For writers of Sci-fi and Fantasy, world building is the backbone of our story. It is the skeleton on which everything else is built.

Creating a vivid world is about two things:

• Consistency
• Relatability

Consistency means that the influence of the unique pieces can be felt everywhere.

Relatability means that we can see ourselves in this world.

Notice that it is not about details or having a complicated idea. It’s about consistency and relatability. That’s it.

A Basic World

The easiest way to create a world is to start with an Earth-like setting, and modify. It’s much more difficult to build it from the ground up (for example, you can add a moon because we get what that would look like, but to create a flat or square planet instead of a sphere gets more difficult (not impossible, but more difficult)).

This is because creating Earth-like settings is very relatable. Readers (and you, the writer) have an innate understanding of Earth and how it works.

A reader paints a picture of the setting the moment they open the book, and adjusts it based on the clues you give. This means that until you tell them otherwise, they are naturally going to have an image of Earth in their mind’s eye. (Even if you tell them it’s Sci-Fi or Fantasy set on a non-earth planet, they will still imagine it like Earth.)

This is in our favour, believe it or not, because they already know all of the details. They can already visualize everything, and they visualize it how they like. All you need is to modify the details. You can modify details as big or as little as you’d like. For example, you can create an Earth that’s entirely ocean (like Waterworld), or change something as simple as a modern day world where Vampire’s exist (hello, Twilight).

The Fewer Details that Change, the Better the Story

Most people are surprised by this. But to create a seamless reader experience, we have to make it easy to read.

A reader (and an author) can only keep so many details in their head. You’re better to go with one big change, than to try to adjust little pieces of the entire world. (For example, go ahead and introduce magic or change the shape of the globe, but don’t change it so that dogs have two heads, and the planet has three moons, and water runs uphill, and, and, and….) Make one change, and follow all the repercussions of it. Don’t make multiple random changes.

This not only helps readers keep track of what the new world looks like, but helps with believability. Just like characters, everything in our world should make logical sense.

The Details We Use Must be Important

The other thing to remember is that all the details of the unique world will likely be normal, everyday life for the character.

It’s okay to have a whole and vast world in your head, but if they never affect the character, they become nice to know, not need to know….

A reader must be able to understand the world with only the details they glean from the story. And because the reader experiences the story through the main character’s eyes, the reader really only ends up caring about (and therefore understanding) the things that become significant to the character and the story.

I say all this because many beginning authors spend a lot of time building the nitty-gritty details of their world in order to make it immersive. And you don’t need to.

If you enjoy it, awesome! But if, like me, you want to know the important bits and get on with the story, this is me saying, “yes, it’s okay to not know everything.”

World Building 101

Chances are, you already know what kind of setting you want for your story. It might be a sci-fi setting like a different planet or a space station. It might be a fantasy world. It might be real world Earth, or Earth with some fantastical or historical modifications.

That’s a great backdrop to keep in mind, but let’s look at it a little deeper:

Step 1) Start with Theme

We know our Theme. We know the belief the main character starts with that they will have to change (to match the theme) in order to succeed. Chances are, the world, or at least our character’s experience with the world, supports this initial belief.

Why?

How has the main character come to believe what they do in the beginning, and how has the setting/world contributed to that?

Step 2) Define the Global Belief System

Is the character unique in their view / belief, or is this a common belief?

What do people in the world generally care about? What is the typical belief or paradigm they live in?

Why? What happens in this world to support this belief?

Step 3) Define the Physical or Political Challenges that have Led to the Global Belief System

You may have already gotten some ideas going through the earlier questions, but let’s focus in now on the more tangible aspects of the world.

What influences the world?

If it’s physical challenges, like difficult terrain or limited resources, is there a reason for this? Were resources once plentiful and something changed? Or were people forced to move to an area of poor resources because of some other disaster?

If it’s political challenges (such as an oppressive government, racial or other discrimination, poverty, etc.) what happened in the past that made people accept this system? And, what are the politicians now thinking? (Check out the character questions for ideas on building the desires and motivations of influential people.)

Step 4) Build Systems

Whether they are political, or magical, or relationship-ical… every society has usual ways that things work. (For example, people in North America typically meet someone at an event, start dating (which typically involves dinner, movies, mini golf, etc.), start dating more seriously, move in together, live together for a few years, get engaged, stay engaged for a year, then get married… But your world/society may feature arranged marriages, or a marriage lottery.)

What systems are in place in your society? How do they work?

Are these hard and fast laws, or are they only conventions?

Under what circumstances could the systems be broken? Or, is there another way?

Start testing your rules by asking what if questions. What if the marriage lottery system broke? What if someone dies, does the other person get another spouse assigned? What are the weird things that could happen and how would your world handle them?

Step 5) Build the Details Surrounding your Characters and Conflict

Remember Story Planning is a cyclical process between Character, World, and Conflict.

Knowing what you’ve learned about your World so far, how does that influence your characters? How does that affect your conflicts, or does it introduce new ones?

Looking at your characters and the conflicts you have already defined, are there aspects of the world you need to know more about? Do certain elements need to be in place, and how do they tie in to the core history you have already established? (Remember, we want one change, with far-reaching repercussions, not multiple little changes that don’t necessary go together.)

Step 6) Fill in Any Other Details as You Go

There may be little details you want to fill in as you go, like, what colour is the sunset, or the rocks in the cave they hide out in? Many details can be filled in, noted just in case we need to revisit them and be sure we are consistent, and then we can move on. These details can easily be filled in while writing, so I don’t worry about them during the planning phase.

But be careful. Sometimes, what looks like little details may be quite significant. If you’re in a sci-fi setting, the colour of the sky and the sunset may be impacted by the chemical make-up of the atmosphere. Cave rocks might need to be a certain colour if they are made of a certain type of stone which signifies some kind of natural disaster or other geologic event.

Always ask, does this detail affect any other part of my world, or is it just a detail?

Some Notes on Writing Unique Worlds

It’s in the writing where world-building becomes the most important, and the hardest to do. It’s one thing to imagine what a setting looks and acts like, but another entirely to translate it onto the page in a way that is interesting, engaging, and important to readers.

Here are my top tips:

• Show, don’t tell. We’ve all seen the fantasy novels that have an entire chapter devoted to just description. How many of us actually read that? How many of us remember anything that it said?
• Make the details relevant to the character. Remember, for them, this is likely normal life. They wouldn’t say, “Oh, look at how different my world is from Earth–a planet I’ve never been to or heard of before.” They’d say, “This is what I’m doing in my normal world, and this is why it’s hard.”
• Highlight important information with emotion. Just like above, we want to make the important information–the stuff we need readers to remember because it is important to the plot–with an emotional response in the main character. This helps the reader make a connection and remember.
• Not everything can be important. Give readers a sense of this whole world, but know which details are needed for the story, and which don’t matter. Highlighting the important stuff while hinting at more in the background is what makes a world feel truly immersive, not lots and lots of details.
• Just like everything else, the information that is needed to solve the conflict in the climax of Act 3 needs to be started by the end of Act 1. To build a truly immersive world, the reader needs to know everything (and remember it) long before it becomes important. Don’t surprise your reader with convenient facts right at the end, even if you knew it all along, it will still seem sloppy and undeveloped to them.

World building can be as complicated or as simple a process as we want it to be. For stories set in the regular world, the world building is already established (we might just need a little research about our particular locations). But for stories set in fantastical places, there is much more we need to create, establish, and stick to.

If you want more help planning, plotting, and writing your story, check out our Free Story Planning Guide.

You can also join the Story Coaching Facebook group to connect with other authors, enjoy Daily Writing Tips, and ask all your writing related questions.

Happy writing!