"It is necessary to create constraints, in order to invent freely. In poetry the constraint can be imposed by meter, foot, rhyme, by what has been called the "verse according to the ear."... In fiction, the surrounding world provides the constraint. This has nothing to do with realism... A completely unreal world can be constructed, in which asses fly and princessesare restored to life by a kiss; but that world, purely possible and unrealistic, must exist according to structures defined at the outset (we have to know whether it is a world where a princess can be restored to life only by the kiss of a prince, or also by that of a witch, and whether the princess's kiss transforms only frogs into princes or also, for example, armadillos)."
Worldbuilding is the process of constructing a fictional universe. Strictly speaking, anything that happens in that universe "builds" it, so "worldbuilding" is only used to describe the invention of fictional details for some reason other than the convenience of a currently ongoing story.
A common form of worldbuilding is the creation of history. This could just be a Framing Device for a story told by a historian, but fantasy worlds regularly include historical notes for centuries of warfare and intrigue. Stories can then be written at various points along that timeline, and each of those stories will have a clear relationship to all the others. It makes the writing of serial fiction much easier, especially if the series has multiple authors. If so, the fictional universe is a Shared Universe.
The result may sometimes be called a Constructed World, conworld or sub-creation. The term world-building was popularized at science fiction writer's workshops during the 1970s. It connotes a focus on detail and consistency. Many post-The Lord of the Rings fantasy and post-DuneScience Fiction writers use world-building in an attempt to give their stories weight and meaning that they would not have without a well-defined setting.
Constructed worlds frequently have their own aesthetics, above and beyond the aesthetics of the stories taking place in those worlds. Some artists and hobbyists build fictional worlds with no intention of writing any stories in them—at least, none more detailed than historical documents.
Worldbuilding has two separate meanings:
The creation of a Fantasy World Map, history, geography, ecology, mythology, several different cultures in detail, and usually a set of "ground rules", metaphysical or otherwise. Sometimes, such worlds will have a Creation Myth that's either hinted at or told in more detailed fashion. This kind of worldbuilding can go to the extreme of working out entire constructed languages. Authors typically revise constructed worlds to complete a single work in a series.
The work that goes into deciding the details of a setting. It's very difficult to write a story that contains absolutely no imaginary elements beyond what's described to the reader, so nearly every author worldbuilds a little bit.
Over the years, this has explicitly become the goal of the creative team for Magic: The Gathering. Instead of being used to tell the story, each expansion block is now used to flesh out a different world to a remarkable degree.
Fan Works
The world of C'hou in With Strings Attached, a completely original world (which is a MAJOR rarity in Fan Fiction), fully realized, with two vastly different cultures and mindsets, several sets of slang, and hints of a much more ordered past.
And to a lesser extent, the Hunter's world, which the four visit in the Third Movement.
Ursula K. Le Guin'sEarthsea. Word Of God says that, at least when working on the trilogy, she literally made up background information as she went along, depending on what felt right.
All of Brandon Sanderson's works, in fact, they actually all share a cosmology except for his young adult Alcatraz books, and of course the Wheel of Time books he's written in Posthumous Collaboration with Robert Jordan, Word Of God says there's even a defined logic that underlies all the different magic systems of all Sanderson's works.
J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-Earth - The original, at least in the modern sense of the detail involved. Tolkien stated that the creation of Middle-earth was the result of giving his created languages a place to live in. He has written a lots of notes on the direction of that the history of Middle-Earth should go. Much of his notes have been organized and published as The History of Middle-Earth.
Jorge Luis Borges's "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" is something of a meta-example, being a fantasy about world-builders.
L. Frank Baum's Land of Oz is perhaps one of the earliest attempts at world building. Maps by Baum depict Oz's four regions and its neighboring kingdoms. The worldbuilding came about because of fans clamoring for more stories and places to explore. (Continuity Snarl ensued)
R. Scott Bakker's Eärwa (though not the entire planet), of the Second Apocalypse series, has four thousand years of human history, three huge religions, several different species, and his very own magic. Also, a completely incomprehensible Eldritch AbominationBig Bad.
Harry Potter indulges in quite a lot of this, the world growing more detailed and complex as the books go on, though for the most part it's Like Reality Unless Noted.
Robert E. Howard's sword and sorcery universe, which encompasses both the Hyborian Age of Conan and the age of Kull's Atlantis.
Michael Moorcock's multiverse, encompassing the worlds of Elric, Corum, and various other heroes who take on the role of the Eternal Champion.
David Weber's Honor Harrington started off less built, but after 17 doorstoppers plus 5 short story collections with several of the short stories designed to fill the history and technology roles have built up a fairly consistent world whose technology is plausible and has rather large and detailed conflicts.
Safehold exploits David Weber being a more experienced author, and has very large global conflict with dozens of different political groups involved in a religious conflict. The list of characters for David Weber series is comparable with that George RR Martin.
Worldbooks, a type of sourcebook, are tabletop RPG supplements that exist entirely to give Game Masters detailed settings to run their games in. While it's possible to buy worldbooks based on the real world—essentially, history books targeted at roleplayers—most worldbooks are about fictional worlds, and so the process of writing the book consisted entirely of worldbuilding.
Many Dungeon Masters create their own fantasy worlds for their campaigns. Some of the more famous examples of these worlds are Eberron by Keith Baker and Forgotten Realms by Ed Greenwood.
There's a new offshoot of roleplaying games developing that might be called "world-building games," in which the players collaborate to tell the history of a world that develops in-play.
The World of The Battle For Wesnoth qualifies although it is unique as it is a open source project.
Akira Tsuchiya's Ar tonelico world. To summarize, he created an extensive fictional musical language as a foundation for his world, complete with a physics section on how the language works in the world.
The Dragon Quest games are meant to be broken up into trilogies (1-3, 4-6, and 7-9.) However, there each trilogy bar the first only has a tenuous connection with the games they frame.
The WarCraft series has grown from a fairly standard setting to this, including lore elements dating back ten thousand years or more. It has four worlds (Azeroth, Draenor, and to a lesser extent, Argus and Xoroth) which are explored in depth.
Blizzard's other big settings, Sanctuary and the Koprulu Sector, which are both getting pretty extensive supplements.
Dwarf Fortress is something of a meta-example, as it does this the first time you play, and can be done as many times as desired. While the set of creatures, plants, and sentient races are well-defined in the game files, the mythology, history between the races, geography, and geology are procedurally generated, according to modifiable parameters. This is a huge part of the game's charm.
BioWare's original properties (well, as original as a BioWare property gets) tend to be quite extensively worldbuilt. Jade Empire is a minor example, while in Mass Effect they went into greater detail. Much greater detail. And even ME is eclipsed by the Dragon Age franchise.
And of course, there are some games where you can build a world, or at least greatly influence one. Sim games are an obvious example. And the Fable games, amongst others, allow you to shape the future of the world they're set in.
The Nasu Verse often makes side-references to expand its magic system without it having any relevance for the actual story. The most prominent example would be the constant mention of dragons being the most powerful of all magical creatures, though nobody ever fights a dragon onscreen.
Marathon gets special credit for doing extensive world-building in a time when most FPS game stories consisted of "monsters teleport in, you kill them"
Although not run by Bungie any more, Halo seems to be doing this now, with its extensive Expanded Universe building an entire mythology around the series. Not to mention how the recent Anniversary re-release of the original game has Terminals that give information expanding on the story to be told in the books, while those books to be written will be giving clues to the plot of Halo 4. Basically, it's like a plot cycle. An awesome cycle...
The Elder Scrolls has the Aurbis, the totality of existence, which encompasses Aetherius and Oblivion, and the Mundus (which contains Nirn, the world of mortals, and the continent of central focus, Tamriel), and a few other lesser planes of existence.
Snow By Night takes a Colonial-like setting with roughly equivalent places and starts its world-building by taking some clever divergences from real life. The Almanac shows it off the most.
The the early seasons of The Simpsons, Springfield semi-qualified, as its events were contained enough to function as a separate world, even if it was never defined as such. Later on, however...
While there hasn't been a whole lot of this in the actual series, there are numerous fanfics about world-building in the My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic fandom. One episode, "Hearth's Warming Eve", established that Equestria, where Ponyville is located, is the name of a nation, not the entire planet.
Other
It's rather easy to do this yourself, just open up a word processor document and let your imagination take off.
The Otherworld Project, formerly Eshraval, is a long-running online collaborative modern worldbuilding project founded in 2004, which also encourages Role Play in the context of the world. The website has an extensive Encyclopedia. It has recently undergone a reset.
Santharia is a world-building project for the world of Caelereth, which has been going since 1998. Everything from flora and fauna to cosmology is described in loving detail, and pictures added created by Dreamers themselves. The world of Caelereth is developed on the Development board, while on a separate Roleplaying board stories are told set within this world, most of them within the continent of Sarvonia. Recently an interactive game has been developped.
