Worldbuilding Starter Resources
Jul 5, 2021 7:11:25 GMT -6
Post by Caulder Melhaire on Jul 5, 2021 7:11:25 GMT -6
Worldbuilding can be a beast. We don’t all need to hit Tolkien levels of knowledge before writing our stories, but having a world that feels natural and accurate to the reader as they watch it pass by is pretty important. And regardless of whether you have an entire shell ready to fill in and paint, or just a few facets left that need fine-tuning, it can be pretty overwhelming as far as where to start. There’s a lot more to the world around us than we generally see - or consciously notice. Much like anyone with a sense of over-familiarity to a topic, it can be incredibly easy to skip otherwise obvious things when we’re trying to replicate “earth” in some alternate form.
So! Here’s a couple links to some tools that were once super helpful to me in kicking off that worldbuilding project:
Storyplanner is a neat little tool for starting a worldbuild whether you’ve got something in mind already or not. It asks you to summarize various bits of your world: biology, politics, language, cultures, economy, etc. You can save your plan in progress, and once you feel like you’ve filled out everything you can, it compiles a neat little list that can be copy pasted into your notes doc for further reference. This is more of a helpful note taker to help you figure out the major categories of your world and sketch in your characters, people, magic, governments, all that good stuff. For short stories, or character driven fiction, a final draft of this step may be all that you need to do. However, if you want totorture yourself even more keep building that epic high-fantasy, I'd recommend taking it and running it up against:
Patricia C. Wrede's Fantasy Worldbuilding Questions, which is a much more extensive list of questions and most importantly: questions! If you have a piece of your world in mind, but aren’t sure where to start, this is a great list of categorized questions to help spark your creativity. Wrede asks you to consider everything from the limits of your magic system and your world’s natural resources, to the customs of eating and population shifting from urban to rural (and vice-versa).
Remember, of course, that you don’t have to answer all (or any) of these questions. Depending on your writing style, not everything about your world may become relevant or even be shown to the readers. Unless you intend to publish your own Silmarillion and 37 lost books and letters of the peoples of middle earth, we as readers (sadly, I know) likely won’t encounter every facet of your world.
But the more you know, the more your characters know, and the more things you'll be able to subtly show us without breaking immersion. And the less likely it is that a savvy reader will get snagged on a seeming incongruity rather than your epic plot.
(And with a few outlines to help kick things off, the less likely you are to get overwhelmed by the task of building a setting from scratch.)
So! Here’s a couple links to some tools that were once super helpful to me in kicking off that worldbuilding project:
Storyplanner is a neat little tool for starting a worldbuild whether you’ve got something in mind already or not. It asks you to summarize various bits of your world: biology, politics, language, cultures, economy, etc. You can save your plan in progress, and once you feel like you’ve filled out everything you can, it compiles a neat little list that can be copy pasted into your notes doc for further reference. This is more of a helpful note taker to help you figure out the major categories of your world and sketch in your characters, people, magic, governments, all that good stuff. For short stories, or character driven fiction, a final draft of this step may be all that you need to do. However, if you want to
Patricia C. Wrede's Fantasy Worldbuilding Questions, which is a much more extensive list of questions and most importantly: questions! If you have a piece of your world in mind, but aren’t sure where to start, this is a great list of categorized questions to help spark your creativity. Wrede asks you to consider everything from the limits of your magic system and your world’s natural resources, to the customs of eating and population shifting from urban to rural (and vice-versa).
Remember, of course, that you don’t have to answer all (or any) of these questions. Depending on your writing style, not everything about your world may become relevant or even be shown to the readers. Unless you intend to publish your own Silmarillion and 37 lost books and letters of the peoples of middle earth, we as readers (sadly, I know) likely won’t encounter every facet of your world.
But the more you know, the more your characters know, and the more things you'll be able to subtly show us without breaking immersion. And the less likely it is that a savvy reader will get snagged on a seeming incongruity rather than your epic plot.
(And with a few outlines to help kick things off, the less likely you are to get overwhelmed by the task of building a setting from scratch.)
You add them to your profile as you do them around the forum.
