Yaron P
Scribe
Hey everyone if you see this post I am very happy then , you know , it is my first writing a book and I am not very knowledgeable about worldbuilding . I do have an ideal world for my book though .
what?Foxkeyes ?
Sorry, it’s another site member who knows a lot about worldbuilding. Maybe I should have said that.what?
yes well thank youSorry, it’s another site member who knows a lot about worldbuilding. Maybe I should have said that.
thank you , I am writing about what I know it just I want to expand it a little and if I don't know something and it is for a book I am writing I go and learn it . it is just as fun for me as writing the actual chapter because it's give me new version or new idea , and because I always think of something new I thought I will write some fundamental things like certain energy or monsters/ beasts who are made originally by me and so onI agree totally with John. Write what you know, take details from the world around you, stir briskly and then add the magic ingredient of your choice. From then on it's blue skies all the way. I wish.
you right I didn't think of the difficulty when I posted the post , well for something specify I don't know how to explain how to explain which country hold more money and which country hold which connectionWorld building is a very large topic. It's like saying, what can you folks tell me about physics? (except physics is easier!)
Instead, maybe you could say what sort of world building you're looking for. Do you need advice on economics? Social structure? The physical world? Politics?
And what, in any or all that, are you needing specifically for this story? Is there something about building out the world that is hindering your ability to write? Are you looking merely for something splashy or colorful because the narrative feels humdrum right now? There can be a hundred reasons, but starting with zero reasons does make it difficult to have a helpful conversation.
I see thank you very much that really helped, I am pretty new to all this worldbuilding setting organization so I am really thankful for how you explained it , well as for the rest of I guess I just need to investigate more about the thing I want to , the thing I need to add and the thing which hinder my work .but it really helped me thank you very much .I like to break up the worldbuilding into five parts: Ecology, Magic, Combat*, Political History, and Culture. You can take each topic however far you want. Ecology can be, "Hrmm, similar to Germany, but with dragons" or you can detail the landscape, name the rivers, create a slew of new creatures, and so on. It's all about what matters for your story and your characters.
I've got an asterisk besides Combat. What I really want to know is, what does the action in my story look like? Are there swords and spells or guns or what? If this was Harry Potter, just for an example, I might be thinking magic spells here, but I might also be thinking about Quidditch. I need to know what how the characters hold their own in a pinch.
I am speechless , putting my hat down for you . thank you for the effort .> which country hold more money and which country hold which connection
Hm. The first clause is clear enough. Which country is wealthiest. And why do you want to know that? It's ok to be merely curious. It's ok to want to decorate. But it's important to be able to distinguish between what is merely decorative and what is necessary to the story. There's not an easy way to do that; you just have to practice, which is to say you just have to start writing. Then write some more. And still more.
But I'll offer a simplistic example, which might provide at least a starting point for thinking about this. Let's consider a major character--the lead, the villain, main supporting characters--that level of importance. OK. So, that character needs a name. You simply aren't going to be able to write a full-length novel without a name (even if the name is something like "the traveler"). That is necessary, which in turn means it's something you need to get sorted fairly early on.
What color eyes does your MC have? It probably doesn't matter. That's what I mean by decorative. Now, maybe you have a magical character and their eyes change color with their mood. Unless some crucial event happens based on that change, the eye color is decorative. You don't need to get it sorted now (though you will during copyedit need to make sure it's consistent!).
Where is your MC's home? That's slipperier. At one extreme, you can treat it as decorative. You don't need to say anything about it, even though you've maybe put hours of thought to the topic. If it doesn't further the story, it doesn't belong in the story. But maybe it *does* further the story. Maybe the MC comes from a place that is despised by some other character. Or the place is war-torn and this has affected our MC. Now the information moves beyond decorative toward the necessary.
A good example is with Conan. We know he comes from Cimmeria. We know Cimmeria is a northern place and is cold. We know it got invaded and that Conan fled the invaders.
That's really all REH gave us. Maybe he had a whole history of Cimmeria worked out, had a medium of exchange, drew maps, has lists of rulers. I doubt it; Howard was a pulp writer and moved fast. My point here is that none of that is in the stories. Cold, bleak, far north. That's about it. And why are those details present in the stories? Because they help establish who Conan is and why he is that way. In short, it is necessary.
Write some. Write some more. Write still more. You'll get a feel for it.
I can't make the second clause of the quoted statement make sense. You use the word "connection" but you don't say what is connecting to what. We need more information. But even once you've made it explicit, the same considerations as above will apply.
you right I didn't think of the difficulty when I posted the post , well for something specify I don't know how to explain how to explain which country hold more money and which country hold which connection
thank youI'm going to try and answer that one.
Countries need five raw materials to prosper: Grain (i.e., farmland), Livestock, Timber, Stone, and Iron. A country that lacks too many of these is going to be poorer because they have to trade for them. A country that has lots of these will be prosperous. You would also want to trade these with your closest neighbors, and protect your access to those goods, which is how tight alliances form or the reason wars are fought If your ally turns on you, and now you can't buy stone, then you're in a lot of trouble.
But then there's the next level of the economy. Countries begin to turn these items into specialties that can't be found anywhere else. That is, they learn to develop rare Spices, Wine and Liquor, Fabrics and Clothes, Housewares, and Jewelry. These are the industries that bring a lot of international wealth into a nation. This is also where you start to see merchants gain power because they can have much more control over the making and distributing of these goods. And merchants have different interests than governments, like protecting secrets and securing trade routes to far off places.
I've mentioned five things in each group. But there are others, depending on the time and place. Oil, fish and salt might fall into the raw materials group. Books, cheese, and weapons might fall into the crafted goods group. But that should cover most of it.