World-Building 102: Getting Organized

Last week, we talked about what world-building is and how to get started. Among other things, we learned that world-building is... well, it can be a lot.

Even if you're just taking regular old modern-day Earth and giving it a small tweak—like humans figure out how to get to Mars or there are actual witches—there are still dozens of questions and implications that you could think through to deepen the world. And for a full-blown secondary fantasy world? The questions are endless.

So today, we'll talk about organizing all of that so you don't get overwhelmed.

1) Start a world bible

A world bible is just a document (or a wiki or a Miro board or something) where you record your ideas and decisions. You'll need this so you can remember them and reference them later.

How you organize your world bible is up to you—the document is literally there to aid you and you alone. I like to separate mine into sections like a historical timeline, nations or kingdoms, sentient species, cosmology (how the world came to be), how magic works, unique plants and animals, etc. Obviously, not every story needs every section, but these are places to start.

Remember, too, that your world bible is a living document. It is for your benefit only, and you can revise and add to it as you need to.

2) Choose a point and work outward

It's overwhelming to try and think about everything at once, but the point of having a world bible is that you don't have to keep it all in your head. You can have one idea, write it down, and then move on to the next.

Maybe a cool idea for your magic system makes you think of some war that might have occurred—jot down the magic idea then move over to the history section. Maybe writing down ideas for that war raises the question of how many nations there are and what state they're in today—scroll down to the list of nations and start brainstorming some ideas for that.

Don't know how to answer a question yet? That's okay. Just write the question down and move on.

What if a new idea conflicts with an older one? That's okay! Again, nobody else is going to read this document, so it doesn't have to maintain internal consistency. I mean, you should try, but you can address conflicts as you discover them.

Often, when a new idea conflicts with something you thought of a while ago, you'll find that the older idea can be easily updated or dismissed. And if it can't, then maybe the new idea can be tweaked. Consistency is important in world-building, and it's a lot easier to create when you haven't even written the story yet.

SIDEBAR: Creating a world bible for collaboration—say, for a video game or when co-authoring a novel—does require more internal consistency. People who are not you will reference the world bible and assume what's in there is fact. The basic ideas in this post still apply though. You and your collaborators just have to do extra work to keep the world bible up to date.

3) Sketch out a timeline of events

I mentioned a timeline as part of the world bible. For me, this is where I often start, and it often becomes the backbone of my world. It helps me to understand how one thing led to another and how everything is connected.

It might not work that way for you, but a timeline is still a good thing to have. Understanding the larger story of your world is a good way to maintain consistency and create real depth.

4) Focus on your story

It's easy to go overboard on details and histories and nations and magic systems and flora and fauna... but remember that you don't have to flesh out everything. You really only need enough details to start writing your story.

When you feel yourself getting overwhelmed with questions or unable to detail some aspect of the world (or unwilling to because it feels boring), take a step back. Ask yourself, "Do I need to know this to write my story?"

Often, you don't.

Because world-building isn't about actually creating an entire world; it's about creating the illusion that you've created an entire world. And that's a lot easier to do.

How do you know when you're done?

The truth is you're never done. There are always more details you can think up (and there always will be when you start writing the story). The good news is that you don't have to be done to start writing.

World-building of the kind I've described above has two main goals: 

1. To help you understand your world enough to start writing
2. To give you extra details to draw from when you need them

We'll talk more about the latter one in a future post. But for now, you know you're done when you feel immersed in the world and ready to start writing the story.

Like I said before, if you are immersed in your world, then you can immerse your reader in it too, and that is the whole purpose of all of this.

World-Building 101: Asking Questions

If you're writing any kind of genre fiction—if there are any fantastical or sci-fi elements in your world at all—you need to do some world-building. This is true whether you're creating a full-blown fantasy world, a sci-fi universe set 100 years in our future, an urban fantasy that's mostly like our world but with some magic in it, or even just our regular world but everybody has self-driving cars now. All of these require some world-building.

So, let's talk about that.

What is world-building? It's you understanding why things are the way they are in your fictional setting and how things are different from our world. It's exploring the "What if?" behind your speculative fiction. What if magic was real? What if we colonized other planets? Even a full-blown fantasy world is a form of "What if?": What if there were a world like ours, except with elves and dwarves, and it was created by some kind of gods?

World-building is thinking through the implications of that "What if?" and then using those implications to flavor your story and immerse the reader.

How do you do it? By asking questions. For example, say your setting is a world exactly like ours except that the city your story takes place in was designed with walkable spaces and public transportation instead of cars. This is mostly (but not entirely) science-fiction, and it raises some questions that you might want to answer, like...

• How long has the city been like this? Was the city always this way, or was it converted from a car-based environment?
• Is it the only city like this, or are most cities in this world like this too?
• How do people feel about it? Is it just normal to them, or is it brand new or even controversial?
• How did the city come to be this way? Is it part of an urban-design experiment, or did the culture shift away from traditional cities because something happened, or something else?
• Does the city's design have a direct impact on the story, or is it more of a backdrop?

With each question, you'll want to explore how that might change things. How do people feel about the city? How does that affect the story?

And as you answer questions, more questions will come up. You might not know or even care about all the answers, and that's okay, but thinking through some of them will enable you to flesh out the world in your mind.

The more you can immerse yourself in the world, the better you'll be able to immerse your readers.

What about deeper world-building, like secondary fantasy worlds? The example above presents only a small change in our world, and already there are a lot of questions and things to think through. How do you create a whole new world?

The same way: by asking questions. For example...

What is a central feature of this world that makes it interesting and/or different from our world? This is usually some form of magic, but it doesn't have to be. For example, the Game of Thrones universe has dragons on one side, White Walkers on another, and a very particular political situation among the humans in the middle. It does have magic, but that magic isn't central to what makes the world unique.

Are there sentient species other than humans? What are they like? Where did they come from (e.g., were they created by gods, or are they an evolutionary branch, etc.)?

Is there magic? Who can do it? How does it work? How long has it existed? What would the implications be on war, economics, and politics if certain spells existed and could be cast by anybody?

What kingdoms, nations, and cultures are there? How are they different? What is interesting and unique about them? Why are they like that?

What are the major historical events that have occurred? How have they affected the people of the present? Were there wars? If so, how big, how long, or how terrible? What do people think of these events now?

Just keep asking questions—the same questions your readers will be asking, in fact. The more you ask and answer, the more fleshed out your world will be.

This all feels like a lot. And it is... and it's just the tip of the iceberg, but it's also a lot of fun!

We'll talk more in future posts about how to organize your thoughts and get the world-building on the page, but to start, you really just have to let your mind wander and ask why?

Think about what excited you about this world idea in the first place. Was it a magic system? A future society living among the stars? A particular "What if...?" that piqued your interest? Start there and branch out, following whatever questions and threads interest you the most. Don't worry about answering everything, just the parts that are exciting to you.

Because if it's exciting to you, it will be exciting to your readers, and that, really, is the whole point.