Focus in World Building

[Ekorus]

Greetings Everyone!

I am a hobby writer. Quite casual in my storytelling, however in January of 2015 I began to endeavor in earnest to write, or rater create, a world that I personally find intriguing. It began as a cliche tavern scene that by page 3 had introduced so many ideas that I became infatuated with the workings of the outside world. I began to World Build, but have never had any real experience with doing so before.

Now, I find myself in a rut. I have a decent amount for the casual amount of time I put into the work, but there's no real organization or even sense of direction when I sit down to develop more. I am not very creative, to be honest, which compounds the problem. I already have an idea of what story I want to tell, but I want a fully fleshed world before I dive in so I don't contradict myself through the telling like I did in my first attempt at writing a book, (different story, different world,).

My question is - how do I develop a good, creative world through a logical process? Are there steps I should follow that would help me not be so scattered while still being able to get into the nooks and crannies? Do you guys have any tips with World Building that might help me focus on the task at hand? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

P.S. If you need any further information from me, please let me know and I will provide what I can.

 

[Creed]

If becoming intimate with the world is important to you, then I would recommend finding places and factions and even historic periods you find interesting, and creating smaller stories from there. Create a character or three in city x, or the palace of nation y, or who are fighting in war z (not WWZ (unless that's a thing in your world)), and just start a new short story with them. This way you practice your writing, but you also still get to build the world, which some people will spend too much time doing, and some people will caution you against.

Each tale will force you to ask important questions, and the beauty is that you don't have to worry about making a decision you want to go back on, because it's only a short story, and they have their own value solely based on the fact that you've written them!

Some facets of your world to consider: nations (how they interact with one another, what resources do they have, how are they ruled), religions (here's a link in the Writing Resources page), your magic system(s), and anything else that is immediately relevant to the characters you're going to work with.

I'll add a little caveat: I might caution against writing short stories set in different time periods. I've begun more than a few and they require a fair bit of re-invention. I'll still write them, but that's a lot of work for a position in a world you may never return to.

 

[skip.knox]

There are scads of guides to world building. Just do a little searching. Also, read all the threads in this World Building forum. Then come back with specific questions. Honestly, you'll be asking world building questions for a long time. It's not like we've all got this figured out!

Anyway, here's a bit of advice from my own perspective.

1. Create a single place where you keep all world building information. It will be more than one document, so make it a folder. I use Scrivener and have an entire separate project for world building. I do scribble notes on paper or from phone or tablet, but no matter where the information starts, it's never "official" until I type it into my World Reference. Some people even use a wiki.
Doesn't matter. The crucial thing is this: you put everything into a single bucket, so when you look for a factoid you only have to look in one place.

2. Organize the bucket. How you do this doesn't really matter. Chances are, whatever organizational principle you start with, you will later revise, so don't sweat it. Here is mine. I organize by nation (by race): humans, orcs, elves, gnomes, etc.

Each nation has a document for each of the following topics: politics, religion, magic, society, culture, economy, history. Some entries are pretty sketchy, but at least I have a document ready and waiting for each topic. It's easier to file when you buy the file drawers first.

I also have folders for the following: places, names, flora, fauna, ideas. The last one is really just Miscellaneous but I hate that term so I use another. You'll always need a document for stuff that doesn't readily fit into any other category.

This makes for about fifty or so documents, which sounds like a lot because it is. But I write multiple stories derived from this one world, so it's deeply articulated. Mine is an alternate version of Earth, so I get to skip over categories you might find necessary, such as climate, geography, even astronomy.

Just remember the foundational idea: one ring (binder) to rule them all!

 

[Ekorus]

Honestly, these are all awesome suggestions!

I do have an organizational system. I use Microsoft OneNote for my World Building, in its own Notebook. I like this one because it's so adaptive and is able to be synced to any device, so I can call up my world from literally anywhere.

I do like the idea of writing short stories within my world. That should help tremendously and be tons of fun!

Thanks, guys! More help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[FatCat]

Get to know your characters, isolate the main idea, world build into the shadows. All these ideas make sense, but you have to put the puzzle together. What's the reason for your MC to triumph? Why should the reader support it?

So many people exasperate a full cycle world (the end triumphs the means) but tension can be beyond the end. I like some tension there, good and bad are just sides. But in the conclusion, what are you going to say?

 

[Ekorus]

Well, I'm hoping to get some time here soon to post what I've got for my World Building so far in the Brainstorming & Planning subforum. It'll take awhile to get up, but once I do I will definitely put a link to it here. I think the opportunity to get some feedback on the setting would be really helpful and informative.

 

[WooHooMan]

Greetings Everyone!

Hello

My question is - how do I develop a good, creative world through a logical process?

There are many different ways, none of which are guaranteed to work.

Are there steps I should follow that would help me not be so scattered while still being able to get into the nooks and crannies?

Stick to what is relevant to the story or what could be used to make a good story. It's better to miss the nooks and crannies than to get lost in them.

Do you guys have any tips with World Building that might help me focus on the task at hand? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Give your setting a personality of its own. Like a good character, you should become invested in your setting and want to know what has happened to it and will happen to it.
In the same way that a good character is easy to write, so is a good setting. Eventually, developing your world will be like second nature to the point where you hardly have to try.

 

[Garren Jacobsen]

There are several approaches. The first, and most commonly associated with fantasy, approach is what I have called the Papa Tolkien approach. This is where you build just about every damn thing. I don't want to talk about that because I am biased against it. So I will talk about my approach.

When I world build I divide the building into two primary categories: natural and artificial. The natural would building would be topography, geography, flora, fauna, weather. The general rule is anything that would exist in the world without human interaction. The other category, the artificial, would be the magic, the food, the politics, the geopolitics, the people, the culture, and anything else that would be influenced by humanity, so domesticated animals would probably be here. I often cop out of natural world building and assume earthlike with a few magical changes.

The artificial world building is often where people go awry. There is just so much crap. The question is how do I avoid this? I focus in on what is necessary for the story. This is usually where my three tiers of world building come into play. Below is how they work.

The first tier is what I call primary world building. This is world building that directly affects the story and the characters. This is where most of the depth of the world building comes into play. This is usually limited to three areas of the world that I consider to be important. So, for the property law novel I am planning, that means I will focus on property law, legal procedure, and how a property law/magic law attorney is viewed in society and how they react to that view. Note: I have three separate story threads in this book the other two are a politician and a soldier. For these two I will focus on the governmental structure, military structure, strategies and weapons.

The second tier I call the secondary pieces of world building. These are items of world building that directly affect the primary world building elements or that indirectly affect the character. These are treated with less depth but, by its nature, are broader. They have some explanation as to how they work and affect the primary world building elements. These, of course, have a mostly indirect effect on the plot.

The third tier is the tertiary world building elements. These are meant to flesh out the world to give it the veneer of being alive. These need not have an effect on the story but often do have an effect on the secondary world building elements and are somewhat tangential to the actual story. These are the broadest but have the least depth and are often made up on the spot. So for the property law novel that would be things like street names, business names, types of food vendors around town that my MC visits, names of weapons companies, names of battles in history that are relevant to a discussion and characters but unimportant to the story, religious tenets because it is there merely as a veneer and plays no central part to the story, and other interesting tidbits needed to flesh out the world.

I want to really hone in on tier 1. This one always takes the most time up front. This tier is the most important tier to get right. This requires detail and depth. However, only 2-5 items will generally fit within this tier for any given story arch or book. So, I am worldbuilding for a novel where the magic is based on property law. I have three characters: a property law lawyer, a politician, and a soldier. Property law in this world is going to take up a whole chunk of my world building and will flow with all three of these characters, another item to build is the legal processes and rules of evidence, discovery, and trial practice (this is primarily the world building needed for the attorney), the politician will require the rules of political procedure and how their democracy works, the soldier will need to have worldbuilding for rank and weapons. So I have four artificial elements that will be detailed in my world. Everything else will get a cursory consideration or will be made up on the fly. I will also have certain natural world building that fits in tier 1. This would be certain creatures that are the primary opponents to the humans in the nation that the story resides in. This will be my most extensive worldbuilding project.

Tl;DR. Focus in on a few tings that are important to your story. Everything else can be given a cursory inspection or made up as you write. Just be sure to write down the crap you make up on the fly.

 

[Ekorus]

Thanks to both of you with your information. Very helpful stuff, Brian!

 

[Holoman]

My approach at the moment isn't very structured or rational, so not sure it should be emulated, but I sort of do world building and writing in parallel. First I did a high level outline of the plot and ending, so I knew vaguely what had to work. And I already had a lot in my head about the world. So then I just pants it, and as I go I might invent something new and then do a bit of world building for a bit. Or I'll realise there is something I need to know and flesh out while I write so I switch to world building.

I'll probably have to rewrite a lot of it doing it like this, I've already had two major things I've had to change to fill in plot holes as I write, but I'm not too bothered about rewriting.

 

[Miskatonic]

The world building ultimately is put into the hands of the characters to bring to our attention. At least that's how I approach it. Each character is a product of this world in one way or another. When characters embody certain cultures and beliefs, and make the readers privy to this knowledge through actions and dialogue, we can show quite a bit about the world without resorting to long-winded exposition on a regular basis. Then again, you have to be careful to not turn your dialogue into thinly veiled exposition as well.

There are quite a few political conspiracies taking place during the first half of my story. Most have an historical catalyst so information can be passed on in small bursts over time to let the reader know the motivation behind various betrayals, alliances, etc., as the conspirators and other players in the game interact.