who collects the rubbish (in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, it’s Harry, King of the Golden River who collects the rubbish) and do you need to know where their food comes from? If it is going to be pertinent to the plot, make sure you know every tiny detail about your world. If it’s not, then don’t bother.                                                                        
   
3. Is your world going to evolve as you write it or do you need to know what it looks like first?
   I’m an evolving writer and let things change as I need them to. Remember, your world needs to fit your story, not the other way round. Don’t plan a river in the middle of their path unless it’s important for the plot.                                                                                                                          
   
4. Remember everything affects everything else.
   For example, when Archduke Ferdinand was killed in 1914, it started a war, to put it in a very simplistic way. But what happens on Mars colony will effect what happens on Jupiter colony. If there’s a war against the lords in Fairyland, it will cause unrest in Elfland. Everything you do causes ripples and consequences.
   
   In my Guardian Chronicles, the main protagonist in Book 2 stumbles into an inn where they are talking about the events in Book 1. It is hundreds of miles away but due to the transport system in the book, witnesses have travelled far and wide to talk about the Other Worlder hero who rescued the princess. (Not quite, but things get exaggerated.)                                                          
   
5. Not everyone is a clone.
   If they are elves, they don’t all think the same. Some of your elves like the protagonist, some think he’s a bit silly or stupid. In Curious Events, some of the characters see Moira as just a little girl while others see her as a powerful magical creature. Some of them even want to eat her.
   
   Whatever class or religion or species your characters belong to, they don’t all have to think the same. Remember, in Lord of the Rings, Galadriel wants to help the fellowship while Elrond has other motives.
   
   I keep picking on Elves, but it could be anything. In Curious Events, I even include different species of elves (sorry elves again) such as Time Elves, who are like Santa’s Elves but not as jolly, and Forest Elves who are tall and beautiful. These different species have different aims and customs.
   
   This is true in Terry Pratchett’s dwarfs. The city dwarfs even live above ground while the Low King’s dwarfs have never seen daylight. Think of how to give variation to your own species. That adds depth to your world building.                                                                                              
   
6. Be subtle.
   There doesn’t need to be a paragraph in your book that says, ‘They were Time Elves, they just cared about time and keeping it in order, which was a direct contrast to the Forest Elves who cared for the things in the forest and maintained the magic there.’ A very rough example, but you see what I mean.
   
   Make it subtle, make it relevant to the plot. Maybe your Forest Elves won’t appear in the novel at all, but they are part of your world building and they give it depth.
   
   Let your character and your readers unravel the history without it being plonked on their laps. That old saying ‘Show. Don’t tell,’ is relevant here.
   
   Mystery is what will turn pages in your book. If your readers know everything that’s going to happen already because you’ve told rather than showed, what reason do they have to keep reading? ‘It was a tall mountain and at the top, clouds hid the even witches lair,’ could be written as, ‘The mountain stretched up until it vanished into thick cloud.’ I don’t need to know the witch is there. She might be, but we can find that out later. Mountains don’t vanish, what’s going on here.
   
   That’s just a rough example, and I’m sure you, reader, could write a better one. Hopefully, you get what I mean.

Best of Luck

Good luck on your world building journey! I hope my researched and gathered tips have been useful. Look up the links listed above and the people who wrote them for more tips.