# Keeping Your Worldbuilding Organized



## Black Dragon (May 2, 2019)

Do you have a system for keeping your worldbuilding organized?  If so, please tell us about it.

Or do you believe that worldbuilding is better left unorganized?


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## Devor (May 2, 2019)

I used to use OneNote, which is absolutely wonderful for it.  Every tab at the top  has its own subtab pages on the right, so you can have a "Map Locations" tab and give every location its own page. And you can move smoothly between pages.

But I've switched from using OneNote and moved into the terrible-for-this MS Word. Now I keep everything in a single word document, kept Landscape in three columns.  I do this so I can print it easily and work on it from my clipboard. It's easier to work with that way.

Also I have to give a special shout out for EverNote, which is an organization heavyweight program that you can download free.

As for the way it's organized, that's different for every project, and I think I'll talk about that in a future post.


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## Darkfantasy (May 2, 2019)

I do like to create original world, especially since Fantasy is so unlimited, I don't understand why people keep regurging medieval England settings. But it is hard because in Fantasy you need a certain amount of familiar.

I don't have a system really because I don't over plan my setting, I focus on character related stuff and plot since they're the most vital.


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## KJF (May 2, 2019)

I write in Scrivener and I usually keep a separate project for the world and organize everything that way. I've heard some people use a personal wiki. Something I just heard about this week is World Anvil (google it). I haven't used it but it seems interesting.


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## Riorlyne (May 3, 2019)

I have been using Notebook.ai to organise my worldbuilding. It's similar to (although younger and less developed than) WorldAnvil. The more advanced pages aren't free, but I chose it over WorldAnvil as keeping worldbuilding pages private was a feature on the free plan, not just the premium plan.


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## CupofJoe (May 3, 2019)

Very organised. Too organised maybe. And all off line in separate files and folders.  I have a Background folder. In that there are several folders; Characters, Maps, Locations, Technology, Countries, Magic, Monsters and others as I need them.
Characters – will have a description of each character in a separate document.
Maps – Anywhere from quick sketches of a world, or a village to more detailed maps of areas.
Locations – Are usually smaller scale but more detailed illustrations of a room or a street, place where I need to KNOW if X can be reach in how-many steps by Y; or if Z can be seen by A
Technology – If I place a limit on what the world has I put information of what can and cannot be done. If I invent a technology then my “research” goes here.
Countries – A bit like a Character description but for countries, guilds and anything bigger. This will also have climate details as well as social organisation, the military, currency & trade etc. whatever I think I need.
Magic – What can and cannot be done, how it works etc. sometimes this is a little sketchy, other times it ends up more like a D&D manual…
Monsters – again like a character profile but for any monsters, aliens, gods etc that might/do appear.
This can lead me to no longer wanting to write the story so I am TRYING to Pants it a bit more and actually write something first and fill in the gaps as I go. But I love making maps and slide in to that far too easily. I think visually so I like to “see” all the background information available to me as I write. This has also led to me using a 2 and 3 scree set up if I can. The more screens I have the more I need. I’m sure I will end up with 6+ like Terry Pratchett used.
My name so CupofJoe and I am a World builder. It has been 7 days since I last world-built.


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## Insolent Lad (May 3, 2019)

Lots of folders on the PC, containing lots of documents (primarily text written in Notepad++). Some  folders are of what I have created, some are of research, historical and otherwise. Timelines, biographical sketches, discussions of magic and myth, etc. Fortunately, most of my fantasy is set in the same 'universe' or it would just be too much—I have the same thing going for my various non-fantasy books, but they don't require quite the same degree of world building.


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## AlexK2009 (May 4, 2019)

Black Dragon said:


> Do you have a system for keeping your worldbuilding organized?  If so, please tell us about it.
> 
> Or do you believe that worldbuilding is better left unorganized?



Start unorganised, just write. This tells me about the world as I explore it. . Organise as needed. I tend to get more organised as the project gets bigger and use mind and concept maps as much as possible, if only to organise research material and notes.


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## ThinkerX (May 5, 2019)

Gah...

My old world building was intended for AD&D campaigns.  I created and merged together one world after another - then redid them when I started writing in earnest.  Each world or major setting has its own folder on my PC, with contents ranging from skimpy to extensive.


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## CelestialGrace (Nov 14, 2019)

Black Dragon said:


> Do you have a system for keeping your worldbuilding organized?  If so, please tell us about it.
> 
> Or do you believe that worldbuilding is better left unorganized?



I've been combing through the forum topics to see how people are organising their world-building materials - esp for the more complex worlds. At the moment I mainly use a mix of notepad, word, and paper to get my ideas down but it's not working anymore. I prefer to use a mix of tech and notebooks to keep track of my ideas. I can't sign up for any paid services though. The 2 main world-building projects that I have, have to be organised to avoid continuity errors, to keep relationships straight, etc.


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## Saigonnus (Nov 15, 2019)

I tend towards organizing the two different settings I use for my writing. Mostly everything is digital. PowerPoint presentations permit me to add blocks of text of various sizes, pictures, drawings etc. The rest is using YWriter, a free writing app for PC that helps organize characters, scenes, items or whatever notes I have concerning a specific scene.


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## Yora (Nov 15, 2019)

Somehow this never has been much of an issue to me. My worldbuilding is mostly conceptual with few details regarding history and geography. All I currently have is a list of the names that I created with a small note what the name is for. I usually leave naming things for much later and sometimes recycle unused names later, so remembering the names for everything can be a bit of a challenge.


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## MrNybble (Nov 16, 2019)

I keep my world building as organized as mother nature. Complex, sloppy, and organic. A note book full of notes with only three sections. World, people, and magic. There are posted notes in the notebook when I have had ideas away from my desk. All this multicolored mess with different colored pens and pencils is backed up by taking pictures of the pages with my phone.


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## Miles Lacey (Nov 16, 2019)

Black Dragon said:


> Do you have a system for keeping your worldbuilding organized?  If so, please tell us about it.
> 
> Or do you believe that worldbuilding is better left unorganized?



The world I've created is based on that of our world in the period between the two world wars.  I've studied that period for decades but there's details like place names, food, cultural stuff, climate, geography, religion, social customs and the small details that add that little bit of spice to this world that I jot down on paper and store it in a coloured plastic file. 

I save certain videos, pictures, maps etc  direct to flash drive so I can access them off-line and print maps and pictures off at a local internet cafe.  I also do a fair bit of bookmarking  how to videos on Chrome Google.  

Mostly it's handwritten notes in folders.


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## Aldarion (Nov 17, 2019)

Black Dragon said:


> Do you have a system for keeping your worldbuilding organized?  If so, please tell us about it.
> 
> Or do you believe that worldbuilding is better left unorganized?





Darkfantasy said:


> I do like to create original world, especially since Fantasy is so unlimited, I don't understand why people keep regurging medieval England settings. But it is hard because in Fantasy you need a certain amount of familiar.
> 
> I don't have a system really because I don't over plan my setting, I focus on character related stuff and plot since they're the most vital.



Because they are familiar with it? My own setting is consists of a hybrid of ancient Roman Empire, Byzantine Empire, 15th century Hungary and Holy Roman Empire fighting against a hybrid of Sassanid Empire, Seljuk Sultanate and Ottoman Empire. As for keeping it organized, I have a folder named "Codex" (_Codex Astartes_, except not), and each topic receives its own Word document. When a topic has multiple subtopics, I name said documents "TOPIC - Subtopic", so they are easy to find after being sorted by name. Right now, I have 15 documents just about the "protagonist" empire, never mind notes on  its adversaries, general mythology, geography, world history and so on. I also have subfoldiers for maps and stories and myths.

Internet resources such as Youtube videos, documents etc. I save in "Napomene i poveznice" ("Notes and hyperlinks") text file.

Whether it is better left organized or disorganized depends on your writing style. No use in spending much time on worldbuilding and organization thereof if you are going to let your pants guide your writing anyway. But if you are Tolkien-style pedantic nitpicker like myself, better start planning not just how to organize your worldbuilding, but how to organize your notes on worldbuilding as well.


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## elemtilas (Nov 17, 2019)

A lot of material is in Notebook.  That's a neat little private wiki which I don't think is available anymore.  Notes & jots, unfinished and reasonably finished articles reside here along with links, ruminations and Q&As I've done.

I have always enjoyed making and binding books, so a lot is actually in book form.  Discussions, but also a number of in-world works.

Same goes for maps & pictures.  There are folders full of maps, pictures, sketches and doodles.

There's a drawer full of undigitised paper notes, genealogies, times lines, etc.  I've been successfully procrastinating on sorting this out for more than a decade.

I can't stand M$ Word and have always preferred WordPerfect.  There's quite a lot of material there, too.  Some just notes and jots, others are complete books.

Somewheres around there's a notebook full of musical notation and folders with bits and snatches of unworked music.  A few pieces have made it to digitalisation / orchestration, but are not quite right yet.

Then there's a box full of in-world artifacts.  Books, playing cards, maps, utensils, jewelry, etc.

I guess dysorganised organisation is the way of it here!


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## Tom (Nov 17, 2019)

I have to organize, or I'd never be able to find anything. (And leaving stuff unorganized stresses me out!) To help me cope with my ADHD, I've created systems of organization for everything I own/use, including digital stuff such as my writing and graphic design schoolwork. The file organization structure on my laptop is a thing to behold, haha.

I used to do most of my worldbuilding on paper and in OneNote, but I've mostly moved away from that. Paper is hard to keep track of, and I've moved several times in the last few years so I've had to either digitize or toss most of my paper notes. I stopped using OneNote because it's just not a very efficient program for writing and organizing large documents. And Microsoft's syncing sucks--if OneNote doesn't have enough internet to sync to OneDrive it'll just nuke your data instead of storing it offline in the app until the next time it can sync. I got fed up with losing material to syncing glitches, so I switched to Google Docs. All of my worldbuilding for my current project is in one doc, organized into categories and subcategories so I can quickly navigate to whatever topic I'm making notes on. I also use good old Microsoft Word '13 alongside Docs, because I'm an IT guy at heart and I don't exactly trust cloud-based storage. So I'll save as a Word doc every once in a while, so I have a backup of what I've been working on in case Google Docs starts acting weird.


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## Zander Willmore (Nov 17, 2019)

I use college ruled notebooks.  Each notebook is for a different genre of writing.  I have one for Horror, one for Fiction and a three subject notebook for my fantasy ideas.  One notebook for fantasy has the story ideas.  While the other notebook has the notes about noble families, wizards, and other characters.  I then have several pages for my organizations.  I have to have organization with my world or my writing would be a mess.


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## Demesnedenoir (Nov 17, 2019)

Pure chaos of pen and paper and digital gibberish stashed willy nilly with the finest intentions of getting it all into Scrivener and Aeon Timeline... hrrm, well... sometime before I die.


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## Prince of Spires (Nov 18, 2019)

I started my current NaNo project with only a vague idea of what the world looked like. So all world building was stuck in my head (in lovely labeled folders with pretty decent search, but the backup potential was limited, and as a result stuff tended to get lost every now and then). I found while writing that I definitely needed to keep track of the stuff I invented, if only because it saves a lot of time and searching when I'm trying to remember if I named a city Hinan or Hinin. 

From there it's growing quite fast. Currently it's all in OneNote, with separate pages for different stuff. Works well enough and so far I haven't had any sync issues, so it's a nice way to have everything available if I think of something on the fly.


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## CelestialGrace (Nov 18, 2019)

I've been toying with creating a wiki, for at least one of my bigger projects, for a while and finally bit the bullet today. Hopefully that'll help me knot out som of the issues I've been having too.


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## Hexasi (Nov 18, 2019)

I keep a sketchbook and file. Other than that, its either all in my head or spilled on the paper. I also have random piles of paper which probably contain stuff that's important.


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## D. Gray Warrior (Nov 22, 2019)

Not organized at all. Most of my worldbuilding is just all in a binder and in no particular order. I just turn to the next blank page and write down whatever idea I have. 

I prefer to hand write my worldbuilding because it makes me feel closer to the process, if that makes sense.

I usually start with a quick overview or summary of the world I'm trying to create and then flesh out each aspect separately.

I used to keep a list for each culture in my worlds, kinda like this-

Name of Culture:
Dominant Race:
Form of Government:
Language(s):
Religion(s):
Currency:
etc...


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## McShane (Nov 24, 2019)

I use a notebook and google docs, and after I finish whatever I'm writing about I upload it to my WA account.


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## skip.knox (Nov 24, 2019)

I write multiple (non-series) stories set in an alternate world, so I have a separate world-building space. I do most everything in Scrivener, so there's a  separate project I named WorldReference. Over there I keep notes on all the different peoples of Altearth, from orcs to humans to sprites. Each has files for their religion, history, social organization, political organization, and so on. I have notes on setting--most of Altearth is just real Earth, but I've added a few geographic features here and there. WorldReference also holds name lists that I've gathered from various sources. It's also where I have general notes about magic systems.

Each story has its own project. With each I wind up inventing or expanding on some aspect of the world. At some point during the project, I copy such information back over to WorldReference--anything that's not story-specific.

The key principle is to put all world information in one place and to organize it to facilitate finding information. Happily, Scrivener has tags as well as folders, so I'm able to put my hand to some needed bit of context or to look up a name quickly, with a minimum of fuss.


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## Devor (Nov 24, 2019)

I've been meaning to get back to this for a while now.

Normally when this question comes up my answer is that I organize my worldbuilding as follows:

First I figure what out follows from whatever starting point I'm looking at.  What's necessary to support that.

Then I break it apart based on Ecology, Magic, Culture, Governments, and Warfare, filling in gaps and using placeholders under each category.  I use placeholders to avoid spending too much time filling out details until I need them.

And that's still a great starting point.

For Smughitter, though, my breakdown looks like this:

What is a fairy?  What is Seelie magic?  Fairy Culture. What can a fairy do.
Falina Cairn, the fairy kind-of kingdom, what is it, what impact did it have, what's tied to it.
Bestiary.
Characters surrounding Haifen. Characters surrounding Aliffe. The Hobs of Trin Ardell.
Seelie Magic Items; Crafting Dusts; Treasures of Falina Cairn.
Fairy Foods.
Fairy Abilities; RPG-style class breakdown.
The Map.
The Kingdom of Crenifer.
The Town of Trin Ardell (where most of the story takes place).
The other countries: Altracia, Kax Helyis, Pel Daxis, and Loxiem, to be explored in sequels.
Haifen's Smug Targets.
The Dark Cohort, to be explored in sequels.
Other magic types in the world (elves, dwarves, wizards, and then some more original ones to be explored in future works)
Poetic Spells and Songs.

I sometimes change the order of these for no reason at all.


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## pmmg (Sep 12, 2022)

My world has recently gotten complex enough that I need to keep track of a lot of things now. For this I have two tools I am relying on more and more.

Scrivener. I am really just using the 'note' feature and creating a place to store all the place names that are mentioned in the story and where they are. I also have notes for items like currency, language, and deities of various places. So far, its still keeping straight.

The last is Inkarnate for map making. Just gonna say...I made my last map on Campaign Cartographer, and again several times on graph paper by hand. I lost my files on CC, and was very much dreading having to make another electronic copy of the map. But wow...Inkarnate was very easy. Took me less than a day, and since then it has expanded quite a bit. My only complaint is that the fonts start to get fuzzy as the world gets bigger. I regret I did not use this earlier.

But for actual writing, I still use notepad and word.


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## Devor (Sep 12, 2022)

pmmg said:


> The last is Inkarnate for map making. Just gonna say...I made my last map on Campaign Cartographer, and again several times on graph paper by hand. I lost my files on CC, and was very much dreading having to make another electronic copy of the map. But wow...Inkarnate was very easy. Took me less than a day, and since then it has expanded quite a bit. My only complaint is that the fonts start to get fuzzy as the world gets bigger. I regret I did not use this earlier.



Is Inkarnate that much easier to use?  Shoot.  I bought CC3 a while ago to do a city map, and it's so complex that I've been putting it off.  Is Inkarnate easy to use for city maps as well?  I guess I picked the wrong one.


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## pmmg (Sep 12, 2022)

Ive not done a city but i believe i could one pretty fast. Specially if i had an idea of what i wanted.


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## pmmg (Sep 12, 2022)

I literally put off for years doing the map over and returned to by hand. But since it was all on graph paper i just used the boxes to duplicate it and filled it in. Editing is now super easy. 


They say they have a tool where i can import a background and then trace it but ive not used it. 

I have two complaints. 1) it would be nice if the words did not become fuzzy when you expand too much and 2) it would be nice if there was a toggle to say ‘now as a pencil drawing’. I may have to make two maps. One for the website one for the pages of a book.


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## ThinkerX (Sep 12, 2022)

I make all my maps with MS Paint.

file:///C:/Users/Owner/Desktop/Writings/CHAR/Map%201%20-%20Eastern%20Solaria.png


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## pmmg (Sep 12, 2022)

Cant really share a file that way.


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## pmmg (Sep 12, 2022)

Here kind of a time lapse of my inkarnate map. Took less than a day.


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## Devor (Sep 12, 2022)

ThinkerX, that's a link to a file on your PC, so it won't work for anyone but you.  You've got to upload it somewhere first.

I made my world map by hand and then sent it to an artist.  I'm really happy with the results, but she also took some annoying liberties that skewered all my travel times and some other things.  The characters don't really leave the city in book 1, so I wanted a map of that as well.  I'd still send it to an artist, but I don't know how to draw a city by hand.


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## pmmg (Sep 12, 2022)

Yeah....like I said, initially I took my graph paper one and just matched block by block till I had the outline, and then started adding the extras.


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## ThinkerX (Sep 12, 2022)

__ https://www.facebook.com/eldritchworld1/photos/a.107681752083576/109023248616093
			








__ https://www.facebook.com/eldritchworld1/photos/a.107681752083576/109020818616336


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## Ankari (Sep 12, 2022)

I've been researching the subject of mapmaking for a pending D&D session. I've used Wonderdraft, but that requires a bit of learning to use. I'm considering Inkarnate until I stumbled upon Project Deios. This looks really promising. I may bite the bullet and buy into the alpha.


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## pmmg (Sep 12, 2022)

I should have added, I did buy the subscription for Inkarnate. I think it was $25.00 for the year.


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## ThinkerX (Sep 13, 2022)

Devor said:


> ThinkerX, that's a link to a file on your PC, so it won't work for anyone but you.  You've got to upload it somewhere first.
> 
> I made my world map by hand and then sent it to an artist.  I'm really happy with the results, but she also took some annoying liberties that skewered all my travel times and some other things.  The characters don't really leave the city in book 1, so I wanted a map of that as well.  I'd still send it to an artist, but I don't know how to draw a city by hand.


Yeah, I figured that out.


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