Worldbuilding Tips

Worldbuilding - what is it?

Building a world.  Duh.

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Usually, fantasy novels take place in a different country, land, or universe.  But what is the point of that if the country / land / universe is exactly the same as Earth? This is where authors can take advantage of a whole, new clean page and just....create.

Beware, though - it's not always a picnic.  What's involved in this worldbuilding thing?

Here is the 3S list that I made up.  The three s's are Setting, Sociality, and Structure.

Setting:
Terrain
Living quarters
Style of Architecture
Climate
Geography
Overall description of surroundings

Sociality:
People relationships (foreigners to natives, etc.)
People description
Accepted etiquette, ethics, and customs
Religion
Superstitions
Fashion
Language
Food
Education
Crime system
Waging war
Imports / Exports
Relations with other countries / planets / tribes
Magic

Structure:
Dating system
Keeping time
Years, months, weeks
Holidays

That's a lot, right? I know - but it's meant to get you thinking and blossoming out into categories of your own.  There are many creative ways to worldbuild - drawing maps, cooking up a gourmet meal typical in court, sewing clothes, testing fighting techniques live, whatever.
I myself don't like worldbuilding that much and tend to insert random pieces into my manuscript whenever I need it.  That's muffing Tip 1, below.

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Tip 1:  The writer should know more than the reader.
A writer I know loves building her world even more than she does writing her story.  She knows everything about her world, she has pictures of outfits, maps of cities, diagrams, you name it.

But do readers really want to get bogged down in all this while they are trying to follow the story? No.  That's why I believe the number one rule of worldbuilding is this - the writer should know a lot more about their world than they let slip to the reader.

Why is this? First of all, the more you know about something, the more confident you can be in writing about it, which means what you write will be pretty believable.  You won't sound shaky or unsure.  And if you happen to need extra details, you have them right there to snatch up.


Tip 2: Don't overbuild.

On the flip side, you don't want your worldbuilding to get in the way of writing your story.  Don't worry about the little details that don't add to what you're putting into your manuscript.  Act like you know them.  Your reader will believe you, and you'll be a lot more productive.

Worldbuilding can turn into procrastination.


Tip 3: Be realistic.

Even if your world may not hold to the laws of gravity, you can still make things realistic.  To help with this, try thinking of disadvantages of not having laws of gravity.  How do they get around these disadvantages? This will make your readers think, and make you look like you know what you're doing.

A friend of mine who created a world where it never stops raining.  She shared this in our Inkblots writing club, and another member said, "So...where does all this water go?"
That's a prime example of questions to think of when trying to be realistic.

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If you've got any questions or ideas for future writing tip posts, let me know in a comment.  I'd also love to hear about the world you may have created.

I hope this post about worldbuilding educated you and helped you somehow with your novel - I hope you also appreciate a bit more the power that fantasy authors have, as opposed to some others.  Heh, heh, heh.

Not that I'm biased or anything....


- Ellyn