Basic Parts to World Building?

[Devor]

So, I think I've pretty much finished world-building for the project I'm working on, and I'm wondering if I've missed anything.

I understand the ecology, governments, religions, magic, warfare, and the like.

What am I missing? What are the basic elements that you consider when you construct a fantastic setting?

 

[TWErvin2]

Trade and trade routes. Resources available and/or being utilized.

 

[Caged Maiden]

travel times and methods? I always overlook that until I want something to happen, say a meeting and i realize my characters would take a longer time to travel than I had anticipated.

Oh, and money. Names for your coins and the like...

 

[Hans]

That very much depends on you. I know some people who want to know as much about their world as possible. Not all of them are story authors.

For you as author, whatever your story needs is important.
Basically some geographic information might be useful. Also the basic culture of the visited regions. Some minor cultural clashes might give the impression of a rich detailed world.
Basically the social structure of society in all visited regions.

 

[JCFarnham]

I'm going to try and do my very best to not give you rubbish do-what-you-want advice.

Typically I build my setting to a point that it can facilitate and most important support a story. Take Faebound for example, I needed to first come with an idea for a magic system (human's can't use raw magic, so use Fae-crafted artefacts instead). This grew from a basic natural law. Fae need to be believed in otherwise they find it difficult to live. This is why we don't find them in our towns and cities. Therefore, Fae who want to protect Earth Realm from "monsters"/bad people HAVE to form contracts with humans.

Admittedly I don't need to do much more worldbuilding than this because it's an urban fantasy, but I think you can see just how those two interlinked points create a plot-supporting conflict inherent in the setting itself.

If you feel you need to work out absolutely everything about this culture/society for it to be capable of holding up any story you wish to set in it then so be it but there's nothing more depressing in my book than doing too much worldbuilding and either overcomplicating your world or having too many ideas and too little time to work through them.

In fantasy, the setting to me is something like the foundations of a house. You need them, enough to hold the house up. You could lay more foundations, but it would be a waste of time, money, effort and... well, what would you put on those foundations? So I think I lost that metaphor slightly towards the end there.

The point is I'm not going to be that guy who says "write the story and see what you need to build", mainly because I'm a setting first writer, and not even slightly minimalist (I don't see the point). To me, everything sits and relies upon the environment that its placed in. Characters are often products of their environment. The plot can be informed by it. Objects, things, concepts are product of it. Like I said, everything.

 

[soulless]

oh, i now realise i don't have a government system for my world... gonna have to get my notes out.

 

[Queshire]

make sure you identify the major differences between our world and your created world and consider the ramifications of those changes. For instance if you have two moons that's gonna mess with your tides which can lead to all sorts of differences in coastal communities. It's one thing to just add a feature for that whole fantasy feel, quite another to consider the effects of that feature.

 

[Shockley]

Some things that the great world builders really obsess over: Food, fauna and the way buildings actually look.

 

[Ophiucha]

I find it hard to categorize things so evenly; often, they are too intertwined to separate. Magic and warfare, in many stories, are basically synonymous. Does government include the economy? Does it include religion? After all, there are theocracies and many nations - to this day - have a state religion. Does ecology include important resources? Ivory is a valued trade item in our world, but it comes from elephants. Where do rocks and mining fall into all that? I'm not against the use of terms like 'government' when I'm planning my worlds, but I prefer to use them like tags instead of headers, able to use one or ten if I need to for every point I want to make.

To answer your question, though: geology, geography, astronomy, trade/economy, climate, history, prehistory, technology, science/medicine, the arts, customs, clothing, architecture, transportation, communication, manners, cuisine, education, timekeeping, languages, demographics, ethics.

 

[Caged Maiden]

In my last novel (based very loosely on the English Peasants' Revolt of 1381) I detailed the two religions, what a few nobles did, and what the town looked like. Everything else was vague. It was so earth-like, it could have been Earth, there was no magic, I didn't talk about sciences or arts in any real details... even the religions themselves were left mostly unexplained except for to tell the reader the major differences between them. My point? I did hardly any research, wrote 50k words in two weeks, and left almost everything vague... and I think it was VERY successful and I love it.