Building Worlds

Why should you be building worlds? Well, because you will need to. As soon as you don’t set your story in the here and now, in the world we live in and the present time, you will need to do some world building. It’s a complex process, but it can be fun, especially if you like looking into history and geography. Both are important to understand why our world and our society are how they are.

No matter how fantastical your world is, it does have to adhere to rules, to laws of nature, and laws of physics. They might differ greatly from ours, allowing for dragons to fly or humans to wield magic, but they must be there. If someone does something specific, the outcome must always be similar at least, if not outright the same. As in the real world, where an object dropped will always fall down, the world you build must be reliable. Unless you’re Lewis Carroll and it’s the Wonderland, of course. In this case, nothing has to make sense. The whole point of the Wonderland is not to make sense, after all.
If your characters travel the same way two times (on horseback, on foot, by airship, whatever you have chosen), the way should take the same amount of time. They could shave off a few hours here or take a day longer there (provided the way is long enough) due to weather conditions or luck, but they can’t take twelve days for the way to the Fortress of Evil and half a day on their way back. That just won’t fly with the readers — and for good reason.
If mages in your setting use ingredients to do magic, they should need the same ingredients for the same spell each time. If they use words, the words must be the same. There have to be underlying rules to what happens, so the audience can understand how the world works and will understand future troubles happening — such as having to do a spell and being all out of ingredients for it. If you have shown that specific herbs are necessary for the healing spell and now the mage wants to heal the fighter, but they don’t have the right herbs, the problem is understood by the readers without long explanations.

In order to build the society in your world, you have to give your world some history. If you look at the map of the world today, you will see borders everywhere. Those haven’t just grown out of the ground, splitting up the surface. They were made throughout human history (and have been created, moved, and erased many times over). It is important to understand history in order to create a society, too. We’re all a product of past generations who have lived during different points in history, have held different beliefs, have chosen mates to have a family with through the lenses of different societies.
If you want a society to resemble that of a certain era in Earth’s history, read about that historical period, but also the ones directly before it. Understand how that society came to be, why certain things were done in a certain way, why certain beliefs were held. Take the historical reality and transpose it, make it fit your magical creatures or the mages who are replacing regular nobility in your setting. If you want to go Steampunk, read Steampunk stories. Read books about Steampunk to understand the underlying ideas and aesthetics. If you want to use Ancient Greece, read up on every aspect on it, from plain history over art to society and mythology. Understand how the society worked and why it had become the way it was.
That, of course, is easier if you like history in the first place and can’t wait to dive into that book on Ancient Greece or the Regency era or the Bronze Age. If in doubt, choose an era you’ve always been interested in, even if it has been done a lot before, unlike that other era you could choose, but aren’t really interested in.

You will always do a lot more world building than you can directly address in the story you’re writing. It’s important to remember that and accept it. You need to know a lot more about the world to make it tick than those who read the story will have to. Some things will become obvious in time. Some will be addressed by the story. Some things will simply be part of the set dressing. Much more, though, will remain only in your notes about the world and will never be known to the audience.
What you should avoid at all costs is to put all that knowledge in via exposition dumps. No matter how much more information you have on the society, history, or geology of your world, do not drop it in unless it is necessary. Add it when it becomes necessary or soon before that time. If you’re writing a series, don’t drop information for the end of book four in during the first chapter of book one. Put it somewhere in the middle of book four.

If you want to make things visible, for yourself or, via blog or map directly in the book, for your audience, use the right tools for it. There is software for creating maps, such as the very expensive CC3+ (thought there sometimes are good offers in Humble Bundles, that’s how I got it, too). Some writing software, like World Anvil, has tools for map-making or blueprint-creation as well.
Write down your information in an ordered way, create a bible of sorts for your world (‘bible’ here referring to a collection of information, not to the religious text). Create maps and blueprints for important places. Write down a time-line for the history of your world and for the back story of your characters. Make sure you have all the information at your fingertips at any point of your work. You need to have it all present, even if most of it might never be known to your readers.
If you want to show off all of your world building, do it outside of the actual story. Put up a website with all the information, write it down in a blog, or make a free e-book which covers it all. Your fans will love it while the average readers will only look at it if they want or need to.

Building worlds for your stories is necessary and it can be a lot of fun. It helps you to keep the worlds working and not to surprise your audience in a negative way by making continuity errors. It helps you with plotting that third book you weren’t sure you’d be writing and picking a new area of your world for it. It can actually be a very fun activity all by itself. Building a new world and shaping it the way you want to can be satisfying and give you new inspiration as well. So pick up pen and shovel and build yourself some worlds!