World Building

I have talked about how I design my characters and plot my story in previous posts, but there is a big part of the puzzle missing: how do I build my worlds?

I think the reason why I saved this one for last was that I don't really have any clear methods as I do for the other two steps. However, I'll take a stab at describing my process to you here.

The Three Pillars of Planning

Before I begin writing v1, I create three documents that define the following:

1. My characters
2. My plot outline
3. My world

Usually, I work on all three documents at the same time, as the contents are so closely interlinked with one another. While 1 and 2 have structures and templates I can follow, world building just sort of. . . happens.

Different Kinds of World Building

The reason this step is less focused is because every world I write about is so different that it is difficult to fit the planning into a one-size-fits-all template. However, if I dig a little deeper, there are definitely broad categories of world building that need a lot of thought before I begin.

Groups of People

Individual characters are defined separately, but every world has 'groups' of people who either work together, are indifferent to each other, or are at all out war (with anything in between). It is difficult to write a story without thinking about the civilizations or castes or cliques involved. Humans form groups, and a realistic story is therefore likely to include some too.

Examples from my own work:

• Awake! (a work-in-progress) is populated by a vampires, humans, nymphs, mermaids, fairies, and elves. (The original version also included many other beastie types, including hydras, ogres, and trolls, but I am in the process of simplifying this story). Each species is blessed (and limited) by a number of 'innate' abilities that they are born with, and each falls on a different rung of the social and political hierarchy. Planning out each of these groups in advance makes writing the story easier as well as lending important nuance to specific characters who come from each group.
• In The Reality Warper, we have the Inners, who live underground, completely unaware of the world above, the Alerrawians, who live in a carefully guarded compound, and the True Users who live in the forest. Understanding why these groups splintered in the first place and what, exactly, they feel about each other was an essential step in planning this story. (Buy The Reality Warper here.)
• Earthquake House (another work-in-progress) likewise has three different groups of people: The Illuminated, who live carefully controlled, highly religious lives in their sparkling white buildings on the plains; the Common, who live sensible, colorful, science-driven lives in the river-less valley in the center of the world; and the Inky, whose tree-top homes in the distant mountains are a bit of a mystery. As the story involves characters from all three groups, understanding them and how they feel about each other was a time-consuming, but incredibly important first step.

Magical Abilities and Functions

Most of my stories include magic. In fact, in my longer works, all of them do. Magic, being a made-up concept, can mean a lot of different things, and I find myself having to carefully balance exciting magical elements with world rules that keep things interesting. If magic solved everything , there wouldn't be much of a story to tell, after all.

From my own projects:

• In both The Reality Warper and Awake! people are born with innate magical abilities. While it is possible to learn abilities that you were not born with as well, you will never be as good at them as the ones you were born with. In The Reality Warper, innate abilities are random, while in Awake! they are tied more closely to your species. Every ability has a list of rules and limitations that I reference frequently while writing.
• in Earthquake House, magic works a little differently. Instead of being something that people can control, it is the force that holds the world together. Magic is a character in the story that leaves pieces of itself scattered throughout the world to keep things on track. This doesn't stop people from trying to control it, of course. . .

Physical Locations

Countries, worlds, buildings, towns, classrooms. . . If they're a major focus of the story, it's worth taking some time to map it out.

• For The Reality Warper, I created many (badly) hand drawn maps, including every floor of the Alerrawian compound, the complete layout of the underground city of Inner, and the rough layout of the forest homes of the True Users, as well as where they all are in relation to each other within the larger Bubble. This way, if I was ever confused about where a character needed to go next, I could reference my maps.
• Sometimes I can afford to keep things simpler. For Earthquake House, for example, I have a map depicting the entry hall to Earthquake House itself, and another showing where Illumina, the Valley and the Lofts (where the Inky live) are in relation to each other. One of the attributes of this story is that Earthquake House shifts and changes all the time, and the geography changes with it. So, rather than creating static maps, I spent time defining the rules for these changes.

Major Plot Points

Finally, all major plot points need some structure beyond the initial idea. Even the craziest plot needs to be guided by rules of some kind so that the world makes internal sense. Some of my plot points include:

• Choose Your Parents: This is an abandoned plot point from Awake! The idea I had was simple: what if children chose their own parents on their twelfth birthday from a list of hopeful adults who were hoping to start a family? A fascinating idea that I still intend to use one day, but I'll have to answer a lot of questions first: Why do children choose their own parents? Who looks after them until they turn twelve? What laws govern the process? Where do the children come from in the first place? And so on.
• The Cure For Sleep: This is a major plot point in Awake!. The basic idea is that the government is seeking to double the productivity of its workforce by eradicating the need to sleep. I had to think through the motivations and reasoning behind the initiative, whether or not the government even had the ability/power to do this, how they would do it, and what the consequences would be.
• Sentient Houses: Earthquake House is a sentient house in a world where most houses can think for themselves. Earthquake House itself is small on the outside, but large on the inside. Every time an earthquake erupts, the House's structure changes. There might be twenty floors one day and a hundred-and-twelve the next. More importantly, the many doors of Earthquake House change too, as do the extremely weird worlds that lie beyond. But other houses have different powers. The mayor's house, for example, has mood walls, that change color to match what she is feeling. One of the main characters, Grace, encounters a house that wanders aimlessly around on two enormous chicken legs. The possibilities are endless, and I had fun thinking about what sorts of houses to include, what restrictions to give them, and what series of events led to the houses being sentient in the first place. And all of this came from a single, two-word note in my Ideas Notebook: "sentient houses?"

In conclusion

World building is an essential part of any story, whether or not it is based in a fantasy world. Even if you are writing a story that takes place in your own, very real home town, you need to take some time to think about what aspects of your town you'll focus on, which you'll leave out, and what you want readers to think of the place before you are done. Don't skip this essential step!