Worldbuilding is the process in which an author adds the finer details to their setting. Also check out Be Original and The Trope History of the Universe.
Choices, Choices
- Will your genre be Science Fiction, Fantasy, both at once or neither?
- Mythology?
- What are the inhabitants like?
- Are everyday people useless, minorly flawed (but that's part of their charm), jerks, or awesome and/ or terrifying?
- What are the politics?
- What technologies have risen to prominence?
- Is there magic? If so, what are the rules? How does it interact with technology?
- Accepted morals?
- Overall tone?
- How "hard" or "soft" is it?
- How will your justice system work? No matter what you're building, every setting will have at least some crime. What punishments are given out to criminals - imprisonment, whippings, or outright death? Who puts them on trial and makes sure that they have a fair and impartial trial (if they do have one in your setting, anyway?) And what does the setting do with convicted criminals? Do they put them in prison, send them off to be exiled, or just execute them?
Necessary tropes
- Worldbuilding: Why else would you be here? And if you go through such time and effort to forge out the details, show them off.
- In a World…: Not exactly necessary, but introduce your world somehow.
- Our Monsters Are Different: A new take on an old beastie is essential. For example, The Thing from Another World combined Doppelgänger (by way of You Are Who You Eat) with Bizarre Alien Biology, Our Vampires Are Different and Plant Aliens (it's a species of carrot). The 1982 remake, The Thing (1982), traded plant alien and different vampire for Shape Shifter Mashup, to stomach-turning effect. But don't go so overboard that people shout No True Scotsman.
- Speculative Fiction: While you could build a fantastic world just for Scenery Porn in a Slice of Life story (like ARIA), most likely you'll want to explore the implications of living in your world.
Pitfalls
- It's Been Done. You need to brainstorm long and hard to make your setting truly unique. Or just cherry-pick bits from other works that you like, toss them in the metaphorical pot, and see what boils up. But be sure to boil long and hard so it doesn't look messily ripped off and stuck on with gore. It helps to read widely in your genre to see what has been done. Some literary agents recommend reading works published in your genre in the last five years.
- Recycled In SPACE. If you want to (for example) make a reimagining of your favorite treasure hunt-story, but as a political satire, or it happens in an urban setting, really put effort in to it. Most of the popular *some character but in SPACE!* type of stories feel worthless, because the storytellers haven't put much thought in to how the story would change, if their Aquaman really WOULD go to space. How would they react? To underthink it, is the pitfall, not using the said trope.
The Random Events Plot and How To Avoid It
In an episode of This Dumb Industry, Shamus Young quotes
Trey Parker and Matt Stone, who decry the idea that scenes and plot points should be connected by the phrase "And then [X]." Instead, they claim, the links should be, "And therefore [X]" or "However, [X]" — the things that happen next are consequences or reactions to the things that happened before. Young describes this consequence-based narrative as "Domino worldbuilding" and points out how it adds verisimilitude to the fiction. It's also very accurate to Real Life, where most actions are (in fact) consequences or reactions to the things that happened before — to the point that certain events become Foregone Conclusions. (For instance, contemporary Americans saw the American Civil War coming 75 years before it started.)
A simple example comes from The Wheel of Time. It stars a Destructive Savior, one who is going to go Ax-Crazy and ruin everything Because Destiny Says So. How could such circumstances even arise? Well, via worldbuilding. Our Mages Are Different: they "channel" a force called the One Power, which is divided into male and female halves. The series is big on the Mars and Venus Gender Contrast. In fact, it dominated the last repetition of the Eternal Recurrence inherent in the Wheel of Time: the male mages couldn't agree with the female mages on how to defeat the Big Bad. Eventually, the men chose a solution and went alone. This exposed them to an insidious counterattack by the Big Bad, who tainted the male half of the Source so that all male channelers would, forevermore, go Ax-Crazy and ruin everything. This resulted in a massive World Sundering that capped off the Second Age and gives rise to the Medieval Stasis the actual Main Characters find themselves in some three thousand years later. It creates a World Half Empty where the best one can hope for is that The Chosen One saves the world before they destroy it... and it all makes perfect sense because it all arises logically from the rules of the setting.
This kind of worldbuilding takes a lot more skull sweat, but it comes with fewer Plot Holes — and is, to a limited extent, immune to them, because a reader who is thinking about the cool thing you thought of, may not be sparing much attention for the things you didn't think of.
Potential Subversions
- Standard Fantasy Setting: Everybody who thinks "Hey, I can write a fantasy epic!" usually plagiarizes Tolkien or D&D, complete with Medieval Stasis. There are comparatively few Weird West fantasy epics, for example, which can be counted on your fingers (The Dark Tower, Wild ARMs and Deadlands are the only ones that springs to mind); Same with Sci-fi/fantasy crossover settings (Warhammer 40,000 and Spelljammer). Even if you want to keep the medieval flavor, you could set it somewhere more like the old Near East or pre-Columbian America.
- Our Dwarves Are All the Same: Dwarves are usually all short, fat, mildly agoraphobic drunkards who really like mining, eating, drinking, gold, and fighting. The most different dwarves usually get is that "oh, my particular dwarves have Steampunk tech and /or guns because they stink at magic." Done to death. So how about trying something different with `em?
- ISO Standard Human Spaceship: Warhammer 40,000's human ships are giant, flying gothic cathedrals with weapons mounts tarted up to look like gargoyles. Johnny's ship from Won Ton Soup is spherical. There's no reason to go for the standard flying-box-with-riveted-plates look.
- Spikes of Villainy: Armor types are rather neutral. It'd be great to find out that, just this once, the Tank in the jet black, spined armor with-skull-mask-helmet is one of the good guys.
Writers Lounge
Suggested Themes, Plots, and Aesops
Too many, so I'll just toss you the Genres index.Departments
Costume Department
- Armor and tunics/leggingsnote /skirts work great for almost any setting. You just need to adapt them to fit the setting. Fantasy gets plate or chainmail armor, Sci-fi gets Powered Armor.
- Those technologies we mentioned? Can any of it be implanted into a character?
Casting Department
- Whatever classic races you want to include, and any new ones you dream up.
Stunt Department
- A heroic deed here and there (up to and including wars) in the history to keep it interesting.
- And scandals, humorous or serious, to add drama or humor.
