how to make a world so real, readers will be looking for the wardrobe
First things first, for anyone who happened to find their way here by happy accident and isn’t one hundred percent clear what ‘fantasy worldbuilding’ means, this is the overarching term for the details of an invented environment in speculative fiction. It might be dragons or elves; it might be visitors from another plane of existence. It could be more or less familiar – kings and queens gambling with their wits, thrones their tokens – or it might be a range of mountains that are only intermittently attached to the ground.
It doesn’t have to pertain to magic in the realm of fantasy or tech for sci-fi. Adhering to clichés isn’t the goal. The purpose of sinking hours of thought and labor into ideas that may never find their way into the actual text is to create ambience. It’s making the setting feel real. You will have heard the term ‘suspension of disbelief,’ and it’s crucial to any writer of fiction. To draw a reader in, a world need not be bland or quotidian, it doesn’t even have to make sense. What allows a reader to accept is depth and texture.
How much worldbuilding is necessary is a function of taste. And an author’s voice. And circumstances specific to any given story. That’s not what we’re here to talk about. I just wanted to supply a checklist of questions writers might wish to ask themselves as they work. Even notions that don’t find their way into the story may help you find your way forward when you get trapped in drafting quicksand.
Let’s begin with your actual world.
you may have noticed I like maps
The physical terrain of where your story’s taking place is going to be a huge factor in the story itself. There are fewer aspects of the setting, in my opinion, that need to hold a higher priority than sussing out the shape of the land your characters stand upon and walk across. Some questions to pose while you think through how you want your land to look.
barriers and ways
Big natural features are a place to start. If you don’t have a visual imagination or feel confident drawing a map of your own, still you can always jot down notes. Both mountains and canyons create obstacles that can be difficult to cross or totally impassable, which affects how people can move about the landscape. Rivers, lakes, and oceans, on the other hand, may be walls that close people in, but will also serve as highways for travel and trade.
There is no reason you can’t add manmade features similar in scope to your landscape, assuming there is or was someone with the ability to create these monuments. Walls that render welcoming terrain impassable. Highways cutting across desert and jungle. Bridges made of stone, magic, or braided grass ropes. The often-invisible but still-daunting barricade that is a border, protected by laws and soldiers instead of white-water rapids or cliffs.
- This is not an endorsement – I’ve not tried either myself – but if you don’t want to draw a map or pay an artist to make one for you, I do have friends who have used and liked Wonderdraft and Inkarnate. There are other (free) apps available; this post felt like a really solid run-down of what’s out there.
to infinity… or not?
One question it does to ask yourself relatively early is: how big is this place? Are you showing me an entire globe, or do we see just a snippet of space with lines vanishing off the edge of the page? How significant is the relevant story and people to this place as a whole? I’m partial to stories with a lot of unanswered riddles and blank space filled with hypothetical sea monsters and mystery. But that’s just me.
Along this vein, if you feel like getting thrilling, you might add a forbidden region. Somewhere cursed, tainted, or simply off-limits for reasons that may or may not prove persuasive. Any really remarkable features, like a particularly deep, spume-filled canyon, a bog, hot springs or wind-sculpted bald stone monuments, would be great places to attach a vivid story to. History or myth. There might be deep-seated metaphysical truths about the nature of this place, and not just a striking appearance.
should we talk about the weather?
Climate is a crucial feature of your setting. Think about it, make it make a degree of sense, then stick with the rules you came up with. If you don’t feel confident studying the jet stream and ocean currents, trying to apply what we understand about how they work to your own world, find somewhere on Earth that fits the environment you’re going for. Then install a widget that keeps an eye on their weather and look at it whenever you write.
I won’t bore you with details that are probably mostly obvious. I bring it up because there’s a reason it’s the ultimate conversational cliché: there are few things we’re more conscious of at any given moment. It’s rarely not impacting us, and there isn’t a soul in the world who doesn’t have a strong opinion. You’ll want your characters to be singing in the rain, letting it snow, and et cetera as per their environment.
extinction event
I’m not going to voice a take on Atlantis or The Flood, but the evidence is in: natural disasters don’t just inspire terror, they capture our imaginations and linger in our memories, passed down in myths or oral histories over centuries. If there’s a fault line in your territories, there will be stories attached. Depending on the weather you get along the coast and the geology, there will be famous storms, tides, or tsunamis.
If there are volcanos anywhere in the vicinity, eruptions will be seared into people’s memories thousands of years later.
Rough news for locals, but good news for someone trying to make a fictional environment feel real. Last I checked, the going theory was that the Minoan civilization – precursor to ancient Greece, and which terrorized the Greeks while they were just finding their feet – was destroyed by a series of ricocheting tidal waves spawned by an eruption. The fabulous city of Teotihuacan may have first been built, then abandoned, because of volcanic activity in the region. Rulers have been pulled from thrones because of shooting stars.
As a writer, I have to say, it would be a shame not to take advantage of this.
adieu
If this feels short and hopelessly incomplete as a compendium of ideas that might need to be touched upon to make a fake world tick, it is. My plan is to make a series of posts so you aren’t faced with one really long list that bores you to actual death. Next, I’ll put my mind on the ephemeral, living crap growing on or running across your map. Until then!
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